NYT Publishes Completely Pointless Story About Avandia Advertising

I've read today's NYT story on the Avandia troubles so you don't have to. Here are the main points:

1. GSK has been "widely praised" for using a lot of black people, like actress Della Reese, in its Avandia ads.

2. This is because "Type 2 diabetes is a disease twice as likely to affect black Americans."

3. "But now ... some black advertising executives wonder if Glaxo’s advertising strategy could end up working against the company."

4. '"I’d expect competitors now to step up their outreach to African-Americans,' said Howard Buford, the founder and chief executive of Prime Access, a multicultural advertising agency in New York."

5. But "Avandia’s main competitor in this country is a drug called Actos...which does not conduct significant consumer advertising in the United States. A spokesman for Takeda said the company had no plans to increase its advertising to consumers in light of safety concerns about Avandia. So, the competitive issue raised by Mr. Buford could be largely theoretical."

6. Oh ...

7. Er ...

8. Never mind then ...

A classic example of a great idea for a business story that fell apart once the reporting was done but was somehow allowed into print anyway. Never underestimate editors' desire to fill space, come what may!

Comments

[John Mack]

Takeda would now find it difficult to do DTC advertising of Actos to "reach out" to any audience, not just African-Americans. The FDA just announced that it requested both GSK and Takeda to put "black box" warnings on their respective product labels for Avandia and Actos.

In the past, this meant that "reminder ads" -- where only the drug name is mentioned, not the indication -- would be strictly prohibited. To some degree that is a mute point now that most companies (but NOT Takeda) have abandoned reminder ads altogether.

Realistically, however, all DTC ads for these products would now have to highlight the cardiovascular concerns, which would make the ads less than effective, to say the least!

[Carol]

It is interesting to see how Avandia started out. Now with Actos, I think we need to really determine whether it is safe for patients or not.