Trimming the fat

April 16, 2009 – 4:21 pm by Gina Monari

Advertising portfolio offerings are being redesigned around the nature of the fast-paced mobile consumer, fueled by the convergence of the digital generation. This blog is not about Web 2.0, however, or the mobile space. This blog is about traditional DTC advertising. As someone who solely watches the Superbowl for the commercials, for me DTC advertising provides more than just benefit and risk. Personally, it sells a comfortable level of affirmation and relateability.

As the world Twitters, Bebos, and Facebooks, I find myself wanting to about-face and deviate more toward personal privacy. Ironically, I am finding the more I engage online, the colder and more disjointed I become toward its messaging. Humans are social beings, but some digest their environmental intake more slowly. As consumers, marketers, and ad agencies race on Lightbikes through some kind of Tron-incarnate world, I find myself welcoming back the comfort of traditional DTC advertising and have become even more receptive to its imagery. Could it be that my tendency toward the channel of TV advertising as a tool is archaic and old-school? Quite possibly. Then again, so is the excellence of the advent of the ‘wheel and axle.’

The human brain is such a resilient evolutionary tool. In retrospect, the brain has astonished and baffled since the age of upright man. The varied growth facets of our abstruce gray matter have always been demonstrated in our use and evolution of tools. Relatively, the coming of, metrics of, and reinvention of DTC healthcare advertising is not much different.

Mark Twain once said, “believe nothing you hear, and only half of what you see.� If this aphorism holds true, advertising — healthcare or otherwise — will always face an uphill climb. One truism remains, the journey of man into discovery has always been an insightful forward harch out from underneath the blanket of one Dark Age toward the dawn of another golden age. Whether it is the information-conscious consumer or the metrics-minded marketer, each are speeding down the super-information highway toward the same goal — away from disease and toward better health and longer lives.

While consumer industries and highly regulated advertising industries find ways to achieve and maintain profitability, the wheel is being reinvented to fit the new model of society — this wheel being that ever-changing PowerPoint pie chart of advertising tools. In April 2008, Steve’s Med Ad News article “Campaigns with character� discussed how the most memorable pharmaceutical ads build on enduring and iconic imagery that forms the foundation of an integrated campaign. In this article he states, however, that memorable advertisements do not always translate to sales with some of the most-recalled television spots failing to generate a strong return on investment.

Industry experts and bloggers are anticipating the decimation of DTC spending in 2009. The difference between myself, Bob Ehrlich, and John Mack, is that I neither see the DTC glass half full, nor do I view it half empty… Rather, I see ‘creative.’

From the moment I laid eyes on this Weight Watchers’ TV spot, Hungry monster has ceased to exit my mind.

Immediately after seeing Hungry, I played my usual commercial guessing game of ‘which consumer ad agency was it?’ Answer: McCann Erickson, part of McCann Worldgroup.

I regress. There have been so many relatable pharmaceutical icons in campaigns that I have been privy to while on the job and in front of the tube. The familiarity among Hungry, the Nasonex Bee, the Lunesta butterfly, and others is apparent in that they are all unique, relatable, memorable, and easily followed without force.

Maybe it was his naïve ‘cute’ coupled with my cozy sofa, an uber-relaxed state, a good movie, and a bowl of homemade Pasta Primavera. Or, maybe it was the nostalgia factor of a Jim-Henson-like creature burning into my retina before a nap. Either way, Hungry’s TV spot sticks, still. I know for sure that if I were mobile or YouTubing, I would have been half-engaged, in-transit, and dutifully detached from his personality, as well as the aforementioned.

Healthcare advertising agencies will continue to redefine the pie in conjunction with clients’ strategic needs. Stricter regulations are also shaping the future DTC healthcare advertising with an emphasis on education. I anticipate the continuing evolution of pharmaceutical advertising as it potentially shifts away from the comfort of the soft warm den and into the mind of the information-hungry cybernaught. I maintain, however, that a balance among channels is necessary for wholeness, with a continuing artistically human appeal toward consumers’ knowledge, emotions, and logic. Combine these traditional targets with a receptive and relaxed audience, an engaging daytime drama, a plate of Pappa al pomodoro, and Voila!

Tags: creative, DTC advertising