Archive for the ‘unbranded’ tag
Non-branded DTC advertising…
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:
