As published in PM360 focus on marketing strategy 2024.

Sonic branding is a proven way to motivate your target. But not the careless way many DTC marketers are using it. Music can work wonders. I was part of the agency that helped United Airlines adopt Rhapsody in Blue as their sonic signature. The score fit the brand perfectly. Gershwin’s glorious overture made you feel that travel is a sophisticated adventure.

Just the opposite is happening in the wave of DTC campaigns that employ musical branding. Most offensive are the Jardiance commercials. Each spot is a music and dance number where a large cast and a portly heroine sing about “the little pill with a big story to tell.” The big story is about managing your type 2 diabetes and heart disease. It’s a hokey, energetic mess of a spot whose choreography tries to distract you from the fair balance, a tactic sure to make a brand seem less trustworthy.

I’m all for having fun in advertising, but even more for style, taste, and relevance. Viewers are not the fools cynical marketers think they are. We need to communicate the benefits of our medications in ways that don’t embarrass the brand or the target.

IPNY and Regeneron Medical Affairs Insights & Value are recognized for their COVID campaign.

Fierce Pharma Marketing Awards has named IPNY and Regeneron Medical Affairs Insights & Value as a finalist in the PharmaTV category for their Mono WHAT? (Taking Aim Against COVID) campaign work.

The winners will be announced at the Awards Gala taking place on the evening of October 19, 2022 at the Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts, during the annual Digital Pharma East conference. The Awards Gala will be an evening of celebration to honor the individuals, teams and companies who are leading the way in pharmaceutical marketing and advertising. See the finalist list here.

FiercePharma is a leading industry publication that delivers breaking news and analysis about drug companies, the FDA and the broader pharma industry. They cover the pharma waterfront, from late-stage drug development through the entire lifecycle—tracking regulatory approvals, payer negotiations, manufacturing, marketing, patent fights, government investigations and regulation, M&A deals and beyond. It is complete life sciences coverage from preclinical research to market and beyond.

Q&A with Founding and Strategic Planning Partner at IPNY, Andy Semons, as published in AdForum.com

Tell us about yourself and what you do.

I’m a strategist to the core. Part psychologist, part architect, neuroscience geek and lover of great creative communication that not only gets the message across but motivates real behavioral change. I guess it’s the promise of being able to do all this that draws me to Pharma and Healthcare – I started working in direct to consumer (DTC) back in the mid-90’s when it was an emerging business and found it fascinating. Pharma and Healthcare have the potential to do such good in the world.

But we all know that getting people to act in their own best interest isn’t always a rational decision, so a fundamental understanding of how people think and act, is critical to motivation. That’s what excites me – how to influence behavior that results in real change for brands. Fortunately, I have the chance to do this every day.

I’m one of the three founding partners of IPNY, a nine-year old privately held agency. We have deep credentials in healthcare and pharma, along with other verticals such as nonprofit and financial services. Our expertise is both in brand positioning and messaging, and we measure the quality of our work by its ability to drive real results.

Pharma and healthcare have been slower to embrace digital marketing compared with other industries. Has there been a shift since the pandemic started?

I don’t think it’s 100% correct to say that Pharma and Healthcare have been slower to embrace digital marketing – in fact, before the world of HIPAA in the mid ‘90’s digital marketing was on everyone’s minds. I think that things like data privacy, adverse event reporting and many important regulatory constraints make it harder to put digital marketing into practice for Pharma and Healthcare.

That being said, I’ve seen quite a bit of use of digital and social channels during the pandemic – not for the marketing of brand name drugs but rather aimed at building awareness of key issues and changing behavior. To begin with, we learned early in the pandemic that people with preexisting conditions were foregoing important medical treatment and even procedures for fear of coming in contact with the virus that causes COVID-19. The impact on the healthcare system and patient quality of life was significant. Many hospitals implemented messages through digital and social channels urging people not to delay routine or necessary care and reassuring them that they provided safe environments.

More recently, I’ve seen unbranded work on social media that talks about monoclonal antibody treatment for high-risk patients who have just been diagnosed with COVID-19. Monoclonal antibodies have been proven to keep people out of the hospital, but they work best if given within 10 days of diagnosis. These ads aim at a key behavioral change, as we’ve all been conditioned to hear that if we get COVID we should just quarantine and not call our doctors unless symptoms get worse. It’s important that these ads go through social channels because that’s where folks are getting their information. Even more so during the pandemic.

Additionally, I’ve seen a lot of campaigns on social media where hospitals have been honoring their own frontline workers. These tend to drive enormous goodwill and give employees who are so overworked and tired the reminder they need, that we all appreciate their selfless dedication. One such campaign was done by IPNY for Dana-Farber. The photos and shoutouts to local heroes kept on coming throughout the initiative.