New Evista ads are strange to say the least

May/19/2008 05:59 Filed in: Current DTC
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Watching TV this weekend I was surprised to see a new Evista DTC spot that featured a bunch of women wearing nothing but towels or bed sheets. After that caught my attention I was extremely surprised to see that this was a new DTC ad for Lilly's Evista. I found the ad to be informative and the cast of women to be believable although some looked like models rather than post menopausal women.







Lilly sold about a billion dollars worth of Evista last year. But first-quarter sales of the drug were down one percent from the same period last year. In her weekly research note to clients on prescription trends, Deutsche Bank's Barbara Ryan writes, "We do not believe that Evista will see much incremental growth from the label expansion for breast cancer risk reduction (in part because of the addition of a boxed warning to the label)." The boxed warning is about the risk of blood clots and stroke.

Warnings? Indeed the "bolded warnings" on the Evista website are enough to cause people to scratch their heads. Take for example this statement;


In a study of women past menopause who were at high risk for heart attack, EVISTA increased the risk of dying from a stroke. However, EVISTA did not increase the risk of heart attack, stroke, or dying from other causes.




If that statement is supposed to ad clarity to the new warning I suggest that Lilly test it because when I showed it to post menopausal women within my family they had no idea what it meant and they are college graduates. There comes a time in DTC when drug companies need to go beyond promotional messages and clearly describe, in real words that people can understand, what this means for the target audience. Enough with the label language, drug companies need to go beyond the label but then that would mean being transparent and God knows the drug companies are nowhere even close to this trend in consumer marketing.


It will be interesting to see the results of this DTC campaign. If share continues to slide will Lilly blame it on not enough DTC dollars and if share increases will they say "it's because of the DTC ads"? Still it is an attention gathering ad that required managers to go all the way to the top to get approval. With new osteoporosis treatments getting ready to come on the market we'll see if one that may reduce the risk of breast cancer has a position with patients who are willing to trade one risk for another.
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