AdPharm Blog

Much was said about the Lipitor Dr. jarvik ads and it’s successor campaign. If you want to see the new Lipitor consumer campaign currently running is the US, you’ve got it right here…

Lipitor TV commercial - click on image to view the ad

Lipitor Print ad

To see the Dr. Jarvik-era ads and post-Jarvik ads on AdPharm, click here.

This consumer advertising provides information on DETROL LA, a prescription medication for the symptoms of overactive bladder. It also encourages patients to have the Detrol Discussion with their doctor during their next appointment. Click the title to view the commercial.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Pfizer will air new Lipitor TV ads that feature a non-celebrity:

“The new television ad, set to debut Tuesday, features a testimonial from heart-attack survivor John Erlendson, a 58-year-old California talent agent. He didn’t take a cholesterol-fighting drug before his heart attack last year despite a history of high cholesterol, and his ad urges people in similar situations to be more proactive.” (See “Pfizer Drops Celebrity Pitch in New Lipitor Spots“).

According to the WSJ article, Erlendson will be paid “a union scale rate,” as opposed to $1.35 million that Pfizer paid Dr. Robert Jarvik for Lipitor ads that he famously appeared in (see “Jarvik: A Modern DTC Tragedy“).

What exactly is the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) “union scale rate” for TV commercials?

You can’t get that information the SAG Web site — you have to be a member and although I am producing my own video commercials, I am not a card-carrying SAG member.

Using Google, however, I easily found a document from an agent’s Web site that outlined the rates for 2006 (see here). For “on-camera principals,” the rate is $567.10 (not including an $83.93 pension contribution).

Doing the math, I find that Pfizer will save $1,349,432.90 using Erlendson vs. Jarvik! The actual savings might be less if you factor in the recent increase in SAG union rates won as a result of the recent strike.

Whatever! Pfizer is saving a bundle!

I have a question for Mr. Erlendson: Are you independently wealthy? Are you getting “residuals” in the form of free promotion for yourself and your talent agency?

After all, if Mr. Erlendson can land this gig with Pfizer, he must be a damn good talent agent!

Original post

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: