• by Les Luchter , November 6, 2023

As National Diabetes Awareness Month kicked off  Nov. 1, two pharma companies took to high-traffic areas of New York City with celebrity-backed activations: Sanofi and Usher in Times Square to push for early screenings of Type 1 diabetes, and Abbott and Sherri Shepherd at the Oculus Center to increase awareness of continual glucose monitors among Type 2 patients .

Sanofi

At the Times Square event, Usher and other Sanofi spokespeople talked about their personal connections to Type 1 diabetes, encouraging the public to take “The 1 Pledge.”

That pledge, found at The1Pledge.com, is designed help people who will eventually get diabetes to start preparing for it.  “This is important” Sanofi tells Marketing Daily, “because while Type 1 diabetes can't be prevented, it can be detected early through autoantibody screenings.”

Usher, father of a child with Type 1 diabetes, also stars in one of three :30 Sanofi spots that are part of a broad campaign including social, display, search, digital out-of-home, streaming audio, point-of-care locations.

“It doesn’t matter what race. Doesn’t matter what age. It is a humanizing experience to be a parent who has a child that lives with diabetes,” Usher says in the spot. “Don’t let Type 1 diabetes catch you and your family off guard. Take the 1 pledge and screen early.”

Agencies involved with “The 1 Pledge” include Ruder Finn, Havas Media Group, Patients & Purpose and Link9.

Usher, Schefter and Arzón will participate in other educational, “action-driven” events and “anchor moments in time” around the country in the coming months, Sanofi says.

Abbott

One recent boost to Type 1 diabetes patients has been the availability of continuous glucose monitors (CGMs), whose sales are booming.  Yet CGMs have barely been registering with the much larger audience of Type 2 diabetics.

With that in mind, Abbott, maker of the Freestyle Libre, staged a takeover of New York City’s Oculus Center transportation hub.

The spacious Oculus, located at the World Trade Center site, accommodated four animated Abbott displays, each 13 feet high and 5.5 feet wide.  Abbott says a new person is diagnosed with diabetes every 23 seconds in the U.S., so the displays changed every 23 seconds to show a different face of someone with Type 2 diabetes -- including talk show host Shepherd (“Sherri,” “The View”).

The Oculus Center was chosen because it’s the “crossroads of the world,” Abbott tells Marketing Daily. Visuals included a QR code connecting people to the web page of a month-long Abbott campaign called “Countdown at a Crossroads.”

That campaign shares stories of Shepherd and others affected by Type 2 diabetes, along with additional info on the condition. Each unique site visitor this month is generating an automatic 99-cent Abbott donation to the American Diabetes Association’s Health Equity Now program.

Current Global handled PR and creative for the “Countdown at a Crossroads” campaign, with Broderville Pictures doing creative for the Oculus Center activation.