In 2013, Viagra accounted for nearly $1.2 billion in worldwide sales, making it the 42nd best-selling drug that year.
Viagra has been around since 1998, has been taken by tens of millions of men worldwide, and the name has become synonymous with treatment for erectile dysfunction. Everyone knows what Viagra is and what it does. So why bother advertising it?
For every dollar invested in prescription drug advertising, pharmaceutical companies get back well over a dollar in increased sales. Viagra also faces loss of patent protection. In 2013, patent protection in many European Union nations ended, opening up the market to generic competitors and cutting prices. Generics are also sold in Canada, and prices for Viagra have dropped there too.
Competitors in the US won’t be available until late 2017, so advertising done now could serve to anchor loyalty to the brand name. But Viagra has always had to tread a fine line with advertising, because of guidelines on direct-to-consumer (DTC) ads for prescription drugs, and because of American attitudes towards sex and advertising.
DTC Prescription Drug Advertising
The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) represents American pharmaceutical research and biotechnology companies, and developed voluntary industry guidelines for DTC ads for prescription drugs. Big pharmaceutical advertisers abide by these guidelines, partly out of fear that if they don’t, legislative action could result in much stricter regulations on DTC prescription drug ads.
The guidelines were designed to help pharmaceutical companies meet requirements of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) requiring that DTC advertising information be accurate, only make claims supported by substantial evidence, reflect balance between benefits and risks, and be consistent with FDA-approved labeling.
Viagra Ads Should Be Placed to Reach Adults
Under the PhRMA guidelines, pharmaceutical advertisers do not have to obtain FDA approval before running an ad, but they do have to submit the ad for FDA approval before running it. One of the guidelines states that ad placements should be targeted to avoid audiences that aren’t age-appropriate. That means ads for Viagra and other drugs targeted toward medical conditions of an adult nature should be placed in publications or programs expected to draw an audience that’s primarily over age 18.
There’s Pushback Every Few Years
Every few years, Viagra and other drugs for erectile dysfunction experience a degree of backlash, often due to fears that ads are placed such that substantial numbers of children view them. There are some numbers to back this up. A study published in 2013 in the Journal of Health Politics, Policy, and Law estimated that ads for products treating erectile dysfunction had been viewed by children 102 billion times.
The study authors viewed 24 commercials and 17 print ads, which were cross-referenced to Nielsen monitoring data that would indicate whether they ran in time slots that would violate the PhRMA advertising guidelines. Starting in 2009, Viagra, Cialis, and Levitra appeared to grow lax in their commitment to only running ads where the viewing audience could reasonably be expected to be primarily composed of adults.
Enforcing PhRMA’s DTC guidelines is challenging, however. The main reason is that the FDA simply doesn’t have the staff needed to view and evaluate them all. While DTC ads must contain language indicating how consumers can complain to PhRMA, actually making complaints isn’t straightforward. For one thing, complaints are submitted by fax. For another, actually getting through by fax isn’t a sure thing. The authors of the Journal of Health Politics, Policy, and Law study referenced above stated that 10 out of 11 attempts to send a fax to PhRMA failed.
Sex in Advertising
Sex and advertising have gone together for nearly a hundred years. The ad credited with being the first to use “sex” to sell a product was a 1917 ad for Woodbury Facial Soap, which was purported to produce “A Skin You Love to Touch.” Studies show men react to sex-based ads pretty uniformly across price points, while women’s reactions are more nuanced. Women, it seems, respond more positively to sex-based ads for luxury products than for cheap products. Either way, Viagra is covered. It’s primarily marketed to men, of course, but it’s also fairly expensive, so women who see the ads may be less likely to respond negatively.
What About When Sex Is Essential to the Advertisement?
Viagra ads, of course, aren’t just sex-based for the sake of selling a product. They’re about the actual act of sex. That, rather paradoxically, further constrains how Viagra markets itself. It has to make clear that the product addresses a sexual problem, but without cheapening the concept of sex or depicting it as purely a physical act. Hence all the happy, nice-looking middle aged couples that populate ads for Viagra and its competitors.
American attitudes to sex also play a role in how Viagra ads are created. While other countries may refer more directly to the effects of the drug, American ads deal with the actual sex act more obliquely, depicting couples engaging in mundane tasks together, having a romantic date, or simply depicting men being manly, as many early Viagra ads did.
Some ads have tried to interject a note of humor, winkingly acknowledging that there is a certain amount of nervous laughter surrounding the topic of erectile dysfunction and its treatment. But too much humor can bump up against PhRMA advertising guidelines, which don’t want pharmaceutical advertisers to give the impression that medical conditions are funny.
Considering Viagra doesn’t want to do anything to draw unwanted attention from PhRMA, the FDA, or to offend American viewers with overt descriptions or depictions of sex, Viagra has to tread a very narrow path in designing its advertisements. And what will happen to Viagra ad campaigns once US patent protection runs out and generic competitors appear is anyone’s guess. But the company must have done something right, because its ads don’t appear to have hurt revenues, if last year’s $1.2 billion in sales are any indication.
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