Pharma brands like Wegovy and Hims & Hers achieved top sales impact scores by moving beyond product features. They successfully navigated consumer distrust by connecting their solutions to broader, emotionally resonant social issues, such as healthcare inequality, striking a powerful and effective chord with viewers.
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Traditional pharma marketing, heavily reliant on science and data, can be improved by adopting consumer goods principles. This involves focusing on simplicity, message consistency, and tapping into emotional insights to cut through a cluttered and competitive marketplace.
The Super Bowl captures mass attention, making it a powerful marketing opportunity for all brands, not just consumer ones. By incorporating relevant themes, even "boring" B2B companies can significantly boost engagement because the topic is top-of-mind for their audience.
Novartis CMO Gail Horwood used the Super Bowl to address a lack of awareness about a specific health issue (prostate cancer screening via blood test). The platform's massive audience is ideal for taking a little-known fact and making it common knowledge, driving immediate behavior change.
Data reveals that Super Bowl ads scoring highest with women also tend to be the top performers overall, including with men. Conversely, ads most popular with men are less predictive of total success. This highlights a significant missed opportunity, as women drive 85% of household purchasing decisions.
The pharmaceutical industry is often misunderstood because it communicates through faceless corporate entities. It could learn from tech's "go direct" strategy, where leaders tell compelling stories. Highlighting the scientists and patient journeys behind breakthroughs could dramatically improve public perception and appreciation.
The Super Bowl is most effective for brands facing a fundamental awareness problem—when the mass market simply doesn't know a product, feature, or solution exists. The platform's massive reach is ideal for closing this knowledge gap at scale.
Pharmaceutical marketing can be transformed by adopting principles from consumer goods giants like Unilever. This involves focusing on simplicity, messaging consistency, and leveraging emotional customer insights, moving beyond a purely science-driven approach to cut through market clutter and build a stronger brand.
The Super Bowl is a massive cultural moment. Even 'boring' B2B marketers can capitalize on this by incorporating relevant themes and language into their campaigns, regardless of industry. This taps into audience top-of-mind awareness and can lead to a significant lift in engagement.
Zappi's methodology measures Super Bowl ads not just on likability, but on a "Sales Impact Score" benchmarked against a curated norm of the prior year's best-performing TV ads. This high bar of comparing against the "best of the best" separates merely entertaining ads from those that drive real business results.
A low-priority ADHD brand became a top performer not through a bigger budget, but by adopting a patient-centric narrative: helping kids become "10 out of 10." This story resonated with parents and doctors, proving that innovative marketing can be narrative, not just technological.