Contraceptives Get Good Reception on Prime Time

Prime-time television, once off-limits to pitches for condoms and other birth control products, is becoming fertile ground for contraceptive ads.

A handful of advertisers, including a unit of health-care giant Johnson & Johnson, have aired birth control ads in local TV markets around the country. And viewers are receptive to the messages, in sharp contrast to the protests that accompanied late-night condom ads a decade ago.

Advertisers say the steady ratcheting of sexual content on TV, from Calvin Klein ads to “Melrose Place” and Monica Lewinsky’s prime-time tell-all with Barbara Walters, has desensitized consumers to messages about birth control, which seem tame by comparison. In 60-second ads from J&J;’s Ortho-McNeil division, fresh-scrubbed women portray newlyweds considering contraceptive options.

So far, the ads have aired only on local stations and cable because the three biggest broadcast networks still refuse to accept birth control spots for national broadcast. But CBS says it is reviewing its policy.

“It’s a reflection of how society has changed in its willingness to allow images in advertising to go down some incredibly provocative and in some cases pornographic paths,” said Diane Cook-Tench, director of the Adcenter at Virginia Commonwealth University. “So an ad for a birth control pill certainly doesn’t seem controversial and could seem like it’s in so much better taste than a lot of other things that we see.”

The ads are part of a stepped-up effort by marketers to reach younger women as loyal baby boomers age beyond their child-bearing years. Although the pill remains the dominant prescription contraceptive, younger women increasingly are choosing drugs considered more convenient with fewer side effects.

Ortho’s ads, aimed at women between ages 18 and 34, say Ortho Tri-Cyclen offers the added benefit of clearing up problem skin--a message likely to resonate with younger women. Indeed, Planned Parenthood Los Angeles reports an increase in women asking about Ortho Tri-Cyclen, though it doesn’t know for sure if the ads are responsible. Commercials have been airing on KNBC-TV and KTTV-TV in Los Angeles since December.

KNBC says it didn’t think twice about accepting the ad and hasn’t received any complaints about its contents.

“The key point is that the FDA has made it possible for prescription drug ads to run on TV,” said Cathy Jacquemin, vice president of sales at KNBC, which has aired the ad during “Frasier.” “Our policy is to evaluate each situation on case-by-case basis. We felt the ad was tastefully executed, highly effective at delivering its message and appropriate to air.”

Pharmacia & Upjohn pioneered TV advertising of prescription contraceptives with a 1997 campaign for the injectable Depo Provera after the government loosened decades-old restrictions on drug advertising. Careful to avoid controversy, the documentary-style commercials, in which women at family gatherings discuss plans for having children, aired in only 11 markets and mostly after 10 p.m. Company representative Daniel Watts said the campaign, which ended last year, resulted in “significant gains and sales for the product relative to the core markets”--and nary a murmur of protest.

Last summer, a public service campaign on emergency contraception aired in Los Angeles and five other major cities, also drawing little protest. The campaign included prime-time ads in Seattle and Philadelphia. Emergency contraception involves a high dose of birth control pills that may prevent pregnancy if taken within 72 hours after sex.

“I think the lesson learned there was an important one: The sky did not fall in,” said James Trussell, director of the Office of Population Research, which helped craft the spots. “Networks have been saying for years that contraceptive ads would offend their audience, but it didn’t offend them.”

Just 10 years ago AIDS activists were rebuffed when they approached Los Angeles affiliates and MTV with a condom ad that showed a man and a woman on a bed. The ad used the word “rubber” because broadcast executives were squeamish about using the word “condom” on the air.

Frustrated condom makers then decided to kill their efforts to advertise on TV altogether, saying it was not cost-effective to market their products through ads on affiliates in only a few cities.

While some activist groups continue to have reservations about contraceptive advertising, they no longer openly oppose it. The Concerned Women of America, among the most vocal objectors to condom commercials, now limits its disapproval to ads that target unmarried women or promote drugs or methods that prevent implantation. In 1990, the group led a petition drive against condom commercials.

Colorado Springs-based Focus on the Family also doesn’t object to contraceptive ads on TV--even though they may cause children to ask their parents about birth control earlier than they normally would, said Carrie Gordon, a policy analyst for the group.

“Clearly the whole world is talking about Viagra; the president was impeached and was on trial for sexually related activity,” said John Kamp, senior vice president of the American Assn. of Advertising Agencies in Washington, a trade group. “The idea that anything is forbidden in prime time is virtually an idea whose time has gone.”

Carter-Wallace, maker of the nation’s best-selling Trojan condom, used television at the end of 1998, with commercials in prime-time and late-night programming, as well as on cable. Ads appeared on affiliates in Los Angeles and eight other cities during “NYPD Blue,” “Late Show With David Letterman” and on MTV, Comedy Channel and the USA Network.

It is Ortho that is bringing the trend into focus, as the company has committed a significant amount of money to TV commercials. It spent $3.3 million from July to December last year, 11% of the $29.5 million it spent on the Ortho Tri-Cyclen campaign since July 1997, according to Competitive Media Reporting, an ad tracking firm.

The amount the company has spent on TV spots in half of the nation’s largest TV markets, including Washington, Chicago and Cleveland, alone is as much as 11 of the nation’s prophylactic manufacturers spent for all types of advertising 10 years ago.

In stark relief to advertisers’ avoidance of the word “condom” a decade ago, Ortho’s ads provide a matter-of-fact approach to birth control. They allude to how a lifestyle choice to postpone having children allows women to enjoy other pursuits, such as travel. Before airing the spots, Ortho-McNeil held focus groups with parents and doctors to solicit comments on the ad and asked the Food and Drug Administration for its input, said Abbe Schiffman, manager of public affairs at Ortho-McNeil.

A key element in the pitch is Tri-Cyclen’s ability as an acne-fighter. Doctors have known for years that birth control pills containing more estrogen than progesterone help clear up blemishes, but Ortho did not obtain government clearance to make the claim until 1996, after it had subjected the benefit to clinical testing. Ortho has touted the drug’s effectiveness against skin problems in print ads for 18 months.

Raritan, N.J.-based Ortho-McNeil hopes its TV campaign from a unit of New York-based Ammirati Puris Lintas will help to convince women that the benefits of its oral contraceptive--the only one with permission to make an anti-acne claim--outweigh the side effects it shares with other oral contraceptives. Many American women have long been leery of the pill because it has been associated with increased risk of blood clots and stroke, especially among those who smoke.

In addition, some pill users have shifted to more convenient drugs, such as Depo Provera--which is given to patients four times a year--and Norplant, which features five matchstick-shaped rods that are implanted in a woman’s arm and prevent pregnancy for as long as five years, though these drugs too have possible side effects. Some teens are choosing these methods and eschewing the pill altogether, said Susan Tew, a spokeswoman for the Alan Guttmacher Institute, a research arm of Planned Parenthood.

Ortho said it considers its ad campaign a test and has not said how long it will last. But there are signs that Ortho’s anti-acne message is working. Johnson & Johnson’s sales in the U.S. market grew by 16% in 1998, an indication that the company is gaining market share here at a time when pill use is fairly flat, said Michael Lachman, a medical products analyst at San Francisco-based Hambrecht & Quist.

And Ortho-McNeil’s print campaign helped in part to boost Johnson & Johnson’s worldwide oral contraceptive sales by 19% in the fourth quarter, said Vivian Wohl, an independent health-care analyst. The Ortho Tri-Cyclen TV campaign is being aired only in the U.S. According to the San Francisco research firm Frost & Sullivan, Johnson & Johnson holds about 23% of the world’s “oral contraceptive” market--a figure that includes infertility treatments.

This success should encourage contraceptive makers to continue using TV ads, experts say.

“I do believe that there will likely be more contraceptive advertising in the future,” Cook-Tench said. “The doors have just started to open.”

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Contraceptive Sales

Although contraceptive sales in North America are expected to increase in the next few years, revenue growth is expected to decrease as baby boomers stop using birth control and some young women shift to injectible and implantable drugs. Contraceptive sales in North America and the revenue growth rate:

Contraceptive Sales

In billions*

2003: $2.83 billion

*

Revenue Growth Rate

In percent

2003: 4.2%

* Includes oral, injectable and implantable contraceptives, infertility drugs and intrauterine devices.

Source: Frost & Sullivan, “World Contraceptive and Infertility Drug Markets”