Patients with narcolepsy often feel defeated, hopeless and angry that they can’t do normal things because they feel tired all the time. The “I Won’t Take Narcolepsy Lying Down” campaign is an empowering anthem to inspire and motivate patients to take on their narcolepsy with a new treatment option that helps them today, tomorrow and in the future.
To further connect with patients, the “Standup Champions” initiative was developed. This ongoing series of videos follows real narcolepsy patients throughout their day to educate and inspire other people with narcolepsy.
2021 Rx Club Award Winner
Nusiki is a music tech start up located in Chicago that launched at SXSW in 2014. Their mission is to create a social network for artists and music lovers centered around sharing music, social interactions and conversations.
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To celebrate Novo Nordisk’s 100-year anniversary, the company wanted to launch its first corporate campaign. While Novo Nordisk is well known in Denmark, awareness remained low in the United States presenting a perfect opportunity to create a campaign that reinforces their corporate philosophy of “Driving Change”, while highlighting the accomplishments of the past century and looking towards the future.
Introducing “The Greats” campaign, featuring real Novo Nordisk patients - inspiring individuals living with chronic diseases who have overcome and achieved great things. This campaign not only celebrates Novo Nordisk’s legacy, but also motivates and empowers patients to explore more about Novo Nordisk and their life-saving science and therapies.
OTIPRIO is a drug for the treatment of patients with acute otitis media with tympanostomy tubes (AOMT) and swimmer’s ear. This logo communicates the drug's targeted administration as well as extended delivery.
Narcolepsy is a rare disease that carries a hidden risk beyond extreme sleepiness. People living with narcolepsy are at a 2- to 3-fold higher risk of cardiovascular comorbidities, such as stroke and heart failure. A high-sodium oxybate medication can add over 1600 mg of sodium to a patients’ daily intake (which is more sodium than the AHA recommends consuming in an entire day). As narcolepsy is a chronic condition that requires lifelong treatment, taking a low-sodium oxybate instead of a high-sodium oxybate can reduce a patient’s sodium intake by over 500,000 mg each year.
This campaign is a call to both prescribers and patients to address the “elephant in the room” and think beyond symptom control. When considering an oxybate, they must also protect cardiovascular health.
Since this campaign has launched, XYWAV has grown to become the #1 prescribed oxybate available. Key belief metrics continue to improve demonstrated by 63% of HCPs noting longer-term health risks are a “very important” consideration in narcolepsy treatment choice. XYWAV net product sales increased 79% to $958.4 million in 2022.
2023 Manny Award Finalist - Best Rare Disease Campaign
2023 Fierce Pharma Marketing Awards Winner - Professional Campaign
2023 Apex Awards Winner - Rare Disease Campaign
2023 PM360 PharmaChoice Silver Winner - Professional Print Campaign
2024 PM Society Finalist - Best Rare Disease Campaign
2024 PM360 PharmaChoice Gold Winner - Professional Marketing
Even though the 2021 APSS Virtual SLEEP Conference was taking place virtually, we wanted to connect with HCPs and provide a new experience that wouldn’t replicate the current brand website. Dynamic content cards reorder based on the physician’s level of familiarity with narcolepsy and XYWAV, creating a customized content journey for the HCP to engage with which includes interactive charts, an educational game and video resources.
2021 Rx Club Award Winner
Viable MKTS is a Financial Tech company whose mission is to build and optimize financial market systems and provide strategic consulting that serves the investor first. Through the stacked type and font choices the logo communicates the company's strength and stability but also it's innovative and out-of-the-box thinking.
Retina Specialists are generally happy with the current treatments they have to treat wetAMD, so a disease state awareness campaign needed to grab their attention, and even make them slightly uncomfortable, in an effort to recognize the shortfalls and uncertainties of current treatments and prime the market for a better option. This campaign was born from the idea that vision outcomes Retina Specialists cite are ones that have been gained in a highly controlled, unnatural environment. The problem is Retina Specialists can’t recreate those stringent environments and wetAMD patients can’t live up to them - putting patients at risk for vision loss and even blindness.
Otonomy wanted to create awareness as the leader in the emerging otology pharmaceutical treatment market and communicate their mission to develop treatments that address unmet needs in the otology field. We wanted to highlight their dedication to their patients, emphasize that they focus solely on otology-related drugs and create a smart, committed and approachable look for their brand.
“Blocking” in choreography is traditionally done with pencil and paper and is often a tedious and time-consuming process. StageBook is a blocking app developed to streamline, simplify and organize the process of blocking for show choir choreographers and directors. Close collaboration with the developer was key due to the complex functionality, while a clean and purposefully-simple interface was designed to support the main focus of customer usability.
With less than 48 hours to write, design and program this site, we focused on bold colors and a simple interface for this promotional website sponsored by Nutrient - a health and wellness consulting agency. The goal of the promotion was to highlight Nutrient’s new Brand Vulnerabilities Workshop. The single-page site featured an easy-to-use interface for signing up your brand and LinkedIn ads were strategically targeted to identified brand managers.
A fun video highlighting Abelson Taylor's ad campaign for Pharmapalooza created for the Manny Awards.
View the At The Heart of Narcolepsy Video
More Than Tired is an educational resource and support community for people experiencing excessive daytime sleepiness. The goal of the initiative is twofold. First, to educate on the 5 symptoms of narcolepsy and encourage people to talk to a sleep specialist. Post-diagnosis, the objective via our “At The Heart of Narcolepsy” initiative is to educate PWNs (people with narcolepsy) about their long-term health and higher risk of cardiovascular comorbidities. Along with a traditional disease awareness campaign, More Than Tired also features a social campaign, influencer partnerships, and takeovers during national Sleep Awareness Week each March.
At The Heart of Narcolepsy
People living with narcolepsy are living with debilitating excessive daytime sleepiness, so heart health can be the last thing on their minds. And while heart health is important for everyone, it is especially important for people with narcolepsy who have a 2X greater risk of heart diseases.
We created the disease awareness campaign, At the Heart of Narcolepsy, to raise awareness of this increased risk, encourage patients to discuss this increased risk with their doctor, and ultimately consider this increased risk when evaluating treatment options.
Because these conversations aren’t always happening in the doctor’s office, we wanted to bring the HCP conversations to consumers, and deliver the message about increased heart risk authentically. Our approach: Grab the attention of people living with narcolepsy through the powerful and persuasive voice of a peer. We use Brittany, a real person with narcolepsy and an established influencer, to discuss the impact of narcolepsy on heart health and cover practical strategies people living with narcolepsy can implement to reduce their risk.
In the interview series, Brittany asks sleep specialists, nutritionists, and other experts to weigh in on the impact of narcolepsy on heart health. Brittany brings her infectious energy to different locations and activities, and the unscripted interactions make this series feel more like entertaining talk-show segments than traditional patient testimonials or HCP discussions.
2021 PM360 Pharma Choice Award Winner
A handful (or two) of HCP, Patient, Branded and Disease Awareness campaign concepts.
