So it will be interesting to see and we very specifically picked a man to do that particular commercial. Now we also have a woman who also has the same dual incontinence symptoms. And we’re running that commercial as well. So this November we have, for the first time, stress urinary incontinence commercial. We have a dual incontinence commercial where people are talking about urinary and fecal incontinence at the same time. And in addition to the kind of straightforward more generic OAB ads. So you can see that we’re trying to get to your question in a way. I mean we’re going to — we’re changing up the messaging and seeing what kind of response we get is maybe different than what we’ve seen so far. But I think it was time for us to be a little more specific with some of these symptoms and see if we can draw some people in.
We’re really curious to see how the fecal incontinence add draws. Because talk about people being embarrassed. I mean it’s one thing to talk about urinary dysfunction, it’s really embarrassing to talk about fecal dysfunction. So we do know that about 30% or so of the patients that actually get sacral neuromodulation for urinary urge incontinence have some form of fecal incontinence to go along with it. So if we can draw some of those people in presenting with fecal continence as their primary indication, it will be really interesting to see how that impacts our business in general. So that’s kind of what we’re up to. But the demographic and why are we on television, right? Well, we’re on television because if you look at third-party SaaS, you’ll find that it’s the people 60 years or older, are the ones that are watching network television these days.
And that’s why we’re on television because that’s our demographic that we’re after. The average age of a person getting sacral neuromodulation for Axonics is 58 years old. So that’s the case. We’ve tried some streaming services and some other fancy stuff in the past and it just doesn’t pull as well. As just plain vanilla Facebook and obviously a network television. So that’s the story.
Operator: The next question comes from Michael Sarcone with Jefferies.
Michael Sarcone: Just a quick question. Can you just talk about, in the U.S., what does rep productivity look like on average? And kind of where do you think that could ultimately go?
Raymond Cohen: That’s a good question. So we talked publicly early day that when we looked at the headcount of our competitor for sacral neuromodulation, their average productivity per rep was about $3.5 million. Now that was with a monopoly with no competition. This year, in 2023, we expect average productivity to be a little over $2.5 million on a per rep basis. And we would expect, obviously, nice increases consistent with what we’re guiding in terms of our growth trajectory in 2024. So you could imagine, once again, not even finished our fourth year and to see the productivity to be as high as it is, we’re very encouraged by that. So that’s the answer to your question. I think you got to round it up higher, obviously, for 2024 but that’s what we’re looking at.
Operator: The next question comes from Mike Kratky with Leerink Partners.
Mike Kratky: So are your newly implemented DTC efforts and the new television commercials likely initiatives that you expect to continue throughout or potentially accelerate in 2024? And then just as a quick follow-up, how do you kind of balance the trade-offs in that DTC spending versus committing to more meaningful investment at the headcount side?
