Upjohn Ads for Baldness Drug Aimed at Latinos : Pharmaceuticals: Rogaine’s sales are respectable but not as high as hoped. The firm hopes targeted marketing will boost sales.
Upjohn Co. is reaching out to Latino men worried about losing their hair in an effort to get them to try its prescription drug for the treatment of male-pattern baldness.
Some analysts said the advertising campaign, which debuts in Spanish-language newspapers on July 25, is a sign of Upjohn’s new aggressiveness in marketing Rogaine Topical Solution (2% minoxidil), a product that is selling well by prescription drug standards but has yet to fully realize its market potential.
The Kalamazoo, Mich.-based company’s campaign will target Latino men in Los Angeles, Miami and New York. Spanish-language radio and television ads have already appeared, a company spokeswoman said Tuesday. But unlike the broadcast ads, the newspaper ads will specifically state that the product is Rogaine, the only drug that meets the Food and Drug Administration’s standard for scientific proof that it grows hair. Upjohn said the newspaper ads will comply with FDA mandates that ads naming prescription drugs also provide detailed information, including the full text of the package insert the FDA requires for prescription drugs.
An Upjohn spokeswoman said the company is targeting Latino men because of market research showing good potential for sales. The company continues to investigate other targeted marketing but has no immediate plans for other ethnic groups, spokeswoman Laura Harwin said.
The Upjohn campaign is actually “nothing different from what we see in a lot of personal care product advertising,” said Richard Stover, a New York-based analyst for Alex. Brown & Co, a Baltimore investment firm.
Most advertising for personal care products is targeted marketing in that the goal is to get the consumer to personally identify with the product, he said. Previous marketing for Rogaine has been targeted toward yuppie males.
Some Wall Street analysts predicted annual sales of $1 billion or more when Rogaine was first introduced in late 1988. Those expectations were based upon the large number of bald or balding men who seemed willing to spend large amounts of money to have hair. Rogaine “has been a disappointment from the great expectations,” said David F. Saks, New York-based senior vice president in charge of research and the drug industry for Wedbush Morgan Securities of Los Angeles. Still, sales will surpass $100 million this year, he said.
Worldwide sales should reach $155 million in 1990--up from about $115 million last year, said Bob Hodgson, an analyst with Boston-based Cowen & Co. “In terms of the relative size of drug products, that’s not too bad,” he said.
Analysts said Rogaine definitely has a larger market potential, but its growth has been tempered by two factors. FDA rules on advertising prescription drugs precludes effective broadcast advertising because it’s not practical to include all the information required in order to name the product, Hodgson said. “It would take 10 minutes,” he said.
The second problem is that minoxidil does not miraculously produce hair overnight.
