• by Les Luchter , Staff Writer, August 3, 2023

What elements makes a good pharma ad?

For one, cut out the jargon, noted Nicole Braley, chief marketing officer of Inception, speaking at MediaPost’s latest Pharma & Health Insider Summit. Viewers of a typical commercial might say “’What are these people talking about? What are all these acronyms?’” added Braley, whose company has several fertility-related companies under its belt.

Also, “Lead with patient stories, not disease stories,” Braley advised. For example,“infertility is a disease, but it’s a very emotional disease.”

Telling a compelling patient story that appeals to the emotions was an idea echoed by other presenters who discussed their company’s ad campaigns.

Maggie Rougier-Chapman, Labcorp’s vice president of marketing, pharma and therapeutics, kicked off the Summit with a keynote look at her company’s “patient-first journey” in marketing a new liquid biopsy late-stage oncology product.

The audience was shown the first half of a four-minute video on the subject -- produced for Labcorp by Condé Nast’s Wired Brand Lab -- which Rougier-Chapman explained was made “to highlight the capabilities of this technology, but from a patient perspective -- why it matters.”

The spot focuses on lung cancer patients living in locales where oncologists are generally far away, like Charleston, West Virginia. One doctor talks about how many deaths could be avoided if all cancer patients had equal access to care. And one patient notes how the Labcorp test “really did change the trajectory of my care.”

The video, shown on Condé Nast channels, has resulted in 2 million impressions and 400,000 engagements, as well as being reformatted into shorter sections for use in other media. Rougier-Chapman said.

Two days after Rougier-Chapman spoke, Juli LeDoux, ImmunoGen’s director of marketing, helped conclude the Summit with a look at how some of her favorite healthcare creative has helped influence -- or not -- ImmunoGen’s marketing for its first product: a late-stage ovarian cancer drug called Elahare (on Monday, ImmunoGen announced Q2 sales of $77.4 million for Elahare, doubling its 1^st quarter results).

Referring to Biohaven Pharmaceuticals’ use of Khloe Kardashian as spokesperson for its migraine headache drug Nurtec, LeDouox pointed to the brand getting slapped by the Food & Drug Administration when Kadashian “went a little rogue on ‘The View’ and said Nurtec changed her life and she never had migraines any more.”

On the other hand, LeDoux praised the Kardashian and Lady GaGa social media campaigns for Nurtec, now distributed by Pfizer, as “the standard of where pharma could and should be from a creative perspective.” Again, there’s a focus on a patient’s story: In the Lady GaGa ad, the superstar notes "I know what it’s like to perform through pain,” over a video of her singing onstage.

As Nurtec has demonstrated, LeDoux said, the pharma industry doesn’t necessarily “have to stick with the tropes” like patients happily engaging in activities with friends and family, or very solemn tones for more intense diseases.

“I know that we all base our advertising on insights, but those insights don’t have to be bathtubs in a field [referring to a Cialis campaign that began in 2007 yet “everybody remembers”], she said. “They can be fun, they can be funny.”

She then played the 15-second “Respect Your Junk,” a spot for Gillette’s men’s pubic hair trimmer. With provocative imagery of a mostly naked man, although nowhere close to the full Monty, a voiceover says, “Introducing the new intimate pubic hair trimmer from Gillette. It’s not junk, so treat it right with a gentle and easy shave from America’s number one trusted men’s grooming brand."

Noting that Gillette is over-the-counter, not prescription, LeDoux said, “People are definitely going to see this and they’re going to remember it, and I just wish and hope that we can all do that from a pharma perspective, as well.”

Alas, LeDoux herself has “a spot coming out next year” that “has a lot of tropes.” But, she explained, “I work in oncology. I’m not going to use humor. But there are consumer insights that we can avail,[and] influencers out there that can speak in a more human way to these people that we’re trying to reach with the right message.”