Drug Maker to Pitch Prozac in Television Infomercial
Borrowing a technique used to sell everything from exercise equipment to food dehydrators, the makers of the antidepressant Prozac have produced a 30-minute television infomercial to directly market to consumers the prescription-only drug.
The commercial, which is aimed mostly at women, will air in the middle of the night and on weekends, when company marketers believe more depressed people will be watching.
By producing the ads, Prozac manufacturer Eli Lilly & Co. is aggressively stepping up to the plate in a controversial new area of marketing that many pharmaceutical companies see as their best hope for new sales in the era of managed care.
More and more, since rules on advertising drugs on television were eased in late 1997, drug makers are turning to consumers, rather than doctors and hospitals, to create demand for their products.
The question of marketing a psychiatric drug directly to consumers, however, goes to the heart of the controversy over whether pharmaceuticals should be advertised on television. Prozac, unlike drugs for allergies and hair loss, can have psychological side effects and is aimed at a condition that is often not easily treated.
“It’s a trap,” said George Gerbner, a telecommunications professor at Temple University in Philadelphia and author of the book “Alcohol, Tobacco and Other Drugs in the Mass Media.” “They’re trying to appeal to and exploit the most vulnerable people.”
The Prozac commercial, which appears to be the first half-hour advertisement for a psychiatric drug, is part of Lilly’s bold campaign to shore up the $2.8-billion drug’s lead among antidepressants. The Indianapolis-based drug maker consulted with the Food and Drug Administration about the ad.
It is accompanied by a Prozac Web page and 30-second versions that direct viewers to a toll-free phone number for information on depression and Prozac, as required by federal regulators.
The idea, said Dan Hasler, president of marketing for Eli Lilly USA, is to reach people who might be depressed and encourage them to seek treatment.
The program suggests that in seeking the treatment, a patient ask whether Prozac might be an appropriate form of medication.
“In today’s world, people are taking more and more control over their health care and health-care decisions,” Hasler said.
Marketing directly to consumers, he and others in the pharmaceutical industry have said, arms people with information they can use when dealing with their doctors and health plans. Other drugs currently pitched on television include the allergy medication Claritin and the impotence drug Viagra.
The Lilly infomercial blends stark, shaky camera shots of people who are presumably depressed with testimonials from patients who have benefited from Prozac. It opens with a scene in a blues bar.
“The blues--an original American art form,” a narrator says quietly. “These haunting melodies reflect a sadness that often seems to linger in the shadows of our existence.”
The scene cuts to patients--all but two of them female--talking about depression. One says she couldn’t even bring herself to do the dishes. Another says that until she received treatment, she couldn’t get out of bed in the morning.
The program, which will be shown on local stations and cable networks starting Monday night, twice cites Prozac’s side effects--which include sleeplessness and impotence--but says that most of them will subside after a few weeks on the drug.
Dr. Freda Lewis-Hall, a Lilly psychiatrist who works with products aimed at women and hosts the infomercial, said that of the 18 million Americans believed to be suffering from depression, half have not sought treatment.
The program, she said, is designed to reach those people.
Although the program is not entirely aimed at women, Lewis-Hall said, the company believes that women suffer disproportionately from depression, and also that women are more likely to refer friends for treatment.
“It really gives us an opportunity to tell people about a disease that really goes underreported or undertreated,” said Lewis-Hall.
But is the purpose of the 30-minute program to educate the public about depression or to sell a product?
“You’ve got to have mixed feelings on this,” said Lawrence Wallack, who specializes in mass media and public health issues at UC Berkeley and Portland State University in Oregon. “Depression is a big issue, and the more public discussion of it the better. But you can’t get around the fact that it’s an infomercial. It’s a sales pitch.”
Introduced in the United States in 1988, Prozac was the first of a new breed of antidepressant medications called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, which offered new hope to millions suffering from depression. To date, 35 million people worldwide have used it, according to company statistics. Over the years, however, a host of competitors have come on the market, making it more crucial for Lilly to engage in promotion of its brand name, said D. Larry Smith, a New York-based pharmaceutical industry analyst for Sutro & Co.
The drug, which accounted for a third of Lilly’s sales last year, lost market share during the first quarter because of competition from other products.
It will face even more competition in 2004, when the patent for Prozac expires, and makers of generic drugs will have the right to copy the trailblazing antidepressant’s formula.
And whereas Prozac is currently on the formularies of most health-maintenance organizations, managed-care companies prefer to prescribe generic or discounted drugs, rather than brand names selling at list prices.
“All of these products are pretty comparable,” Smith said. “And that means that the amount of market share is very directly dependent on the amount of promotion of the product.”
