Pfizer airs 2nd Cibinqo ad, this time with more color but still lacking in flair

Pfizer isn’t wasting time when it comes to the marketing strategy for its new dermatology therapy Cibinqo; just a few months after launching the first TV ad for the drug, its second is already out on the airwaves.

The 60-second spot, called “Make Your Move,” plays on the theme that eczema “doesn’t care” whether you have a “date, a day off or a double shift” as it can come out and disrupt your day regardless.

But you can “make your move and get out in front of it,” the ad’s narrator intones, and uses a split between the people who use Cibinqo and can get on with their day with a smile and the ghostly apparitions left behind, grimly contemplating what could have been.

The core of the ad is the focus on it being a pill and not injected like some of its rival therapies are, and that it can give continuous relief from the condition.

The commercial is clearly branded with the Cibinqo logo several times throughout the spot, alongside Pfizer’s name at the end of the ad.

While not the most exciting ad in the world—for this year, that will go to the wild ride that has been ads for AbbVie’s rival therapy Rinvoq,  which have featured extreme sports and dashes to helicopters—it is still a step up from the first ad for Cibinqo released in the summer.

That ad looked as if Pfizer had left a generic screen saver on and featured no actors, no animated characters and no environment. What you got instead was a lot of blue: a blue background and blue text that flitters around the screen as if under water, with the result that it all felt a little underwhelming.

As with its latest ad, the first focused predominantly on text that told you what the drug does and the fact that it works as a pill, not an injection, and is non-steroidal.

The New York Big Pharma has been spending big on selling Cibinqo, becoming in the last few months a regular in the top 10 TV drug ad spenders, according to real-time TV ad trackers at iSpot.

For the last few months since the launch of its first ad back in June, Pfizer has been spending more than $10 million each month, putting it solidly on the biggest spenders’ list.

The drugmaker nabbed an FDA approval for the oral daily JAK1 inhibitor in September last year, with a label to treat adults with moderate to severe atopic dermatitis who have not been able to get their disease under control with other medicines including biologics and for those who can't take other treatments. Analysts see the drug peaking at around $3 billion in annual sales.

It had a bumpy path to approval after being hit by a series of delays and a lengthy safety review and came into a market dominated by Sanofi and Regeneron’s Dupixent. That blockbuster med is approved for use after topical treatments and ahead of biologics like AbbVie's Humira.

Cibinqo will, however, compete more directly with AbbVie’s Humira follow-up Rinvoq, a fellow JAK inhibitor, which also has an FDA approval in atopic dermatitis when other treatments have failed.

Both Rinvoq and Dupixent have consistently topped the iSpot top spenders list this year, with both vying for the 2022 crown to the biggest TV drug ad spender. Pfizer will need to up its spend next year if it wants to really compete for space on the airwaves in this highly competitive immunology market.