Ad Review: Pfizer's New Celebrex Spot -- Partial Thumbs Up!

Unless you've been living in a drug-induced coma for the last few days, you'll know that Pfizer just began airing its new ad for Celebrex, the cox-2 pain reliever that wasn't withdrawn from the market following the Vioxx/Bextra scandal.

I've said before that I think cox-2 drugs should be on the market as long as their risks are adequately declared. In fact, there are lots of risky drugs that should be prescribable as long as doctor and patient are fully informed going in. (Whether they should be marketed to consumers is another question, but until the FDA rescinds its 1997 decision to allow DTC we have to live with it.)

That said, Pfizer appears to have taken my position and based their entire new campaign for Celebrex around it (I guess we get the advertising we deserve). The ad is 2 minutes and 30 seconds long and consists almost entirely of warnings, disclaimers and stuff that sounds like it was written to frustrate the plaintiffs' bar.

The animated white-on-blue images in the ad are formed entirely from "small print" of the kind lawyers use to make disclaimers. From afar, these lines of type form workaday images of people riding bicycles, walking their dogs, painting a fence and dancing--ie the kind of normality people in pain feel they're nort really a part of.

But the beauty part is the voiceover. It includes one of the most complicated (and slightly misleading, in the sense that I can't figure out what it means) customer propositions I've ever heard: "You may think some prescription NSAID pain relievers like ibuprofen and naproxen don't have any cardiovascular risks. But based on available research that's not clear."

Uh, what? Run that by me again? And that's just the first line.

People in the biz know what this means, of course: It's a play on the old saw that if drugs like ibuprofen and aspirin were presented to the FDA today they would not get approved.

The ad progresses by listing what feels like all Celebrex's side effects and warnings. How about these zingers for a tagline? "Any prescription NSAID including Celebrex may increase the chance of heart attack or stroke, which can lead to death." The ad lists some more scary sounding adverse events--skin reactions, etc--before stating that gastric bleeding "can occur without warning and may cause death."

How many other brands in the history of advertising can say they ever aired an ad which TWICE warned it can kill its customers?

At about the halfway point, the voiceover utilizes a line that sounds like it was written for an SNL spoof: "Prescription Celebrex has never been taken off the market." Sign me up now!

Only two thirds of the way in do we start to hear some positive stuff about the benefits ("Celebrex's benefits outweigh the risks...understand the risks--see the benefits.")

In many ways, this is an historic ad and Pfizer should be applauded for it. It is one of the first ads to really take risk marketing seriously and to treat patients like adults when it comes to pain management and its side effects. And it's worth repeating that in its DTC for all its brands Pfizer has gone further to publicize and make the risks of its medicines easier to understand for consumers.

This Celebrex ad represents the zenith of that effort--an ad constructed almost entirely (and as the imagery goes, literally) out of risk information. While its motives are laudable, the result is in danger of becoming one of those cultural touchstones, akin to "I'm not a doctor but I play one on TV!" or "...if you experience an erection lasting more than 4 hours consult a doctor..."

So don''t be surprised if you hear "Can cause death! Has never been taken off the market!" being used in a late-night show monologue in the future.

Comments

[John Mack]

Jim,

I have a little quiz for readers to see if they remembered correctly the claims made in the Celebrex ad. See "The New Celebrex TV Ad: What Did You Learn?" (http://pharmamkting.blogspot.com/2007/04/new-celebrex-tv-ad-what-did-you-learn.html)

I hope your post didn't give away all the answers!

John

[John Mack]

Sorry, the URL got screwed up.

Just gohere:
http://pharmamkting.blogspot.com

[Tom]

Generic Celecoxib (Celebrex) is a Non-Steroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug (NSAID) that represents a huge breakthrough in the treatment of pain, inflammation, and stiffness of arthritis. http://www.caldrugs.com/pill/Celebrex.html

Generic Naprosyn (NAPROXEN) is a Non-Steroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug (NSAID) used to relieve pain and swelling (inflammation). It is also used to treat headaches, muscle aches, backaches, tendonitis, bursitis, dental pain, menstrual cramps, arthritis, or gout. Generic Naprosyn may be used to reduce fever, or relieve minor aches and pain due to the common cold or flu. This medicine works by blocking the enzyme in your body that makes prostaglandins. Decreasing prostaglandins helps to reduce pain, swelling, and fever. http://www.caldrugs.com/pill/Naprosyn.html