WellPoint Awarded Prestigious International Marke...( INDIANAPOLIS Oct. 30 /- WellPoint...),Health

INDIANAPOLIS, Oct. 30 /PRNewswire/ -- WellPoint's commercial marketing team was awarded a silver ECHO award from the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) for its innovative campaign, "Ecosphere -- Simple is more complex than it looks."

The DMA International ECHO Awards competition is the only international award that honors excellence in direct and digital marketing, creativity, strategy and response results.

WellPoint's campaign, conducted through its affiliated health plans, included direct mail and online components, was targeted to the health benefits decision makers at large, multi-state employers and was designed to show that while health care is complex, WellPoint's affiliated health plans make the complexities simple.

As the campaign rolled out in January, 2008, more than 500 benefits managers received a box with the word "Simple" on the outside, and "is more complex than it looks" on the inside lid. The box also included an actual Ecosphere -- a glass sphere that encloses a perfectly balanced, self-contained aquatic ecosystem of bright red shrimp, algae and bacteria -- as well as additional marketing materials.

Once the decision maker opened the mailing and reviewed the material, they were asked to visit an interactive microsite in order to participate in ongoing online conversations with WellPoint sales associates.

"The Ecosphere is designed to show that it takes a lot of intelligence, dedication, research and effort to make the most complex system in the universe very simple," said Lisa Guertin, senior vice president of commercial marketing and product for WellPoint.

This campaign worked so well that WellPoint was contacted by benefits managers not on the original distribution requesting their own Ecosphere.

"Winning this award means a lot to our team because it indicates that this particular direct marketing campaign is among the best, not only in the country, but in the world," said Guertin "It also
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