Dexcom President and CEO Kevin Sayer told CNBC on Friday that the company’s Super Bowl commercial was successful in sparking interest in its glucose monitoring system for people with diabetes.
The ad featuring musician and actor Nick Jonas, who also has diabetes, aired on Sunday during the NFL championship game between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
The game drew 96.4 million viewers, its worst rating since 2007. But for Dexcom, his first Super Bowl ad proved to be effective, Sayer told “Mad Money” host Jim Cramer.
“With regard to media impressions – those who hear the word or the name Dexcom – we had five times more media impressions in one day than last year,” said Sayer. “With regard to leads that enter our system, as people [got] interested in technology, the biggest lead generation day ever. … The message was released with great force. “
That message, according to a Dexcom press release about the announcement, was to ask for “better care for people with diabetes who still painfully prick their fingers to measure their glucose levels”. Dexcom’s device, called the G6 CGM System (Continuous Glucose Monitoring), tracks glucose data in real time through a smartphone app and the information can be shared with multiple people.
Dexcom’s announcement received some criticism. According to a Healthline article, people expressed concerns that this could stigmatize individuals who still monitor blood glucose with a digital puncture device. Others questioned whether it would be wise for Dexcom to spend money on a Super Bowl commercial – which are known to be expensive – when some people with diabetes skip treatment because they cannot afford it.
Sayer said Dexcom wanted to take advantage of all the interest associated with the Super Bowl to ensure that people knew about continuous glucose monitoring.
He previously shared with CNBC a story about a Dexcom customer who was woken up in the middle of the night by his mother, who saw through the app that the person’s blood sugar had dropped. “When you can do things like that and deliver results like that with a system, it’s really solving a very serious problem,” Sayer told Cramer in November 2019.
“We really need to promote awareness of this technology and get it out to people and we really feel the way it was deployed and shown by Nick Jonas, our spokesman, absolutely talking about it,” added Sayer on Friday.
Grammy-nominated musician Jonas was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes when he was 13.
Dexcom’s shares closed Friday’s session with a 0.6% rise to $ 412.56. Shares in the San Diego-based company have risen 68% in the past 12 months.
In 2020, Dexcom’s revenue grew 31% year over year to $ 1.93 billion. In its fourth-quarter and full-year results released on Thursday, Dexcom said it expects to see revenues in 2021 between $ 2.21 and 2.31 billion.