DTC 360

DTC Advertising: Empowering or Hurting Patients?
By Richard Meyer
Since the economy has “fallen off a cliff,” many consumers who can’t afford health coverage increasingly are self-diagnosing as they forgo trips to their physician to cut back on expenses.

DTC ads have long been criticized for getting patients to ask for medications they don’t need, but the reality of today’s environment is that patients are becoming more empowered and very rarely are they going to take any ad or web site at face value without doing some research on their own.

America Is e-Engaged
According to Manhattan Research, 145 million consumers are going online for health information, and of these, 95 million go online for prescription drug information. The number of people going online for health information has doubled since 2002 as access to the Internet continues to climb.

The old marketing method was to develop a motivating message, test it with focus groups, and then deliver this message over and over again via a reach-and-frequency model on TV and in print. However, in an age of consumer mistrust of any big corporation, that model is outdated. General health portals, such as WebMD, Med Safety Alert, EverydayHealth, Yahoo!, Mayo Clinic, Drugs.com, and Drugstore.com, are core health consumer destinations.

It’s also interesting to note that, according to Manhattan Research, more and more e-pharma consumers are looking to blogs, government sites (i.e., CDC, FDA, and NIH), Wikis, and drug-ratings sites. Why is this happening? Well, all one has to do is pick up a newspaper to read a negative story on big pharma. Indeed, consumers’ overall love of American business may be coming to an end, as billions of dollars go into reviving corporate America while more people lose their jobs. Consumers trust each other a lot more than any sales message today, and before they decide to put any medication in their body they are going online to gauge the risks and benefits.

Still an Opportunity to Educate
One of the biggest benefits of DTC advertising is that it educates and informs consumers. It may not benefit the brand directly but consumers are going online to learn all they can about prescription drugs and health information. The challenge for the industry is going to be to ensure that patients do go to their physicians and don’t self-diagnose their conditions before they become a lot worse, endanger themselves and add costs to an overburdened health system.

Consumer products marketers all over the nation are learning that the old days of showing a product on TV and waiting for sales to follow are quickly coming to an end. Consumers today research and talk about everything online from electronics to prescription drugs. One site, iGuard, even lets consumers rate drugs on effectiveness and side effects.

DTC marketers need to understand that DTC advertising effectiveness may drive awareness of new conditions and medications but that the messages they develop are falling on the deaf ears of mistrust in corporate America. It’s time for DTC marketing to embrace the realities of new marketing and leave the old behind.

Richard Meyer is President of Online Strategic Solutions (www.onlinestrategicsolutions.com), an Internet consulting company. He has worked in healthcare marketing for more than 12 years, and writes at www.worldofdtcmarketing.com and www.richsblog.com. He welcomes comments at richardameyer@me.com.