• by Les Luchter , 4 hours ago

In fact, no llama, nor goat, nor oryx was even used, since the entire production -- featuring those animals acting like co-workers in an office environment -- was created though AI.

The spot, along with two :30s, mark the launch campaign for AstraZeneca’s Breztri inhaler as an asthma maintenance medication. Breztri had previously been FDA-approved -- and marketed -- only for COPD patients.

Marketing to asthma patients means targeting a “different patient population,” Katie Pansegrau, AstraZeneca’s senior director, marketing, explains to Marketing Daily. The asthma population skews younger than COPD’s, she notes, resulting in more use of social media advertising, for example.

The age difference is telling, as Breztri’s COPD advertising has used such settings as cruise ships and RV trips. 

The asthma ads, created by Edelman in its first Breztri work, not only change the settings but break from the trope of lifestyle-based pharma ads,

“We had a very clear goal to not make just another pharma campaign,” affirms Brian Wood, Edelman’s senior vice president-group creative director. “The last thing we wanted to do was make more slop that's filling everyone's feeds these days.”

“We all collectively embraced what it could mean to be really bold by being wonderfully weird and letting the entertainment value help drive home the memorability of the message,” Wood adds.

That message relies on the campaign’s llama concept, which was derived from LAMA (“Long Acting Muscarinic Antagonist”), one of Breztri’s “3-in-1” components.

“What a fun play on words,’ we thought,” recalls Pansegrau. “We can make something that seems very scientific more light-hearted, more accessible and more educational, so patients feel like they understand the treatment.”  

AI -- as opposed to using CGI -- helped drive the process, Wood elaborates, by providing “more creative freedom to try a lot of different ways to bring each of the scenes to life. We even went as far as to do multiple takes for each scene.”

“Following proven production processes and continuing to leverage AI as this really powerful tool unlocks so many more possibilities in how we execute,” he adds. 

The campaign, with media buying handled by Omnicom’s HealixGlobal, is running on connected TV,  YouTube, display and social.

Pansegrau says that the humor-based AI approach allows Breztri for asthma to break through all the media “noise.”  

“There are a lot of different ads out there, not just in pharma, but across every engagement point,” she explains. “The challenge was, “How do we break through that noise to make sure that we are advocating for those patients and reaching them?”

The answer, she says, was found by using something as lighthearted as a llama”: “It’s going break through and get that attention.”

And, she continues, “in getting that attention, we are going to bring more awareness to understanding what a LAMA is, what triple therapy is, and how it can help patients.”

Breztri’s COPD ads have also added a notice that the treatment is now approved for asthma.