The challenge
Evening primrose oil is not a product Nigerian consumers were searching for. There is no meaningful search demand to capture, which rules out the usual playbook of intercepting existing intent.
So the campaign had to do two jobs at once: create category awareness among women who did not know the product existed, and drive them to a purchase — in a regulated pharmaceutical category, across three cities with materially different media habits.
The approach
Four workstreams, one plan
Digital alone could not carry category creation. The campaign was built across television, media relations and expert placement, paid social with an AI health bot, and the agency and regulatory workstream that held them together.
Television for the story, social for the sale
Broadcast covered 60-second and 30-second commercials in a national morning belt across three months, plus weekend breakfast placement — reaching women during daytime viewing. Paid social then carried the same creative into feeds where it could be targeted, measured and converted.
Credibility before conversion
For a health product, endorsement is not optional. The plan funded a briefed pool of print, TV and radio journalists across thirty outlets, plus two paid expert health segments.
Regulatory built in from day one
ARCON and NAFDAC approvals were a costed, scheduled line item — not a surprise discovered in week three.
An AI health bot as owned infrastructure
A twelve-month WhatsApp and web health-information bot, so a woman who sees a commercial at 9am can get her questions answered on WhatsApp at 9pm without a human on the other end.
What we learned
Cost per visit swings, and you have to say so. Cost per website visit varied more than fourfold across the flight, driven by creative fatigue and audience saturation. Every week went into the client report. Managing that spread, rather than hiding it, is the job.
Category creation is a broadcast job. Reach is what a new category needs before conversion tactics can do anything at all.