Exposure to pharmaceutical company advertising may leave you shaking your head. Never have people looked so giddy about having a serious health issue. Do these folks recognize disease is nothing to sing and dance about? Turns out, one little pill is a prescription for profuse jubilation.
Pharmaceutical firms spent $1.1 billion on advertising in 2023, most of it on television to convince Americans to gulp more medications. It must be working because Big Pharma racked up $722.5 billion in sales last year in the U.S., peddling more than 20,000 FDA approved drugs.
Statistics show most of us are taking a prescription drug. According to the Centers For Disease Control and Prevention, 60% of adults are on at least one medication and 36% are swallowing three or more drugs. Pillboxes are the new must-have vanity item.
The names of the medications are designed to be catchy and memorable. Take Skyrizi, a prescription for moderate to severe plaque psoriasis. Sounds like the name for a sky diving outfit. Picture yourself parachuting into luxurious skin. The sky's the limit with this medication.
The fanciful name Cymbalta sounds like an Italian dish. Or an orchestral instrument. But the prescription drug is used to treat depression and anxiety, so the brand name has to be uplifting. No one wants to take an anxiety medication with a name such as Doomstics.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which approves mediations, insists brands cannot be viewed as overpromising on a cure. For example, the FDA rejected the name Regain for an Upjohn company drug that helps regrow hair. Upjohn changed a single letter and won approval for Rogain.
Big drug manufacturers use focus groups, consumer testing and a phonetic formula to create evocative names for their products. In an average year, the FDA approves about 60 new drugs and the makers want each one to sound different than every other prescription. With 20,000 drugs, it's getting harder.
Apparently, someone at Sanofi, a consumer healthcare firm, ran out of clever names for medications. The company slapped the moniker Xyzal on its allergy drug, which promises 24-hour relief from scratchy throats, running noses and itchy eyes. Did a marketing person throw a dart at an eye chart?
But today it takes more than fetching names to sell prescription drugs to consumers. Television ads featuring dancing, singing actors are how you stand out in the crowded prescription space. Drugs to treat type 2 adult diabetes feature Broadway worthy productions.
If you ever seen a Mounjaro commercial, chances are you rushed to your doctor and pleaded for a prescription. Overweight people suffering from diabetes look awfully happy about their battle against disease. They can't stop grinning, swirling and clapping on television.
Similar drugs in the same category--Wegovy, Ozempic and Jardience--are trying to outdo Mounjaro on the blissful meter. They feature practically intoxicated adults, dressed in loose fitting clothes with perky demeanors. They are canoeing, hiking and flitting. No one is ever eating cake in these ads.
Even mirthful drug names cannot mask the side effects. The killjoys over at FDA mandate the drug companies mention the possible downside of the medication. After the onscreen celebration of the medication, an off camera narrator delivers a somber warning.
It usually goes something like this: taking XYZAB may cause weight loss, blurred vision, rapid heartbeat, acute kidney injury, increasing or worsening chronic renal failure, diarrhea, nausea and vomiting. Who would sign up for those side effects?
A benign drug this writer has taken for years contains this WARNING: "A very bad reaction called angioedema has happened with this drug. Sometimes this may be life-threatening." Say, what? How often is "sometimes"? Twice a week? Once in a millennium? Just asking.
The key for selling the drug is for the announcer to whiz through the side effects at hyper speed, hoping the rhythmic performers distract the consumer. It would be fun to once hear the narrator make this claim to see if folks are paying attention to this gibberish:
"Taking this medication may cause you to lose four toes, soil your pants, call your wife by your exes name, provide your computer password to a complete stranger, sprout long hair on your nose, leave your new iPhone in a seedy bar and drop your expensive Patek Philippe watch in a airport toilet."
If that sounds entertaining, imagine showing up in your doctor's office with a list of every drug advertised that encourages consumers to ask your physician about taking this medication. Innocently inquire: "Should I be taking..." and then reel off the entire list.
I tried it and found out primary care doctors have no sense of humor. The doctor fixed me with a quizzical look and folded arms. He didn't appear amused. There's a reason you won't find humor in a medical dictionary.
