Wall Street Journal Article on Rozarem a huge miss
Nov/29/06 06:03 | Current DTC
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An article in the Wall Street Journal this week on the Rozarem TV spots completely misses the point of effective DTC advertising and in advertising in general. The problem facing marketers trying to reach consumers is media clutter. It is estimated that you have 3 seconds to get the attention of your audience and even the President of an ad agency admits that "I had to watch it a few times to really get it". This is just plain bad DTC in every aspect.


As you compare the website traffic for prescription sleep aids, Ambien CR, Lunesta, and Rozarem, you can see clearly see that Ambien CR is still clearly in first place followed by Lunesta. The traffic to Rozarem.com is so low that it barely registers website traffic at all.

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The WSJ state that to make sure its ad got attention, Takeda wanted to try something that broke from convention, says Chris Benecchi, Takeda's senior product manager for neuroscience marketing. Most other ads for sleep medication feature prominent shots of people sleeping soundly or waking up from a restful night. Takeda and its ad agency, Cramer-Krasselt, an independent Chicago firm, decided those spots looked too much alike."We decided collectively that taking this brand down the typical route was going to actually hurt its chances for success," says Marshall Ross, chief creative officer for Cramer-Krasselt.

Still, Takeda acknowledges that its own research shows that consumers needed to see the ad six to nine times "to fully digest" the spot and what is taking place in it. What makes Takeda think that viewers who have a short attention span are going to sit through this spot six to nine times and think about it? Note to Takeda: consumers are time pressed and have better things to do than to think about a TV sot !

Also according the Journal "So far, there is evidence the ad is working. Rozerem's monthly sales have increased to $10.5 million in October from $6.31 million in July, when the ad went on the air, according to Wolters Kluwer Heal". Ummmm..excuse me but I think that when you look at the life-cycle of most pharma products you'll see that there is a growth curve shortly after launch and that this growth is a normal part of the product life-cycle.

We'll see where Rozarem winds up 12-18 months from now but my guess is that the clear winner of the "sleep wars" is going to continue to be Ambien with Lunesta a distant second.
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