Direct-to-Consumer Advertising

Direct-to-Consumer Advertising

"Although I believe that communication about prescription medicines to patients should be left to the medical profession, it is clear from the developments in the US, where over US$2 billion will be spent on direct-to-consumer advertising this year, that things have changed irreversibly and that what is happening in the US will soon be happening everywhere, with major repercussions. ...

What brought home to me the significance of direct-to-consumer promotion was a comment last week from a senior industry executive who believes that it could become a major factor in shaping the future of the industry. He argued that the success or failure of a new R&D-based prescription product in the US now depends on the size of the direct-to consumer advertising buget.

What chance, he asked, does company A have with, for example, a US$50 million budget for direct-to-consumer advertising for its new prescription medicine, if the far bigger competitor, company B, decides to spend US$600 million? The short answer is very little. So are we facing a whole new scenario where the market will become dominated by the big direct-to-consumer advertisers - and that means the big companies - and where customer choice, stimulated by advertising, will determine a prescription product's success? Providing the prescribing doctor acquiesces to the demands of the patient, the answer must be yes.

All the evidence suggests that in a free market, what the patient asks for, the doctor will prescribe. As a Consumer Association survey published a few weeks ago shows, even in the impoverished UK National Health Service, patient demand holds sway when it comes to prescribing. According to the Association, hundreds of millions of pounds worth of Pharmaceutical products are being prescribed because patients demand them. Of particular concern is the fact that in many cases the prescription was inappropriate, notably where antibiotics were prescribed in viral conditions. But even in these cases, although the prescribing was irrational, the doctors still gave in to patient demand. ...

To meet this change, doctors themselves will have to change. They will have to develop far better communication skills. They will have to show far greater understanding and concern for their patients. They will have to be far better informed about medicines and the diseases they treat. And they will have to know far more about getting the best value for money when it comes to the choice of one therapy over another. ...

Starting in the R&D laboratories, and thence throughout the companies, the aim will be to maximise the benefits of the change to greater patient demand. Consequently, there could well be more recreational and lifestyle products, such as Viagra, and possibly less emphasis on product areas where therapeutic advance is hard to establish. And with more Viagras, will there be radical changes in marketing and pricing practices, and will new relationships emerge with the healthcare professionals who will also be caught up in the consumerisation process? When the consumer demands change, major industrial change follows."
- Brown (1998)

Brown P. Will DTC advertising shape the future of the industry? Scrip Magazine. September 1998 p3