Bayer targets younger audience with online Aleviator ‘commercial’

Bayer Consumer Healthcare last month launched an interactive online “commercial” in an effort to reach a younger, Internet-savvy audience with its Aleve Liquid Gels messaging.

It is one of the first times a major over-the-counter brand like Aleve has been featured in a comprehensive Internet campaign. “With the emergence of more of the alternative media offered by Web 2.0 properties and other channels, we’re testing the waters here,” Tricia McKernan, Bayer spokeswoman, said.

The Bayer Aleviator campaign, an online game at www.aleviator.com, kicked off July 12 and ran for four weeks. Visitors to the site followed a fictional storyline that pulled them through a series of social networking sites, wikis and blogs. For those consumers who completed the storyline, Bayer donated up to $10 to the Conservation Fund.

“In the first day, we had over 2,500 unique visitors to the site,” McKernan said. “This is in support of our Aleve Liquid Gels launch, and that is going after a new target consumer for us—a younger target ages 29 to 45.”

More than 70 percent of people in that age bracket use the Internet regularly, McKernan said, making it an ideal medium through which to reach them. Aleve already has significant brand awareness among older consumers with arthritis. This campaign gives Bayer the opportunity to reach the pre-arthritic segment, McKernan added.

Similar online campaigns may be in the works for all of Bayer’s consumer health care products—the media buzz generated by www.aleviator.com certainly outperformed a spend that represented less than 1 percent of Bayer’s overall advertising budget for Aleve.