Page 359 - Battleground The Media Volume 1 and 2

| Pharmaceut cal Advert s ng

Evidence shows that DTCA is one of the most cost-effective marketing sec-
tors in the U.S. economy. In 1999, Pfizer spent $57 million to promote its anti-
histamine, Zyrtec, and saw a 32 percent increase in sales over 1998 revenues.
This increase boosted Zyrtec’s drug-sales ranking by 23 spots, while a similar
campaign increased Aventis’s competing antihistamine, Allegra, by 34 spots.
There was no sudden exponential growth in pollen output or sudden increase in
the number of people suffering from allergies. There was, however, an increase
in the sale of prescription allergy medications as a result of the Allegra DTCA
campaign (Mullen and Fisher 2004, p. 185).

ThE hEaLTh CarE sysTEm: CosTs anD PrioriTiEs

Much of the blame for skyrocketing health care costs has been directed at
the increase in prescriptions for expensive, highly advertised medications in-
stead of cheaper generic or over-the-counter equivalents (see “Brand Names
versus Generic/Over-the-Counter: The Economics”). The National Institute
for Health Care Management, for example, suggests that consumer advertis-
ing may be responsible for 10 to 25 percent of the recent increase in prescrip-
tion drug spending. The increase in spending is vast: it is estimated that in
2002, Americans “paid almost $208 billion for prescription drugs . . . almost
double that spent in 1996” (“TV Ads Spur a Rise in Prescription Drug Sales,”
2002, p. 998). As a percentage of total health care costs, prescription drug
costs are the fastest growing, rising substantially each year. Growth of such
speed and magnitude is exerting tremendous pressure on the budgets of in-
dividual consumers and on the financial viability of the health care system as
a whole.
Just as it is critical to examine DTCA’s role in the increasing costs of health
care in America, it is also important to identify where the gap is occurring.
If vast sums of money are committed to DTCA campaigns each year, which
budgets are being depleted within the pharmaceutical/health care industry, and
to what effect?
The enormous financial rewards enjoyed by pharmaceutical companies as a
result of DTCA campaigns has prompted a structural shift in recent years; today
an ever-greater percentage of drug budgets in particular, and industry resources
in general, are earmarked for DTCA. In 2000, 15 to 20 percent of total drug
marketing costs (Bell et al. 2000, p. 329) were devoted to DTCA. By 2003, it
was estimated that as much as 90 percent of a brand’s total promotional bud-
get was earmarked for DTCA (Mehta and Purvis 2003, p. 194). The increase in
advertising resources is mirrored by a shift in industry structure, as pharmaceu-
tical companies downsize their research and development departments while
bolstering marketing sectors.
Prompted by the earnings potential of DTCA, the shifting of both money
and nonfiscal resources toward DTCA suggests the pharmaceutical industry is
adjusting economically and structurally to enable a continuation and/or inten-
sification of the DTCA trend. While this may make economic sense from the
perspective of the pharmaceutical industry, it may leave a gap in the health care