One Drop begins TV advertising, experimenting with media mix to connect to people with diabetes

One Drop diabetes management system debuted its first TV ad last week. The commercial featured real patients, including One Drop founder and CEO Jeff Dachis, who started the company after he was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes.

Dachis talked about founding the company and how it first “modernized the meter,” One Drop Chrome, to make it sleek, discreet and compact. He explained how it syncs to the One Drop app and stores patient information in one place. Two other people with diabetes, who also work at One Drop, talked about the convenience and affordability of the system. The voiceover call to action pointed people to go to the sign-up website.

Dachis characterized the first commercial as part of One Drop’s work to create “an ongoing dialogue” with people with diabetes, to engage with them and learn from them. The initial feedback has been impressive both commercially and anecdotally, he said.

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“Literally, these are baby steps on a long journey, and to call it a campaign would be overstating the case. It really is us learning every step of the way, so there is no endpoint,” Dachis said, adding that the creative and media plan will change as it goes along to optimize the push across media placement, networks, messaging, call to action and pricing.

One of the creative messages he'd like to incorporate is One Drop's voice of empowerment. At its core, the system is meant to give patients access to their own data, and provide tools, technology and coaching to make better choices and empower them to become, as he called it, "a diabadass."

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One Drop in September announced a pilot program along with Sanofi and Innovation Health to study the impact of its digital management solution on patients with diabetes on “blood glucose management and medication-taking, as well as other related health outcomes.” The diabetes platform is also working with Mannkind on a clinical trial that tests One Drop alongside inhaled insulin drug Afrezza.