With placements during Fox’s coverage of both
the first World Cup semifinal and baseball’s All-Star Game July 14, Johnson & Johnson (J&J) kicked off a campaign for Icotyde, a new daily pill for plaque psoriasis.
The spot suggests that Icotyde's results are as “unbelievable” as a unicorn passing by a doctor’s office.
The drug is touted for its long-lasting “skin clearance” (16 weeks) and “side effects similar to a placebo.”
Icotyde, which launched in March, was singled
out Wednesday morning by J&J Chairman/CEO Joaquin Duato for its “significant early launch momentum” as the firm kicked off the pharma industry’s Q2 earnings report season by
reporting sales of over $25.3 billion, up 5.6% year over year.
advertisement
advertisement
Back in January, Duato had predicted that Icotyde -- which is also
seeking approval for IBD (inflammatory bowel disease) conditions like ulcerative colitis (UC) and Crohn’s disease -- would be a “new blockbuster for us” as it “expands
our immunology innovation beyond injectable medicines…This is going to be a transformational change for the treatment of these diseases.”
Jennifer Taubert, executive
vice president and worldwide chairman of J&J’s Innovative Medicine (its pharma business), provided more details during an analyst call: prior to the consumer ad launch, 18,000
prescriptions from 6,000 different prescribers were already written, covering 11,000 patients.
About 40% of the prescribers were dermatologists, “which tells us that
there’s really good confidence in the product, in both the efficacy and safety profile as well as the simplicity,” she said.
Icotyde joins the heavily advertised Tremfya
injection in J&J’s plaque psoriasis portfolio.
Tremfya, which is also approved for psoriatic arthritis, ulcerative colitis (UC) and Crohn’s disease, saw its quarterly sales
increase 72.5% year-over-year, to $2 billion.
Noting that the launch of Icotyde has “not slowed down Tramfya at all,” Taubert stressed that the main driver for Tremfya’s
growth has been in IBD.
Calling Icotyde “one of our must-win launches,” she revealed the start of the consumer ad campaign, which should “further bring more patients in to
talk to their providers about new options for psoriasis.”
As Icotyde launched its first ad, iSpot was reporting this
Tremfya spot (for its IBD indications) as the “most-seen TV ad” of the past seven days, with 2,400 national airings and a $5.4 million estimated ad spend.
Meanwhile,
Tremfya’s main competitor for similar conditions, AbbVie’s Skyrizi, ranked as the second highest TV ad spender for the week, with a combined $5.25 million in estimated spending ($2.64
million for Crohn’s/UC and $2.62 million for psoriasis). The Crohn’s/UC ads received 1,389 airings and the psoriasis ads 1,121.
Including Tremfya, J&J now has 28 products and
platforms delivering over $1 billion in annual sales, Duato boasted to investors. He said the company remains on track for a record $100 billion+ in annual sales. Per
revised upward guidance, that is now projected at $100.3 billion to $100.9 billion for 2026, an increase of 6.5% to 7.1% over 2025.
Darzalex, which treats multiple myeloma, remains
J&J’s top-selling product, accounting for over $4 billion in Q2 sales, a YoY increase of 17.6%.
While not as profitable, sales for three other J&J drugs that treat
multiple myeloma -- Carvykti, Tecvayli and Talvey -- grew even more rapidly, at 47.7%, 56.1% and 52.6% YoY respectively.