I saw this editorial in today's Star Ledger called End Drug Ad Deception and I had to laugh, not because the article was funny, but because I had the exact same discussion with a friend of mine on our way to a meeting on Friday. My friend Jim and I spoke about this exact editorial of course before it was written and discussed the three drugs mentioned in the article - Lipitor, Procrit, and Vytorin. All three of these drugs my immediate family has had experience in, but the one thing that was constant was that our doctor's recommended them and hopefully not based on direct to consumer ads.
I'm not going to sit here and write to you that I'm some smart pharmaceutical marketer but I am a consumer in the market for these drugs and I know a thing or two about advertising; plus I just had this discussion on Friday. Basically the article failed to point out some good pharma has done when they advertise around medical problems you could be having that would cause you to go to a doctor about your problem. Think about ED (I'm not spelling it out because of spam fear). According to Jim there are numerous studies that show ED drove a lot of male patients into their doctor's office because of possible problems and this led to other diagnoses. The Star Ledger article failed to mention that, but that was a key discussion point with my friend Jim who is in the pharmaceutical industry.
Now I don't have all the answers but it seems to me that pharma opens themselves up to a lot of criticism, lawsuits, and government regulation with ads that are trying to drive patients into the doctor's office asking for a specific drug. Do you really know the difference between Lipitor or Vytorin? Feel a little down in the dumps from your cancer treatment, forget about whether your oncologist recommends your drugs, perhaps you should talk with him/her about Procrit. Seems like a stretch to me, but perhaps someone has benefited because they were more educated than their doctor.
However if pharma stuck to advertising around health symptoms, problems that patients could be experiencing they could use their advertising budgets to drive people to doctor's offices and let the professionals figure out which drug they should get. By the time a patient shows up in the office, big pharma's sales force should have already explained their latest and greatest drugs to the doctor. The ads could even be sponsored by the latest and greatest drug to get some name recognition out there and working with their sales force could show a tremendous amount of marketing synergy.
Anyway, that was the basis for my Friday conversation with my friend Jim. Perhaps a shift towards advertising around potential health problems they'd spend a little less on ad dollars but what they did advertise would help patients with potential health problems; thus indirectly driving product sales...That's probably old fashion of me, but why not?
PardonMyFrench,
Eric
Comments