Healthy Skepticism Library item: 8801

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

Publication type: news

Edwards J.
This Is Your Show On Drugs: Rx Brands Injected Into Action
Brandweek 2007 Mar 12
http://www.brandweek.com/bw/magazine/columns/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003556675

Full text:

The amount of prime time network TV devoted to name-checking prescription drug brands has roughly doubled in the last year, according to Nielsen Product Placement.

Drug makers have been shy of product placement until now because Food and Drug Administration regulations generally prohibit drug marketers from publishing messages without risk and side-effect information. It can be very difficult to work those disclaimers into a drama or comedy script, and almost impossible to then suggest that viewers go see their doctor for more information.

The FDA has never taken a position on product placement. The closest it has come is to allow so-called “reminder” ads in which only the name of the drug brand is mentioned and no medical claims are made.

A source told Brandweek that some of the “biggest” drug companies had successfully placed “disease awareness” messages in reality TV shows. Non-branded mentions of diseases and conditions are useful to drug companies because they make patients more comfortable talking to their doctors about problems, and doctor visits lead to category-wide prescription sales increases.

Because the area is so controversial-no company wants to be scrutinized by the FDA-executives declined to say which brands were being placed.

The Nielsen statistics, however, imply that their efforts have paid off. There were 337 visual or audio mentions of prescription drug brands in 2006, according to Nielsen. That’s up from 231 in 2005. The length of those occurrences also increased, from 607 seconds in 2005 to 1,548 seconds last year.

While a normal background level of drug mentions is to be expected-Viagra and Prozac are cultural touchstones as well as brands-some drug brands stick out in unusual ways.

Take, for instance, Dey Pharma’s EpiPen, the injectible for people with potentially fatal allergic reactions. In the Jan. 16 episode of Boston Legal (ABC), a school teacher failed to administer the anti-allergy injectible to a child who ate peanut candy and died of anaphylactic shock.

The script read like an ad for the Dey brand: “Anaphylactic shock can come on suddenly, which is what happened here,” said the boy’s father, testifying on the show. “If the EpiPen isn’t administered, it can be fatal.”

The plaintiff’s attorney drew him out further: “If [the teacher] had gotten to your son sooner . . . ?”

The father replied: “Well, we obviously can’t know for sure, but he had had these attacks before and the EpiPen, along with the pills, had proven effective.”

EpiPen also was mentioned five times on the Feb. 8 episode of NBC’s ER, per Nielsen.

The Napa, Calif.-based Dey has previously denied that it engages in product placement. Last week, a source confirmed that when TV producers request branded props, the pharmaceutical company fulfills the requests.

The only drug company that has come out of the closet regarding product placement is Organon. In 2005, the Roseland, N.J., firm placed posters for its Nuvaring contraceptive in the backgrounds of NBC’s Scrubs and CBS’ King of Queens. Since then, it has added ABC’s Grey’s Anatomy to its list, according to brand director Lisa Barkowski. “A lot of the feedback we get is from healthcare professionals,” she said. “They mention it to [our] reps, ‘Wow, I saw that poster.’ It reinforces in their mind; it makes them think of the product.”

Drug companies are also becoming expert in branded content deals that do not include overt placements. Roche late last year did a tie-in with the movie Happy Feet for its “Flu Facts” effort, in which the penguins appeared in Roche ads. Roche markets the Tamiflu vaccine, but the drug or the flu were not specifically mentioned in the movie.

Johnson & Johnson’s Centocor unit currently has a documentary in limited theatrical release, InnerState, which looks at sufferers of psoriasis, Crohn’s disease and arthritis. Centocor markets Remicade for those conditions, but the drug is not mentioned in the movie.

Similarly, GlaxoSmithKline, Forest Labs, Novartis and Pfizer have run informational programming on The Health Television System, which has included brand mentions of the drugs they sell. Kathy Kastner, CEO of the Toronto-based hospital TV network, said the shows were “educational, but with product placement.”

The shows-screened for 39 million patients in 43 North American hospitals-included such non-Hollywood titles as Controlling Nausea and Overcoming Depression.

Even that modest effort, though, bumped up against limits. Pfizer’s program, Sexual Dysfunction, touted Viagra but was pulled from the net after hospitals complained. Kastner said: “Hospitals are more conservative even than the FDA. It’s one of the reasons why-how shall I put this?-we’ve developed an acceptable and successful balance of product placement, usage and education.”