Monthly Archives: January 2010

Zetia & Vytorin: how Merck got patients to spend $21 billion on drugs that don’t work

Posted on by Carolyn Thomas
7

How did drug giants Merck and Schering-Plough persuade patients to spend $21 billion on a cholesterol drug that doesn’t prevent heart attacks? According to a December 14th report in Forbes, the cholesterol-lowering drug Zetia works by a little-understood mode of action, and no research has shown that it prevents heart attacks at all. Physicians have been brutal in their assessment. Zetia’s rise “was the miracle of marketing, not the miracle of medicine,” says cardiologist Dr. Sanjay Kaul of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. Cleveland Clinic cardiologist Dr. Steven Nissen adds:

“We’ve spent billions on a drug that may turn out to be a placebo.”

Yet Merck’s clever marketers have spun straw into gold. Over the last seven years, they have convinced doctors to prescribe $21 billion worth of Zetia and its sister drug, Vytorin, which combines Zetia with Merck’s old cholesterol drug Zocor. In fact, the drugs are on track to do $4 billion in combined sales this year, despite multiple studies suggesting they fail to prevent clogged arteries. Thanks to an agressive $200 million ad campaign, American sales of Zetia and Vytorin represent 16% of all cholesterol-lowering drug sales, but only a 3% share in Canada, where direct-to-consumer (“Ask your doctor”) advertising is banned.   Continue reading →

Microwave popcorn: (still) bad for you

Posted on by Carolyn Thomas
18

Two years ago, Orville Redenbacher soared from the graveyard and announced in weeks of TV ads that his popcorn was now free of diacetyl.

According to Senior Public Health correspondent Andrew Schneider‘s report in Sphere last month, diacetyl is the chemical in that disgusting artificial butter flavouring that has been blamed for sickening hundreds of workers, killing a handful, and destroying the lungs of at least three microwave popcorn consumers with what’s been termed “popcorn lung”.

The disease from exposure to diacetyl — bronchiolitis obliterans — is debilitating and potentially fatal.

And because it irreversibly destroys the small airways in the lung, the only hope for many victims is a single or double lung transplant. Almost every other popcorn maker followed the lead of Orville’s parent company, ConAgra Foods, Inc.

But now, health investigators are reporting that the “new, safer, butter substitutes” used in microwave popcorn and other foods can be as toxic as what they replaced.

Even John Hallagan, lawyer for the Flavor and Extract Manufacturers Association, confirms that diacetyl substitutes are actually just another form of diacetyl. Dr. Daniel Morgan of the Respiratory Toxicology Group at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences said he has found the same danger in one of the principle components of the butter substitute, a concoction called 2,3-pentanedione. Dr. Morgan said in the Sphere interview:

“It caused the same injuries in test animals as diacetyl, and our preliminary data indicates the toxicity is close to identical.” Continue reading →

The marketing dead weight called Tiger Woods

Posted on by Carolyn Thomas
10

I’m glad that savvy ad guy Terry O’Reilly has waded in on a subject that I (and a few million others) have been wondering about: how long corporate sponsors will choose to hang on to the marketing dead weight that is Tiger Woods. O’Reilly is a Canadian marketing whiz and co-author with Mike Tennant of The Age of Persuasion: How Marketing Ate Our Culture, as well as host of the popular CBC/Sirius Satellite radio program of the same name.  He sums up Tiger’s future in corporate endorsements with ESPN writer Rick Reilly‘s memorable quip:

“Tiger is the first human being in history to run into a hydrant, and set himself on fire.”

Now, just for a moment let’s forget about what Tiger did or did not do with dozens of those Girls With Big Hair. And really, can we honestly be that shocked, after all, to learn that wealthy, young, studly, celebrity superstar athletes are groping groupies on the side?

From a public relations perspective, however, the way this issue has been handled after the story broke has been far more damaging to his corporate marketability than the adultery itself.  “No comment” and three armed bodyguards? What was he thinking? It’s been wrong from the get-go, and a fiery topic among my PR pals whose expertise is to offer counsel on basic issues management and crisis communications – something that Tiger and his people seem to know tragically little about. Whether he loses millions through divorce or through endorsement contract loss, his problems are likely to get far worse before they get better.  Continue reading →

How a menu can make you order what the restaurant wants you to

Posted on by Carolyn Thomas
8

William Poundstone, author of the new book, Priceless: The Myth of Fair Value (and How to Take Advantage of It), recently told New York Magazine how to dissect the marketing tricks built into restaurant menus.

“A star is the name for a popular, high-profit item—in other words, an item for which customers are willing to pay a good deal more than it costs to make. A puzzle is high-profit but unpopular; a plowhorse is the opposite, popular yet unprofitable. Consultants try to turn puzzles into stars, nudge customers away from plowhorses, and convince everyone that the prices on the menu are more reasonable than they look.”

Poundstone uses the menu from the popular restaurant Balthazar in New York City’s Soho district to illustrate these ideas.