People with plaque psoriasis are often stared at, but never seen for who they are. When celebrity Cyndi Lauper started taking COSENTYX, there was an opportunity to use her voice and story to help patients and expand the SEE ME campaign. This partnership allows Cyndi to not only connect with patients, but also create buzz for the brand. With patients in mind, the celebrity partnership was carefully considered and executed to ensure the brand kept its promise to the community to be real. Cyndi would not be the sole spokesperson in the campaign like your typical celebrity sponsorship. In fact, Novartis made her one of their many advocates, joining Gary and LauraLee, speaking on camera about their struggles with psoriasis and how they overcame it with the help of COSENTYX. Her story is genuine, and she has an ability to connect with the community in a sincere and authentic way.

To maximize the multi-channel approach, assets were carefully deployed over several months. We created seemetoknow.com as a hub for the video series, as well as other engaging content like behind-the-scenes gifs, blog posts from the patients and Cyndi, and educational materials/tools for explaining their condition to others. The site was built on Tumblr in order to take advantage of the unique social-like content management system. While the site was branded and did ultimately drive prospects to COSENTYX.com for treatment information, seemetoknow.com focused on real patient stories about their experiences managing and living beyond their condition. The site was supported by social content, digital display, online video ads, and press events.

Since campaign launch, the total brand awareness is up to 79% as of January 2018, which is 11 points above Millward Brown’s pharma DTC postlaunch brand norm. The total brand communication awareness, which speaks specifically to how our marketing is breaking through, reached an all time high of 33%. This result was bolstered mainly by TV, which also peaked in January. Additionally, motivation to talk to a doctor is over 66% among patients who saw the Cyndi “SEE ME” TV spot.