Vytorin Ads In The Supermarket Aisle
17 CommentsBy Ed Silverman // June 26th, 2008 // 9:06 am
The television ads were controversial, so Schering-Plough and Merck have to do something to get consumers to ask their docs for prescriptions. So at a Super Stop & Shop near New Brunswick, New Jersey, shoppers can see a dispenser offering fold-up ads for the cholesterol pill in the health-care aisle, where the supermarket sells over-the-counter pain relievers, allergy meds and aspirin, The Star-Ledger of New Jersey reports.
A spokesman for the drugmakers tells the paper the move makes perfect sense, because Vytorin ads focus on two sources of cholesterol - food and family history. “Since supermarkets are where people routinely make choices about which food to buy, we believe this was a good place to engage consumers with education on high cholesterol and one treatment option they can discuss with their doctor,” Irvine wrote in an e-mail to the paper.
Mal Karlin, president of Karlin and Pimsler, a New York ad agency, tells the paper the supermarket aisle is a “very odd place” for the Vytorin ad. On the one hand, consumers are in the aisle because they’re interested in their health and may consider Vytorin if they’re not aware of it. The dispenser’s location might even be strategic if situated near bottles of 81 milligram aspirin, which is often taken by consumers with cardiovascular conditions, he tells the Ledger.
On the other hand, it’s not really clear who is seeing or taking the advertisements, he tells the paper. There’s a reason why companies are willing to pay high prices for prime-time television commercials: They’re targeting a certain audience. In the supermarket aisle, Karlin says, “it’s a crap shoot.”
Indeed, maybe Schering-Plough and Merck should start advertising on pizza boxes next. Any suggestions? Sounds like they need help.
Insider
Ouch! :-)
John
Ed,
The pizza box idea is a stroke of genius. It makes all the sense in the world. Perfect demographic target, low cost and wide distribution. You sure you’re an objective observer, or are you secretly working in pharma product management?
Jack2
Cake boxes too. That way, with Vytorin, you can have your cake and eat it too.
By the way, I’ve never really understood that saying.
Ed Silverman
Hi John,
I was an accounting major and have been a business journalist most of my grown-up life, such as it is, so perhaps some things are rubbing off. In addition, two empty pizza boxes have been lying around my kitchen for the past few days and I just happened to glance at them this morning. Think of it as serendipity.
So what do you think? Will we start seeing drug ads on pizza boxes now? Have I given someone a bright idea? If so, remember where you heard it first.
Cheers
ed
Chris
Ed,
Put down the lap top and take out the trash! We’ll be here when you get back.
Ed Silverman
Hi Jack2,
I never understood that saying about having your cake either, and I heard it all the time growing up thanks to my dad. As it turns out, I’m not much for cake. Little did he know.
Regards
ed
Jack2
In order to derive any benefit from cake you clearly must both have it, and eat it. The former alone is useless, and the later alone impossible.
Can anyone clarify this for me? If they do they’ll be “the exception that proves the rule.”
Quibbler
Presumably if you have your cake without eating it, you’ll be saving it for later consumption. (Unless, that is, you have an interest-bearing cake account in which case you could just live off the cupcakes you get as interest.)
As for the exception that proves the rule, “prove” in this case refers to testing. That is, exceptions to a rule provide useful test cases by which we can assess the rule.
From Dictonary.com
“4. to subject to a test, experiment, comparison, analysis, or the like, to determine quality, amount, acceptability, characteristics, etc.”
This is the same usage as the saying
“The proof of the pudding is in the eating.” Note that the saying “the proof is in the pudding” is an exceedingly annoying bastardization!
Justice in MI
Re: the cake … Perhaps I’m a weirdly literal thinker (sign of psychosis), but I assumed it always meant what it said. Someone, say, who wants both the pleasure of having a wad of cash (sense of power, potential, anticipation, security) and the pleasure of spending it (on, say, pizza). Having the cake does have independent benefit (I won’t get into risk). One can look forward (perpetually) to the pleasure of eating it - and going off one’s Mediterranean diet - even while really having the pleasure of deating it. Kind of like a birthday party on Ground hog day.
I’m sure that has clarified the matter. Don’t get me into glass houses (in which ston–throwing always seemed to me the least of one’s problems).
Now, back to the supermarket. When Vioxx got pulled, it was all Celebrex, all the time, in the Rite Aide aisles. I don’t recall when they pulled their TV ads (before they returned), but I think there was some overlap. Perhaps not.
As I’ve mentioned, there was also a neat fake TIME magazine I found in a waiting room. It looked all the world like an actual TIME cover, but it was a “wrap” for Celebrex. You had to turn the page to get to the actual TIME cover.
One could think of this as having one’s time and spending it too.
John
Look. You’re all missing the point. You can have your cake (or pizza) and eat it too, BECAUSE you take Vytorin. Hence, Ed’s pizza box reminder ads and Jack2’s cake box ads. Now do you see? I hear the collective epiphany.
CV DOC
I think that they would get more for their buck if they started putting their dispensers in fast-food outlets. I can see them now - right on the wall where you pick up your fat, juicy burgers and geasy french fries. And they could hang them next to the drive-in window on the outside of the joint. It seems that they are trying to get around the scrutiny of the ads, but the question is whether or not DDMAC needs to review these materials before they post them anywhere? It may blow up in their faces if they haven’t done so prior to putting them out in front of the public. The FDA may be all over this one and Congress may join in.
Dan
This seems like a FTC misbranding issue.
Another Idea
They should post them in public restrooms and portable pots. The hit rate would be really high with this new strategy.
harpy
The phrase’s earliest recording is from 1546 as “wolde you bothe eate your cake, and have your cake?” (John Heywood’s ‘A dialogue Conteinyng the Nomber in Effect of All the Prouerbes in the Englishe Tongue’) alluding to the impossibility of eating your cake and still having it afterwards; the modern version (where the clauses are reversed) is a corruption which was first signalled in 1812.
Via Wikipedia
Justice in MI
Since my birthday party is tomorrow (even though event actually happened in May), I am particularly sensitive to the cake issue.
Thus, to avoid further uncertainty, chaos, overwarning, and a blow to innovation, I propose the following:
Eating one’s cake hereby preempts having it too.
Whether citizens should be allowed to horde unconsumed cake is a different question - thought not without public health implications. Perhaps some expiry date ought to be considered.
Neers87
Vytorin ads in supermarkets!
Now that really does “take the cake”.
Would that imply this may be the final chapter? Can anyone sort out that reference; cake seems to be an apropos topic for the subject matter.
Neers87
Dingle
These types of tactics aren’t new. I’ve seen VYTORIN “shelf shouters”, as well as these tactics for many other brands, in pharmacies as well as supermarkets (typically those with pharmacies).