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Twitter disarray continues as pharma advertisers extend pauses and look around for options, but keep tweeting
2. MarketingRx roundup: Pfizer, BioNTech re-up iHeartRadio holiday sponsorship; WHO renames monkeypox to 'mpox'
3. Merck's latest 'Why Vaccines' campaign seeks to better inform vaccine-hesitant moms
4. Roivant’s Dermavant debuts first-ever TV commercial for psoriasis cream Vtama
5. Gaming for pharma: Real Chemistry adds video game marketing to agency expertise
6. Pharma renewable energy co-op sparks broader supplier push, follows Walmart's lead
7. Sanofi welcomes 500 staffers to new Paris HQ after €30M renovation
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Beth Snyder Bulik
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The Twitter turmoil continues with the departure of the pharma and healthcare director amid a now almost entirely stalled pharma ad spend. See the story below for details and stay tuned for more as we roll through the holiday season. Speaking of holidays, today is Giving Tuesday, so don't forget to top off your favorite charities and causes! 

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Beth Snyder Bulik
Senior Editor, Endpoints News
@BethSBulik
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Illustration: Assistant editor Kathy Wong for Endpoints News
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1
by Beth Snyder Bulik

Phar­ma ad­ver­tis­ers on Twit­ter are done — at least for now. Ad spend­ing among the pre­vi­ous top spenders flat­tened even fur­ther last week, ac­cord­ing to the lat­est da­ta from ad track­er Path­mat­ics, amid on­go­ing tur­moil af­ter bil­lion­aire boss Elon Musk’s takeover now one month ago.

Among 18 top ad­ver­tis­ers tracked for End­points News, on­ly two are spend­ing, GSK and Bay­er. GSK spend­ing for the full week through Sun­day was min­i­mal at just un­der $1,900. Mean­while, Ger­man drug­mak­er Bay­er re­mains the in­dus­try out­lier up­ping its spend­ing to $499,000 last week from $480,000 the pre­vi­ous week. Bay­er's spend­ing al­so marks a big in­crease from a month ago and be­fore the Musk takeover, when it spent $16,000 per week.

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by Beth Snyder Bulik

It’s that time of year again for pop mu­sic fans with the re­turn of the iHeartRa­dio Jin­gle Ball tour — and Pfiz­er and BioN­Tech’s spon­sor­ship. For the sec­ond year, the Covid-19 vac­cine col­lab­o­ra­tors are the phar­ma na­tion­al spon­sors among con­sumer brand part­ners, in­clud­ing ES­PN, Dunkin, M&Ms, Mer­cedes and Pep­si.

Pfiz­er and BioN­Tech are al­so spon­sor­ing the of­fi­cial Jin­gle Ball Ra­dio stream­ing sta­tion on iHeart’s net­work, pro­grammed with mu­sic from past and present con­cert per­form­ers. This year they in­clude Liz­zo, Dua Li­pa, Dove Cameron and Char­lie Puth. Pfiz­er-spon­sored ra­dio ads and on­line video and dig­i­tal ban­ner ads en­cour­age lis­ten­ers to get up­dat­ed Covid-19 boost­er shots.

WHO phas­es out mon­key­pox dis­ease name, re­plac­ing with short­er, less stig­ma­tiz­ing ‘mpox’

In a bid to get rid of the mon­key­pox name to stem “racist and stig­ma­tiz­ing lan­guage” used around it, WHO is chang­ing the dis­ease name to mpox. Both names will be used si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly for one year be­fore the name mon­key­pox dis­ap­pears from use, al­though the term will re­main search­able in archives.

Mpox will be added to the in­ter­na­tion­al clas­si­fi­ca­tion of dis­eases (ICD) this week, WHO of­fi­cials said in a state­ment on Mon­day, not­ing that the name change process was ac­cel­er­at­ed in this case.

While the change was ex­pect­ed, the year-long tran­si­tion may be nec­es­sary as mon­key­pox is a long-es­tab­lished dis­ease name, first named more than 50 years ago in 1970 — and be­fore the WHO best prac­tice guide for nam­ing dis­eases was pub­lished (in 2015).

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by Beth Snyder Bulik

From Hol­ly­wood cou­ple en­dorse­ments to tar­get­ed eq­ui­ty ef­forts, Mer­ck has been push­ing the val­ue of vac­ci­na­tions, es­pe­cial­ly since the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic dis­rup­tion. Now the phar­ma is turn­ing to a new tar­get — vac­cine-hes­i­tant par­ents, and moms in par­tic­u­lar.

Mer­ck’s “Why Vac­cines” lat­est so­cial me­dia and dig­i­tal cam­paign spot­lights re­al-life new moms who have ques­tions about vac­ci­nat­ing their chil­dren.

In one video, April ad­mits she felt con­flict­ed, wor­ried and un­sure about vac­ci­nat­ing her third child af­ter a friend showed her a video about child­hood vac­cine con­cerns that “led me down a rab­bit hole of mis­in­for­ma­tion.”

April says she ul­ti­mate­ly went to the CDC web­site, talked to her pe­di­a­tri­cian and found out she knew some­one strug­gling with the af­ter­ef­fects of a vac­cine-pre­ventable child­hood dis­ease be­fore de­cid­ing to vac­ci­nate her youngest son — on the same rec­om­mend­ed sched­ule as she had done with her old­er two chil­dren.

Mer­ck ini­tial­ly launched the “Why Vac­cines” cam­paign last year with a fo­cus on in­ter-gen­er­a­tional well-be­ing and tar­get­ing un­der-vac­ci­nat­ed groups of peo­ple. How­ev­er, the new Face­book ad­ver­tis­ing work is aimed at vac­cine hes­i­tan­cy in par­ents, said Mike Stan­ton, a Mer­ck VP of mar­ket­ing in pe­di­atric, he­pati­tis and pipeline vac­cines and vac­cines con­fi­dence.

“Small gaps can lead to big health con­se­quences,” he said, point­ing to re­cent measles out­breaks in Ohio and po­lio out­breaks in New York. “When you start to ask why are these gaps hap­pen­ing? That’s where we’ve seen this in­crease in hes­i­tan­cy in the US. It was here be­fore the pan­dem­ic – I don’t want to just blame all hes­i­tan­cy on the pan­dem­ic – … but the po­lar­iza­tion and politi­ciza­tion of vac­cines has got­ten greater dur­ing the pan­dem­ic.”

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Dermavant Sciences' first consumer TV ad for its Vtama psoriasis med shows people ready for a new topical treatment.
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by Beth Snyder Bulik

Der­ma­vant Sci­ences has been mar­ket­ing its first prod­uct, pso­ri­a­sis med Vta­ma, to der­ma­tol­o­gists for months, but on Tues­day it rolled out its first con­sumer cam­paign. The de­but DTC ef­fort in­clud­ing a stream­ing TV com­mer­cial en­cour­ages pa­tients to a “Top­i­cal Up­ris­ing” in a nod to Vta­ma be­ing a top­i­cal cream.

In the new com­mer­cial, a swell of peo­ple dis­cards scarves and jack­et cov­er­ings, gath­er­ing in the street to con­verge on a phar­ma­cy to de­mand a steroid-free pre­scrip­tion. A mo­ment of lev­i­ty fol­lows when a phar­ma­cist says, “You know you can just talk to your doc­tor, right?” The gath­ered crowds col­lec­tive­ly says, “Oh.”

Der­ma­vant VP of mar­ket­ing Stacey Williams said re­al pa­tients' in­sights were the dri­ver be­hind the cam­paign — in­cor­po­rat­ing their frus­tra­tion at the lack of top­i­cal op­tions in the mar­ket. While pso­ri­a­sis bi­o­log­ic in­jecta­bles and pills are fair­ly plen­ti­ful, on­ly about 20% of pa­tients with mod­er­ate to se­vere plaque pso­ri­a­sis use them. The ma­jor­i­ty of pa­tients use steroid top­i­cals, which are not rec­om­mend­ed for dai­ly use, to try to con­trol symp­toms.

“The idea be­hind the cam­paign comes from hear­ing the voic­es of the top­i­cal pa­tients who aren’t on bi­o­log­ics,” Williams said. “…It’s tak­en ex­act­ly from what these pa­tients talk about and how it feels to live with pso­ri­a­sis — and quite frankly, their frus­tra­tion that they haven’t had an op­tion in 25 years.”

Der­ma­vant, which is a sub­sidiary of Roivant and is one of its "Vant" com­pa­nies, is aim­ing in the new DTC cam­paign to tar­get peo­ple who have been di­ag­nosed with pso­ri­a­sis but have de­cid­ed against, or stopped us­ing, in­jecta­bles or pills as treat­ments.

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Devon Taylor is taking her love of gaming — and its personal health benefits — to the next level as head of 21Gaming.
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by Beth Snyder Bulik

Re­al Chem­istry’s 21Grams ad agency wants to help phar­ma clients get in the game, video gam­ing, that is, with a new ded­i­cat­ed busi­ness prac­tice. 21Gam­ing is ramp­ing up to help clients across video game mar­ket­ing plays, from cus­tom orig­i­nal ti­tles to sim­ply ad­ver­tis­ing in­side ex­ist­ing games.

Lead­ing the group is De­von Tay­lor, a life­long gamer who turned to the genre for her own men­tal health and well­ness dur­ing post­par­tum de­pres­sion af­ter giv­ing birth to her youngest son. She’s not alone, point­ing out that two out of three moms play video games as a way to im­prove their moods and take a brain break.

Us­ing video games as a phar­ma mar­ket­ing chan­nel isn’t com­plete­ly new — di­a­betes in­sulin pump mak­er In­sulet cre­at­ed Om­ni­pod Bay in­side “An­i­mal Cross­ing” as a di­a­betes-themed space ear­li­er this year — how­ev­er, 21Gam­ing aims to add ex­pe­ri­ence and rig­or to it.

“We’re hon­ing in the ther­a­peu­tic el­e­ments,” Tay­lor said. “See­ing the ef­fect on peo­ple for men­tal health and phys­i­cal health re­in­forces the fact that this is so far re­moved from pas­sive en­ter­tain­ment. It is an ac­tive form of ex­pres­sion, con­nec­tion and ther­a­py that you can’t by see­ing a dis­play ad or watch­ing a TV show.”

The re­sult is more ef­fec­tive mar­ket­ing — now she and the team at 21Gam­ing just need to talk to phar­ma clients about try­ing it. So far, so good, Tay­lor said, with phar­ma and health com­pa­nies “ea­ger to dive in and get start­ed.”

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by Beth Snyder Bulik

A coali­tion of phar­ma com­pa­nies is dou­bling down on ef­forts to en­cour­age sup­pli­ers to adopt re­new­able en­er­gy prac­tices. The “En­er­gize” phar­ma pro­gram, launched last year at the cli­mate change con­fer­ence COP26 with 10 of the world’s largest drug­mak­ers, now in­cludes 15 phar­mas, plus a new co­hort of sup­pli­ers opt­ing in­to a first-ever pow­er pur­chase agree­ment (PPA).

The buy­ers’ group, which in­cludes sev­en sup­pli­ers and two of the phar­mas, is pitch­ing in to­geth­er un­der Schnei­der Elec­tric for scale-buy­ing pow­er in Eu­rope and North Amer­i­ca. PPAs are at­trac­tive for re­new­able en­er­gy providers be­cause the typ­i­cal 10-20 year long-term deals pro­vide cap­i­tal for build­ing new projects, in­clud­ing wind farms and so­lar fields.

While the PPA move is a first in phar­ma, Schnei­der re­cent­ly bro­kered a sim­i­lar sup­pli­er deal for Wal­mart called the Gi­ga­ton PPA.

“The goal is to try to ad­vance the ex­e­cu­tion of those deals in the US and Eu­rope over the course of 2023, but at the same time con­tin­ue to add more spon­sors and re­cruit more sup­pli­ers in­to the pro­gram,” said John Pow­ers, VP, glob­al clean­tech and re­new­ables at Schnei­der Elec­tric.

En­er­gize cur­rent­ly has more than 350 sup­pli­ers signed up along with 15 phar­ma com­pa­nies which are: Am­gen, As­traZeneca, Bio­gen, Boehringer In­gel­heim, Bris­tol My­ers Squibb, Chiesi Far­ma­ceu­ti­ci, GSK, John­son & John­son, MSD (Mer­ck in the US), No­var­tis, No­vo Nordisk, Pfiz­er, Sanofi, Take­da and Te­va Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals.

Schnei­der says the sup­pli­ers and phar­ma spon­sors com­bined rep­re­sent 22.1 ter­awatt-hours of elec­tric­i­ty de­mand. One ter­awatt-hour is equal to the out­put of one tril­lion watts for one hour, and is rough­ly equal to the elec­tric­i­ty used by 100,000 US homes over an en­tire year.

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by Nicole DeFeudis

When Paul Hud­son took the helm at Sanofi back in 2019, he promised to rein­vent the phar­ma gi­ant — in­clud­ing its Paris head­quar­ters. This week, the com­pa­ny set up shop in new “state-of-the-art” digs.

La Mai­son Sanofi, as the new HQ is called, is of­fi­cial­ly open for busi­ness, Hud­son an­nounced on Mon­day. The 9,000-square-me­ter (just un­der 97,000-square-foot) space ac­com­mo­dates 500 em­ploy­ees across the com­pa­ny’s gov­ern­ment and glob­al sup­port func­tions teams, in­clud­ing fi­nance, HR, le­gal and cor­po­rate af­fairs — and it was built with en­vi­ron­men­tal sus­tain­abil­i­ty and hy­brid work in mind.

“The open­ing of La Mai­son Sanofi is an­oth­er step to­ward the mod­ern health­care com­pa­ny we strive to be­come,” Hud­son said in a news re­lease. “A com­pa­ny open to the world and that seeks to of­fer its peo­ple the best work en­vi­ron­ment to chase the mir­a­cles of sci­ence.”

Sanofi signed a lease for the new space on Av­enue de la Grande Ar­mée back in 2020, just as its old lease on Rue La Boétie ex­pired. The com­pa­ny hired Franklin Azzi Ar­chi­tec­ture for the ren­o­va­tions, which in­clud­ed merg­ing two pre­vi­ous­ly sep­a­rate build­ings.

While a Sanofi spokesper­son de­clined to dis­close the cost of the project, they did note that the new lease is less ex­pen­sive than the pre­vi­ous one. Franklin Azzi said the ren­o­va­tion cost €30 mil­lion ($31 mil­lion).

The re­vamp is part of Sanofi’s push to mod­ern­ize its work­spaces, which re­cent­ly in­clud­ed a new 900,000-square-foot fa­cil­i­ty in Cam­bridge, MA. The com­pa­ny al­so ren­o­vat­ed its rough­ly 7-year-old Gen­til­ly cam­pus, close to Paris, to “bet­ter wel­come up to 3,000 col­lab­o­ra­tors.” Ear­li­er this year, Hud­son al­so sketched out a $1 bil­lion-plus in­vest­ment for a new mR­NA cen­ter in France.

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