FCB Health’s Kerydin campaign aims at “toe tucking”

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This is one of the print DT pieces FCB Health produced for Kerydin.

This is one of the print DTC pieces FCB Health produced for Kerydin.

When Harrison and Star’s DTC spot for Jublia, the first topical prescription treatment for toenail fungus, aired during the Super Bowl, it immediately started a buzz. This week, the campaign for Kerydin, Jublia’s direct competitor launched, and rather than go the route of the pugnacious boxing big toe, agency FCB Health went for a more personal approach. The campaign, “Toe-Tucker,” debuted on Aug. 28.

“Toenails are less than .02% of the body, yet toenail fungus impacts dozens of micro-decisions each day,” executive say. “Sufferers must determine which shoes they can wear before picking out their outfit for the day, or a black-tie affair may be turned down because they don’t have time to get a pedicure before the event. There are many ways people cope. Opting for nail polish, socks and closed-toe shoes are just a few ways individuals have been hiding the ugliness of their toes this summer.

“With a market saturated by the competition, Kerydin’s first DTC campaign encourages the millions of Americans who suffer from toenail fungus to treat the fungus and untuck their toes.”

According to Rich Levy, chief creative officer at FCB Health, “Our brief was very simple. We said to unlock the potential of this brand, what we wanted to do is we were going to promise shameless toes, and we were going to say, ‘Stop tucking your toes. Stop tucking them inside socks. Stop tucking them inside shoes. Stop tucking them under.’ We had people in focus groups say, ‘Hey, when my husband comes in the room, I tuck them under the dog,’  because they don’t want people to see their feet. It’s huge, we underestimate the burden. It affects personal lives, people say they feel dirty. They don’t want people seeing their toes, they don’t want their spouse or their significant other seeing their toes.”

Levy says everyone who worked on the campaign believes it will be a “rallying cry that will resonate with our target audience.”

“Everyone we showed it to, from research, to clients, to our own creative teams here, say, ‘I get that, I totally get that, I’ve seen that behavior, I know people who do that behavior.’ It comes from a human insight that having toenail fungus is embarrassing,” Levy says. “And I think that when you can create a campaign that resonates on a human insight level, that people get it, understand it, and self-identify, and they say to their physician, ‘You know what, I am going to stop tucking, I am not going to do this anymore, I am not going to be a toe tucker anymore.’ I think it’s a huge idea.”

Client PharmaDerm immediately recognized the potential in the brief, Levy says. “Yes, we did do research and yes, we did all the usual things that you would do, but they knew pretty much right off the bat that this had the opportunity to be an enormous, enormous idea in the category. They saw our excitement, they saw it in the idea immediately, and they fully embraced it and helped us make it much, much better along the way.”