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Lilly airs first TV spot ever for cancer
"Metastatic breast cancer is relentless," says a woman with a determined expression, looking straight into the camera. "But I'm relentless too."
"MBC doesn't take a day off. And neither will I," another woman says.
Metastatic breast cancer-also known as stage 4 breast cancer- is a tough, crippling disease that claims 40,000 lives a year and has no cure. Nearly three-quarters of all women inflicted with the disease die within five years of being diagnosed.
But a new, 90-second television spot for Eli Lilly and Co.'s latest cancer drug, Verzenio, is pushing a decidedly positive message.
The commercial, which first hit the airwaves on April 15, shows women in their 50s and 60s looking resolute and indominable, surrounded by smiling friends and family.
It's part of a marketing campaign called "Relentless" and is meant to give voice to metastatic breast cancer patients, and celebrate their strong spirits.
For Lilly, the campaign is a milestone in drug marketing. It is the first time the company has launched an advertising campaign directly to consumers for a cancer drug, even though it has been using television for decades to pitch medicines for diabetes, erectile dysfunction, depression, psoriasis and other ailments.
But the company is getting blowback from critics who say the Verzenio commercial might be too positive and even misleading.
In the ad, upbeat piano music plays in the background as a series of poignant scenes unfold: a mom watching a young daughter on stage at a dance performance, two women baking pies in the kitchen, a family blowing soap bubbles on the patio, and a mom sipping hot chocolate around the fireplace with her daughter.
The scenes show lots of hugs and smiles, mixed in with a few wistful looks. No one is seen in a hospital bed or a wheelchair or strapped to oxygen or an IV stand.
Verzenio, the announcer says, "is proven to help women have significantly more time" without disease progression, when taken along with another drug called an aromatase inhibitor. (Aromatase inhibitors are an older class of drugs used in the treatment of breast cancer in postmenopausal women.) The announcer says that more than half of women "saw their tumor shrink."
Lilly says the...