PHARMA NEWS, MULTICHANNEL & CROSSCHANNEL MAKETING

Spending on direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical ads rose 9% to $5.6 billion in 2016 [see note below], in part fueled by a 16% boost in spending from Bristol-Myers Squibb, according to data from Nielsen.

Pfizer and Bristol-Myers Squibb again took the two top spots among drugmakers, spending $1.1 billion and $458 million, respectively, on DTC ads. AbbVie, Eli Lilly, and Allergan rounded out the top five DTC spenders. The Nielsen figures include business to business, outdoor, cinema, television, magazine, newspaper, and radio media spend, but not digital.

Newer brands to the top 20 list in 2016 include Novartis' heart-failure drug Entresto ($122 million), Novo Nordisk's diabetes treatment Victoza ($128 million), Celgene's psoriasis drug Otezla ($96 million), and Eli Lilly's diabetes drug Trulicity ($184 million).

The Celgene ad is under scrutiny by regulators. The drugmaker received an untitled letter from the FDA's Office of Prescription Drug Promotion last year over its DTC ad for Otezla, which said the ad's use of loud music and attention-grabbing visuals downplayed the risk information presented therein (here).

When broken down by channel, pharma companies spent less on cinema, newspaper, and radio media last year but sharply increased their investment in outdoor media by 552%. Business to business, television, and magazine media spend also grew, by 31%, 11%, and 6%, respectively.

PM360 magazine is asking its readers find marketing campaigns and tactics used by consumer packaged goods, retail, and other industries to give pharma marketers some fresh ideas. Here's what one ad agency SVP Executive Creative Director came up with as and example of how pharma can "push the boundaries"

Disgusting! I know. But does this type of campaign really have "fresh ideas" that can be used by pharma marketers? Read my POV here.

AbbVie, Astrazeneca, Eli Lilly, GSK, Merck, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, plus others have submitted comments to the FDA regarding its plans to research animated spokes-characters in DTC Drug Ads (see Federal Register Docket ID: FDA-2016-N-0538).

Merck was not impressed: “While the proposed collection of information may be interesting to learn, it may not have practical utility for the general public and may be unnecessary for the proper performance of FDA's functions.”

Regeneron expressed a similar concern; i.e., "the results from this study should not be used to guide or influence FDA's current thinking on the use of animation in DTC ads."

But FDA is sticking to its guns.

“On the contrary,” says FDA in response, “this particular study has the potential to directly influence policy in an area that we have no prior research on. Although one research study cannot answer all questions, we believe we have designed the study in such a way that we will be able to provide information on the issue of animation in DTC ads. Because there is no previous research of this kind, this will be an informative study that will help FDA develop guidance and policy in the future, should the research reveal a need to.”

Meanwhile, The Advertising Coalition, representing national trade associations whose members prepare and deliver advertising through television, newspapers, magazines, the Internet, whipped out its 1st Amendment gun: “[T]his study must be viewed through the lens of two Supreme Court rulings that explicitly protect Commercial Speech, including advertising. In particular, the FDA must be mindful of the Supreme Court's ruling in Zauderer v. Office of Disciplinary Counsel, which held a state regulation of an advertising illustration unconstitutional and subject to strict scrutiny.”

But the comments I found most interesting had to do with the "Uncanny Valley” Hypothesis and measuring the “eeriness” of certain animated ads. More...

Welcome to the world of unbranded [“disease awareness”] ads, a stealthy and lightly regulated form of drug marketing focused on educating the public about a health condition — which the pharma company just happens to sell a product to treat. The ads aren’t required to disclose side effects. Instead, they often direct patients to a website about the disease. Click on a few links and you’ll likely land on a page promoting the branded treatment.

The tack has fluctuated in popularity over the years, but it seems to be on the upswing, perhaps in part because public distrust of the pharma industry is so high that drug makers are scrambling for ways to promote their products more subtly, analysts said.

Two unbranded campaigns — Mylan’s allergy awareness ads (e.g., read “Mylan TV Spot for "FaceYourRisk.com": Doesn't Mention Risk of Not Being Able to Afford EpiPen!”) and Merck ads about vaccines (e.g., read “GSK's Whooping Cough Vaccination Campaign Needlessly Vilifies Grannies!”) — both ranked among the top 10 most expensive TV drug ad campaigns last month, according to data from the ad tracking firm iSpot.tv

Other unbranded campaigns have also made headlines recently: The marketer of a drug for opioid-induced constipation aired one during the Super Bowl, stirring controversy (read “Super Bowl DTC Drug Ads Spark Backlash!”). Another unbranded ad, from the maker of a heart failure drug, drew sharp condemnation from cardiologists who called it manipulative and shameful.

All told, the drug industry has spent $171 million on unbranded ads so far this year, up 15 percent over the same period last year, according to the media research firm Nielsen.

That’s only a fraction of the industry’s total ad spending; last year drug makers spent a whopping $6 billion, mostly on branded ads that explicitly promote their products.

If you watch enough unbranded drug ads, you’ll notice a theme: they’re often pretty ominous in tone.

In Mylan’s anaphylaxis awareness ad, a young woman is shown with alarming red splotches all over her skin after accidentally ingesting peanuts. She gasps and collapses as her panicked friends try to help (read “OMG! A White Person is in Shock!”).

Those are tame compared to a recent interactive digital ad from Boehringer Ingelheim designed to raise awareness of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease for which the company sells a treatment. Another recent unbranded ad, also from Boehringer Ingelheim, relies on eerie silence to raise awareness of a fatal lung disease for which the company sells a treatment.

It’s no coincidence that these ominous ads are unbranded, said John Mack, who has tracked many of them in his digital newsletter Pharma Marketing News.

If you’re a drug maker, “you don’t want to attach a dark image to the brand — so you’re attaching this dark imagery to a medical condition instead,” Mack said. That leaves room for a branded ad that shows “the bright side: that there’s this product that can save the day.”

"Consumer ad spending by drug makers in 2015 reached $6.09 billion ... after $5.12 billion was spent in 2014 and $4.29 billion was spent in 2013. These totals include spending on branded prescription drug ads plus unbranded ads by drug companies promoting awareness of a health condition and directing consumers to get more information, usually leading them to a company website where the prescription drug is offered as a treatment option" (read "Pharma Drug Ads: A Glass Half Empty is a Glass Half Full").

These numbers differ from the direct-to-consumer (DTC) ad spend data reported previously by Kantear Media (read "Annual Spending on Direct-to-Consumer Drug Advertising Ties an All-Time High"). The chart at the left shows the updated data.

Kantar Media’s CRO, Jon Swallen, noted that all the Kantar Media reports I've referenced included branded plus unbranded DTC. "The difference in spending estimates are attributable to (1) slight differences in the universe of media outlets that were tabulated; and, (2) updates to historical ad pricing and spending data that were received after publication of the earlier report."

In any case, Kantar Media also presented some interesting data regarding the yearly trend in the number of Rx drugs with $500,000+ in annual ad spend as well as physician and consumer attitudes toward DTC advertising.

Click here for more.

As spending by drug-makers on consumer-focused advertising grows by nearly $1 billion per year, Kantar survey research of physicians and patients shows some striking correspondence of opinion about the impact of all the ads.

Consumer ad spending by drug makers in 2015 reached $6.09 billion, according to Kantar Media, after $5.12 billion was spent in 2014 and $4.29 billion was spent in 2013. In 2012, $3.89 billion was spent, representing a much smaller, $400 million increase year-over-year to 2013.

These totals include spending on branded prescription drug ads plus unbranded ads by drug companies promoting awareness of a health condition and directing consumers to get more information, usually leading them to a company website where the prescription drug is offered as a treatment option.

The soaring ad spend has come from two sources. First, a rising number of prescription drugs are being promoted with meaningful ad budgets as evidenced by the count of brands spending at least $500,000 annually: from 147 in 2012 to 153 in 2013 to 184 in 2014 to 215 last year. Second, there has been an uptick in big-budget marketing launches for new drugs which has also boosted category spending totals.

A February 2016 survey of physicians by Kantar’s Lightspeed All Global found 40% saying consumer-targeted prescription drug ads has hurt their interactions with patients. Among the reasons volunteered by physicians interviewed for the survey:

Patients pressuring doctors to prescribe something they know little about.

Patients self-diagnosing and telling doctors what treatment they need, when most times they are wrong, which then also wastes time.

Patients getting all the wrong information, requiring some doing to help straighten out their thinking.

Patients getting hung up on the side effects reported on TV that have nothing to do with them, which creates fear.

Kantar Health’s 2015 National Health and Wellness Survey (NHWS), which documents patient-reported information, shows 37% disagreeing or strongly disagreeing with the statement that “drug ads help [them] have better discussions with [their] doctor,” corresponding with the 40% of physicians who say drug ads hurt their interactions with patients.

In other words, looking across the research results, for every patient who feels empowered by the information contained in the drug advertisements, a physician—or two—feels undermined or inconvenienced by them.

Also worth noting, however, is that if 40% of physicians think drug advertising compromises their position or their authority with their patients, per the Lightspeed All Global data, a solid majority of 60% do not find that to be the case.

The advertisers of the top 20 best-selling drugs directed two-thirds of their TV ad spending last year on just four networks — broadcast titans CBS, ABC, NBC, and FOX.

“People talk a lot about how television viewership is eroding, and traditional media is fading, and that is all true. But the decline is very slow, and so there are still big audiences. And if you’re a pharma company, and you want to reach a lot of people quickly … there’s really no better place to go still than the traditional networks,” said Timothy Calkins, a marketing professor at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management.

It also helps that these viewers are getting older and older — and, thus, presumably more receptive to pitches for drugs to treat ailments like arthritis and erectile dysfunction. It’s likely no coincidence that CBS drew the most advertising dollars last year; the age of its median viewer in 2014 was nearly 59.

The makers of the top 20 best-selling prescription drugs bought a collective $29 million worth of ads on the History Channel last year. And $12 million on the Food Network. And $8 million on Animal Planet, according to Kantar data.

Spending on cable TV ads for the top eight best-selling prescription drugs has more than doubled in the past decade, according to Kantar data. It’s risen at a faster rate over that period than spending on network TV.

I prepared the chart on the left for the Pharma Marketing News article "DTC Ad Spending Rises from the Grave," which was published this Monday. You should compare this version of the chart to the one I published here on Pharma Marketing Blog last week (here). 

This chart says 5% of pharma's 2014 DTC ad budget went to the Internet (excluding search), whereas the previous version says only 3%. 

This chart says 63% of the budget went to TV, whereas the previous version says 70%. 

I'll ignore print for now. 

Determining the exact amount that the pharmaceutical industry spends on advertising via different media (TV, print, Internet, etc.) is a daunting task. Numbers regarding pharma DTC spending come from two sources: Nielsen and Kantar Media. Both report "measured media" spending, which includes TV, magazines, news-papers, radio, outdoor, and Internet (display ads only, not including search). Kantar tracks over 3,000 media sources throughout the US and Canada, which is a different methodology than that used by Nielsen. As a result, the numbers from these sources often do not match (for more on that, read "Making Sense of Pharma DTC Spending Trends"). 

Why the Differences?

Read more here.