Primary and secondary care physicians treating patients diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes in various healthcare settings. Our primary audience consists of healthcare professionals new to using SGLT2 inhibitors (the category of drugs FORXIGA belongs to). The secondary audience consists of physicians already prescribing FORXIGA.

FORXIGA and XIGDUO (FORXIGA+metformin) are prescription drugs that may only be advertised to healthcare professionals. They are promoted by AstraZeneca, whose headquarters are in the UK, As such, they must follow the ABPI Code of Practice, which requires materials to be appropriate, factual, fair and capable of substantiation.

Our campaign stemmed from the insight that FORXIGA is THE great reducer. Like many diabetes treatments, FORXIGA lowers patients’ blood sugar levels. But FORXIGA also lowers weight and blood pressure – because it physically removes excess sugar from the body.

To create our campaign, we commissioned a sugar artist to physically build our campaign visuals using sugar, to represent the sugar removed. We took the approximate amount removed from one person in 1 year (25 kg) and used it to symbolise FORXIGA’s advantages (lower blood sugar, weight and blood pressure), which both demonstrates how FORXIGA works and showed the benefits of this approach in a way that was quick and simple to grasp for healthcare professionals.

To bring home what FORXIGA can really do for patients, we showed healthcare professionals the effects for real. So we physically built our new campaign from scratch using real metal, real glass and real sugar.

The global campaign was launched at IDF in Vancouver in November 2015, with subsequent individual market launches taking place across 70 countries in 2016. This presence will continue across international congresses in 2016 with a high presence at ADA, EASD and ESC.

The message and visual are easy to understand and clearly show the way FORXIGA works, whilst also introducing the benefits of using it. In market research, physicians commented:

‘This helps me understand that getting rid of sugar in this way causes these additional beneficial effects.’

‘I recognise I could use this product in patients with Type 2 diabetes who need weight loss, have obesity or problems with hypertension.’

‘[This shows that Type 2 diabetes is]…a multifactorial disease and that you need an agent to address everything’

The campaign is currently being adopted by over 70 markets (a key indicator of the success of a global campaign template prior to sales data availability) and rolled out across multiple channels. Data on campaign sales impact has yet to be gathered, but it is anticipated that the campaign will continue to drive the growth of FORXIGA and the SGLT2 class.

This work is relevant as it is a single campaign based on a unified creative idea, executed across multiple channels/media (including print, digital, film and conference).

To build on the launch campaign’s success and ensure we continued to lead the class, we evolved the previous iconic sugar shaker image to tell a story beyond FORXIGA’s mechanism of action and help healthcare professionals understand the link between FORXIGA’s action and its benefits. We engaged markets across the globe early and gathered insights to ensure the campaign we created would resonate worldwide and guarantee local market uptake.

The entire campaign was based on one clear theme – removing sugar and using it to demonstrate the benefits of doing so. Every promotional material had this theme at its heart including print, film digital media and activity at conferences worldwide.

FORXIGA was the first SGLT2 inhibitor to launch worldwide and had a successful campaign focused on the way it worked. However, several similar competitors now exist and are seeing commercial success; one has data showing it can reduce cardiovascular risk, which is likely to change Type 2 diabetes treatment.

Our client briefed us to update the campaign to highlight FORXIGA’s key benefits while incorporating a well-established existing visual. The objective was to capitalise on the mentioned competitor data to create an integrated campaign presenting FORXIGA as a class leader based on category benefits rather than factual experience. Our aim was to avoid the use of stock photography or ‘happy patients’/’lifestyle’-type imagery often seen in the space.