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Cialis
February 08, 2004
Believe it or not, erectile
dysfunction used to be a taboo topic. Now
it is so thoroughly a part of public discourse
that it's possible to hold water-cooler debates
over the Super Bowl ads of competing impotence
treatments. This is the environment in which
Cialis, a Viagra
competitor and a joint venture of Eli Lilly
and Icos, made its debut in the United States.
While new here -- it was approved for use in
November, and advertising to consumers began
in January -- Cialis has been on the market
for about a year in Europe, and it's worth taking
seriously because in that short time it has
captured 16 to 35 percent of the major markets
there. That early success may be either a result
of scrupulous positioning by its makers and
marketers or of vaguely salacious positioning
by the media and the marketplace itself. Or
both.
The selling point of Cialis (pronounced see-AL-us)
is that it stays in the bloodstream longer.
According to the company, in fact, its effects
last 36 hours, which would be about six or seven
times longer than Viagra and Levitra. (As with
any prescription drug, there are a lot of caveats
about who should be taking what and how individual
results may vary; as the saying goes, ask your
doctor.) It's a matter of coincidence that the
Federal Drug Administration approved Cialis
just in time for the run-up to Valentine's Day:
the drug, its marketers say, is all about romance.
Instead of tough sports stars or anything echoing
Levitra's ad of a man hurling a football through
a tire swing, the first set of 15-second ''awareness''
TV spots for Cialis
features slow, jazzy guitar music on the soundtrack.
A middle-aged man and woman sit side by side
in outdoor bathtubs, facing a smoldering sunset.
The tag line: ''Are you ready?''
The winking nature of that line notwithstanding,
the idea is to link the drug to committed couples,
according to Matt Beebe, brand manager of Lilly
Icos. After all, he says, the average man who
uses an erectile dysfunction product is 55 and
in a monogamous long-term relationship. Consumer
research found that such men and their partners
were stressed out about planning for a drug
that lasts five or six hours and were attracted
to the flexibility of a 36-hour time frame.
So the couple-focused campaign, Beebe says,
''is all about this relaxing moment -- it could
be a funny moment, a silly moment. Any moment
in a couple's time together could turn into
the right moment.''
In Europe, regulations rule out the marketing
of drugs directly to consumers by way of ads.
So Lilly Icos has sponsored radio talk shows
about men's health issues, as well as a Feb.
7 concert for an audience of about 150 couples,
featuring the tenor Jose Carreras and Blondie's
Debbie Harry performing duets. But the drug
has also relied on publicity and word of mouth
in those strictly regulated markets, and because
of its (cialis) 36-hour duration
duration, it has received a lot of each. Most
notable is its unofficial nickname: the weekender
or, even better, le weekender. This calls to
mind not a monogamous long-term relationship
but rather a macho swinger or a movie on an
adult pay-per-view channel menu.
And while Cialis's American marketers may not
openly embrace that term, they are not exactly
running from it. On one hand, they emphasize
that E.D. is a ''devastating disease,'' that
treatments for it are not mere ''lifestyle drugs''
and that talk of ''recreational'' use trivializes
a serious issue. On the other hand, Newsweek
recently reported that Lilly Icos has sent press
kits to late-night talk-show hosts and that
its public relations team is meeting with sitcom
writers.
Egging on professional makers of off-color
remarks would seem to work against the dignity
of the official Cialis story. But the European
lesson of le weekender is that while a good,
memorable and somewhat leering nickname might
not be the best thing to use in an ad, it doesn't
exactly hurt in the real world. Beebe says the
nickname originated in a French media report;
it so happens that Cialis has 35 percent of
the erectile dysfunction market in France --
its biggest share in any country in Europe.
So if a strategy of public dignity and whispered
innuendo might help Cialis get a similar chunk
of the significantly larger U.S. market, well,
que sera, sera.
source:-http://www.nytimes.com
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