Johnson & Johnson’s Cordis launched the first on-air volley in the drug-eluting stent wars with a 60-second spot that broke during the Thanksgiving Cowboys-Jets game.
The spot, bearing the tagline “Life wide open,” opens on a middle-aged man sinking, defeated, into an armchair to the upbeat strains of Guster’s guitar-pop anthem “C’mon” while text asks: “How big is the world? Ask the tough guy cornered by chest pains.”
The ad, by BBDO, follows newspaper ads that launched last month. Magazine ads, in Time and other titles, broke this week, and new professional ads by Harrison & Star will debut in cardiology journals in December. The firm launched a revamped website, www.cypherusa.com, in September, and the site saw a healthy jump in traffic from the newspaper ads. Interactive for the campaign is being handled by BBDO’s sibling digital agency Atmosphere, while PR is tasked to Edelman.
The campaign comes as cardiologists are taking a second look at the category. J&J has long split the market with Boston Scientific, but with Abbott and Medtronic poised to jump in with coated stents of their own, Cordis could soon have a lot more competition.
