Monday, July 17, 2006

Sleep Wars: Takeda start a $100 million DTC assault

Takeda is launching a nearly $100 million DTC ad campaign for its sleeping pill Rozerem using a dead president as its poster boy!

How edifying!

4 comments:

christianhauck said...

I can't even see the page from within my company's firewall: "Your security settings do not allow Web sites to use ActiveX controls installed on your computer". I'll try from home later. Funny/weird.

Anonymous said...

I was talking to a Takeda drug rep last week, and I asked her what she thought about DTC advertising. She told me that she didn't really approve of it, and that they waited for a year after Rozerem was approved before advertising it so the docs could become familiar with it. I tend to believe her -- she had no reason to lie since she wasn't actually selling anything when we were chatting. (She was a patient.)

To compete against Ambien and Lunesta, you pretty much have to advertise DTC. That said, Rozerem is a much more interesting drug than either of the other two (it's mechanism of action is completely different). I think it's probably going to either do spectacularly well, or bomb on some hithertofore unknown side effect in the next 3-4 years.

insider said...

The only "more truthful" dead spokesperson Insider can think of is George Washington with a chopper in his hand.

Or am I getting the wrong Freudian connotation of the beaver in the ads.

Funny website, tho'!

Anonymous said...

fyi, here's the somewhat strange (but cool, I guess) online Rozerem ads --

http://adverlicio.us/rozerem_they_miss_you_728x90

Lots more online pharma ads here.

Enjoy!