FCB Health (China)

A wolf strides through a restaurant, down a city street and into a hospital in Sanofi’s new TV ad for its flu vaccines Fluzone and Flublok. The voiceover speaks in the low voice of the wolf who’s wearing a sheepskin on his back: “Don’t mind me, I’m just the flu.” Meanwhile, people cough vigorously or even collapse as the realistic computer-generated wolf walks by. A medical professional finally blocks its way into the hospital and sends the wolf scurrying — and the sheepskin flying off its back. The advertised products Fluzone high-dose quadrivalent are approved for adults 65 and older while Flublok quadrivalent is for adults 18 and older. The new commercial ends with a prominent Sanofi logo over three healthcare professionals (two wearing Sanofi’s brand color purple) and the reminder that “This flu season, you do have a choice. Choose the protection of a Sanofi flu vaccine.” While Sanofi has run ads for the brands before — including one memorable Fluzone with a hedgehog spokescharacter — the then-Sanofi Pasteur vaccine division was not prominent. Earlier this year, Sanofi rebranded the pharma under a singular Sanofi identity and logo, leaving the Pasteur and Genzyme names behind. The branded ads follow Sanofi’s flu vaccine awareness campaign with Seinfeld actor Jason Alexander that debuted last week. Pfizer, BioNTech partner with Southeast Conference for Covid-19 booster TV ad Pfizer and BioNTech are teaming up with the southern college football league to encourage Covid-19 booster shots. The new TV ad celebrates the details of Saturday college games in the Southeastern Conference with highlights and videos of teams, including LSU, Tennessee, Florida, Georgia and Alabama. And coincidentally in some of the states with the lowest full vaccination rates in the country — six of the top 10, according to federal data. “Saturdays don’t just happen, Saturdays are in the details,” the voiceover says, adding “Pfizer and the SEC are teaming up to remind fans to get an updated Covid booster shot.” (And yes, I know this is just one week after I said no football weekends for me — so thanks football fans for the tip!) AstraZeneca rolls out antibody TV commercial with cancer survivor and actor Jeff Bridges As part of AstraZeneca’s “Up the Antibodies” campaign to raise awareness and support for people living with immunocompromised conditions as Covid-19 continues to spread, actor Jeff Bridges is speaking out in a new TV ad . Bridges carries his guitar in the woods, quietly talking about missing out on being with his family and friends and making movies while he was “away” during chemotherapy treatments for cancer treatment, complicated by being infected by Covid-19. “My immune system was totally shot. Fortunately, you don’t have to wait around for the worst — you can up your antibodies before Covid comes knocking,” he says. Celsion changes its name to Imunon Clinical-stage biotech Celsion is changing its name to Imunon, effective Wednesday. The new name better reflects the company’s work in immunology, specifically in immune-oncology and vaccines, the company explained in a news release . President and CEO Corinne Le Goff, who was most recently served as chief commercial officer at Moderna, said the name change underscores “our commitment to create a new category of medicines leveraging our proprietary plasmid DNA technology platform.” Horizon donates to establish patient advocacy program at Notre Dame Horizon Therapeutics is backing a new kind of patient program at the University of Notre Dame that aims to help students in the sciences learn through rare disease study and collaborations. The founding five-year gift of an undisclosed sum for the programming “advances training, outreach and research to better serve the rare disease community,” Horizon and Notre Dame said in press releases . Ad business worst among industries at handling layoffs with compassion, report says While not specific to pharma marketing and advertising, the broader advertising and media industry came in dead last at handling layoffs with empathy, according to a new study. JobSage conducted a survey of 1,000 laid-off employees about their experiences and found that advertising and media were ranked worst at layoffs by 83%, ranking just below hospitality (79%) and engineering (74%), according to a Capitol Communicator article . Among the issues noted as poor form was inconvenient timing such as before a holiday, no space to process the news and no opportunities to ask questions. Marketing moves Havas Health and You named Laura Mizrahi as chief creative officer of its flagship H4B Chelsea health and wellness agency. Mizrahi joins Havas from FCB Health New York and has worked on big name pharma brands including Cialis, Trulicity and Skyrizi.

CANNES — Diversity, equity and inclusion are not about ticking a box or wearing a badge, health marketing group Omnicom Health stressed in a recent report. When it comes to inclusion in the pharma industry, “everyone’s got to do the work,” DE&I director Gena Pemberton told Endpoints News at this year’s Cannes Lions festival of creativity. Diversity was a key focus at a handful of events in Cannes this year as the pharma industry struggles to make marketing, drug development and clinical trials more inclusive. At IPG’s “Wake Up to Equity” breakfast, the 10th iteration of the event, CEO Philippe Krakowsky took a moment to recognize the industry’s progress. “Over that time, there’s been such progress in terms of the number of women leaders within our agencies, the number of women who run creative departments within our agencies and lead that really core part of what we do,” he said. However, as Krakowsky and Pemberton both noted, there’s much work left to do. Even with a focus on diversity this year, VMLY&R CEO Claire Gillis said during one discussion that this year’s advertising award winners “didn’t feel very diverse.” “One of the key things that we focus on at OHG is that we made sure that everyone [has] a good understanding of what DEI [is] and then also how they can become allies in the industry,” Pemberton said. “When I say do the work, I mean you have to stop what you’re doing, instead of just doing the same old, same old.” Oftentimes, marketers are so used to “going through the motions” that they forget to incorporate new tools and data, Pemberton said. That’s what her company is trying to change. “If we’re working on a disease state that’s very heavily Asian Pacific Islander facing, then we make sure that our ads represent that,” she said. Speakers at IPG’s equity breakfast also called on the pharma industry to make clinical trials more inclusive. Despite commitments made by pharma companies and the FDA to make trials more inclusive, a recent report from the National Academies of Sciences suggests that progress has largely stalled. Non-Hispanic white patients made up 78% of participants in trials conducted between 2015 and 2019, despite comprising only 61% of the population, according to a recent FDA summary report. Meanwhile, Black patients only accounted for 8% of trials for drugs approved in 2020, despite representing about 13% of the US population. Asian patients comprised just over 6% of clinical trial participants, while Native American patients represented less than 1%. “I think it’s a lack of action,” Pemberton said. “A lot of people like to speak about it instead of be about it, as my mom would say,” she added, noting that “some of that action is starting now.” Back in April, the FDA released a draft framework for drugmakers and medical device manufacturers regarding plans to enroll more diverse trial participants. However, research shows that while patients of minority groups are largely interested in learning about clinical trials, many aren’t made aware of them in the first place. Recruiting diverse patient populations will take more than just handing out pamphlets, according to Sommer Bazuro, FCB Health’s chief medical officer. It’s about giving patients information in a way they can understand it, that “meets them where they are,” while also combating misinformation, she said. Even then, investigators must overcome a lack of trust. It’s been less than 50 years since the infamous Tuskegee study ended, in which researchers knowingly withheld treatment from Black men with syphilis to study the progression of the disease. “We go to those trusted sources, whether it’s the provider groups, patient advocacy, making sure we shape the right messages, so they are credible, and they come from trusted resources,” Ivor Horn, Google’s director of health equity and social determinants of health, said during the IPG event. Technology is one tool, though, that can also widen the access gap. Horn said Google has experimented with a broad range of mediums for dispersing information, from TV to radio to billboards. “I think it’s also about giving some education to the community or the patient base, especially in Black and Hispanic communities, so that we can kind of explain that… there’s no reason not to be a participant,” Pemberton said. As for Omnicom, the marketing company put together a task force to work with clients on achieving greater diversity in trials. The company also launched an action plan in 2020 called Open 2.0 to “achieve systemic equity throughout Omnicom.” “We will build equity from the fragments of shattered glass ceilings. We will nurture the talent we know and hire the talent we’ve overlooked. We will approach our biases consciously and become more fluent in our shared humanity,” the plan states. In 2021, almost 40% of all new hires were Black, indigenous and people of color, according to the report. And more than 68,000 employees have completed unconscious bias training. As Kathleen Hall, Microsoft’s chief brand officer, summed up at the IPG event: “The difference between diversity and inclusion is I’m there and then I’m heard.” “It’s really about the, the culture of the industry,” Pemberton said. “How do we make this culture in this industry more inclusive and accepting of different people and different perspectives?”