Pharmaceutical advertising gallery from all over…

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.

Original post from Pharmalot:

Patient advocates are complaining that GlaxoSmithKline is using scary advertising to market medicines for HIV, the deadly virus that causes AIDS.

One Glaxo ad shows shark-infested waters with the message: Don’t take a chance‚ stick with the HIV medicine that’s working for you. Some of Glaxo’s biggest HIV drugs have been losing ground to newer treatments, and AIDS groups say the ads appear aimed at dissuading patients from abandoning Glaxo drugs for others, according to this morning’s WSJ.

To read this story, go to: http://blogs.wsj.com/health/2008/08/25/are-ads-for-hiv-drugs-too-scary/

10. Viagra, Whaazzzz up!
9. Viagra, The quicker pecker picker upper.
8. Viagra, like a rock!
7. Viagra, When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight.
6. Viagra, Be all that you can be.
5. Viagra, Reach out and touch someone.
4. Viagra, Strong enough for a man, but made for a woman.
3. Viagra, Home of the whopper!
2. Viagra, We bring good things to Life!
1. This is your penis. This is your penis on drugs.

From PharmaGossip

This is a billboard campaign for Garcia’s Irish Pub. It uses billboards as a “message board” to tell a story.

For more details about the campaign, see the original post on The Daily Ad Biz

Lush beauty products are handmade and all natural. The brand also considers the overuse of product packaging to be wasteful. To build awareness of their company’s policy of avoiding the unnecessary, some Lush employees took to the streets of Berlin wearing nothing but aprons.

The stuff that looks like cheese is actually soap and the jars that look like marmalade presumably contain beauty products.

Read more about the Lush promotion at The Scented Salamander.

Via Advertising is good for you

The pharmaceutical company Bristol-Myers Squibb and Universal Music have joined forces to launch the campaign Luvu2.ca designed to encourage young people to take tests for detecting HIV.

Designed and produced by Bleublancrouge and its pharmaceutical division BBRx, the operation unveiled on August 18 counts on the popularity of the group U2 and singer Mary J. Blige to attract the attention of youth.

One Life (Life) target sexually active young people of 18-30 years, and invites them to use contraception and passing detection tests for HIV. The initiative is based on a video aired free of the song “One” by U2 and recorded by Mary J. Blige.

Hoping to generate excitement on the Internet through forums and blogs, the two firms will give $ 1 to groups of HIV-AIDS whenever the video is downloaded.

Client: Bristol-Myers Squibb
Agency: Bleublancrouge
Account Servicing: Michel V?©zina, Rita de Marco, Nancy Bouzi
Creative: ?âric Capel
Photo: Val?©rie Simmons
Director: Thomas Castaing
Agency Producers: Normand Vaillancourt, Lisa Arduini, Dominique Dufour
Production House: De Shed - Renaud C?¥t?©
Special Effects and 3D: De Shed - Sylvain Lebeau

Original post on InfoPresse.com

Medical Videos

Medicalvideos.us is a new online service. Here’s what they have to say about their service:

280 steps? Cool. I was an athlete when young.

Nevralgex. 0% Pain. 100% Relief.

Drop it. I’ll get it down here.
Nevralgex. 0% Pain. 100% Relief.

Advertising Agency: Ara??jo, Florian??polis, Brazil
Creative Directors: Alexandre Guedes, Edu Borges
Art Director: Thiago Zandonai
Copywriters: Alexandre Guedes, Leo Fontes
Illustrator: Mika
Photographer: Photos.com
Published: May 2008

Via Ads of the World

Gothic glasswork created by Belgian artist Wim Delvoye using X-rays.
See his other works on his site: http://www.wimdelvoye.be/

Via medgadget