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1. Perpetual crisis? Pharma communications and public relations pros just wait for the next shoe to drop
2. MRx roundup: Hologic enlists Sheryl Crow for screenings; J&J QuickFire teams with feds for public health
3. Merck offers empathy to pandemic-battered parents in revamped HPV vaccine awareness campaign
4. Boy bands and psoriatic arthritis? NSYNC’s Lance Bass creates new dance for Amgen about early signs
5. Striking murals in US cities highlight Horizon and Arthritis Foundation collab for gout awareness
6. AstraZeneca bows first ad campaign for lupus med Saphnelo, highlights patients' personal experiences
7. Roche lays out access ambitions in its ESG strategies, including innovation and value goals
8. ‘Say no more’ to yeast infections: Scynexis rolls out new Brexafemme marketing — and rallying cry
9. BioFrontera bows bold imagery websites amid Q1 sales gains in dermatology
Beth Snyder Bulik
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Living in a new house where the previous owners were dedicated gardeners, we are in awe of the greenery, blooms and wildlife outside our windows these days. Except for, true story, that one weird squirrel that comes by occasionally to stare in and scratch at the window. But we never know when — which may be how pharma PR people feel these days with almost 8 in 10 anticipating more than three crises this year. Read about it in my feature below, along with the latest in pharma marketing news.

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Beth Snyder Bulik
Senior Editor, Endpoints News
@BethSBulik
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1
by Beth Snyder Bulik

Wel­come to phar­ma pub­lic re­la­tions where every day feels like it might be a cri­sis.

More than three-fourths (76%) of phar­ma com­mu­ni­ca­tions lead­ers ex­pect to face three or more crises this year — com­pared to less than half (49%) of their peers in oth­er in­dus­tries, ac­cord­ing to new sur­vey from risk in­tel­li­gence com­pa­ny Crisp. The same 76% al­so ex­pect that a brand new risk that is yet to be iden­ti­fied will crop up this year, com­pared to 66% of peers across oth­er in­dus­tries who wor­ry about the same thing.

They might not be wrong. A litany of health crises jump­start­ed by the pan­dem­ic has spun out in­to an al­most dai­ly drone of in­dus­try, brand and phar­ma com­pa­ny is­sues. Phar­mas seemed doomed from the be­gin­ning, start­ing with the not-even-vac­cine-re­lat­ed Bio­gen “su­per­spread­er” meet­ing with 100 glob­al ex­ec­u­tives in Feb­ru­ary 2020 that even­tu­al­ly caused as many as 330,000 Covid cas­es.

Of course, many of the en­su­ing waves of mi­nor and ma­jor crises have of­ten been Covid-19 vac­cine- and treat­ment-re­lat­ed — re­pur­posed drugs that worked for a while and those that didn’t at all, vac­cine side ef­fects such as rare blood clots and fevers that were re­al and ru­mors of things such as al­tered DNA that were ab­solute­ly not, along with con­t­a­m­i­na­tion at man­u­fac­tur­ing plants and vac­cine short­age crises. And that doesn’t even scratch the sur­face of the vol­umes of com­plete­ly fab­ri­cat­ed ac­cu­sa­tions that tra­versed in­to the ridicu­lous. Could any­one have imag­ined the CEO of Pfiz­er at the cen­ter of wild­ly in­cor­rect, but wide­spread ru­mors about be­ing ar­rest­ed or his wife dy­ing af­ter re­ceiv­ing a Covid-19 vac­cine?

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2
by Beth Snyder Bulik

Ho­log­ic is adding an­oth­er ef­fort from Gram­my-win­ning mu­si­cian Sh­eryl Crow, who's al­so a breast can­cer sur­vivor, to its most re­cent mar­ket­ing ef­forts. Crow, a long-time Ho­log­ic spokesper­son, is speak­ing out to en­cour­age women to sched­ule an­nu­al mam­mo­grams. Crow paired with ra­di­ol­o­gist Ar­lene Richard­son to talk about the im­por­tance of health screen­ings.

The so­cial me­dia ef­fort is built on in­sights from a re­cent study com­mis­sioned by Ho­log­ic that found that on­ly 59% of peo­ple who re­spond­ed were up-to-date. Mean­while, the top source of in­for­ma­tion about mam­mo­grams? Mom first, fol­lowed by their pri­ma­ry care physi­cian.

Hori­zon ex­tends thy­roid eye dis­ease aware­ness cam­paign with Olympic track star and a let­ter-writ­ing ef­fort

Three-time Olympic medal win­ner Gail De­v­ers al­so lives with Graves’ dis­ease, and has been a spokesper­son for Hori­zon for more than a year. Now she’s tak­ing part in its lat­est cam­paign fo­cused on men­tal health for peo­ple liv­ing with thy­roid eye dis­ease (TED). Called “Dear TED,” the ef­fort en­cour­ages peo­ple liv­ing with the con­di­tion to write a let­ter about how it has af­fect­ed their life – and about how they’re tak­ing back con­trol of their phys­i­cal and men­tal health.

Health ex­pert and au­thor Lori Got­tlieb, who is work­ing with Hori­zon on the ef­fort, said writ­ing a let­ter is a healthy way to ex­press emo­tions as well as a good way to share ex­pe­ri­ences and feel less alone.

De­v­ers’ heart­felt and emo­tion­al video­taped let­ter starts out: “Dear TED, you’ve been my un­want­ed house­guest for 30 years and now, you’ve got­ta go. We both know you’ve con­stant­ly in­ter­rupt­ed my life and for a long time made me un­rec­og­niz­able to my­self.”

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Dad gets a side hug from his tween daughter in Merck's latest campaign to promote HPV vaccinations.
3
by Beth Snyder Bulik

Awk­ward side hugs and rid­ing in the back of the "dad cab" are typ­i­cal ado­les­cent rites of pas­sage. But it’s al­so around the same time that par­ents over­see­ing the pre-teen years should be think­ing about HPV vac­ci­na­tions for their kids.

Mer­ck’s lat­est HPV vac­cine aware­ness cam­paign show­cas­es those par­ent-tween mo­ments in a new TV com­mer­cial. The mes­sage is de­liv­ered by a mom who says, as she gets a sur­prise full-on hug, “Em­brace this phase, help pro­tect them in the next. Ask their doc­tor about HPV vac­ci­na­tion to­day.”

While Mer­ck has been pro­mot­ing the im­por­tance of HPV vac­cines in var­i­ous cam­paigns for more than 15 years, the lat­est ef­fort takes a soft­er ap­proach. The cam­paign di­rect­ly be­fore this was a hard­er-hit­ting “Not My Child” ef­fort with TV ads where par­ents stepped in front of their tweenagers, look­ing at the cam­era and told HPV can­cer "You're not wel­come here." The tough-talk­ing par­ents fol­lowed up on Mer­ck’s 2016-launched cam­paign fea­tur­ing young peo­ple with HPV-re­lat­ed can­cers ag­ing back­ward and poignant­ly ask­ing their par­ents “Did you know?” about the vac­cine that could have pre­vent­ed their can­cer.

“Not My Child” res­onat­ed with par­ents, and won sev­er­al awards, Cheryl Don­nel­ly, Mer­ck as­so­ciate VP for US mar­ket­ing in vac­cines, said. How­ev­er, Mer­ck mar­ket re­search showed that the di­rect­ness of the ads need­ed to be soft­ened af­ter two years of a lot of parental stress dur­ing the pan­dem­ic.

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Former NSYNC member Lance Bass is Amgen's new psoriatic arthritis spokesperson.
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by Beth Snyder Bulik

NSYNC boy band mem­ber Lance Bass didn’t re­al­ize his aches and pains weren’t just a byprod­uct of a busy lifestyle, many years of danc­ing and of course, ag­ing. In­stead, it was pso­ri­at­ic arthri­tis.

Now Bass is part­ner­ing with Am­gen and its an­ti-in­flam­ma­to­ry brand Ote­zla to help oth­ers rec­og­nize the signs of pso­ri­at­ic arthri­tis. The singer and dancer, whose ca­reer be­gan as one of the five boys of NSYNC with pop­u­lar hit songs and co­or­di­nat­ed dance move videos such as “Bye Bye Bye” and “It’s Gonna Be Me,” is trans­lat­ing those moves to a short Tik­Tok-style “Dou­ble Take” dance.

The ed­u­ca­tion­al dance high­lights “head, heels, knees and nails” be­cause skin and joint is­sues in those places po­ten­tial­ly re­late to pso­ri­at­ic arthri­tis. Bass says in the in­tro­duc­tion that he cre­at­ed “the very boy band-like line dance” to help oth­ers do a dou­ble take on what some symp­toms might mean and en­cour­age them to reach out to a health­care provider.

The cor­re­spond­ing orig­i­nal song in­cludes lyrics that say: “If you see the signs, don’t wait, let’s go.”

"One of the things we've learned over the years is that pa­tients with a di­ag­no­sis like Lance has, it can take them 8 to 10 years to get a di­ag­no­sis or be­fore they see a rheuma­tol­o­gist be­cause no one puts it to­geth­er," said Alvin Wells who is di­rec­tor of rheuma­tol­ogy at Ad­vo­cate Au­ro­ra Med­ical Group and help­ing Am­gen and Bass pro­mote the need for ear­ly di­ag­no­sis.

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An outdoor mural of a hand with gout uric acid crystals is part of Horizon's latest campaign to raise gout awareness and erase stigma.
5
by Beth Snyder Bulik

Gout is the most com­mon form of in­flam­ma­to­ry arthri­tis, but not many peo­ple make the con­nec­tion. That’s why Hori­zon Ther­a­peu­tics is part­ner­ing with the Arthri­tis Foun­da­tion in a new cam­paign that in­cludes out­door mu­rals in cities across the US. In each of the four art­works, the uric acid crys­tals that build up in­side the body with gout are shown as bright green crys­tals on hands, feet or spine.

The mu­rals in­clude Hori­zon’s cam­paign web­site un­cov­er­gout.com where peo­ple can see a be­hind-the-scenes video about the con­di­tion and the mak­ing of the im­ages, along with more in­for­ma­tion and pa­tients’ sto­ries about the stig­ma and mis­con­cep­tions around gout.

“Gout is a sys­temic dis­ease but of­ten mis­un­der­stood. So this is a cre­ative way to get the word out and ask pa­tients who are suf­fer­ing from gout to take a clos­er look,” Er­ic Fos­ter, group VP and gen­er­al man­ag­er of Hori­zon’s gout busi­ness unit.

The mu­rals in down­town ar­eas of Char­lotte, Phoenix, Hous­ton and At­lanta were planned and drawn for May which is Arthri­tis Aware­ness month and al­so in ad­vance of Gout Aware­ness Day in two weeks. Hori­zon com­mis­sioned a New York mur­al artist to cre­ate the im­ages and then hired lo­cal artists in each city to recre­ate them.

Hori­zon chose out­door mar­ket­ing in part to get clos­er to com­mu­ni­ties where gout is more preva­lent. That is the case for the four cities se­lect­ed, but each al­so has spe­cial­ty physi­cian re­sources pa­tients could look up af­ter see­ing the ads.

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AstraZeneca's first DTC for its lupus med Saphnelo literally highlights the individual nature of the disease's symptoms.
6
by Beth Snyder Bulik

Lu­pus isn’t fair — and As­traZeneca’s de­but di­rect-to-con­sumer ad cam­paign for Saph­ne­lo wants to let pa­tients know that it un­der­stands. And that it’s here to dis­rupt the sta­tus quo.

Saph­ne­lo, ap­proved in Au­gust, is the first new med for sys­temic lu­pus ery­the­mato­sus (SLE) in more than 10 years. Its type I in­ter­fer­on dif­fers from its lu­pus mar­ket-es­tab­lished com­peti­tor Glax­o­SmithK­line’s Benlysta, a B-cell ac­ti­vat­ing fac­tor in­hibitor first ap­proved in 2011.

The Saph­ne­lo cam­paign “Here for More” fo­cus­es on women’s in­di­vid­ual and “deeply per­son­al re­la­tion­ship with their lu­pus,” Krista Socha, As­traZeneca’s ex­ec­u­tive mar­ket­ing di­rec­tor for im­munol­o­gy.

“The cam­paign au­then­ti­cal­ly rep­re­sents these pa­tients who are liv­ing with this very per­son­al ill­ness of SLE,” she said, adding it aims to “ed­u­cate and en­cour­age them to ex­pect more from their treat­ment.”

SLE is the most com­mon form of lu­pus and af­fects more than 300,000 peo­ple in the US, most­ly women of child­bear­ing age and dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly af­fects women of Black, His­pan­ic and Asian de­scent. Lu­pus is broad­ly symp­to­matic across po­ten­tial­ly 9 dif­fer­ent or­gan sys­tems mean­ing each in­di­vid­ual can present dif­fer­ent­ly — or as Socha said, “If you’ve seen one pa­tient with lu­pus, you’ve seen one pa­tient.”

The dig­i­tal­ly-fo­cused cam­paign in­cludes on­line video dis­play and so­cial me­dia with a plan that will reach 95% of the lu­pus pa­tient pop­u­la­tion this year. The dig­i­tal and so­cial plan is pur­pose­ful be­cause many lu­pus pa­tients who are of­ten younger women are ac­tive on so­cial me­dia as self-ad­vo­cates and are ea­ger to con­nect with oth­er pa­tients, Socha said.

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7
by Beth Snyder Bulik

Roche laid out its am­bi­tions in the so­cial part of its en­vi­ron­men­tal, so­cial and gov­er­nance (ESG) strat­e­gy on Mon­day cen­tered on ac­cess to its drugs and di­ag­nos­tics.

The Roche in­au­gur­al Ac­cess to Health­care in­vestor call fol­lows a gen­er­al phar­ma in­dus­try trend in ESG. More com­pa­nies are pub­lish­ing re­ports and hold­ing calls to out­line cli­mate, so­ci­etal, di­ver­si­ty, and even pric­ing goals as in­vestors clam­or for de­tails amid surg­ing in­ter­est in ESG com­mit­ments.

RBC Cap­i­tal Mar­kets pre­dict­ed last year that the phar­ma sec­tor is poised to raise its his­tor­i­cal­ly poor rat­ings in the boom­ing ESG in­vest­ment mar­ket – now more than $820 mil­lion in as­sets un­der man­age­ment. Covid pan­dem­ic rep­u­ta­tion gains, along with de­clin­ing lit­i­ga­tion, im­prov­ing drug pric­ing ac­count­abil­i­ty and more man­age­ment in­volve­ment in ESG is­sues could con­tribute to a pos­i­tive change, RBC said in a re­port.

On Mon­day, Roche ex­ec­u­tives out­lined its tar­gets – in some cas­es re­it­er­at­ing or up­dat­ing them – while al­so point­ing out what it has ac­com­plished when it comes to ac­cess across its meds and di­ag­nos­tics. That starts with in­no­va­tion across all pa­tient pop­u­la­tions, Bruno Es­chli, Roche’s head of in­vestor re­la­tions, said.

“Ac­cess is not a top­ic spe­cif­ic to just one ge­og­ra­phy, but rather every coun­try whether low-in­come or high-in­come coun­try faces its own spe­cial chal­lenges,” he said.

For up­per-mid­dle and high in­come coun­tries, for in­stance, in­creas­ing health costs, health­care pro­ce­dure back­logs and a lack of health­care work­ers are con­cerns Roche is try­ing to ad­dress, while in low-mid­dle in­come coun­tries it faces chal­lenges such as a lack of health­care in­fra­struc­ture, low aware­ness and di­ag­noses rates, and gen­er­al eco­nom­ic pres­sures.

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8
by Beth Snyder Bulik

Scynex­is is rolling out a new cam­paign for its Brex­afemme yeast in­fec­tion treat­ment, but the ef­fort is more than just ad­ver­tis­ing.

As CEO Mar­co Tagli­et­ti said in wrap­ping his pre­pared com­ments dur­ing an earn­ings call on Thurs­day, “Let me fin­ish with our new ral­ly­ing cry — yeast in­fec­tion, say no more.”

That head­line — writ­ten as “Yeast in­fec­tion? Say no more” — ap­pears on Scynex­is’ re­cent­ly launched ad cam­paign to health­care providers and will be­gin rolling out to con­sumers lat­er this month.

Chief com­mer­cial of­fi­cer Chris­tine Coyne ex­plained the ral­ly­ing cry is meant for pa­tients “who have been suf­fer­ing from yeast in­fec­tions and try­ing the same thing.” The same things mean over-the-counter treat­ments and long-ap­proved oral Pfiz­er’s flu­cona­zole.

The dig­i­tal and so­cial me­dia cam­paign in­cludes changes to Scynex­is’ ini­tial Brex­afemme pro­mo­tion­al ma­te­r­i­al lan­guage “to be more pow­er­ful and more ro­bust,” Coyne said. “Our new pa­tient ma­te­ri­als are much more about em­pow­er­ment which res­onates with our tar­get au­di­ences.”

The “Say No More” de­but cam­paign with health­care providers in April us­es “re­lat­able and icon­ic im­agery paired with new da­ta and mes­sag­ing” to dri­ve home that same mes­sage to doc­tors. The cam­paign in­clud­ed a me­dia tour and cov­er­age on 25 ra­dio and TV sta­tions last week with two Brex­afemme spokes­peo­ple, Scynex­is’ clin­i­cal de­vel­op­ment leader Nkechi Azie and women’s health ad­vo­cate Bar­bara Dehn, a nurse prac­ti­tion­er bet­ter known as Nurse Barb. The me­dia tour drove view­ers and lis­ten­ers to www.YourVHealth.com which redi­rects to Brex­afemme’s home page.

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9
by Beth Snyder Bulik

Sharks lurk­ing un­der the skin and gri­mac­ing im­peti­go le­sions are the strik­ing im­ages top­ping BioFron­tera’s new and re­vamped web­sites for its flag­ship brands Ameluz and Xepi, re­spec­tive­ly.

The skin spe­cial­ist bio­phar­ma’s Ameluz site is its first aimed at pa­tients while the Xepi re­vamp ex­pands in­for­ma­tion and re­sources for both pa­tients and physi­cians in the now one-stop site.

Ameluz is a gel used in pho­to­dy­nam­ic ther­a­py along with a spe­cial­ized lamp to treat ac­tinic ker­ato­sis (AK) le­sions on the face and scalp. AK, al­so called so­lar ker­ato­sis, is a type of pre-can­cer that if un­treat­ed can de­vel­op in­to squa­mous cell car­ci­no­ma. The shark-shaped pro­tru­sions ap­pear on the scalp of a man who al­so has le­sions on the new Ameluz page un­der the head­line “When dan­ger lurks be­low the sur­face.”

Mean­while, the new page for Xepi, an an­ti-bac­te­r­i­al top­i­cal cream to treat im­peti­go in adults and chil­dren, is topped with an im­age of a lit­tle boy's face and three an­thro­po­mor­phized le­sions with yel­low faces gri­mac­ing as a man­i­cured fin­ger nears with lo­tion. The tagline un­der the im­age reads: "It's what re­sis­tant bac­te­ria fear most."

Along with the new dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing, BioFron­tera is amp­ing up its sales force, CEO Er­i­ca Mona­co said in its first-quar­ter earn­ings call on Fri­day. It re­cent­ly cre­at­ed a ded­i­cat­ed key ac­counts sales team that aims to boost BioFron­tera across a range of der­ma­tol­ogy clin­ics “from in­sti­tu­tion­al ac­counts to re­gion­al or­ga­ni­za­tions,” she said.

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