The Ethical Nag

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.

But the question we ask Terry O’Reilly here is whether it’s possible for any celebrity to survive a personal train wreck of this magnitude of slimy-ness and still cling to a dwindling list of multi-million dollar corporate endorsements.  Here’s O’Reilly’s take on the subject:

“I just read that AT&T is the latest advertiser to drop Tiger as a spokesperson. A lot of people are saying this scandal won’t hurt his image. I disagree.  Read more…

There’s a simple blood test done routinely to screen men for a condition that is rarely serious.  But if your screening test happens to be positive, the resulting treatment and side effects are likely to be devastating to your day to day quality of life, and may include stress incontinence, overflow incontinence, urge incontinence, or continuous incontinence. And impotence, temporary or permanent.

Should you get this blood test done?

That’s the controversial question behind two large, randomized clinical trials this past year studying the relationship between PSA-based screening and prostate cancer mortality: The European Randomized Study of Screening for Prostate Cancer and the Prostate, Lung, Colorectal, and Ovarian Cancer Screening Trial in the U.S.  According to the European study, which involved over 162,000 men between the ages of 50 and 74 in seven countries, PSA-based screening reduced the already low rate of death from prostate cancer by 20%, but was also associated with a high risk of overdiagnosis and overtreatment.

The American PLCO trial found the rate of death from prostate cancer was very low for both the 38,343 men in the group that received annual PSA-based screening and the 38,350 men in the control group who received “usual care.” The conclusion: “Screening was associated with no reduction in prostate cancer mortality.” 

‘Non-intervention’ is what urologist Dr. Anthony Horan says he was taught when he attended medical school and also during his urology residency at the Columbia Presbyterian Hospital in New York in the mid-1970s. “We didn’t go looking for the incidental cancers that were of no clinical significance,” explains the author of The Big Scare:  The Business of Prostate Cancer.  “And if we found them, we did nothing about them.”  Read more…

Psychiatrist Dr. Daniel Carlat is a compelling storyteller. One especially compelling story, Dr. Drug Rep, was told in the pages of the New York Times Magazine about his own very brief career moonlighting as a Big Pharma drug rep. 

Once upon a time, he explained, on a blustery fall New England day in 2001, a friendly sales manager from Wyeth Pharmaceuticals came into his medical office and made him an offer he found hard to refuse.

“He asked me if I’d like to give talks to other doctors about using Effexor XR for treating depression. It would be pretty easy. Wyeth would provide a set of slides and even pay for me to attend a speaker’s training session. I would be paid $500 for one-hour Lunch and Learn talks at local doctors’ offices, or $750 if I had to drive out of town. I would be flown to New York City for a ‘faculty-development program,’ where I would be pampered in a midtown hotel for two nights, and would be paid an additional honorarium.”

Dr. Carlat was familiar with the drug Effexor XR and had read some studies in medical journal articles showing that Effexor might be more effective than S.S.R.I.’s, the most commonly prescribed antidepressants: the Prozacs, Paxils and Zolofts of the world. S.S.R.I. stands for selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor, referring to the fact that these drugs increase levels of the neurotransmitter serotonin, a chemical in the brain involved in regulating moods. Effexor, on the other hand, was being marketed as a dual reuptake inhibitor, meaning that it increases both serotonin and norepinephrine, another neurotransmitter. The theory promoted by Wyeth was that two neurotransmitters are better than one, and that Effexor was thus more powerful and more effective than S.S.R.I.’s.

Some time later, as promised, Wyeth flew both Dr. Carlat and his wife to New York, put them up in a luxury hotel for two nights (along with about 100 other psychiatrists from across the country), presented them with the schedule for the Effexor training day,  invitations to various gala dinners and receptions, and two tickets to a Broadway musical. At the end of the intensive training presented by prestigious American psychiatrists, Dr. Carlat received another Wyeth envelope – this one with $750 inside, and a note wishing him and his wife a great time in New York City.    

But even then, Dr. Carlat recalled having niggling doubts about some of the Effexor ’facts’ that had been presented during that Wyeth training day.

“Was I swallowing the message whole? Certainly not. I knew that this was hardly impartial medical education, and that we were being fed a marketing line. But when you are treated like the anointed, wined and dined in Manhattan and placed among the leaders of the field, you inevitably put some of your critical faculties on hold.”    Read more…