The Big Pill Pitch
Drug companies are marketing directly to patients. Is this empowering or perilous?
The movement toward change is also driven by the cooling of consumers toward ads. In 1999, more than half of respondents to an FDA survey said they like seeing drug ads. In 2002, the number was less than a third, and 60 percent of respondents felt ads didn't provide enough information about risks of a drug. "There's generally a recognition that we're making some people pretty mad by some of the direct-to-consumer advertising. And making your customers mad is not generally a good strategy," Pfizer Chairman and CEO Hank McKinnell said in a press conference last week.
Still, whether we like them or not, the ads seem to be working. Multiple surveys have shown that the huge majority of us are aware of brands that are advertised on television. Even if a much smaller percentage actually go to their doctor, request and receive that drug (surveys show that happens about 5 to 7 percent of the time) that still translates into millions more prescriptions per year.
The ads work because they make use of the best advertising psychology available. They show people with allergies romping happily outside or someone who's had chronic heartburn scarfing down pepperoni pizza. Such images are "incredibly powerful," says Matthew Hollon, an internal medicine physician at the University of Washington. They convince people that medication can help them enjoy life more.
Recent signs, however, suggest that drug companies may be questioning the wisdom of investing in TV ads. After the FDA requested last November that Pfizer pull ads for its popular erectile dysfunction medication Viagra (the one that showed a man with blue devil's horns), the company noticed only a small drop in sales. The 4 percent drop between October and March was pretty much the same decline one would expect from increased competition in the marketplace. So drug executives were left wondering if they really needed to invest so much in the small screen. Still, says Mark Bard, president of the marketing firm Manhattan Research, "TV remains king" for now, accounting for almost double the amount of money spent on all other media combined in 2004, according to IMS Health.
Patient power. Even direct-to-consumer ad critics credit the marketing for getting people into the doctor's office who might not have otherwise gone. Television, print, and Internet ads for Viagra persuaded millions of men to see their doctors. And, when men went in to get their little blue pills, thousands were diagnosed with other conditions such as heart disease or diabetes.
But doctors and critics worry that drug marketing leads patients to insist on specific drugs when other drugs or lifestyle changes might be better for them. In the past few years, says Cynthia Romero, a family practice physician in Virginia Beach, Va., "patients are more aggressive in trying to do things on their own. It's sometimes really difficult to try to sway them when they have in their minds, 'I saw that ad, and I need that pill.' " She says that the insistence on drugs is frustrating and that many patients want a "quick fix" instead of looking deeper about what may be causing their symptoms.
While patients taking charge of their health is generally good, Hollon says it can make doctors feel cornered when a patient insists on one medication. "Patients should appreciate that direct-to-consumer advertising makes them think about important health issues," says Hollon. But when you go into the doctor, don't expect that "the ad medication is the right medication."
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