Beer too is available from your local corner store in Newfoundland. Anything harder requires a visit to the NLC.

Maybe women are more open about how they deal (or don't deal) with things, whereas men may not want to appear "weak" and/or perceived as "lacking control". Maybe men do go for the medical/psychological approach but stay quiet about it while putting on the "i'm a man, it'll be alright" front.

Who knows.

I do agree with Alan2005 though. The more people believe they have something (based on marketing or reading crappy health websites), the higher the chance of the placebo effect taking place.


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Anyone in advertising? I'd be interested to know what % of magazine & TV advertising revenues came from drug companies who are essentially asking people to pressure their doctors into prescribing medicine. I find it very disturbing.

I think your right there, a Mum always know when a child is sick before the child is actually properly sick. Before my daughter went to the extreme she did, I kept saying to her 'Please talk to me. How can I help if I don't know what's wrong?' Once she self harmed (thankfully just once, thankfully no scars), then she had no choice but to talk to someone.

Now I've got to locate ginger nuts We've found a good rich tea alternate from Walmart and Yes Mr Xpat we have found the Superstore's equivelents as well, although not made it in yet for the Bacon

I'd be interested too. I am surprised at the amount of 'drug' ads there are, it encourages you to 'think' maybe your little ache or pain is something that needs medication. Saying that I have just been to the doc's as I am exhausted and not in a good way, so tomorrow I have to have blood tests, if they come back negative then we have to explore the 'depression' avenue. I don't feel depressed and I told him that but maybe depression has many more side effects than I knew?????

Piff, I have tried to stay kinda objective so far, but I totally agree with the clever advertising that's here in North America.............."DO you sometimes feel low, tired and like you have no energy - our drug just has the side of effects of hairy palms, inverted nipples and death, aside from that you will achieve your end to the pursuit of happiness..................................."

Some of the advertising here, to me, is quite shocking.

Mrs M x

Create the need, sell the product. This applies to therapy as well as medication.

The most up to date/comprehensive information I can find, but illustrates some trends, particularly WRT allergy medication's use of TV and print media.

From Medical Marketing & Media:

In 1997, the year FDA issued guidance making TV advertising feasible, $844 million was spent on consumer advertising. Around 19 percent of that amount was allocated to TV. In 1999, $1.5 billion was spent by the industry on DTC promotion and the amount devoted to TV ads had grown to 57 percent, according to Competitive Media Reporting.

Allergy drugs was one of the larger categories advertised to consumers during the 12 months from October 1999 to September 2000 with fully 70 percent of the $353 million spend on DTC advertising of allergy products directed to television.

Marshall Paul, chairman of PERQ/ HCI Research finds the TV budget to be overloaded. Paul studied return on investment (ROI) obtained from 13 major consumer advertising campaigns for the top five allergy drugs between 1996 and 2000 and concludes that the 70-30 media mix does not produce best returns. Except, perhaps, for the market leader.

"The expenditure is unbalanced," Paul says. "There is a real problem with low levels of product association and recall of brands generated by advertising on television."

Between December 1996 and December 2000, the 13 campaigns Paul studied consisted of four each for Allegra and Claritin, two each for Flonase and Nasonex, and one for Zyrtec. A question-- naire with four-color ads and storyboards to simulate TV viewing was mailed to a sufficient number of allergy sufferers to produce 1,000 responses for each campaign, with a response rate of 45 percent.

In terms of share of voice, Claritin had 33 percent for a cost of $117 million. The remaining four products had between 16 percent and 18 percent share of voice for outlays of $55 million to $63 million each. These amounts were for all forms of advertising: TV, magazines, radio, and direct mail.

Low recall for millions spent

From the $353 million total expenditures, the allocation for TV ranged from 65 percent (Zyrtec) to 79 percent (Flonase), for an average of 70 percent. Here's what it bought.

The average brand name recall of the respondents ranged from a mere 1 percent for a TV expenditure of $20 million to 6 percent for a TV budget of $50 million, measured at the time of questionnaire return. Campaign recall in which the respondents remembered seeing the ad (with the product name removed) was higher. Recognition ranged from 6 to 10 percent, with an anomaly - one product scored 28 percent in campaign recall for reasons unknown.

Is this low rate of brand name recall due to the medium or the message?

Television exposure has limitations. Now you see the message and 30 seconds later you don't. In fact, 30 seconds later you see a different message for a different product.

It's also known that TV advertising of consumer products can clear the supermarket shelves. But Paul points out that in the case of consumer products, the product itself is shown on the screen, which creates a package recall. The consumer can easily identify the advertised product in the store. In the case of prescription drugs, however, a patient in the doctor's office has the more difficult task of recalling the name without assistance.

Perhaps the quality of commercials is responsible for low product recall, given the newness of the TV medium for prescription drugs.

The research organization Datamonitor believes that the current ROI is lower than desired and can be increased. Datamonitor estimates that for every 1,000 potential patients who see a DTC advertisement, an average of only 11 patients will eventually receive a prescription for the drug, just 1.1 percent of the target audience.

Pharmaceutical companies have had problems adapting to DTC marketing, according to Datamonitor. They are overly focused on communicating rational attributes to customers. But consumers often choose a product on emotional attributes, the research company said, echoing criticism of drug ads by consumer advertising executives.

The emotional benefits need to be communicated and highlighted, the research company suggested. In its view, this could increase the portion of the target audience receiving a prescription of the advertised drug to 6 percent.

Datamonitor does recognize that there is a "heavily regulated nature of the industry," and how an emotional appeal fits into fair balance in advertising prescription drugs under the requirements and approval process of FDA is not clear. But, something must be responsible for the low product recall from TV.

Greater reach for print

According to Paul, magazine advertising created a better response then television. One factor may be that a magazine page can be removed and retained. For expenditures of $25 million or less, brand name recall ranged from 6 to 13 percent. Four of the five drugs achieved campaign recognition ranging from 13 to 23 percent (the remaining one had 6 percent). Paul points out that, "contrary to popular belief, TV advertising does not reach a larger allergy sufferer audience than print for an average dollar spent." He finds that magazines provide a stronger ROI than TV for 70 percent of the time.

The ever-increasing flow of ad dollars to television was initiated by the success of Claritin. Claritin sales in the United States increased from $1.4 billion in 1997 to $2.6 billion in 2000, and DTC campaigns played a significant role. But market conditions were favorable. When Claritin started using TV, Hisminal and Seldene were being pulled from the market. There was a void to be filled and Clarion's TV exposure helped get positive results.

Subsequently, "everybody jumped in though they did not have the same market conditions," Paul said. "To compete, the other companies took the plunge into TV." He feels second, third, or lower tier drugs get less of a return for their TV dollars. Rather, their advertising often helps the top product in a category. Advertising expands the market and the leader is in the ideal position to benefit. When a consumer talks to a physician about an allergy ad but cannot recall the name of the drug, that patient is likely to get a prescription for the most popular brand.

Television advertising can be very effective for some products and market conditions. A lead product gains market share. A new indication for a drug, for example use of Paxil for social anxiety, really opens a market. A unique product such as Lipitor can benefit from television to become a category leader. "It depends on where you are in the market."

Benefits of better balance

Paul strongly advocates a better balance between print and television. His studies show that use of the combination improves the return. Television should have no more than 50 percent of the DTC budget, he urges, rather than the 70 percent that allergy products now spend. "The combination of magazine and TV doubles correct message association over either medium alone."

To demonstrate the benefits of a balanced media mix, Paul analyzed the message association achieved with each medium. (See Figure 1, page 84.) Nine percent of respondents who saw an ad only in magazines correctly identified the message. Television viewers had a correct message association 8 percent of the time. But 17 percent of respondents who saw the ad both in magazines and on television correctly identified the ads.

DTC can be effective

The bottom line effectiveness of DTC advertising is measured by the number of consumers converted into new product users. There are approximately 45 million adult allergy sufferers in the United States and they constitute the target audience.

Paul projects from his sample of close to 4,000 responding individuals that slightly more than 25 million of the nation's suffers saw one multi-media ad campaign for a specific allergy product. The product was labeled "E," rather than identified by name, to protect confidential information. The balance of allergy sufferers, roughly 19 million, did not see the ad.


Among those who saw the campaign, 2.8 percent became first time users compared with only 0.6 percent of those who did not see the product ad who tried drug "E" for the first time. Of the patients who saw the ads and had used the drug in the past, 2.6 percent had recently retried the drug. This is double the 1.3 percent who did not see the ad campaign but had recently retried the drug. In this case, the promotion motivated compliance or persistence by former users. Advertising converted 3.5 percent of the audience into "E" users. These results are exceptionally good in the allergy market. Only 28 percent of allergy sufferers have ever asked for an allergy product by name. Sixteen percent asked for an allergy product in the last year. Half of those requests were prompted by promotion.

Results bring positive ROI

Five percent of the market received the product requested, but 2 percent is the most any one product obtained as a result of DTC promotion in a recent study.

The return on a consumer campaign can be determined by revenue derived from the number of individuals who purchased the drug as a result of the ads, multiplied by the price of a script and the average refill rate. The overall income divided by the cost of the promotion equals the ROI.

With 45 million allergy sufferers, 2 percent of new users in the allergy market means 900,000 new scripts. This brings a net increase in revenue over expenses of $28.4 million for an ROI of $1.55 per dollar spent. If the same campaign results in 4 percent of first time users, the ROI rises to $3.11/$1.00. Product "E" did well with 3.5 percent of new and return users.

The average ROI for 13 allergy medication campaigns (TV and magazine) was $2.10/11.00.

Today, the best way to meet or beat the average return on media investment is to use a balanced mix of television and print for consumer promotion, Paul says. Tomorrow is another matter, as use of the Internet becomes more common and major credible sites develop. At this time, 57 percent of individuals diagnosed with allergies seek health information online, according to a current Cyber Dialogue survey. That number will certainly increase, and a media mix will have a different balance.

Is it clever? I find it really really obvious and off-putting. But maybe that's just me.

My favourite is the Asthma medication currently advertised where the possible side effects include potential "Asthma related death". Cannot remember the name of it but always makes me chuckle when it appears on TV.

I am not 100% sure on this but I think this type of advertising is not allowed on Canadian stations and what you're seeing is on U.S. channels.

thanks for posting that R I C H. I know nothing about advertising apart from as a consumer. It's interesting that, after reading about the determination, analysis and general 'plotting' behind the scenes, I feel even more cynical about advertising than I did just watching the adverts! It almost makes me feel like I'm now obliged to resist their fiendish siren calls! (not particularly medication, just all products in general!)

I think you're right. The ads I've seen either name the prescription drug or describe the condition. The two are never explicitly linked. It's pretty obvious in most cases.

It's not quite a medical advert but we're given fits of giggles by the Trojan one offering condoms with a "new shape".

Oh, you mean like those lifestyle-type ads that show happy, active people running around saying happy things and thinking happy thoughts, then the closing voiceover is just "[insert drug name here]. Ask your doctor" ? They're always very careful to avoid explicitly linking a specific drug with a specific set of symptoms (I think that's where the Canadian regulations fall).

On US channels there are no such niceties. There was a spoof some years ago (can't remember the details) which had a dialogue between a voiceover and an actor something like:
"Are you a grown up?"
"yes"
"Do you pee your pants sometimes?"
"Hmm, yes" (looks a bit embarrassed)
"Are you worried that all your friends think you stink of piss?"
"Oh, God, yes. Do I?"
"well, you wouldn't if you used this new wonderdrug, you disgusting old git. Go and tell your doctor to sell you some and give us the money."