Not too many years ago I was asked by my ECD to work on a pitch for a pharma product. I blurted out the title of this post, and he took the hint and he let me off the hook.
With the billions now being spent on pharma advertising, it stuns me that essentially, no matter what medicine you're hawking, you do the same commercial.
I used to have this, so I couldn't do that, so I asked my doctor and he told me about blank. [Diarrhea disclosure. And people pushing kids on swings or sitting on the sofa with an attractive person of the opposite sex or an attractive couple walking on the beach. With a super that says see our ad in Cooking EZ.] Name of product and tagline, usually "Take back your life." Or "Tomorrow is your future."
Pharma commercials suck because the people involved in them have an illness. It's called "Conference Room-itis." The ads all work in a conference room. On forced exposure people nod and say "that's me." And the sales force loves hearing their product name. But on TV or in the real world they just are not seen.
Wasting billions. That's sick.
what's worse is that the vast majority of the spots and print-ads to for that matter seem so totally removed from any life-form known to man.
ReplyDeletewhether featuring a sufferer or someone said to have recovered. As one of my kids said a while ago: "i wish i had that, they looks so happy, what is it?".