Launching the first laser cleared for non-invasive fat reduction

Scope

National media relations for the launch of the Zerona, the first low-level laser cleared by the FDA for non-invasive fat reduction, across broadcast, print and digital health and beauty press.

Challenge

Body contouring without surgery is exactly the claim a skeptical health desk has learned to ignore. The category is crowded with devices that promise inch loss and cannot survive a fact-check, and beauty editors had been burned before.

Erchonia was different in one respect that mattered, and it was a regulatory fact rather than a marketing one. Getting anyone to hear that fact before dismissing the category was the whole job.

What we did

Crier led every pitch with the clearance. FDA sign-off is not a claim a brand makes about itself, which is precisely why it works as an opening line to a producer who has heard the rest before.

Behind it we put physician spokespeople and real patient results, so a reporter following up on the science found substance rather than a brochure. Only once that foundation was laid did the consumer hook do its work.

That order mattered. Pitched hook-first, the story is an infomercial. Pitched proof-first, the same hook becomes the reason a national morning show books the segment.

Results

Broadcast carried it. TODAY reached 4 million viewers, Good Morning America 3.8 million, The Early Show 2.4 million and the Rachael Ray Show 1.5 million, with Bravo’s Real Housewives of Atlanta airing the segment nine separate times.

In print

The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, USA Today and U.S. News & World Report took the news and business angle.

Harper’s Bazaar, SELF, Women’s Health, Woman’s World, Allure, Consumers Digest, the Daily Mail, The Daily Beast and ConsumerReports.org carried it to the beauty and consumer audience the device was built for.