NYT: Drug Makers to Police Ad Campaigns (Super Bowl ED ads over?)

[DeepModem Mom]

Drug Makers to Police Consumer Campaigns
By STEPHANIE SAUL
Published: August 3, 2005


SUPER BOWL ads promoting drugs for erectile dysfunction are remnants of the past, if the pharmaceutical industry truly follows its own new guidelines. Also extinct might be 15-second television ads that give little more than a drug's name, without explaining its benefits or risks.

The industry's main trade group yesterday announced details of a voluntary plan to restrict consumer drug advertising. The guidelines were developed to fend off stricter government regulation, as well as improve the industry's public relations, which have been at all-time lows recently.

Although the industry's critics said self-policing was insufficient, the trade group, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, said it would open its own advertising accountability office. The office's job will be to field complaints from the public and forward them to companies for action. At the end of the year, the association known as PhRMA (pronounced FARM-ah) will appoint an independent panel to review the process and issue a report.

Advertising industry executives said yesterday that it was too soon to say how the changes might affect the ad spending of drug makers. Advertising drugs to consumers has grown into a $4 billion industry since 1997, when the Food and Drug Administration relaxed restrictions on such ads.

But in the last year the ads have become the subject of criticism from Capitol Hill, doctors and consumers who say they seem only to promote the benefits of drugs without fully explaining the risks....


http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/03/business/media/03adco.html

[Orsino]

1. And they're going to give up their best market? Yeah, right. n/t

[Mike Daniels]

2. I think they can pretty much capture most of their market

during preseason, 16-17 weeks of regular season and the 3-4 week pre-Super Bowl post season game period.

[livinginphotographs]

3. This would be a good move IF

It wasn't the fox watching the henhouse.

"Although the industry's critics said self-policing was insufficient, the trade group, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, said it would open its own advertising accountability office. The office's job will be to field complaints from the public and forward them to companies for action. At the end of the year, the association known as PhRMA (pronounced FARM-ah) will appoint an independent panel to review the process and issue a report."

Yeah, that'll work. :eyes: