Boehringer Ingelheim’s mission for Super Bowl LX viewers, should they choose to accept it, is to learn more about urine albumin-to-creatinine ratio (uACR) screening to monitor kidney health in people with certain risk factors.
A new commercial set to air during the Feb. 8 championship game between the Seattle Seahawks and New England Patriots gets the uACR testing message out with help from acclaimed actors Octavia Spencer and Sofía Vergara.
Spencer has Type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure, and Vergara’s mother has the latter. As Boehringer noted in a release Wednesday unveiling the new ad—its first-ever Super Bowl spot—almost half of all U.S. adults live with high blood pressure, including close to 60% of Black women and around one-third of Hispanic women in the U.S. aged 20 and older.
Both high blood pressure and Type 2 diabetes are among the risk factors for chronic kidney disease, which can in turn raise the risk of heart attack, stroke and other major cardiovascular events.
The uACR test can help detect albuminuria, an otherwise hidden early sign of kidney damage, potentially picking up on what an ongoing campaign from Boehringer has dubbed an “SOS” from the body alerting to increased heart risks. Though uACR screening is recommended alongside the estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) test to detect kidney disease, it’s “often underutilized,” per Boehringer.
The “Mission: SOS” Super Bowl commercial is shot like an action film with a buddy comedy twist. It starts with Spencer sporting a holographic wrist display and zooming off on a motorcycle in pursuit of her mission to “detect the SOS,” only for Vergara to suddenly appear behind her on the motorcycle, demanding acknowledgement from the gravelly voiceover.
The duo travel to a Batcave-like lair, where they talk through cardiovascular risk factors. The ad ends with Spencer on a rooftop, igniting a flare—its red smoke creating the shape of a heart—to flag down a helicopter driven by Vergara, who excitedly announces, “I just got my permit!”
“Don’t miss the signal. Ask your doctor about a simple urine test called uACR and join our mission,” Spencer concludes before the daring pickup, as text on screen directs viewers to the “Detect the SOS” campaign website.
Alongside Boehringer’s logo at the end of the commercial are those for the American Diabetes Association, the National Kidney Foundation, WomenHeart and Mended Hearts. With the drugmaker, those nonprofits form the Detect the SOS Collective, aimed at improving awareness of and education around kidney and heart health.
"Detect the SOS is a multi-stakeholder movement that brings together trusted voices, advocates, healthcare professionals and policymakers to empower patients with resources as they take care of their kidney and heart health," Brian Hilberdink, president of U.S. human pharma at Boehringer, said in Wednesday’s announcement.
He added, “This is just the beginning, and we hope many more join our mission either by taking the test themselves, sharing the information with a loved one or reaching out to us to partner.”
The “Detect the SOS” campaign kicked off last fall with the website—currently available in English, with a Spanish version coming soon—plus social media posts and a 30-second ad in which various everyday sounds spell out SOS in morse code until a man finally ignites a red flare of his own to acknowledge the message.
Along with information about uACR testing and the “SOS” signals sent by the body, the campaign website also features lifestyle tips for improving heart and kidney health and a downloadable discussion guide to prepare individuals to talk to their doctors about testing options.
The campaign is unbranded, but Boehringer is the co-developer—with Eli Lilly—of chronic kidney disease and Type 2 diabetes med Jardiance. The duo previously launched another awareness campaign to promote the combination of uACR and eGFR tests to detect kidney disease.