A world without DTC
Mar/22/2007 06:38 Filed in: DTC
Environment
A
bill currently in the house would prohibit pharma
companies from doing DTC for three years after a
drugs initial approval. But what are the
implications of this? Far reaching I'm afraid.
DTC advertising drives consumers into physicians
to ask about medications and raises awareness of
disease conditions that, left untreated, could
lead to major health issues. Has the House and
Senate thought of these issues? Of course not
because it's easier to get on the bandwagon then
to approach prescription drug advertising with
reason and logic.
If this bill were to become law consumers would be the losers. Rather than learn about new drugs through innovative advertising (of course there is very little of that in DTC today) they would have to rely on their physicians to inform them of choices. They would not be able to research prescription drug choices because they would not be aware that there were in fact choices. Click stream analysis in our industry clearly shows that consumers are comparing medications because they want to have choices when it comes to their healthcare choices. Congress would have us believe that consumer are too dumb to make their own choices and are influenced too much by DTC ads. What a bunch of garbage !
TV networks will also be big losers if this bill becomes law. The only increase in TV advertising has come from the pharma industry. The majority of the billions of dollars spent on DTC is on TV and if a moratorium went into place networks would lose a valuable source of revenue.
Then of course there are the pharma companies. At a time when costs are increasing to develop and bring drugs to market they would essentially be handcuffed from maximizing their ROI for 36 months. That's a big bite out of the revenue pie and one has to wonder if in fact less drugs would go through the pipeline because the ROI model would change.
What will happen? That's anyone guess but like I have said all along the environment for pharma marketing is changing. The pharma industry needs new blood in the DTC marketing departments and more importantly a new leader who can lead the industry into the next era of challenges.
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