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Welcome to the first issue of Endpoints Marketing Rx. We’ll be dropping into your inbox every Tuesday afternoon with executive interviews, trends, features and news from the pharma marketing and drug commercialization world. Sign up here for weekly delivery, and feel free drop a line with news, tips or ideas to bbulik@endpointsnews.com. |
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Beth Bulik |
Senior Editor, Endpoints News
@BethSBulik
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by Beth Snyder Bulik
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Welcome to Endpoints Marketing Rx, the new weekly about pharma marketing, advertising and drug commercialization. The newsletter launch begs an old question though: what is pharma marketing and why does it matter? To some people, pharma marketing is the exclusive playground of Big Pharma companies trying to one-up each other on mainstream TV with celebrity spokespeople and big ad budgets. Others look at the up-and-coming hip opposite end of the spectrum where new brands with shoestring budgets get creative on social media channels with patient influencers and PR plays. The answer is yes. Pharma marketing is big-budget TV. Although it’s been a few years since a pharma company advertised on the $5.5 million for 30-second Super Bowl showcase, pharma brands spend more than $6 billion every year on national TV advertising. Pharma marketing is also small budget social media targeting, word-of-mouth public relation pushes and local city-to-city events to get a drug noticed or raise awareness of what may be a rare or little-known condition. It's also healthcare provider marketing with sales reps and communications that speak directly to physicians — which at around $30 billion actually dwarfs consumer spending. Yet there remains a stigma in the industry that advertising, or even overtly marketing, a therapy is unseemly. The prevailing attitude borrows the mantra of a well-known magical baseball movie: “If you build it, they will come.” No, they won’t. Even in rare disease where a treatment may have a built-in audience, if the patients and families never hear about it, it won’t succeed. |
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Kate Cronin, Moderna's first chief brand officer |
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by Beth Snyder Bulik
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It’s probably not an exaggeration to say that all eyes in the marketing world are on Kate Cronin. Maybe not specifically on Cronin by name, but most definitely on the Moderna brand she is shepherding as the biotech’s first chief brand officer. An Ogilvy advertising agency veteran where she was most recently CEO of Ogilvy Health, Cronin has crafted strategies and campaigns for many Big Pharma brands. But Moderna is different. The biotech is not only a newcomer to the public perception stage but also joins with what may be one of the most high-profile product debuts in history. Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine — its one and only commercial product to date and still under emergency approval — has propelled the company into the white-hot spotlight of consumer opinion and skyrocketed it up the charts of investor estimation. In fact, Moderna’s current estimated $140 billion market valuation puts it in the consumer mega-brand territory of Starbucks, Volkswagen and American Express. Its closest biopharma comparison, BioNTech, has similar mRNA science and a COVID-19 vaccine debut as well, but BioNTech benefits from the marketing, manufacturing and distribution prowess of 50/50 partner Pfizer. So how is Cronin building a brand with the whole industry watching, while continuing to help to save the world from a deadly virus and still get home in time for the occasional family dinner? Cronin, now just a few months into the role, brings a broad portfolio of marketing experience, wisdom from mentors including ad industry luminary Shelly Lazarus, and a reenergized purpose and affable sense of humor. |
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by Beth Snyder Bulik
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For a long time, migraine sufferers were stuck with the same old medicines and advice. Try some triptans, change your diet, maybe even see if a narcotic might help — but no major drug advances to prevent or stop debilitating migraine episodes in almost 30 years. Fast forward to 2021. With seven new drug approvals in the past three years, the once-moribund migraine market is suddenly competitive. That’s good news for patients because the new meds from AbbVie, Biohaven, Eli Lilly, Amgen, Teva and Lundbeck offer a variety of delivery methods and fewer side effects. However, for the pharma company that makes the drugs, the increased competition created a new challenge — how to make their brands stand out in the now-crowded field? Welcome to the migraine marketing wars. Migraine drug brands are angling for attention and market share by crafting marketing and advertising strategies to make sure consumers and physicians know who they are — and why they’re better than the others. The competition is especially apparent in advertising spending over the past years. National TV commercial spending in the migraine category, for instance, went from $32 million in 2018 to $150 million in 2019 to almost $230 million in 2020, according to data from real-time TV ad tracker iSpot.tv. Digital ad spending is on the rise, too, as migraine marketers look to reach a typically younger patient target audience that spends much more time with digital media than traditional TV. Digital ad budgets among the seven newer meds collectively topped $25 million in 2021 so far this year, a 20% bump compared with the same time period last year, according to data provided by ad spending analyst firm Pathmatics. |
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Queen Latifah (Novo Nordisk) |
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by Beth Snyder Bulik
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Queen Latifah is done. With weight jokes, judgy people, self-hate and a complicit media. Novo Nordisk’s newest face — and body — for anti-obesity awareness lays out the struggles in a series of video vignettes that never even mention the word obesity. The unbranded work aims to change the narrative around obesity, framing it as a manageable health condition instead of a character flaw. The new campaign debuts as Novo Nordisk has begun rolling out Wegovy, the glucagon-like peptide (GLP-1) drug semaglutide to treat obesity. If the generic name sounds familiar, that’s because Wegovy is the same med as Novo's type 2 diabetes Ozempic but at a higher dose. Direct-to-consumer brand ads are in the works for next year. In one of the awareness sketches, Queen Latifah meets up with a friend for lunch while an obnoxious laugh track blares in the background. A waitress looks up and down at her “big-boned” friend as she orders, and again when the friend makes jokes about cabbage soup. Finally, Queen Latifah says “Enough … The amount of times I’ve yoyo’d with my weight and hated my body and just gave up? I can’t even count them. But this is bigger than us, and our DNA is part of it.” The upshot? It’s not your fault. Genetics, biology, hormones and environment play key roles. Obesity is, as the campaign is titled, “Bigger than me.” |
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by Beth Snyder Bulik
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Johnson & Johnson is looking for big ideas from small entrepreneurs. Spurred by the pandemic health inequities and ongoing racial injustice in local communities, J&J is running a new innovation challenge in six hard-hit cities. And there will be lots of winners. With $1 million to distribute, awards won’t top more than $75,000 each, Seema Kumar, J&J’s VP of innovation, global health and policy communications told Endpoints Marketing Rx. Not because J&J is being stingy, but because it wants to fund as many efforts as possible of course, but also because it doesn’t want to overwhelm the small entrepreneurs and community organizers it’s hoping to apply. With just ten days left until the Nov. 12 submission deadline, J&J has already received 110 entries but anticipates more. As a J&J spokeswoman noted in J&J’s long-standing Quickfire innovation challenges, people tend to work long and hard on the application until the last minute with about half of the entries submitted within the last 48 hours. “People always knew health inequities existed, but COVID brought it to light and made it unavoidable to see,” Kumar said referring to the disparate negative outcomes in many communities of color. “In six cities last year, the gap was just ginormous. And we wanted to do something about it.” Applicants are invited to submit solutions in prevention and treatment of illness, increasing equitable access to healthcare, growing diversity in science, and creating more trusted community-based care. |
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Jean-Jacques Bienaimé (BioMarin via Youtube) |
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by Beth Snyder Bulik
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BioMarin is ready to launch the first drug to treat achondroplasia, the most common form of dwarfism, in Voxzogo – it just needs an FDA greenlight. The US commercial team is planning for Voxzogo’s launch at the end of the year with an “experienced” sales force already in place, BioMarin execs told analysts in its quarterly call this week. The biopharma is also working with the FDA on late-stage labeling and post-marketing requirements. That’s assuming FDA approval next month of course. Voxzogo’s FDA deadline date in Nov. 20. Concurrent with the US prep plans, Voxzogo is already rolling out in Europe after a late August EMA approval. So far, sales there have “exceeded expectation,” BioMarin chairman and CEO Jean-Jacques Bienaimé said. Although BioMarin recorded a small number of sales ($100,000) from the first patients in France under treatment by third quarter’s end, more patients have started recently in France and shipments are now out to Germany and Switzerland for new patients there, it said. In the US, BioMarin is encouraged by “early indicators of product demand,” Bienaimé said, noting the approval would “set the stage for significant revenue growth starting in 2022.” Analysts agreed, noting a Voxzogo nod would go a long way in restoring investor confidence in BioMarin after last year's shocking FDA pushback on its assumed shoo-in Roctavian, a hemophilia A gene therapy. Cowen analysts said in a note that “Voxzogo's US approval followed by a solid launch will begin to change opinions,” and predicted investor optimism will continue to build around that through the second half of 2022. |
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A bent carrot takes center stage in Endo's first brand ads for Xiaflex to treat Peyronie's disease (Endo International) |
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by Beth Snyder Bulik
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Endo's last trip to the grocery store enlisted a variety of produce to raise awareness about curved erections in Peyronie’s disease. Now in its first branded campaign for Xiaflex, Endo settles on just one vegetable — a carrot. The bright orange visual is meant to be simple and striking, continuing to remind men they’re not alone, but also dodging strident network censors and introducing the brand name for the first time, Endo's executive director of men’s health marketing Justin Mattice said. “Taste and tone is absolutely critical,” he said. “We’re talking about a condition that is a curved penis. It needs to be factualized, medical and it can’t be funny. And it needs to be appropriate for TV — an extremely difficult task.” Endo laid the groundwork for the Xiaflex ad with its 2019 unbranded “Learn about PD” campaign series of ads using crooked produce to convey its message. Men looked at bent cucumbers, bananas and peppers, while a voiceover noted that “guys come in all shapes and sizes.” The narrator goes on to suggest a painful or new bump may be a reason to talk to a doctor. Endo’s Peyronie’s disease awareness ads date back to 2017, with efforts to destigmatize and open up conversations. Mattice likened the work to Pfizer's Viagra and Eli Lilly's Cialis marketing that changed the “dark and scary” term “impotence'' into the more friendly medical term “erectile dysfunction” or just ED. Endo wants to change Peyronie’s disease unfamiliarity and potential fear to easier-to-understand erectile curvature or simply a lump, bump or curve, Mattice said. |
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by Beth Snyder Bulik
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Drug ads on TV are always telling people to “ask your doctor.” But guess what? Almost one in five actually do bring up a drug they’ve seen in advertising during a medical visit while one in 10 say they even ask directly for the prescription. That’s according to a new DeepIntent study fielded as a follow-up to an initial deep dive into perceptions around pharma direct-to-consumer marketing in March. Back then researchers at the digital healthcare marketing platform found, not surprisingly, people were seeing more DTC advertising thanks to increases in digital consumption during the pandemic. A lot more in fact. Pharma and healthcare companies’ digital ad spending jumped to more than $9.5 billion in 2020, eMarketer reports, and predicts another big jump by the end of this year to $11.3 billion, an increase of 18%. Yet at the same time, people also reported feeling less informed than ever. While 75% agreed that being informed about pharma treatment options could save lives, more than 30% said they didn’t know enough information before they talked to their doctors. One of the goals of DeepIntent’s second study was to figure out what people are finding online when they look up a drug and how pharma companies can better connect the dots between consumers and physicians. The number one appeal of a drug ad was relevance. More than half (51%) of the more than 1,200 consumers surveyed paid more attention to drug ads that discuss a health condition they have, and another 33% pay attention to ads that talk about a loved one's condition. A smaller 15% pointed to good content as a reason they paid attention to the ad. |
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by Beth Snyder Bulik
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October is both breast cancer awareness and liver disease awareness month. While there’s no doubt which condition draws more attention during the month, Salix wants to change that. Salix, Bausch Health’s gastroenterology arm, piloted its first chronic liver disease report and physician survey with results out this week aimed at raising awareness and dispelling stereotypes. While 4.5 million people have chronic liver disease or cirrhosis – which is even more than 3.8 million women diagnosed with breast cancer – the research found chronic liver disease “has not received the attention or level of effort needed for adequate prevention, diagnosis, and standardization of its management.” Among doctors surveyed, 38% weren’t aware of national guidelines to treat chronic liver disease even as 20% of them pointed to big increases in disease severity and hospitalizations among their patients over the past year. The pandemic made the already growing liver disease problem worse – although likely more for lack of care reasons than the much-discussed alcohol use increases widely discussed in the media. Alcohol and drug-related causes do make up about one-third of cases, but the rest of chronic liver disease falls into two non-alcohol related categories, nonalcoholic fatty liver (NAFL) or nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), along with hepatitis, other viral and genetic connections. Jumping to an alcohol connection is one of the myths Salix wants to push back on with the study and ongoing advocacy work. Doctors in its survey blamed alcohol and recreational drug use as the top two determinants for patient outcome despite agreeing the majority of their liver patients were not alcohol related. |
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Vas Narasimhan, Novartis CEO (Jason Alden/Bloomberg via Getty Images) |
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by Max Gelman
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Novartis’ Entresto has proven a blockbuster drug since its approval in 2015, netting $924 million in sales this past quarter alone, representing a 46% gain from last year’s period. But the US government is calling the company’s sales practices into question, demanding info dating back years in a newly revealed probe. The Department of Justice is seeking documents as far back as 2016 related to the marketing, pricing and payments to doctors for Entresto, Novartis revealed in its third quarter regulatory filing. Per the biopharma’s account, DoJ initiated the probe — known formally as a Civil Investigative Demand — this past September. A spokesperson for DoJ declined to comment. It’s not yet clear whether this process will lead to formal litigation against the company. Novartis said in its update, tucked away in a small note on page 36, that it’s currently evaluating the request. This isn’t the first time Novartis has found itself in hot water over its marketing practices. Just last year, the Swiss biopharma paid $678 million to settle a lawsuit alleging it paid hundreds of millions of dollars in kickbacks to essentially bribe doctors to prescribe its medications. The civil suit, filed in 2011 by a whistleblower and joined by DoJ two years later, claimed Novartis paid for lavish dinners, so-called speaking fees and expensive alcohol to persuade clinicians. In some of the more ostentatious kickbacks outlined in that DoJ complaint, Novartis paid for a $3,250 per person dinner at a Dallas sushi restaurant, at least seven trips to Hooters and fishing trips off the Alaska and Florida coasts. Novartis had described such events as “speaker programs,” though DoJ said the drugs were hardly mentioned, if at all. |
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by Beth Snyder Bulik
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Teva is doubling down to prevent “parody” marketing videos from entering the courtroom in its New York opioid trial. The 15-year-old Cephalon videos connected to the launch of fentanyl drug Fentora — labeled with Hollywood titles such as “Austin Powers” and “A Few Good Men” — are irrelevant and inflammatory, Teva is arguing. Its motion last week is the latest in a series of Teva efforts to keep the videos under wraps, reported first by Law360. Teva asked the court in the Oct. 15 filing to deny the state’s request for the videos, dismissing them as “parody videos” and “jokes” and arguing that the state is improperly trying to insert the potentially prejudicial videos at the last minute. Teva claimed the state has had the films for years and tried — and failed — to introduce them under cross-examination of an expert witness. In an earlier letter sent directly to New York State Supreme Court Justice Jerry Garguilo, Teva argued that the court itself labeled the videos “incredibly prejudicial” and “incredibly damaging.” Teva says the introduction of the video creates a "grave risk of a jury verdict based on a negative reaction to irrelevant videos rather than actual evidence," Law360 reported. Still, Justice Garguilo may yet allow the videos. Law 360 reported the judge said during the trial last week, "I disagree with defendants that they're too prejudicial — you produce them, you've got to live with them, period.” |
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John Carroll
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Editor & Founder
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Arsalan Arif
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Publisher & Founder
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Shehla Shakoor
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Managing Director
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Igor Yavych
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Chief Technical Officer
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Mike Peck
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Chief Revenue Officer
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Valentin Manov
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Creative Director
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Kyle Blankenship
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Managing Editor
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Beth Snyder Bulik
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Senior Editor
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Worldwide made. Thanks for reading.
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