TV Ad recall, does it mean anything?

Feb/22/2008 06:20 Filed in: Media (TV)
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Well the list of the most recalled pharma TV ads is out and some DTC marketers and agency people will be running to management with a "look what we did" attitude. Only the smart and seasoned executives however will ask the tough questions of marketers like "what did it do to share" and "now that we have a high awareness how do we translate that into new Rx's"? Unfortunately most marketers don't know how to take that awareness and translate into new Rx's they feel that someone will see the ad and go running to their doctor to ask for an Rx. Notice to DTC marketers: that model doesn't work anymore



Ahhh the good old days of marketing; you spent a lot of money on TV and watched your brand take off. But the Internet came along at a time when consumers had less and less time to evaluate brand and product claims. People started talking to each other and seeking each others opinions on message boards and guess what they trust each others comments a lot more than any claim from a pharma company. So what did marketers do? They convince management to spend more money on DTC, they make a few calls to their agency so that some of their people can be nominated in industry trade magazines for awards that have little bearing on any real accomplishments and then they go to management and say "we won awards and need more money". Meanwhile consumers and patients sit patiently looking for any type of engagement or personally relevant content on websites so that they can make health cares decision in the era of the empowered patient.


An executive of P&G, the most respected marketer in the world, recently was interviewed and asked about ad recall. His response "there is little correlation in ad recall and share movement". He went on "in today's environment the brand has to be personally engaging and have an emotional connection with consumers" that's hard to do on TV especially when costs keep increasing and viewership is declining. To show you how truly ignorant some DTC marketers are go to the cialis.com website and marvel at "actor portrayals" of real people who have issues with ED. Yeah, that's motivating ! Then there was the video on the Avandia.com site of a VP from GSK who tried to "calm" patients about their concern of possible side effects of using Avandia. Yes, we are going to believe a GSK employee when our doctor tells us there maybe a link.

Mass marketing is dead. A lot of good and great consumer marketers know this and are currently devising innovative ways to have their brands come alive. Pharma marketers continue to be stuck with old business models and their biggest success seems to be getting more money from management so that they can do more TV. After all it's easy to manipulate data to show a correlation between share increase and TV.

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