Name That Drug? Not In These Ads…
6 CommentsBy Ed Silverman // August 29th, 2008 // 4:01 pm
Several weeks ago, Pfizer returned its Chantix ads to television, although the drugmaker chose not to run typical ads touting the name of the controversial anti-smoking pill, which has been linked to suicidal thoughts and other side effects. Instead, Pfizer is trying unbranded advertising, which means the product name isn’t used and, therefore, costly ad time needed to list side effects can be avoided. Here is the MyTimeToQuit site.
The idea, writes The Wall Street Journal, appears to be undergoing a revival for drugs with chequered pasts, especially as drugmakers come under attack from some lawmakers over direct-to-consumer advertising. Sanofi-Aventis, for instance, just launched a 15-second ad that uses a rooster to promote a web site called silenceyourrooster.com, which promotes Ambien, a sleeping pill linked to such side effects as sleepdriving.
Unbranded ads have been used before to promote disease awareness and build markets for drugs for those diseases, the paper notes. Although Bob Ehrlich of DTC Perspectives, which monitors DTC advertising, writes in his blog that the Ambien and Chantix ads may be clever, but are risky because they don’t emphasize medicine. “The use of the darkly comedic rooster may arouse the wrath of Congressional watchers who recoil from uses of non-serious spokespeople or in this case spokesfoul.”
Pfizer says it isn’t pushing Chantix in its ads, or trying to circumvent FDA rules. “The goal of the My Time to Quit campaign is to encourage people to quit smoking,” Pfizer spokeswoman Sally Beatty tells the paper.
“With unbranded ads, you don’t have the ‘fair balance’ requirement,” Rich Gagnon of the ad agency DraftFCB, tells the Journal. “Imagine paying millions to run that ad campaign, and having to use up 30 seconds to list all the problems.”
Ruth Day of Duke University, a frequent critic of direct to consumer ads, gave the commercial and website high marks for useful information. An expert in how medical ads work on consumers, Dr. Day said mytimetoquit.com is relatively easy and gets to lists of side effects quickly.
Pfizer had originally been skeptical of unbranded “help-seeking” and “disease-awareness ads.” In late 2005, an executive said that such ads “do not drive patients to the doctor” as well as ads that offer a solution, the Journal smartly recalls.
Brian
Yes, Chantix was problematic from the first time it came to the market. Check also this site:
http://www.chantixsite.com
There are many people in the forum sharing their experiences with its side effects.
Cobalt
Ed,
I know this comment is only tangentially related to this item, but could you do a post on the whole Enzyte/Berkeley Premium Nutraceuticals saga? The 11th company executive was sentenced to prison this week (The enzyte commercials are those that feature smilin’ Bob and promise natural male enhancement). The company founder, Steve Warshak, got 25 yrs.
Marilyn Mann
http://www.usagainstathero.com/
The “Us Against Athero” website is sponsored by AstraZeneca, maker of Crestor (rosuvastatin). Similar type of thing.
Thoryke
This sounds a lot like what was done with the Propecia ads, when they wanted to drop any mention of the “pregnant women should not handle pills because of the risk of birth defects to a male fetus”…
As for the “silence your rooster” ad, my immediate thought was this was an unbranded pitch for Rozerem, which seemed to own the ‘wacky dream’ schtick.
harpy
spokesfoul?!? *sigh*
Ambien Side Efects
My name is Carrie James and i would like to show you my personal experience with Ambien.
I have taken for 30 days. I am 23 years old. First I took it to help me fall asleep. After a couple of days I noticed that it made me feel really good, so I would take it just to feel the high that it gave me. I would had no memory of what I did the night before. Every night I did really weird things like send out strange emails, take weird pictures, and I fear that I did things that I still don’t know about. I would also hallucinate. I would just spend a lot of time staring at things watching them move, like the wall or notes on sheet music. I was way too distracted to go to bed. It made me tired, but I didn’t want to go to bed. I stopped taking it because I don’t want to get involved with something like that. I think about it all the time and I have cravings for it, but I just don’t think I need anymore problems.
Side Effects :
Hallucinations, feeling of being high, and no memory of things I did the night before.
I hope this information will be useful to others,
Carrie James