M e d i c i n e A ve 2 ended up being short-lived as the claims werefound to be false and misleading as more helpful than harmful. Ad spending was relatively low and primarily relegated to a handful of magazines. Branded Advertising Hits the Market This relative calm was broken by the advent of branded DTC. Sandoz Pharmaceuticals put their toe in the water in 1987 with a major-market newspaper campaign for Tavist-1, another anti-allergy drug. Seeking a way to counter Seldane's success, Sandoz ran full-page ads ostensibly directed at physicians in a non-traditional media venue to increase prescribing for the brand. The first version needed some FDA-approved copy revisions to make it more of a professional ad, but the campaign ended up being short-lived as the claims were found to be false and misleading. By 1989, branded advertising really began to pick up. 3M ran extensive ads for Minitran, Ciba promoted Transderm Scop and Estraderm, Pfizer advertised Cardura, and Wyeth began its two-decade-long campaign for Premarin. Advertising efforts for Seldane and Nicorette also turned to branded messages. Despite the growing number of advertisers, the late 1980s and early 1990s was a rough period for DTC. All the ads directed to consumers also reached physicians, who weren't happy about being bypassed by the drug companies in their promotional efforts. This created a fair amount of backlash by physicians who claimed that DTC was interfering with the doctor-patient relationship. This type of reaction caused most marketers to wait in the wings. Then Upjohn, reversing their previous opposition and fueled by a massive $30 million ad budget, kicked off a branded print campaign for the hair-restorer Rogaine, supplemented by unbranded TV spots. Despite the aggressive nature of the advertising, most physicians didn't have a problem with the outreach because they 124
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