hen it comes to storytelling, today’s tales often come in the form of feature films, with a touch of Hollywood pixie dust to keep us intrigued until the movie ends, the credits roll, and we leave the theater talking about what we just saw. When Amgen Inc. and Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, which co-market the drug Enbrel, decided to tell the drug’s story at the 2005 American College of Rheumatology (ACR) Scientific Meeting, they turned to Dayton, NJ-based creative and strategic company Impact Unlimited to help them create some Hollywood magic of their own.

Held annually each fall, ACR is the place to be if you’re looking to prove your mettle in the rheumatology field. “It’s the one big show of the year,” says Michael Mazzola, a creative producer at Impact Unlimited. “If you are going to make a splash, it is the show to do it at.”

Making a “splash” at the event was easy enough for Amgen and Wyeth back in 2003, when the two companies featured Enbrel at ACR, essentially uncontested.

By 2005, however, rival companies with products in the same category had challenged Enbrel (a first-to-market prescription drug used to treat both rheumatoid arthritis and psoriasis). These new competitors were becoming increasingly aggressive not only in the industry at large, but also in their efforts to attract attendees to their booths at ACR.

Meanwhile, the overall competitive landscape of the ACR exhibit hall had changed dramatically since 2003, according to Mazzola. “As the years went by, the creative elements of booths on the floor became more and more elaborate. We were seeing more and more creative flourishes designed to bring people in and turn them into a captive audience.” As competitors became more adept at attracting attendees, Amgen and Wyeth found it increasingly difficult to not only attract the same attendees, but also hold their attention and keep them in the booth.

Faced with these challenges, Amgen and Wyeth decided to create a single exhibit element that would break from the norm (such as product literature and in-booth demonstrations). They worked with Impact Unlimited to design an exhibit experience that would draw attendees to the Enbrel booth in droves, retain them long enough to hear the companies’ message, and educate them about the product in a memorable way.

Hoping Enbrel’s exhibit would be the talk of the trade show, Amgen and Wyeth set a lofty goal of increasing booth traffic by more than 50 percent, from 650 visitors in 2004 to 1,000 visitors in 2005.

The Big-Screen Booth

“The first struggle for any exhibit team is to get attendees into the booth,” Mazzola says. “In 2005, we wanted to make sure we were out there on the floor with a ‘wow’ factor that would capture people’s attention and imagination, draw them in visually, and do so in a way that had never been done before. We also wanted to have one big idea — something that would tempt attendees to come into the booth and that would stand head and shoulders above everything else on the floor.”

The result was the Enbrel Multimedia Multisensory Theater, a fully enclosed domed construct replete with flashing lights and a gigantic 20-foot-tall entrance. As if the structure weren’t buzz-worthy enough, the presentation inside illuminated the dome’s slightly-translucent fabric walls, rendering its exterior a color-shifting rainbow. “I think that there was a certain ‘unknown element’ associated with seeing this large, brightly lit dome that was constantly changing from the outside, and people became naturally curious to find out what was going on inside,” Mazzola says.

While the exterior of the theater may have drawn most attendees into the 2005 Enbrel booth initially, the experience awaiting them inside was what enabled Enbrel to achieve its other goals for the event: namely, retaining attendees and educating them about Enbrel.

Inside the theater, visitors watched a three-minute computer-generated, panoramic movie produced by Saatchi & Saatchi Healthcare. The ultra-wide-screen film immersed attendees in a journey through the drug’s product and clinical-research data. This otherwise dry material was rendered exciting and memorable for attendees, Mazzola says, thanks to an array of synchronized special effects — from twists and turns, lightning strikes, underwater immersion, and a gasp-inducing plunge over a waterfall to fog, surround sound, vibration, and even a programmable motion floor that raised and lowered to correspond with the film’s motion and imagery.

With Enbrel’s research and medical data points serving as a plotline, the film created a multi-sensory metaphor that connected Enbrel’s product and clinical-research data with the topography of the “new world” that the drug makes possible to legions of rheumatoid-arthritis sufferers. For example, vistas morphed from one to another to demonstrate the peaks and valleys seen in charts and graphs from the product’s clinical studies.

The film also made Enbrel’s position in the marketplace abundantly clear to attendees, according to Robert Lisicki, Amgen’s arthritis marketing director. “We didn’t merely give people a gratuitous ride. The information relayed in the movie was valuable and relevant, and it always had a point.” The film also drove home the key areas in which Enbrel excels in relation to its competitors. “Amgen and Wyeth were out on the market first, and we have the longest medical-history record,” he says. “The intent of the film was to differentiate Enbrel by focusing on that sustainability, the product’s history in the marketplace, its longstanding clinical record, safety, efficacy, and dosing data.”

Most importantly, the Enbrel in-booth film experience allowed Amgen and Wyeth to connect with attendees on a personal level, as it incorporated case studies and testimonials from patients whose lives were changed for the better due to Enbrel. “The film was inspirational in nature,” Lisicki says. “When doctors saw the change Enbrel can make in the lives of people afflicted by rheumatoid arthritis, they could feel proud of what they do and good about using Enbrel.”

Now Showing

Throughout the three-day show, the Hollywood-inspired in-booth presentation drew hordes of attendees, who waited an average of more than 20 minutes to get into the theater, giving sales reps the perfect opportunity to engage them in product-related conversations. Staffers distributed Broadway-theater-style “playbills” that contained product information, detailing Enbrel’s benefits and differentiators, while sales reps used pre-determined talking points and hard-copy lead forms to provide attendees with additional product information, while capturing contact information and qualifying leads.

Following the presentation, the Enbrel Etanercept Café served up coffee, cappuccino, and biscotti, and attendees sat, sipped, and — most importantly — stayed in the exhibit, chatting with staffers and drinking in even more of Enbrel’s message.

In the end, the 2005 exhibit far exceeded Amgen and Wyeth’s initial goals. Overall both traffic, for example, skyrocketed from 650 attendees in 2004 to 2,100 attendees in 2005, more than doubling the companies’ goal and nearly quadrupling the 2004 figure. Additionally, attendees were exposed to messaging for much longer, as the average time spent in the exhibit increased by almost 500 percent. e