A History of DTC $170 million, followed by Propecia, an ill-fated hair growth drug from Merck, at S91 million. Zyrtec, Pravachol, Zyban, Allegra, and Prilosec rounded out the $50-million club. That year also marked the first of Prevention magazine's annual DTC Surveys, which would become a key marker for consumer reaction and action from DTC ads. It was clear to observers and participants that the TV explosion had shaken up brand marketing and given consumers and physicians a lot to absorb. The survey had plenty of both good news and bad news. Of the respondents that participated, 67 percent said that DTC educates people about the risks and benefits of prescription drugs, and 61 percent said that DTC confuses people about those same risks and benefits. Prevention concluded that "DTC ads for Rx medicines are not doing a good job of telling consumers about the health problems they are intended to treat, even among sufferers. The large majority of the target audiences for Pravachol (79 percent) and Zocor (66 percent) do not know the indication for either of these medicines, despite having seen advertisements for them." One of the big highlights of this period was AstraZeneca's "Purple Pill" campaign designed to convert Prilosec users and other patients with GERD (gastroesophageal reflux disease) to newly launched Nexium. By 2001, this was the third-largest-spending brand at $126 million, behind top spenders Vioxx and Celebrex, which combined for S260 million in the COX-2 Selective NSAID category. While those two would suffer major reversals, with a Vioxx withdrawal from the marketplace in 2004 and added warnings on Celebrex, Nexium would go on to spend more than $1 billion on DTC ads and become a highly successful brand. Despite the enormous success of Claritin and T educates people about the risks and benefits of prescription drugs 129
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