It’s hard to believe it has been 12 years since the FDA eased the guidelines on television advertising for pharmaceuticals. It occurred to us when this happened that DRTV marketing would be a natural component for DTC television:
–Pharma TV ads had to contain an 800# for consumers
–Commercials had to contain a balance statement (requiring a longer length spot)
–Capturing the names of people with a chronic disease state seemed valuable

As I made my rounds of marketing conferences espousing the benefits of DRTV and how it would change pharma marketing, mostly what I received were stares. I quickly learned that pharma product managers in those days not only had no idea what DRTV marketing was, most had no consumer marketing experience either. They had built their success on B2B marketing to the physician.

While we as an agency had some success with a few clients, the growth never reached the level we thought it would. It seemed that while direct marketing was being used here and there, it hadn’t taken hold, for whatever reason. A few years passed.

I walked into a meeting a couple years back at a large pharma company. As the large group introduced themselves, it became apparent that 70% of the people from the company had the term “Relationship Marketing” in their title. The day had come — direct marketing had finally taken it’s place in the Pharma industry and it’s never looked back.

There are rumblings that the new healthcare plan will contain some restrictions on DTC advertising — until that time we suspect that direct marketing/DRTV will continue to play a larger role in DTC marketing.

Bill McCabe is EVP/COO at A. Eicoff & Co., one of the North America’s largest DRTV agencies.