Evolus’ injectable neurotoxin, Jeuveau, which was approved in 2019 and rivals AbbVie's major blockbuster Botox, knows exactly what it is. It’s an aesthetic product and that’s all it wants to be: no stopping headaches, or overactive sweat glands or even incontinence (which is was Botox is also licensed for), it just wants to make people look young, rested and fresh.
There are certain advantages to being solely focused on beauty and aesthetics, and Jeuveau is the only one in the U.S. to do so—it means being able to advertise differently including co-branding with injectors who use Jeuveau.
The more the injector purchases the toxin from Evolus’s app, the more advertising they earn from the company. The ads, starting from digital media, to billboards, build up to slickly produced tv spots all aimed at potential clients in the immediate area.
Also, there’s a freshness and youthful vibe to the company and the product, which did a good job of snagging the company’s original target, millennial women.
“We interact with our customer on a digital basis,” Evolus CEO, David Moatazedi said. “This is a forward-thinking, younger-generation brand. It's edgy, it's modern, and it's in the back of the consumer's mind. They go ‘wow, this is different. It feels like a beauty brand’ and it's because we don't have this link to therapeutic.”
But why millennials? Certainly older women such as Gen X have more lines to tox up? Turns out Gen Xers ask too many questions, such as “why this is different from Botox?” “Why would I use this instead?” After all, formulation-wise, Botox and Jeuveau are the same. But thanks to the just beauty branding, the millennials are seeing it as a new part of a skincare routine that differentiates from Botox, which with its other indications can appear more medial than aesthetic.
This is, of course, not to say that Evolus doesn’t want Gen X and above, in fact, they do have a good chunk of them as Moatazedi says that 60% of the loyalty program isn’t millennial, it’s older.
But by initially targeting the millennials and having that brand-driven marketing, Evolus interested the injectors, who then switched to Jeuveau, and their clientele, no matter what age, went along with their injectors and realized they liked this newer product. Now Jeuveau can start moving its target up the generational bands, which is what it’s planning to do, as well as moving away from just women.
Also on the horizon is an "Extra-Strength" formulation of Jeuveau which is in Phase 2 trial. This new formula puts double the amount of units in the skin, from 20 to 40 resulting in a longer-lasting result and a stronger “freeze,” which Moatazedi says many people want.
With all this talk of beauty, at one point Moatazedi proudly stated, “our creative our team has no experience in healthcare,” is Evolus even a pharma?
“We're public, we trade like a biotech company. I would argue that we should be tracked by consumer analysts in the beauty space, but the problem is, there's no peer for us in the beauty space. So it's easier to bucket you in with everyone else. Are we a pharma? Yeah, we are. We have a biologic. It's FDA-regulated,” Moatazedi said.
The younger, scrapper neurotoxin has garnered more than half a million members in its Rewards loyalty program. For 2022, Evolus also reported net revenue of $148.6 Million, which was up 49% over 2021. Still, AbbVie’s Botox is top of the tox, making more than $5 billion a year—including its therapeutic use.