There seems to be two schools of thought about whether the Gardasil controversy was a winning or losing proposition for Merck.

This morning, Boston Globe columnist Ellen Goldman slammed the company for lobbying politicians so aggressively for state mandates that the drugmaker raised undue suspicion among a public already leery over Vioxx and other industry scandals.

Despite the vaccine’s virtues, Merck’s campaign was overkill, Caren Turner, a DC lobbyist and pr specialist tells Pharmaceutical Executive. “When companies push too hard, it backfires.”

But John Mack, who runs Pharma Marketing Blog, disagrees. “All the publicity has made Gardasil a household word and more people than ever know about the vaccine and the link between HPV and cervical cancer. From that point of view, all the hullabaloo has achieved a level of awareness that no multi-million dollar disease education campaign could ever hope to do. And Merck got this windfall on the cheap.”

The reality is the hullabaloo cuts both ways. On one hand, John is right that more people may be talking or even arguing about Gardasil had the controversy not erupted. The theory, of course, is that sometimes bad publicity is better than no publicity.

At the same time, this episode did come at a cost. Merck’s reputation suffered - again. This all happened too soon after the Vioxx scandal for some parents not to question the drugmaker’s motives and credibility. Instead of rebuilding its rep with Gardasil, Merck lost some trust.

Here’s one more thought. This may blow over soon enough and doctors will talk up the virtues of vaccination. But eventually Glaxo’s HPV vaccine is likely to be approved and, perhaps, a new marketing war breaks out. Even as Gardasil sales rise, Merck will have to be cautious for quite some time. Good medicine or not, Merck can’t run the risk of becoming synonomous with sleaze.

[tags]Gardasil, GlaxoSmithKline, HPV, Merck[/tags]