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PhRMA’s new direct-to-consumer voluntary advertising guidelines contain few requirements that will add to marketers’ ethical and legal burdens in creating drug ads and does not add much to the trade group’s July 21 statement that “encouraged” the industry to better target its audience, Adweek reports. There are no penalties for not following the guidelines and no mandatory ad-free time period between a drug’s approval by the FDA and its consumer launch.
The voluntary rules call for companies to educate patients about diseases, act responsibly in targeting and promoting their medicines and encourage them to highlight risks and preventative measures.
In the end, there are only two hard-and-fast requirements. One ends “reminder ads” in which only the brand name is mentioned and no information about diseases or risks are mentioned. The second states that companies should submit all new DTC ads to the FDA before broadcasting them - which the vast majority of drug companies already do.
A statement from Commercial Alert, a longtime PhRMA critic, said that the guidelines were “a public relations exercise that cloaks doing nothing in a stream of verbiage that sounds like doing something. They will cause no inconvenience for the drug industry and no real change of behavior.”
Radio stations in the U.K. reacted with outrage when they learned of a report by researchers from the University of the West of England which accused them of promoting excessive drinking.
The study looked at 1,200 hours of radio output,…
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In order to boost sales as much as possible during a time when…
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Fox says that viewers’ attention to commercials is higher when fewer commercials are aired. The revelation comes as a result of testing the network has done for its freshman thriller, Fringe, which will premiere Sept. 9 with limited commercials and shorter…
Worldwide sales of mobile phones will reach 1.28 billion units in 2008 - up from 1.15 billion units in 2007 - an 11 percent increase from last year, according to Gartner, Inc - (via MarketingCharts).
While the mobile phone market is poised for…
Consumers in all income segments are cutting back spending, and doing so to a greater extent recently than at the beginning of the second quarter, according to a comScore study examining changes in consumer attitudes and perceptions about the U.S. economy…
