“Hypertension Bites:” Daily
mishaps befell a man and a woman in two new :30 spots
running on streaming services, prompting them to respond “whatever” – a phrase that turns out not to work when their doctors tell them they have high blood pressure, which “can
lead to heart attack, stroke, even dementia. Get Help at MYBPControl.org.”
The campaign, the first from the year-old Hypertension Control Alliance, has also enlisted actor-director Aisha
Tyler to “share her personal story and use her platform” for the cause. “I have seen how high blood pressure affected the health of my very closest loved ones,” she says in one
social media video. “When my father had a stroke, that experience drove me to take my heart health way more
seriously.”
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The 55-year-old Tyler is “a trusted voice” for Gen Xers, having starred in shows that resonate with this audience [e.g, “Ghost Whisperer,”
“Criminal Minds”],” the Hypertension Control Alliance tells Marketing Daily.
Yet, while the content has been “shaped most by input from people ages 40 and over
– many of whom are juggling work, caregiving and other responsibilities,” the campaign itself “is meant for all adults,” the Alliance says.
Why the urgency?
“Nearly half of U.S. adults have high blood pressure and three in four adults with hypertension do not have it under control," according to a statement from Dr. Yvonne Commodore-Mensah, an
Alliance advisor who is professor at the Johns Hopkins Schools of Nursing and Public Health. ‘Some people underestimate the risk because they feel fine or think they can manage it on
their own. Others are frustrated because they've tried and struggled to get results. And some only fully grasp the urgency after a health event touches their life. Our goal is to help all of them
understand what control looks like—and how to get there."
AstraZeneca, which has a drug in its pipeline for treating uncontrolled or resistant hypertension, is a founding partner of the
Hypertension Control Alliance, which was put together by the CDC Foundation, a nonprofit arm of the federal Centers for Disease Control established by Congress in the 1990s.
The Foundation has
experienced staff cuts in the past year, with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution noting that “critics…allied with the Trump administration” have accused it of conflicts of
interest by taking “donations from private industry, namely pharmaceutical companies.”
Other members of the Alliance include the American Pharmacists Association, the National
Forum for Heart Disease & Stroke Prevention, and the Preventive Cardiovascular Nurses Association.
Dozens of other organizations, the Alliance says, will support dissemination
efforts for the new campaign, “helping bring hypertension control tools and messages to audiences in communities nationwide.”
Current campaign elements will run through December,
with the Alliance then reviewing the campaign evaluation findings “to incorporate any updates as needed for 2027,” the group says.
That evaluation will include”a combination
of campaign performance metrics and behavior-predicting engagement indicators,” per the Alliance. Key performance indicators “will track reach and visibility—such as media
impressions and paid and organic content engagement. Deeper indicators will assess how audiences interact with campaign resources, including traffic to MYBPControl.org, time spent on site,
downloads of patient tools, and use of the Hypertension Control Guide interactive chat feature.”
Agencies involved with the campaign includeZeno Group for creative and
media strategy; Lumina (formerly CommunicateHealth) for audience research (which included contacts with hundreds of people living with uncontrolled hypertension), message strategy and development of
patient education materials; Band of Coders/Toolbox 9 for website design.