Some Drug Makers Are Starting To Curtail TV Ad Spending

[question everything]

Some Drug Makers Are Starting To Curtail TV Ad Spending

By SCOTT HENSLEY
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
May 16, 2005; Page B1

After years of plowing a small fortune into television ads, some drug makers are concluding that they have overspent and are scaling back.

Pfizer Inc. says it is re-evaluating its TV-ad strategy for Viagra after prescriptions for its impotence drug fell off only slightly when the Food and Drug Administration ordered the company to stop running its principal TV campaign last fall. TAP Pharmaceutical Products Inc., which spent about $91 million advertising heartburn drug Prevacid on television in 2004, pulled the plug on TV commercials for the treatment late last year to focus on print media. The pullback represents "a strategic business decision," and is part of a plan to increase efficiency in marketing, the company said in a statement.

AstraZeneca PLC, one of the heaviest TV advertisers on such brands as heartburn medication Nexium and cholesterol drug Crestor, says it is committed to the medium but is rejiggering its spending.

(snip)


The pharmaceutical industry spent $4.45 billion on advertising to consumers in all media last year, a 27% increase over 2003, according to TNS Media Intelligence. It's too early to say whether a slowdown in TV ads is in full swing, and the launch of newly approved drugs, such as Sepracor Inc.'s. sleep aid Lunesta, and other medicines later this year could give TV spending a boost.

(snip)

Drug makers are also mindful of the intensifying heat that direct-to-consumer advertising is drawing from regulators and the broader public, especially in the wake of the safety controversy over highly advertised painkillers Vioxx from Merck & Co. and Celebrex from Pfizer. In February, the chairman of a panel of advisers to the FDA on the safety of these medicines said the group was trying to send a message that advertising them to consumers would be inappropriate. At the FDA's request, Pfizer halted all consumer ads for Celebrex late last year.

(snip)


Write to Scott Hensley at [e-mail]

URL for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB111619670216334114,00.html

[Cleita]

1. That would be fine if they passed the savings on to the

consumer, but I doubt if that will happen.

[candy]

2. I wish it was still banned---we were better off !

Just watching TV at night I must see 6 or 8 ads for drugs that say "Call your doctor and see if XYZ is right for you"

Insanity ! We are becoming a "pill for everything" society.

[UdoKier]

3. Those ads for prescription drugs should be BANNED.

They are deceptive, try to get people to buy drugs they shouldn't be taking, and they balloon the costs for patients.

[Cleita]

5. Only medical care givers and doctors need this information.

The companies should advertise only in professional journals like the New England Journal of Medicine. Also, the pharma companies have salesmen who contact pharmacies and doctors. They give them free samples of new drugs and the literature needed for them to know how these drugs act and react. This is all that's needed in the way of advertising.

[gratuitous]

4. Which raises the question

Why have the drug companies been advertising so heavily for products that you and I can't buy?

[Cleita]

6. The idea was to get the patient to ask his doctor for the drug.

They missed the fact that most of us who actually need prescription drugs are also on plans that force us to use generics when available.
I also heard the scuttlebutt that most of the new patented drugs are only variations of drugs that have expired patents and therefore can be manufactured as generics. So it's basically a new expensive drug that isn't much different than a generic drug that came before it.

[gratuitous]

7. I was a little too obtuse

Yes, I know what the idea was, but the fact remains that the pharmaceutical companies were buying ad spots on really expensive programs like the nightly news for products that the viewers couldn't directly buy.

This tells me that they had so much money to dispose of they didn't know what else to do besides run a bunch of ads for uninformed people to pressure their doctors to prescribe for them.

And, if I see that stupid honeybee with the phony French accent ONE MORE TIME, I don't know that I can be held responsible for my actions.

[Cleita]

8. This is why drugs are so expensive.

We Americans are paying the price, yet the same drug companies can sell their drugs for a third of the price often to Canada and other countries with NHC.

[kzootalker]

9. Good post!

Thanks

[question everything]

10. And, I suspect that this was one more reason for them to "rethink"

Especially Pfizer that mounted a personal attack on Canadian pharmacies that were selling to U.S. residents, objecting, until recently, to re importation, claiming that it "hurts" their bottom line, that drugs here cost more because research is expensive. Yet, they were spending so much money on TV ads - expenses that really could not be hidden, with a 30 sec spot on the Super bowl running, at what, $2 million a shot?

And that "honeybee" is no other than Antonio Banderas.. I think that the "phone French accent" is supposed to be a congested voice..

[Misskittycat]

11. Does anyone here have pharmaceutical or advertising connections?

On behalf of a friend, I was about to post this question in the Lounge, but I'll also try here.

In a nutshell, my friend now works for a nonprofit that for over 20 years has successfully disseminated continuing medical education seminars to doctors -- by way of pharmaceutical company "funding."

In one of the few acts of the Bush Administration that has not favored drug companies, about 2 years ago the feds issued regs prohibiting drug firms from directly funding these programs.

This actually freaked out the drug companies so much they withdrew all of the funding, and this nonprofit's main source of income tanked.

The nonprofit has now worked out a way legally to get drug firm support for these doctor seminars in an indirect way that meets a "safe harbor" test.

The problem is they can't seem to find the different folks in the drug firms now who will handle this funding, i.e., the "product managers." Apparently, their identities are concealed like state secrets.

Also, they're having trouble finding an advertising consultant who knows how to connect with these product managers. The nonprofit thought this part would be easy, but it hasn't been.

Does anyone here have any ideas, knowledge, input for this problem? Thanks very much.

[question everything]

12. Start from the top

Go the websites of these pharmaceuticals and find the name of the V.P. marketing, or even the president, and write to these people directly. You may just get some reply that would refer you to someone else.

Good luck