State of the Brand

Author: Jason Voiovich Ecra Creative Group

Key Points: 1. The US Justice Department fined Pfizer $2.3 billion for illegal marketing practices; taking doctors on golf trips, paying for massages, and the like to encourage off-label prescriptions of popular drugs. 2. With such a hefty penalty, conventional wisdom would say Pfizer’s market perception should suffer. By objective measures, that is not happening. 3. Pfizer has insulated its corporate brand by positioning its blockbuster drugs as the stars, and not marketing itself. That seems to be working. For now.

Remember the dad in “My Big Fat Greek Wedding”?

He used Windex® for everything. He went so far as to carry around a bottle at all times, spraying things (and people) at comically inopportune times. Clearly, neither the FDA nor our friends at S.C. Johnson and Company in Racine, Wisconsin endorse Windex for the treatment of cold, flu, arthritis, and acne. The depiction was so ridiculous, most (reasonable consumers) wouldn’t take it seriously.

Now, let’s change the scenario.

Imagine you are recovering from a surgical procedure. Let’s pick appendix removal, but it could be anything. Clearly, you’re in pain, and your attending physician prescribes a medication - in this case, Bextra®. She tells you to take the prescribed dosage as needed and come back in three weeks.

Let me ask you something: In that scenario, do you look up the drug name in the formulary? Did you learn your doctor just prescribed well beyond the recommended dosage? Did you also learn Bextra; was not approved to treat post operative pain? That is was really an arthritis drug? And a Cox-2 inhibitor? The same Cox-2 inhibitor class of drugs you’ve heard about?

But your doctor knows best, right? (more…)

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Author: Jason Voiovich Ecra Creative Group

Key Points: 1. Apple’s latest operating system release, OSX 10.6 (code named “Snow Leopard”), spawned an unplanned grassroots effort to help real cats in the wild. 2. The attention is a boon to Snow Leopard conservancy organizations, due perhaps in part to unexpected Google search results, the speed of social media, and Apple’s status. 3. However, the real hook is the image Apple uses to promote its new product - so different from other Apple creative and so powerfully engaging.

This was never supposed to happen.

The new Apple Operating System - technically named Mac OSX 10.6 - simply was following the naming convention the company adopted when it released version 10.2. That was Jaguar. Then came Panther (10.3). Then Tiger (10.4). Then Leopard (10.5).

You get the idea.

The newest release - 10.6, or “Snow Leopard” - has been positioned by Apple as an important, but evolutionary release. Most of the upgrading this time around happened “under the hood”. In other words users won’t see too many new whiz-bang features. From that perspective, using “Snow Leopard”, versus the more distinctly named “Lion”, made product management sense.

From a business objectives perspective, it also helped Apple stay one step ahead of the upcoming Microsoft 7 operating system release.

But something odd happened on the way to market. (more…)

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Author: Jason Voiovich Ecra Creative Group

Key Points: 1. FDA-approved eyelash enhancer Latisse may not seem like a big healthcare deal, but its ads are a great way to show how persuasive strategy works in big pharma advertising. 2. The ad uses classic techniques (primacy/recency, visual supremacy, and disassociation) to sell its message. 3. It uses those same techniques to downplay potential side effects. It may not be a big deal with Latisse, but other drugs are not so benign.

In the pantheon of big issues in healthcare, this has to rank near the bottom.

It’s called “hypotrichosis”, a medical condition in which the sufferer does not grow adequate eyelashes.

Now before you laugh, the eyelash serves a meaningful purpose. They protect the eye against foreign contamination; they are a first line of defense for one of the body’s most sensitive organs. Like most primates, humans are highly visual creatures, and the eyes are the center of that attraction. More specifically, human beings find large eyelashes attractive (evolutionary psychologists say) because they are a competitive advantage in a world of airborne dust and dirt.

For those poor souls who fail to grow eyelashes, or fail to grow them thick enough, medical science has come to the rescue with bimatoprost, the FDA’s first approved drug to lengthen lashes, marketed under the trade name “Latisse”.

But unlike its chemical twin used to treat glaucoma, Latisse isn’t meaningfully positioned as a medical product. Latisse ads are more reminiscent of a Revlon cosmetics pitch. (more…)

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Author: Jason Voiovich Ecra Creative Group

Key Points: 1. Plastic water bottles are an undeniable environmental disaster, contributing tons of plastic each year to the Texas-size Pacific Garbage Patch. 2. Bottlers have an incentive to fix the problem and save their $11 billion cash cow. 3. But canteens - repositioned as fashion accessories - are making a strong return, and could eventually cannibalize 30 to 40 percent of the market.

In the middle of the northern Pacific Ocean, the currents converge just right.

They form a giant loop of swirling water attracting floating debris from the entire Pacific basin into just one spot. In the middle of this immense area of ocean is a growing island of floating garbage twice the size of Texas. It is a sea of unbelievable foulness filled with all manner of trash from North America, Russia, Japan, China, and Southeast Asia. And it’s growing.

By far one of the biggest contributors: The humble plastic water bottle.

(more…)

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Author: Jason Voiovich Ecra Creative Group

Key Points: 1. The pork industry feels the use of the word “swine” flu to describe this latest outbreak will hurt consumption. 2. In addition to short-term market data, they cite other examples of virus-induced hysteria. 3. All that said, long-term data for public health shocks in the poultry, tomato, and spinach markets (and even the last swine flu in 1976) show little impact.

Hog farmers were hog-raving mad.

Scientists just did what scientists do: In the midst of a cacophony of technical language most journalists wouldn’t understand, they mentioned the words “swine flu” to describe this latest swine virus that was able to mutate - just enough - to infect humans. Admittedly, the term “swine flu” is a bit inaccurate, but it’s catchier than H1N1, for sure.

Guess what name stuck? (more…)

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Author: Jason Voiovich Ecra Creative Group

Key Points: 1. Fibromyalgia is an example of drug company marketing at its best: Convincing the medical establishment to pay attention to real suffering. 2. Fibromyalgia is also an example of drug company marketing at its worst: Using emotional tactics to boost prescriptions. 3. Regardless of the final judgment, we cannot ignore the power of giving a vague set of symptoms a legitimate name.

Eli Lilly and Pfizer are sure trying hard to make sure you have.

Fibromyalgia is a medical condition characterized by widespread and persistent pain with a particular painful sensitivity to touch. Other symptoms include debilitating fatigue, trouble sleeping, stiff joints, difficulty swallowing, bowel and bladder trouble, numbness, abnormal motor activity, and even cognitive dysfunction.

As you could guess, making a definitive diagnosis is a bit tricky. Without that certainty, not everyone in the medical community agrees fibromyalgia actually exists. Its symptoms are often confused and muddled with other common ailments.

Why is it, then, that Eli Lilly and Pfizer have dolled out more in grants for fibromyalgia research ($6 million in the last 9 months of 2008) than to either diabetes or Alzheimer’s? And why is it that fibromyalgia ranks third on that recipient list behind only AIDS and cancer? (more…)

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