Envoy Medical hearing aid video goes viral; 2 million+ views in a week

Envoy Medical’s Esteem hearing aid has a perpetual publicity boost through a $250,000 a month agreement to be the hearing aid Rush Limbaugh uses. But the Minnesota-based medical device company just got some free marketing magic: a video by one of its customers has gone viral.

Sarah Churman, 29, posted the video of her hearing her own voice for the first time on her sloanchurman YouTube account. In five days the video has gathered more than 2.1 million views on YouTube and the video (and Esteem) were featured everywhere from The Washington Post to The Huffington Post.

“I was born deaf and 8 weeks ago I received a hearing implant,” she writes below the video. “This is the video of them turning it on and me hearing myself for the first time :) Edit: For those of you who have asked the implant I received was Esteem offered by Envoy Medical.”

In the video she says, “I don’t want to hear myself cry” and later says: “My laughter sounds loud.”

Envoy’s device is is implanted behind the ear. Instead of amplifying sounds with microphones like traditional hearing aids, Esteem converts vibrations picked up by the eardrum into electronic signals, cleans them up with a sound processor and then converts them back into mechanical sounds. It’s been available in the United States since March 2010.