In the ear­ly days of the pan­dem­ic, there was a mad scram­ble for in­for­ma­tion. What was a coro­n­avirus, how like­ly was a vac­cine and how soon could it be de­vel­oped?

At John­son & John­son, where Janssen sci­en­tists were al­ready at work on vac­cine can­di­dates even be­fore Covid-19 was of­fi­cial­ly a pan­dem­ic, Seema Ku­mar, along with her glob­al health com­mu­ni­ca­tions team, no­ticed that in­for­ma­tion void and jumped in with an idea.

The glob­al head of J&J’s of­fice of in­no­va­tion, glob­al health and sci­en­tif­ic en­gage­ment quick­ly helped launch a week­ly so­cial me­dia show called “Road to a Vac­cine.” J&J sci­en­tists in­clud­ing chief sci­en­tif­ic of­fi­cer Paul Stof­fels, pub­lic health of­fi­cials and oth­er med­ical ex­perts dis­cussed Covid vac­cines news and de­vel­op­ments. Host­ed by well-known jour­nal­ist Lisa Ling, the vac­cine show end­ed up not on­ly track­ing J&J’s Janssen path to its ade­n­ovec­tor vac­cine, but al­so cul­tur­al mo­ments, health­care sys­tem in­equities and men­tal health con­cerns.

Now in­spired by the suc­cess of “Road to a Vac­cine” — more than 1 mil­lion views on LinkedIn alone — J&J has cre­at­ed “Eu­re­ka Mo­ments,” a new week­ly so­cial me­dia show to shine a light on sci­en­tif­ic dis­cov­ery and specif­i­cal­ly on the peo­ple mak­ing them.

Host­ed by Ku­mar, the show aims to be a kind of “Peo­ple mag­a­zine of sci­ence,” fo­cused on the sci­en­tists and re­searchers and the eu­re­ka mo­ments be­hind their dis­cov­er­ies.

To­day’s au­dio chan­nels are not your grand­ma’s ra­dio. From dig­i­tal stream­ing au­dio to orig­i­nal pod­casts, more ears than ever are tuned in­to a grow­ing wave of au­dio con­tent. Phar­ma mar­keters are tak­ing an­oth­er look at ad­ver­tis­ing op­tions on au­dio — which is now boom­ing, thanks in part to the pan­dem­ic and more peo­ple stay­ing at home.

More than 220 mil­lion peo­ple in the US stream mu­sic every month, while 116 mil­lion lis­tened to at least one pod­cast in the last month, ac­cord­ing to stats com­piled by SXM Me­dia and Pan­do­ra. And it’s grow­ing. Dig­i­tal au­dio stream­ing in­creased 16.4% in the first six months this year when com­pared to the same time pe­ri­od in 2020.

That goes for ad­ver­tis­ing too. Phar­ma mar­keters are jump­ing in across a wide range of au­dio ad­ver­tis­ing op­tions. The in­dus­try, for in­stance, dou­bled its ad share spend­ing on pod­casts in 2020 over the pre­vi­ous year, said Mark Pap­pas, se­nior VP, In­no­va­tion at CMI Me­dia Group.

“There are now so many touch­points to reach pa­tients, and HCPs, wher­ev­er they are through­out the day. They’re lis­ten­ing on their phone, in their car, at their com­put­er and con­nect­ed to smart speak­ers at home,” he said. “The au­di­ence is there and un­like ban­ner buys or so­cial me­dia where the com­pe­ti­tion is in­sane, this is an area that’s re­al­ly wide open — at least for now.”

One of the rea­sons phar­ma com­pa­nies are at­tract­ed to pod­casts is that they’re ef­fec­tive. Phar­ma and health­care pod­casts topped all in­dus­tries with a 137% lift or ac­tion tak­en af­ter lis­ten­ing to an ad, ac­cord­ing to Pod­sites Bench­mark Re­port last year.

Mil­lions of peo­ple stuck at home dur­ing the pan­dem­ic took on do-it-your­self home projects. Now Mer­ck wants them to turn the ta­bles on them­selves and get back to self-care.

The “Do it For Your­self” cam­paign en­cour­ages peo­ple to pay at­ten­tion to po­ten­tial lung can­cer symp­toms such as pro­longed un­ex­plained cough or con­tin­u­ous short­ness of breath.

While health checks dropped pre­cip­i­tous­ly dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, can­cer screen­ings were es­pe­cial­ly hard hit. Screen­ings for lung can­cer, which is the lead­ing cause of can­cer deaths in the US, de­creased by 50% in 2020, said Kris­ten Drake, Mer­ck ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor, glob­al com­mu­ni­ca­tions.

“The pan­dem­ic has had a pro­found and far-reach­ing im­pact on rou­tine well vis­its and pre­ven­ta­tive care,” she said, adding “if you find lung can­cer ear­ly, the 5-year sur­vival rate can be 60%, but when found late, it drops all the way to 6%.”

Mer­ck’s lung can­cer ef­fort is the lat­est in a string of ef­forts across the in­dus­try from phar­ma com­pa­nies, ad­vo­ca­cy groups and pub­lic health of­fi­cials to rev up screen­ings and pre­ven­ta­tive health­care af­ter missed ap­point­ments dur­ing the pan­dem­ic.

An­oth­er re­cent lung can­cer screen­ing ef­fort from Stand Up To Can­cer, backed by Bris­tol My­ers Squibb, fea­tures rap artist and ac­tor Com­mon as spokesman and be­gan last week in con­junc­tion with the start of Lung Can­cer Aware­ness Month in No­vem­ber. Al­though both ef­forts are un­brand­ed, Mer­ck’s Keytru­da and BMS’ Op­di­vo are both block­buster im­muno-on­col­o­gy drugs to treat lung can­cer.

For as long as there have been HIV med­i­cines, the on­ly op­tions for pa­tients have been dai­ly pills — un­til this year that is. Glax­o­SmithK­line’s Vi­iV Health­care ap­proval for long-act­ing in­jectable Cabe­nu­va in Jan­u­ary marked a sud­den change.

In­stead of peo­ple with HIV tak­ing dai­ly pills — a habit even re­in­forced in pop cul­ture in film and oth­er fic­tion­al de­pic­tions — there’s now a once-a-month in­jec­tion op­tion.

So now Vi­iV is putting mar­ket­ing to work as it looks to change those long-es­tab­lished habits. In its first di­rect to con­sumer cam­paign for Cabe­nu­va, the open­ing line of the cur­rent­ly run­ning na­tion­al TV ad an­nounces, “There’s a dif­fer­ent way to treat HIV.”

Three re­al peo­ple liv­ing with HIV are shown trav­el­ing and liv­ing ac­tive lives with fam­i­ly and friends, while talk­ing about their rea­sons for tak­ing Cabe­nu­va. One man named Or­lan­do notes, “HIV pills aren’t on my mind,” while Steve is shown dri­ving a con­vert­ible speak­ing in voiceover, “I love be­ing able to pick up and go.”

The cam­paign Vi­iV calls “Once a Month and You’re Good to Go” keys in on the in­sight that while peo­ple liv­ing with HIV are gen­er­al­ly sat­is­fied with dai­ly pills, some strug­gle with self-stig­ma, fear that their HIV sta­tus will be dis­closed or the con­stant re­minder of their di­ag­no­sis, said Robin Gait­ens, Vi­iV Health­care prod­uct and com­mu­ni­ty com­mu­ni­ca­tions di­rec­tor.

Mean­while, the over­all launch of Cabe­nu­va “is go­ing well and as ex­pect­ed,” she said.

When Bob K. was di­ag­nosed with fol­lic­u­lar lym­phoma, he wasn’t even sure how to spell the name of the rare blood can­cer. Now, as spokesper­son for Epizyme’s “In My Blood” dig­i­tal cam­paign, he and oth­er fol­lic­u­lar lym­phoma (FL) pa­tients are talk­ing about their ex­pe­ri­ences with the type of non-Hodgkin’s lym­phoma, along­side a new kind of dig­i­tal coach.

“My Fol­lic­u­lar Lym­phoma Coach” is ac­tu­al­ly re­al-life hema­tol­ogy and on­col­o­gy nurse prac­ti­tion­er San­dra Kurtin, who in­tro­duces her­self in a video on the web­site. She asks the per­son watch­ing to be pre­pared to an­swer some sim­ple ques­tions about their di­ag­noses, adding that her goal is to “take some of the un­cer­tain­ty out of liv­ing with fol­lic­u­lar lym­phoma and pre­pare you to en­gage in a proac­tive part­ner­ship with your health­care providers.”

Peo­ple watch­ing can then choose from op­tions on a menu list­ed be­side the video. De­pend­ing on the se­lec­tion, Kurtin re­turns to ex­plain terms or of­fer re­sources on top­ics such as liv­ing with fol­lic­u­lar lym­phoma, treat­ment op­tions and how to com­mu­ni­cate bet­ter with a doc­tor. As the ques­tion and an­swer­ing con­tin­ues, again de­pend­ing on the user’s choic­es, Kurtin’s videos ex­plain things like the dif­fer­ent stages of the dis­ease or spe­cif­ic treat­ment is­sues like cost, ef­fi­ca­cy, safe­ty and qual­i­ty of life.

Epizyme’s use of Kurtin, who prac­tices at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ari­zona Can­cer Cen­ter, is a dif­fer­ent take on phar­ma coach­ing apps which some­times in­clude per­son­al­ized chat­bots like No­vo Nordisk’s Sophia on its Cor­ner­stones4Care Type 2 di­a­betes-fo­cused web­site or Sanofi France’s Ni­na to help peo­ple with mild sleep dis­or­ders. Kurtin said in an email that she was ap­proached by Epizyme's ad­vo­ca­cy staff to do the videos, and that there are no plans for fol­low ups at this time.

What’s the best way to talk to young peo­ple about Covid-19 vac­cines? Try YouTube. That’s what Klick Health did, part­ner­ing with Google’s video plat­form and the Vac­cine Con­fi­dence Pro­ject on a vac­cine facts cam­paign aimed at 18 to 30 year olds.

The “Com­mu­ni­ty Uni­ty” pub­lic ser­vice an­nounce­ments take the most Googled ques­tions about the Covid-19 vac­cines and turn them in­to a hip and ed­u­ca­tion­al 12-video se­ries. The first three videos de­buted Wednes­day ad­dress­ing of­ten-asked ques­tions around the po­ten­tial of in­fer­til­i­ty, mis­car­riages and yes, even alien ba­bies, which was an ac­tu­al con­cern that sur­faced in search. An in­tro­duc­to­ry video ex­plains the se­ries goal to “come to­geth­er, learn to­geth­er and stay pro­tect­ed to­geth­er.”

The Klick Health team be­gan with the Vac­cine Con­fi­dence Pro­ject’s re­search and then added in Google and YouTube ex­ten­sive da­ta and an­a­lyt­ics to dig up the most searched Covid-19 ques­tions and top­ics on Google around the world across 12 dif­fer­ent lan­guages.

The glob­al pub­lic ser­vice an­nounce­ments use an­i­ma­tions, pop-cul­ture ref­er­ences and re­lat­able char­ac­ters to try to dis­pel vac­cine mis­in­for­ma­tion that younger heavy so­cial me­dia users are more ex­posed to. The age group is al­so more like­ly than old­er age groups to take a wait-and-see ap­proach to vac­cines.

Al­most one-third (30%) of 18-29-year-olds in the US are un­vac­ci­nat­ed com­pared to just 14% of peo­ple 65 and old­er, ac­cord­ing to the most re­cent Kaiser Fam­i­ly Foun­da­tion’s Covid-19 month­ly mon­i­tor. While 13% of the younger group say they won’t get vac­ci­nat­ed no mat­ter what, 9% are still wait­ing. (The oth­er 8% said they will get vac­ci­nat­ed if re­quired.)

A few months af­ter Eli Lil­ly and Boehringer In­gel­heim broke in­to the chron­ic heart fail­ure space with their SGLT2 in­hibitor Jar­diance, the part­ners are al­ready plot­ting an ex­pan­sion in­to acute heart fail­ure — and on Sun­day, they read out some piv­otal re­sults to back their bid.

Acute heart fail­ure pa­tients were 36% more like­ly to ben­e­fit from Jar­diance than place­bo af­ter 90 days (p=0.0054), meet­ing the pri­ma­ry end­point in the Phase III EM­PULSE tri­al, Lil­ly and BI an­nounced at this year’s Amer­i­can Heart As­so­ci­a­tion con­fer­ence.

Ben­e­fit was mea­sured by sev­er­al com­po­nents, in­clud­ing mor­tal­i­ty (4.2% in the Jar­diance group com­pared to 8.3% in the place­bo group), heart fail­ure events (10.6% for Jar­diance ver­sus 14.7% for place­bo), and im­prove­ment from base­line on the Kansas City Car­diomy­opa­thy Ques­tion­naire (+36.9 points for Jar­diance ver­sus +31.6 for place­bo).

Lil­ly and BI ac­knowl­edged that the study could be lim­it­ed by a rel­a­tive­ly small sam­ple size (530 hos­pi­tal­ized adults). But the part­ners say they’re con­fi­dent the drug could make a dif­fer­ence in pa­tients’ lives.

“This is the first time we have re­al­ly seen this type of med­ica­tion work so ef­fec­tive­ly and safe­ly in pa­tients who were hos­pi­tal­ized for acute heart fail­ure, re­gard­less of heart fail­ure his­to­ry or di­a­betes sta­tus,” the study’s lead au­thor Adri­aan Voors said in a state­ment.

Heart fail­ure is clas­si­fied as acute when pa­tients ex­pe­ri­ence flu­id build-up in the lungs, re­quir­ing hos­pi­tal­iza­tion. But even once these pa­tients are re­leased from the hos­pi­tal, they are at a high­er risk of death.

Bris­tol My­ers Squibb is look­ing to shine a light on the rarely di­ag­nosed heart con­di­tion hy­per­trophic car­diomy­opa­thy (HCM) as it awaits an FDA de­ci­sion on a pro­posed drug to treat it.

The un­brand­ed “Could It Be HCM?” cam­paign that launched Mon­day doesn’t men­tion mava­camten, which has an FDA de­ci­sion dead­line in Jan­u­ary, but in­stead fo­cus­es on aware­ness of the con­di­tion with Utah Jazz Na­tion­al Bas­ket­ball As­so­ci­a­tion play­er Jared But­ler who has HCM. But­ler found out he had the heart con­di­tion while at Bay­lor Uni­ver­si­ty, where he helped lead the team to an NCAA na­tion­al cham­pi­onship last sea­son, and is now un­der a doc­tor’s care.

While he points out that his HCM may be dif­fer­ent than oth­ers — along with in­creased risk of stroke or heart fail­ure, pa­tients of­ten have short­ness of breath or fa­tigue that in­ter­feres with dai­ly ac­tiv­i­ty — But­ler said he hopes speak­ing out will en­cour­age oth­ers to check their own symp­toms with a doc­tor. The dig­i­tal cam­paign in­cludes a cus­tom web­site with in­for­ma­tion and re­sources about HCM in­clud­ing symp­tom and dis­cus­sion guides.

Mava­camten is the myosin in­hibitor BMS nabbed in its $13 bil­lion MyoKar­dia buy­out. The phar­ma re­cent­ly re­port­ed tri­al da­ta it says in­di­cate a “sus­tained re­duc­tion” in NT-proB­NP hor­mone lev­els which at high lev­els are in­dica­tive of heart fail­ure.

Cannes Li­ons Health con­fer­ence and awards will be in-per­son again for the first time since 2019, the or­ga­ni­za­tion an­nounced Tues­day. The sem­i­nal ad­ver­tis­ing and mar­ket­ing event and cre­ative awards cer­e­mo­ny for phar­ma and health­care mar­keters will re­turn dur­ing the week­long June 20-24 show in Cannes, France.