Dexcom President and CEO Kevin Sayer told CNBC Friday that the company’s Super Bowl commercial was successful in piquing interest in the glucose monitoring system for people with diabetes.
The ad featuring musician and actor Nick Jonas, who himself has diabetes, aired Sunday during the NFL’s championship game between the Kansas City Chiefs and Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
The game drew 96.4 million viewers, its worst rating since 2007. But for Dexcom, the first-ever Super Bowl spot has proved effective, Sayer told Mad Money host Jim Cramer.
“As for the media impressions – those who hear the word or name Dexcom – we had five times more media impressions in one day than last year,” said Sayer. “As for leads that enter our system, as people [got] interested in the technology, the biggest lead generation day ever. … The message got out very strongly there. “
That message, according to a Dexcom press release about the ad, was to call for “better care for people with diabetes who still painfully prick their fingers to measure their glucose levels.” Dexcom’s device, called the G6 Continuous Glucose Monitoring (CGM) System, tracks glucose data in real time via a smartphone app and the information can be shared with multiple people.
Dexcom’s ad has received some criticism. According to a Healthline article, people expressed concern that it could stigmatize individuals who still monitor their blood glucose with a fingerstick device. Others questioned whether it was wise for Dexcom to spend money on a Super Bowl commercial – known to be expensive – when some people with diabetes skip treatment because they can’t afford it.
Sayer said Dexcom wanted to take advantage of all the interest in the Super Bowl to make sure people are aware of 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 was low. “If you can do things like that and get those kinds of results with a system, then you really solve a really serious problem,” Sayer told Cramer in November 2019.
“We really need to raise awareness of this technology and bring it to the people and we really felt the way it was deployed and shown by Nick Jonas, our spokesperson, absolutely spoke against that,” said Sayer on Friday.
Jonas, a Grammy-nominated musician, was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes when he was 13 years old.
Shares of Dexcom closed Friday’s session up 0.6% to $ 412.56. Shares of the San Diego-based company are up 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 Thursday, Dexcom said it expects sales of between $ 2.21 and 2.31 billion by 2021.