Fresh off earning FDA approval for label expansions for its LDL cholesterol-lowering Nexletol and Nexlizet tablets, Esperion Therapeutics has launched a marketing campaign to reach that newly expanded patient group.
The “Lipid Lurkers” campaign stars a squadron of mischievous, pint-sized animated characters symbolizing the LDL cholesterol—also known as LDL-C and, colloquially, as “bad” cholesterol—that can sneakily build up in artery walls and wreak havoc on the cardiovascular system.
In the campaign ads, the characters hang out in packs inside arteries and, with the help of Esperion’s treatments, are trapped in jars and tossed in wastebaskets. With their bright yellow hue and denim outfits, the anthropomorphic lipids resemble the popular Minion film characters, with whom they also share a cute-but-pesky demeanor.
The cuteness was deliberate, according to Eric Warren, Esperion’s chief commercial officer. In an interview with Fierce Pharma Marketing, he said that the goal of the campaign is to bring LDL-C to life “in a way that would get patients’ attention and would make the patient aware of the problems that LDL-C is causing”—but without coming across as “threatening or off-putting.”
The resulting mascots of the Lipid Lurkers campaign won out over more than a dozen other concepts in audience testing, Warren said, noting that they struck the right balance between being “cute little guys” and “menaces” that both caught audiences’ attention and “ultimately empowered them to take action.”
“I’ve seen other companies where it’s all shock and fear, as to the risk associated with elevated LDL-C—you know, ‘you could die.’ We wanted to make it a little bit lighter than that,” he said. “So, we got the patients’ attention, but we didn’t scare the heck out of them.”
The actions that Esperion is hoping to inspire in viewers include clicking through to the Nexlizet and Nexletol website, learning about the risks of uncontrolled LDL-C and using that information to start a conversation with their doctors, ideally resulting in prescriptions for the treatments.
Beyond that brand growth, Warren said that the ultimate “proof” that the campaign is working will be if it’s able to “actually move the bar on cardiovascular disease.”
To reach potential patients, Esperion has kicked off the campaign with a “digital-first” approach, comprising highly targeted search ads, digital banners and placements on social media—rather than diving straight into a pricey TV commercial blast.
“We’re a relatively small company … so we don’t have the resources some of these big companies do where they can go right to television,” Warren said. “We just feel like our dollars are better spent being a bit more targeted initially. As we get more traction, as physician awareness increases more, as our revenue starts to increase, we can unlock some of those more traditional mechanisms, but it’s about just being smart with our current money. So, focused, targeted.”
It's working so far: Website traffic was up 60% month-over-month in May, per Warren, who also noted that some of the Lipid Lurkers social ads have already racked up more than 1.5 million impressions—“so, we’ve got some pretty big numbers that we’re posting with our targeted and relatively efficient budgets,” he said.
The campaign launched in April, shortly after Esperion announced the FDA’s latest approval of expanded labels for Nexletol and Nexlizet. The drugs were initially approved in 2020 to help lower LDL-C in patients with hypercholesterolemia or atherosclerosis who were already on a “maximally tolerated” statin therapy and had experienced a cardiovascular event. A series of updates since then removed the statin requirement, added hyperlipidemia as a qualifier for the patient group and, most recently, outlined the tablets’ ability to reduce the risk of cardiovascular events in those who haven’t yet had one but are at an elevated risk.
The expanded label, and especially the last of those updates, has been “critical” not only for Esperion, but also for patients and clinicians, Warren said, adding that the numbers alone have been “exciting,” as the label updates expanded the drugs’ total eligible population in the U.S. from 10 million to more than 70 million patients.