The quotation of the week overheard in our office as a doctor was giving some Rozerem samples to the patient:

“What! You want to give me a drug advertised by Abe Lincoln and some ratty-ass rodent? Come on now doc!”

John Mack over at Pharma Marketing Blog has been quite critical of the ads for Rozerem (a new sleep medication) which is made and marketed by Takeda Pharmaceuticals.

Honestly, I didn’t like the ads and I was getting tired of seeing them EVERYWHERE, but I did not find them as offensive/stupid as Mr. Mack. After visiting Japan a year ago, I had just thought that Takeda had used the Japanese trend of using furry characters to advertise the medication. (For those of you who have not been to Japan, you never see anything advertised without an animated little Pikachu thingy with a high pitched voice).

lincoln.jpgHowever, now it seems that this advertising campaign is losing whatever punch it had. It never was something that generated a positive emotional response to the product, but the creativity did garner attention.

Now– the ad seems to be having a detrimental effect. It was too obtuse— the average guy was never able to figure out the symbolism, the above average guy was not moved by the symbolism. Now the insane frequency of the ads are annoying people. The lack of any sort of content that would enable people to ‘identify’ with the product is now coming back to make people doubt the efficacy of the medication and the motives of the company.

Takeda really needs to re-think their strategy. Afterall, at least in our office/state, the drug requires prior authorization for most insurances to pay for it. So— add a stupid, annoying ad that turns off patients with increased administrative nightmares for the prescriber and you get a medication that nobody will prescribe because patients don’t want it enough to warrant the hassles (20 minutes on average per patient) of doing the paperwork.

I suppose that to date there has always been a good ROI on DTC advertisements. I guess people think that it is pretty much of a slam dunk that can’t be messed up. Instead, the Takeda/Rozerem story may go down as the textbook case of where things went terribly wrong.

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Photo credits: Leedy-Voulkos