With spring allergies in the air, two prescription-products-gone-over-the-counter recently – Astepro and Nasonex -- have sprung creative campaigns.
Surrounded by flowers, and clothed and posed as if in a perfume ad, actress Meghann Fahy (Daphne in HBO’s “The White Lotus”) holds up a bottle of Astepro antihistamine spray instead of a fragrance in a campaign that marks twelvenote’s first work for the brand.
Astepro is marketed by Bayer, the rare pharma giant that has yet to depart the OTC business.
Should Astepro’s Fahy ads get consumers craving perfumes as well as allergy relief, Bayer’s got something for that too: a unisex eau de toilette called La Spontanéité.
La Spontanéité, will be available, among other prizes, to winners of the Astepro’s “Feel Sexy Fast” sweepstakes, running April 20 to May 22. Consumers will be asked to follow @astepro_us on Instagram, tag a friend, and post of a memory of when their allergies kept them from feeling sexy.
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Bayer’s reasoning for equating an antihistamine with perfume?
“About seven in 10 allergy sufferers say allergies make them feel less attractive or admit it’s affected their love life,” Catherine Vennat, Bayer’s general manager, and vice president, U.S. Marketing Allergy, Cough & Cold, says in a release, citing results from a recent Pollfish survey. Sounding somewhat like a Cialis commercial, she then adds that Astepro “lets you be ready anytime and that’s a little boost to your confidence when you need it.”
Short social media videos starring Fahy suggest that viewers “take on all three at a moment’s notice: passion, spontaneity and allergies.”
Fahy, by the way, doesn’t just play an allergy sufferer, but is one in real life.
“Nothing makes me feel less sexy than compulsively sneezing,” she says in a statement. But with Astepro, she adds, “I don’t have to hold back and can be my spontaneous self.”
Nasonex, meanwhile, has launched a promotion directed at golf fans: a sweepstakes ending April 3 that gives 30 winners a box containing a bottle of the steroid nasal spray surrounded by Georgia-grown Bermuda grass, azaleas and pine boughs designed to accompany their TV viewing of next weekend’s (April 6-9) Masters Tournament from Augusta, Georgia. The prize also includes two tickets to the U.S. Open, coming to Los Angeles in June.
Nasonex, a Merck prescription product, had to find a new distributor for its OTC launch, since the pharma company exited the consumer health business via a sale to Procter & Gamble in 2018. So Merck licensed the product to Perrigo, a longtime manufacturer of generic drugs.
The Nasonex campaign, from CPB, has partnered on social media with golf pros Kevin Kisner and John Daly, along with comedic golf instructor Manolo, who posted this comedic video announcing the prize box.
To enter, fans need to follow @Nasonex_us and comment on either of the three partners’ posts about whether or not allergies have ever messed up their golf game.