Healthy Skepticism Library item: 20087
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: Magazine
Siegel L
DTC Advertising: Bane...or Blessing?
Pharmaceutical Executive 2000 Oct140-152
http://business.highbeam.com/137364/article-1G1-66355685/dtc-advertising-bane-blessing
Full text:
A 360-DEGREE VIEW
Direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising is a powerhouse whose potential is still untapped. It promises enormous benefits for pharmaceutical stakeholders—patients, payers, and providers—as well as new markets and profits that, without DTC, pharma companies would never have. But industry needs to look past short-term gains toward the long-term impact of DTC advertising on its relationships with managed care providers, doctors, and pharmacists—key market shapers whose resistance to DTC could lessen its benefits for everyone.
Initially, DTC advertising took considerable heat. Recently, however, views have shifted. Former adversaries are starting to recognize DTC’s valuable educational components and potential for improving doctor-patient relationships, disease-state management, and, ultimately, patient outcomes—all of which can reduce healthcare costs. But if DTC advertising is to gain further support and avoid stringent regulation, pharma companies must address some important issues.
This article analyzes how the various market stakeholders view DTC and suggests ways that industry can address their objections, improve DTC advertising’s image by partnering with stakeholders, and enhance consumer education.
The Upsides
More than ever before, TV broadcast ads, print, and the Internet are reaching consumers with important information about medicines and treatments. The resulting benefits are enormous:
- increased disease awareness, with the potential to impact yet-untreated diseases
- better patient compliance and a decrease in adverse medical events
- better patient outcomes and improved quality of life
- lower per-episode/per-case treatment costs.
A recent Institute of Medicine study underscored the importance of DTC advertising in raising awareness about drug safety. The report estimates that more than half of adverse medical events each year—including more than 7,000 deaths annually—are the result of preventable errors. Because many of those events are associated with consumer misuse of medications, they may be preventable if consumers have adequate information before using the product. DTC advertising could be a key resource for consumers to correct or confirm medication information.
DTC advertising also serves as a compliance reminder to patients. In one study, a third of consumers stated that seeing an ad for a product made them more likely to take their medications regularly; another third reported that seeing an ad reminded them to refill their prescription.
Many of the benefits of DTC advertising have already materialized, but opponents discount or ignore them. Therefore, a seeming victory could turn to defeat if adversarial concerns are not adequately addressed. Companies need to seriously consider the genuine misgivings of those holding negative or mixed views of DTC advertising. The major concerns are
- DTC-induced consumer demand for pharmaceuticals
- rising pharmacy costs perceived as driven by DTC-advertised products
- embarrassment of doctors and pharmacists who feel demeaned professionally when confronted by consumers who have seen DTC ads.
The challenge for pharma companies is to improve stakeholder buy-in and avoid consequences that could lead to regulatory countermeasures or alienation of managed care providers, consumers, doctors, and pharmacists. Careful positioning and appropriate attention to adversaries’ sensitivities can optimize the outcomes of DTC advertising for all parties.
Health Information Explosion
DTC ads consume 20 percent of companies’ promotional spending—a rise of 150 percent in just five years to $1.9 billion in 1999. Growth in spending for DTC advertising also increased 58 percent between 1999 and 2000, so pharma companies have seen huge benefits from investing in DTC advertising. According to Scott-Levin data, much of the spending increase is related to major DTC campaigns for Vioxx (rofecoxib), Celebrex (celecoxib), Xenical (orlistat), Tamiflu (oseltamivir), Paxil (paroxetine) , and Flovent (fluticasone propionate).
Adversaries point disparagingly to the increase in DTC advertising dollars, but they should understand that those increases parallel the explosion of healthcare information on the Net. About 25 percent of online information is related to health, more than 50 percent of adults online use the Web for healthcare information, and more than 25 percent of adults who visit …
