Drug Companies and Advertisers Blur the Line Separating Them

By Vanessa O’ Connell
The Wall Street Journal, March 15, 2002

More than telling American consumers why they need a particular medication, advertising agencies increasingly are working with large pharmaceutical companies during the earliest stages of drug development.

In a potentially controversial practice, agencies are helping drug companies recruit patients for clinical trials and even are conducting medical experiments in agency-owned labs. In the past, such crucial groundwork was solely the purview of the drug makers and took place a decade or more before an ad agency came into the picture.

"What you're seeing is an emerging convergence between the clinical development and the commercialization of drugs," said Thomas Harrison, chief executive of the Diversified Agency Services division of Omnicom Group Inc., the New York parent to ad agencies BBDO Worldwide, DDB Worldwide and TBWA Worldwide. "The ultimate goal is to make drug development more efficient."

According to the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, an industry trade group, drug companies invested an estimated $30.3 billion (34.6 billion euros) in research and development last year.

For an ad agency, getting involved early in the process can be lucrative on its own but can greatly increase the chance of getting the account if the product ultimately comes to market. For the drug maker, agency involvement can shorten the costly process of getting a drug from development to market.

"The emphasis has to be speed, speed and more speed," said Lynn O'Connor Voss, the chief executive of Grey Global Group Inc.'s Grey Healthcare Group Worldwide, which last year handled the marketing for the launch of such drugs as Advair for asthma, Nexium for heartburn and Augmentin ES-600 for children's ear infections.

However, critics see a potential clash of science and business. They question whether ad agencies can succeed in their efforts to branch into the highly competitive drug-development business, a field about which, until recently, they have known very little.

In theory, there could be a temptation for the agency to tilt test results toward the drug maker in hopes that it eventually would land the ad campaign for the new product, and thus reap huge advertising fees.

Others worry that agencies could marshal the forces of their lobbying and public-relations specialists to help the large pharmaceutical companies gain regulatory approval for their drugs or gain other advantages with powerful academic institutions or medical associations.

"In addition to the pharmaceutical companies and everything they know about drug marketing, now there are these other ad companies out there collecting information on drug marketing and research," said Sidney M. Wolfe, director of health research at Public Citizen, a consumer watchdog group. "Whether or not that is good, it could be anticompetitive. They may gain a set of facts for one company, and use that set of facts to deal with another."

Omnicom's Mr. Harrison dismisses claims that any trial results might be biased and said his agencies' motives are simple. "All we want to do is speed up the process," he said. "What we want to try to do is look at the molecule in the test tube as a brand. A lot of people don't think a brand is a brand until it has the FDA approval. But we are asking, 'What is the maximum commercial potential of this molecule? What will it be when it grows up? What is the message? How should the clinical trial be developed?' "

To expedite drug development, many ad agencies now employ patient-recruitment specialists who identify people afflicted with diseases for clinical trials and other research. Drawing people willing to test the safety and efficacy of compounds that have yet to be approved by the regulators at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has taxed the drug companies over the years, but the agencies say their communications skills help them excel at the task.

The biggest ad holding companies run clinical trials at their own small science and marketing labs known as contract research organizations. These units, which the ad-agency parents say operate independently, test the chemical compounds on patients and keep track of the results. Drug-company sponsors later can submit the results to the FDA for approval to market the chemical compound to the public as a possible new drug.

Omnicom is one of the most aggressive in the drug-development marketing efforts. It owns a 20% stake in Scirex, a clinical-research organization that specializes in mental and neurological experiments for drug companies. In September, it acquired all of Interbrand Wood, which specializes in creating brand names for drugs (among them, Viagra, Zocor, Prozac, Celebrex and Prilosec).

Omnicom's DDB Worldwide on Wednesday bought Bass & Howes Inc., a public-policy firm with offices in Washington and New York City, in a move to offer clients such as Pfizer Inc. and Genentech Inc. the ability to raise awareness of health and environmental issues that support their business goals.