|
New Viagra Ad Educates and Informs
Pfizer has effected sea changes in the people's outlook and view of Viagra with an educative Ad campaign. The inspiration and conception behind the advertising campaign gives a flicker of the underlying effort on the part of the company to portray Viagra as a drug for the treatment of erectile dysfunction, with no connotations and implications for recreational use as was evident in the earlier Viagra Ads. Industry analysts account the sagging sales of Viagra in the past few years as the riding factor behind this radical change of marketing strategy.
Viagra has come light years away from the Ad with blue horns sprouting from the forehead of a middle age man to the letter "V". When their plan to depict Viagra as the resurgent bull raring for a go in the sexual game backfired, they immediately engaged themselves in brainstorming sessions, desperately looking for measures that can salvage the face of Viagra in the market. Pfizer wants to emerge itself from the Ad with the tagline, "Remember that guy who used to be called Wild Thing? He's baaack!"
Pfizer's Ads for Viagra went into a hibernation mode after the blue horn Ad was taken off air. But they have struck back, starting with the educative Ad campaign launched in November 2005. The Ad lays emphasis on educating the people in the sensitive issue of erectile dysfunction. With the slogan, "Make a call", they have encouraged men suffering from the symptoms of erectile dysfunction to visit doctors and physicians for a proper treatment of the dysfunction. The Ad informs the people that erectile dysfunction is a disease that has a cure.
To complement the 'make a call' Ad, Pfizer has come out with a new series of advertisements in the second week of April 2006. The company has started a disease awareness campaign that involves direct-to-consumer drug advertising to bring the issue of erectile dysfunction closer to the victims. They have used the picture of a doctor standing alone in an empty stadium to visualize the enormity of erectile dysfunction. With a fitting tagline that says, "Just ask today", the Ad boosts the confidence in men to overcome the initial hiccups and embarrassments of talking to a doctor.
Karen Katen, Pfizer's vice chairman and president of human health told market analysts that the new erectile dysfunction drugs are cutting into the market share of Viagra, proving many people wrong. Experts were of the opinion that the introduction of new ED drugs would broaden and widen the ED market; however, the market remained static while the number of drugs increased, causing irreparable damages to Viagra sales.
Pfizer is keeping its fingers crossed, waiting for Viagra to bounce back with the launch of this series of educative and informative advertising campaign.
|
Home 
