Pharma TV and video ads get animated in 2020

As stay-at-home orders and social distancing made it difficult to get people together for TV and video ad production, pharma came up with some clever workarounds. Intra-Cellular Therapies hired actors and their real-life families to act out scenes for its schizophrenia drug Caplyta. Merck & Co. used existing footage for its awareness spot reminding parents to keep up on their preteen children's wellness exams after nearly everything went online.

But the more prevalent and conspicuous change was a move to animation. Novo Nordisk’s first DTC ad for Type 2 diabetes drug Rybelsus featured a sunny, maskless animated world, full of happy animated people doing things real people couldn’t.