“Dreidel Dreidel” (Sanofi Genzyme, EMCAY)
“Dreidel, Dreidel” is a truly one-of-a-kind pharma campaign initiative. This DTC, disease education campaign for Sanofi Genzyme runs across TV, print, and radio, informing a very specific group about Gaucher disease—a chronic, progressive, inherited genetic disorder that usually affects 1 in 40,000 to 1 in 60,000 worldwide. However, in the case of Ashkenazi Jewish people (Jewish community of Eastern European descent), this number becomes a staggering 1 in 850.
This highly targeted campaign was specifically designed to reach Russian-speaking U.S. Ashkenazi Jews, which represent about 40% of the total U.S. Ashkenazi community. Even though a great majority of the U.S. Jewish population is of Ashkenazi descent, the ability to reach this audience efficiently and appropriately presented a clear challenge. The level of research and planning had to be extremely granular. The team identified that a high number of U.S. Ashkenazi Jews immigrated from the former Soviet Union with unique consumption behavior, which allowed them to reach this audience across the DTC marketing mix driven by TV, radio, and print.
Many patients aren’t aware that their symptoms, such as bruising, nose bleeds, fatigue, which often resemble symptoms of many other conditions, could be driven by a genetic disease. Given the condition is progressive, this is not something to take a chance on. Dreidel, a Jewish childhood game of chance, is used to connect with the target audience and convey a sense of urgency to take a test rather than take a chance. Headlines read: “Are you playing around with your health?” Conceived in Russian, the original in-language concept has strong creative impact.
Still a young campaign, “Dreidel, Dreidel” has resonated with its target community as well as the PM360 judges, one of whom says that this campaign is “Creative, and niche oriented. DTC is rarely used for this type of limited disorder; however, the impact is huge on the people this affects. The dreidel is a creative way of reaching this group.”
