A Hard Pill to Swallow
But while companies like Prospectiv and imc2 make a great deal of their revenue from pharmaceutical marketing, DTC has been under a lot of heat as of late, which could create some problems for these types of companies going forward. Commercial Alert, a nonprofit advocacy group whose mission it is “to keep the commercial culture within its proper sphere, and to prevent it from exploiting children and subverting the higher values of family, community, environmental integrity and democracy,” has launched an anti-drug advertising site called stopdrugads.org in an attempt to convince the FDA to prohibit pharmaceutical companies from advertising.
Unlike imc2’s Levy, Gary Ruskin, Executive Director for Commercial Alert, doesn’t see DTC or pharmaceutical advertising as educational at all. “Direct consumer prescription drug marketing ought to be prohibited,” he says. “It’s not educational and it can increase the demand for prescription drugs which can be extremely expensive for taxpayers and deadly for consumers. DTC is not legal in any other country except for New Zealand and the United States and in New Zealand we expect it will be rebanned sometime soon.
Ruskin adds, “Basically, DTC prescription drug marketing was unheard of before 1997 so what would happen [if the FDA approves Commercial Alert's push] is that we’d go back to the status quo 1996 which is no marketing of prescription drugs.”
The question that remains is if Commercial Alert succeeds in their quest to rid the advertising world of DTC, how will this affect companies like imc2 and Prospectiv?
From Levy’s perspective, he hopes this will only affect TV and print advertisers and not those like imc2 who deal in the interactive space. “It does hurt a lot of marketers,” he says. “The marketers who are focused on TV and print have a lot to lose but [for] the agencies like imc2 that are focused on interactive, I think it’s a different story. On the web development side, it’s about not only promoting a property through advertising but also drawing people into an experience where you can provide them value.”
Levy adds, “With [pharmaceuticals], consumers want information, they want to know, and that’s been a big change. If you have a condition, odds are that you’re going to go to the Internet to do research on it.”
Prospectiv’s Doyle seems to agree with Levy’s sentiment. “With online advertising….the consumer is in control,” he says. “Online channels allow consumers to seek out the pharmaceutical companies that they want to hear from and opt-in for the drug treatment messages and information that address their ailments. An increasing number of pharmaceutical companies are expanding their investments in online advertising because they can then establish direct relationships with individual consumers and provide them with vital information about the ailments they suffer from and specific treatments for those illnesses.”
Doyle concludes, “This type of “direct-to-patient” approach is a win-win for everyone, since it allows consumers to get the educational and factual information they need and want, while marketers are better able to deliver the right information to the right person at the right time.”
Reader Comments.
- Pingback from Online Prescription Blog » A Hard Pill to Swallow
- Pingback from Online Prescription Blog » SureScripts Statement on the President’s State of the Union
another poorly written article. the author’s articles are rarely well informed and often outright wrong. I’m officially not reading them anymore.
And I think it’s a joke that the Adnetwork porn comments were turned on…and the kontraband editor comments removed. His comments had nothing to do with free speech. Agent Red just didn’t like being criticized.
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