A restaurant menu, a book, a smartphone and other everyday objects have come alive in Tenpoint Therapeutics’ first consumer campaign for presbyopia-treating eye drop Yuvezzi.
Complete with fuzzy faces and eyes of their own, a cast of hand-crafted puppets make their debut in Tenpoint’s “Friends of the Presbyopians” campaign, which launched June 29 on digital and social channels to show adults with close-up vision-loss disorder presbyopia that their standard workarounds to manage their condition should perhaps be replaced by once-daily eye drop Yuvezzi.
“For millions of adults, blurry close-up vision shows up in frustrating ways every day. Through this campaign, we hope to spark conversations about the impact blurry close-up vision can have on important daily life tasks and encourage people to learn more about Yuvezzi,” Tenpoint CEO Henric Bjarke commented in a press release.
Presbyopia is a common condition hallmarked by the gradual loss of close-up vision that typically sets in around age 45, according to Tenpoint. Most of the 128 million adults in the U.S. with the eye condition and the some 2 billion globally typically seek out reading glasses or otherwise manage it by holding reading material at arm’s length, for example.
The ad sees a frustrated restaurant menu tired of a flashlight in its face, a pair of reading glasses sick of being misplaced and other everyday objects voicing their own frustration to typical everyday occurrences for those with untreated presbyopia. To create the characters, Tenpoint enlisted filmmaker Spencer Susser and a team of puppet designers and fabricators including Ben Bayouth, a veteran puppeteer known for earning runner-up on Jim Henson's Creature Shop Challenge in 2014.
The “level of frustration” patients deal with on a day-to-day basis through this condition came across “loud and clear” to Tenpoint in its market research, chief commercial officer Carol Kearney explained in an interview with Fierce Pharma Marketing. Given that presbyopia is a natural, non-sight-threatening aging process, the company opted to infuse a touch of light-hearted humor into the campaign, according to Kearney.
“Frustration through the eyes of the puppets has proved to be an effective way to inject that humor into the ad without offending the target audience, and it will allow us to convey relatability through that humor and wit,” she said, noting that the puppets can also serve to evoke familiar nostalgia from Jim Henson’s “The Muppets,” for example.
The puppets and their dialogue about bothersome close-up vision workarounds highlight an education and awareness gap Tenpoint is looking to solve, as “most people don't really know that their blurry close-up vision is presbyopia, and that it can be treated,” Kearney said.
Yuvezzi is the only dual-agent, once-daily prescription eye drop that’s FDA-approved for the condition and launched nationwide in March through Tenpoint’s e-pharmacy partner PHILRx and at retail pharmacies following its January approval. The drug is a solution of 2.75% carbachol and 0.1% brimonidine tartrate, two long-marketed treatments for other eye conditions and is an “and, not an or,” Kearney explained, as the drug provides eight to ten hours of clear vision but should be paired with reading glasses or contact lenses.
With Kearney on board as the company’s first commercial hire, Tenpoint is seeing “good uptake” and week-over-week growth as it settles into “an awareness level” with eyecare professionals and turns to now “motivating patients” through its consumer campaign, she said.