Promoting Abilify: What Brand-Name Recognition?
8 CommentsBy Ed Silverman // March 6th, 2008 // 2:54 pm
Antipsychotic Promotional Spending In ‘06
| Drug | Spending |
|---|---|
| Abilify | $329 million |
| Zyprexa | $184 million |
| Risperdal | $182 million |
| Seroquel | $179 million |
| Geodon | $119 million |
Sometimes, money really can’t buy everything. Despite outspending its rivals by huge sums, Bristol-Myers Squibb’s Abilify failed to make much of an impression on a group of psychiatrists and primary care docs surveyed recently.
As the first table illustrates, Bristol spent $329 million to promote Abilify in 2006, and this included unspecified costs in reaching docs, samples, DTC ads, detailing, advertising in medical journals, and mailing reprints, according to Sandra Chow, an analyst at Decision Resources, which queried 62 psychiatrists and primary care physicians. This amount was significantly more than any of its rivals spent to promote their own atypical antipsychotics. Yet, the payback was modest, at least when it came to getting docs to think of Abilify before any other drug for treating schizophrenia.
Top of Mind For Schizophrenia ‘07
| Drug | Psychiatrist | PCP |
|---|---|---|
| Abilify | 3% | 7% |
| Geodon | 3 | 23 |
| Seroquel | 10 | 19 |
| Zyprexa | 19 | 26 |
| Risperdal | 45 | 23 |
| Invega | 19 | 3 |
Take a peek at the second table and you’ll see that few psychiatrists and primary care docs surveyed last year gave Abilify much thought - just 3 and 7 percent, respectively. However, Abilify scored higher among docs when it comes to writing scrips for bipolar disorder and the drug also did well when major depressive disorder was mentioned - 26 percent of psychiatrists and 13 percent of primary care docs. On an overall basis, though, just 6 percent of psychiatrists and 7 percent of primary care docs thought of Bristol-Myers before any of its rivals on a company-by-company basis.
Now, you may argue that 2006 spending may not affect brand-name recognition among docs in 2007. But the various promotional efforts can take time to make an impression, particularly ad campaigns and journal articles that linger for weeks and months at a time. Ironically, Bristol-Myers significantly increased its spending from 2005, when it doled out about $229 million to promote Abilify.
Top of Mind for Bipolar Disorder ‘07
| Drug | COL 2 | COL 3 |
|---|---|---|
| Abilify | 23% | 16% |
| Geodon | 3 | 7 |
| Seroquel | 29 | 42 |
| Zyprexa | 32 | 29 |
| Risperdal | 10 | 7 |
| Invega | 3 | – |
Lisa Van S
Maybe they should have included ADHD diagnosis
ol cranky
I think Otsuka has some control over aripiprazole development programs so ADHD is probably out of the question. Despite the partnership with BMS this is still, at heart, a medium sized Japanese company’s drug
CO
Get real. Otsuka owns it the patent and the NDA but it’s BMS all the way in the US. BMS is responsible for marketing and sales and has been since its launch. And you might recall that Abilify off-label promotion played a little part in BMS’s recent $500 million settlement with the government and the new CIA. Of course, it’s the same company that entered a CIA just after its Deferred Prosecution Agreement for the channel-stuffing scandal ended. And it’s CEO Peter Dolan was forced out somewhere in the middle and I think there were a few other investigations and settlements. Basically, I think the company is good at two things: spending lots of money on lacklustre ideas and getting in trouble with the government.
Nathan
This appears to be another example that flies in the face of what many people on this site like to believe: Marketing alone won’t sell drugs. Exhubera is still my favorate example, but this is a close second. Companies can pump all they want into marketing, but at the end of the day a drug has to be satisfy a MARKET NEED in order to sell big.
Janet
At the end of the day, a drug has to be PERCEIVED (through marketing) of satisfying a market need in order to sell big. If you downplay risks and pump up benefits, then perceptions can be shifted.
(Also these study results are top-of-mind only, which is not the same as likelihood to write a script or general awareness. I bet Vytorin right now is also top of mind for many in terms of cholesterol reducers; however, I bet that is not correlating to scripts.)
mc
They should have promoted more heavily to the doctors via medical journals. The journals are a proven medium and these ridiculous brand managers are too interested in what they think is sexy. They are spending their promotion dollars foolishly.
someone
does it really make a difference? all the atypicals are equally bad …
Former pharma Marketing Exec
Nathan - could you possibly be agreeing with me?
Janet, if the drug does what it is supposed to do, just send around a clinical specialist (science background, not marketing or sales and certainly no MBA’s) to the targeted doctors and I guarantee you it will sell.
Any marketing budget should be spent on reprints of the study and mailing them or emailing them out to the doctors.
The perception stuff - after many years I can honestly say PHOOEY!!!!
Doctors are usually very smart people and they do not need us to tell them what to think and do…