Some Ad Firms Mount Campaign
Defending Pharmaceutical Industry

By Vanessa O'Connell
The Wall Street Journal, April 19, 2002

"Cutting edge industries make easy targets," reads an ad that will run in drug-industry trade magazines. The ad shows a robust drug executive standing tall, his hands on hips, before a target pierced with knives. The hero's bodysuit is emblazoned with a red "Rx," in place of Superman's "S." "The profits. The pipelines. The high cost of drugs and DTC ... It seems everybody has a knife to throw at the healthcare industry," the text says. DTC stands for direct-to-consumer advertising of prescription drugs on TV and in magazines, which has grown increasingly common in recent years.

The ad is paid for by CommonHealth, a health-care ad agency that in 2001 took in $1.8 billion in advertising and marketing fees from brands such as Claritin and Clarinex, the allergy drugs; Augmentin the antibiotic, and Glucophage, a diabetes drug.

"There's a constant barrage of assaults on the industry that is essentially our client base," says Matt Giegerich, chief executive of CommonHealth, a unit of London's WPP Group, based in Parsippany, N.J. "We wanted to be one of the first to speak out against these assaults." The hero ad is scheduled to appear in Medical Marketing and Media, Med Ad News, PharmaVOICE, and other publications for the drug industry, at a cost of roughly $70,000. CommonHealth says it may run the ad more broadly in the future.

Indeed, growing numbers of critics are questioning the messages in television commercials and magazine advertisements for prescription drugs. Some lawmakers now want to curtail the messages in drug ads, and class-action lawyers representing consumers claim the ads may be deceptive and could contribute to higher drug prices.

This past August, the Prescription Access Litigation project, a coalition of law firms and public interest groups behind many of the suits, filed its first legal assault focusing on DTC advertisements. The suit in New Jersey blames Schering-Plough Corp. and CommonHealth for using deceptive consumer advertising to stoke consumer demand for prescriptions for Claritin, the blockbuster allergy drug. Schering-Plough of Kenilworth, N.J., denies the Claritan ads were unfair. It has asked the judge to dismiss the case.

"There's been an increased drum beat to rein in consumer advertising of medicines, as people have focused more on the government's role in paying for prescription drugs," says Dan Jaffe, executive vice president at the Association of National Advertisers. "But what people don't realize is that this is the most highly regulated form of advertising in this country. To raise the amount of regulation on drug companies would be a very bad precedent for the advertising world."

Other agencies are joining the defense of drug companies. On Monday, at a national managed-care conference in Baltimore, the chief executive of the ad agency Robert A. Becker, France's Havas Advertising unit specializing in pharmaceuticals, said the advertising debate is of national importance. By raising awareness about disease, drug advertisements can improve public health, he said.

"Let's look at the 52-year-old man living in a trailer park," says Sander Flaum, the agency's CEO. "His arthritic pain has gotten so bad that he fears he might have to miss another day of work. He sees a TV commercial for Celebrex or Mobic describing his symptoms ... He then goes to the county health department, sees a doctor and gets something for the pain. The point is he had the impetus to take care of himself." Mr. Flaum's agency developed the ads for the painkiller Mobic, from Germany's Boehringer-Ingelheim GmbH.

The advertising industry has impetus of its own to defend direct-to-consumer drug advertising. During the prolonged advertising recession, now in its second year, many major industries have slashed their ad budgets. But pharmaceutical firms spent $2.8 billion on consumer advertisements for prescription drugs in 2001, 8% more than what they spent in 2000, according to Nielsen-Media Research, a marketing research firm. And because they tend to purchase 60-second commercial slots, the drug companies are often big-ticket ad clients. In the 12 months through Jan. 31, for example, Britain's AstraZeneca PLC spent more than $14.4 million to advertise just one brand, Nexium, for heartburn.

The drug industry itself has been fighting back as well. It spent $22.2 million in 2001 on advertisements, including a round of dramatic commercials featuring real people whose lives were saved or improved by new drugs. "I was first diagnosed with cancer when I was 26," says Carrie Ameen, a patient appearing in a current ad for America's pharmaceutical companies. "I owe them my life."

U.S. lawmakers are floating proposals to force drug makers to better disclose the benefits and risks of a featured medication in their ads. For instance, one current bill before the House would require drug companies to provide more information about the side effects of a featured drug. Advertisers that didn't comply would lose the usual tax-deduction for advertising costs. Advertising is a tax-deductible business expense.

Drug companies and their agencies say this would put them at a big disadvantage. Because the disclosures would be so numerous and burdensome, companies couldn't convey them in the typical 30-second or 60-second television or radio spot, they say.

Chris Molineaux, vice president for public affairs at Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, a trade group, says consumer ads are important to educating the public about advances in drug therapy, and can encourage people to talk to their physicians.