Amitiza DTC Ads Won't Win Any Awards, But...

While in a hospital outpatient waiting area last week I was forced to watch "The View" on one of the ubiquitous overhead flat screen TVs that seem to be everywhere these days. Whoopi Goldberg was talking about the "ultimate gift" a mother could give a pregnancy-challenged daughter -- implanting her daughter's embryo in her uterus and delivering her child -- when she was rudely interrupted by the new Amitiza DTC ad.

Of course, Takeda does not want to limit the market for Amitiza just to pregnant women. Therefore, it is engaged in a bit of "disease mongering" on the Amitiza web site, to whit:

"Chronic Constipation touches the lives of up to 28% of adults in America. Both men and women suffer from it, but the condition is two to three times more common in women."

What exactly "touches upon" means is anybody's guess. Nevertheless, the 28% figure is dutifully repeated in media stories. In fact, the media go even further and cite these numbers given to reporters by Takeda: "Constipation affects 42 million American adults, and 12 million could be characterized as suffering from chronic idiopathic constipation, the condition for which Amitiza is indicated..."

In today's post to Pharma Marketing Blog, I whip out my trusty Microsoft desktop calculator to see if all these numbers jibe with one another. Guess what I found out.

For more posts in related topic areas, see:

• DTC Advertising
• eMarketing

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The collection of articles and commentary in this first Pharma Marketing News Special Supplement chronicles the emerging issues of direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising and presents pro and con opinions from experts on how DTC needs to adapt in the post-Vioxx marketing era. Topics include: DTC Pros and Cons, Straight-Talking DTC, Communicating Risk, Biotech DTC, Print DTC, and more.

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