After several weeks and thousands of votes, TV drug ads from Apellis Pharmaceuticals and AstraZeneca found themselves in the final round of the annual #FierceMadness bracket competition. The trophy ultimately went to Apellis, but both companies’ commercials racked up plenty of fans on the road to their championship matchup.
A common factor in voters’ comments in support of both ads was their use of lovable mascots: an adorably clumsy dinosaur for AstraZeneca’s Airsupra and one Henry Winkler for Apellis’ Syfovre.
“In all of our feedback that we get, Henry is the draw that gets people to stop and listen to the commercial,” David Acheson, Apellis’ chief commercial officer, told Fierce Pharma Marketing in an interview.
“So, rather than have gimmicks that would maybe get the patients distracted from talking about Henry or watching Henry on the commercial, we just decided to eliminate that. … We wanted to make it all about Henry and his message about Syfovre, directly talking to the patients,” Acheson said of the ad, in which Winkler breaks the fourth wall to eschew traditionally over-the-top pharma marketing tactics in favor of a pared-down “just the facts” approach to talking about the geographic atrophy (GA) medication.
Liz Bodin, vice president of U.S. respiratory and immunology at AstraZeneca, expressed a similar sentiment about its “cute, not scary” dinosaur, who represents traditional albuterol-only rescue inhalers, in contrast to the newer Airsupra, a combination med that aims to treat both asthma attacks and underlying symptoms.
“The thing we’re seeing resonate with our patients is that the message is a pretty powerful message for them as an asthma sufferer, but our dino, Walter, approaches it in a way that draws them in. And the feature of the albuterol-only rescue inhaler as the chain around his neck, I think, is an emotion that a lot of asthma patients can relate to,” Bodin told Fierce Pharma Marketing.
“Bringing to life this challenge and this unmet need that’s quite real for asthma sufferers in a way that catches their attention, draws them in, is a bit disruptive and maybe not like everything they see on television—that combination is really striking a chord,” she continued, adding that it also doesn’t hurt that Walter “is really cute.”
Apellis first recruited Winkler in 2023, shortly after Syfovre’s FDA approval, when he appeared in an unbranded company campaign to raise awareness of GA.
When it came to selecting the “Happy Days” star as a celebrity spokesperson, Apellis was sold on Winkler’s believability, his likeability and his generation-spanning appeal: “Everyone knows him,” Acheson said.
The branded ad starring Winkler went live at the start of this year, and, while Apellis is waiting a few more months to begin quantifying certain results of the commercial, due to the time it takes to schedule and attend doctors' appointments and be diagnosed with GA and prescribed Syfovre, the company has already observed the ad’s positive impact in other areas.
“What we can do is we can see website clicks, we can see digital information that people have gone and looked at, we can look at the high-value actions that they take when they go to our website and they go to an additional video or want to learn more, ask for a brochure—and those numbers are above benchmark,” Acheson said.
Indeed, the commercial chief noted that the website hits seem to spike every time the ad runs in a popular prime-time slot. Following an airing during the “Saturday Night Live” 50th anniversary special in February, for example, the Syfovre website received an additional 3,000 hits “because of the discussion that we think Henry drove as a result of being a part of that discussion on that night,” he said.
AstraZeneca, too, is already seeing the early benefits of Walter’s star turn, which first hit TV screens about a year ago. In that time, Bodin said, the Big Pharma has logged “really strong growth” across three main key performance indicators tied to the ad campaign.
“We want to see traffic to our website and engagement with the brand content. We want to know if patients are intending to talk to their doctor about Airsupra,” she said. “And what we’ve really been monitoring closely is to see whether we’re securing that belief in the educational messaging that the campaign is communicating: Do patients understand through this ad that albuterol-only rescue treats symptoms, but it’s not addressing inflammation? And are we growing in that aided awareness?”
With the ongoing success of both campaigns, fans of Walter and Winkler alike will be relieved to hear that both AstraZeneca and Apellis are hanging on to their beloved spokes-beings for the foreseeable future.
Walter the dinosaur is already starring in the next iteration of Airsupra’s direct-to-consumer ad campaign, which went live this month and sees him weighing down an asthma patient while riding on the back of a tandem bicycle.
“So, Walter will continue to connect with asthma patients and help them see that his traditional approach to rescue is outdated, and it’s time to say goodbye to their albuterol-only rescue therapy and step into this modern age with Airsupra,” Bodin said.
Apellis is hoping to follow suit and extend Winkler’s promotion of Syfovre, too.
“Our plan is to keep Henry front and center through at least this year, and he is in contract with us, so we hope at some point in time we can continue to keep him going into next year,” Acheson said. “As we continue to see the kind of impact that I think we’re seeing with the ad and with him now, we hope to have a long-term relationship with him.”