Ever wonder why drug ads don't say what the medication does? If they did, there'd be no room for the ad itself.
Though many agencies and clients struggle with getting timely advertising created and approved within regulated industries, few have to contend with the pharmaceutical industry's issues -- or fair balance.
What is fair balance? According to FDA regulations, if a pharmaceutical company promotes the medical condition that a specific brand treats, they are legally obligated to outline all possible side effects of the drug. To combat these legal regulations, many companies run ads that show the brand name but never reveal the actual condition or disease the brand treats.
It’s been a source of a tremendous amount of comic material, especially on television commercials. Often times, consumers cannot tell what a specific drug is supposed to treat. What do two people dancing and hiking have to do with treating herpes? Many :60 spots tout “See our ad in Shape Magazine” to skirt issues of revealing unappealing side effects.
In the online world, imagine the challenge of creating a 468X60 that includes the brand, the indication and fair balance. Expandable banners have been indispensable in helping advertising agencies deal with fair balance concerns. Online agencies use technologies such as PointRoll to include the vast fair balance language in a banner available to any user who chooses to initiate the content. Expanding ads can be more impactful, as agencies can include the indication, the brand, and the required fair balance language. Having the brand and indication in the ad is valuable even if not everyone clicks on the ad.
Fair Balance regulations are in place to protect and educate consumers, but fair balance has some unintended side effects for online marketers.
1. Timing: One of the greatest challenges agencies and pharma clients face is getting advertising online in a timely manner. Once an agency and a client agree to a creative concept, they still have to make sure that all creative (including text links and copy) are approved by a pharmaceutical company’s in-house medical/legal review team. Getting copy through legal review is an arduous task. Depending on a client’s medical/legal review team, and the number of brands in the queue, creative can languish in legal review for many months.
2. Moot Planning: Imagine the challenges media departments face trying to hold onto valuable inventory over the duration of legal review. As legal delays go on, a planner is faced with an increasingly irrelevant media plan each day. This is often hard on publishers too -- trying to manage inventory in light of huge legal delays.
3. Estimating Fees: Once the creative is (finally!) approved by the medical/legal review team, clients naturally want to see their ads go live immediately. This poses a significant challenge for agencies. Suddenly, they have to re-plan their entire buy to reflect the current marketplace. This one issue alone makes it very difficult for agencies to accurately predict fees if the legal review process is unknown. Re-planning media plans multiple times takes time and money, and this additional expense can eat up media budgets with fees. As many online agencies know, keeping a reasonable fee to media budget can be challenging with extensive legal delays and tweaks.
So what are the solutions? My recommended best practices are straightforward:
1. Press clients to get real turn-around times from legal. Factor in these timelines (with buffers) when scoping out work and fees.
2. Get to know the brand team’s legal department and make sure they understand online. The more the legal departments understand the online market place, the faster the copy/creative can get approved.
3. Be honest with vendors. Media planners need to be straight-forward with vendors about delays and the potential of creative delays. Media planners can also look to add buffers in their plans to factor in unforeseen legal delays.
4. Educate clients about how legal delays bottleneck work in the agencies. If all the balls are up at he same time, there is a greater chance one will drop.
5. Go with the client to present your creative to the medical/legal review teams. When this is acceptable to the client, it will usually increase the speed of getting creative approved.
Working on pharma campaigns can be very challenging and exciting, especially when promoting brands that offer consumers new and improved choices in managing their health and chronic conditions. It is my hope that these tips will help you provide the most value for your clients.
Debrianna Obara is Media Director for i-FRONTIER, an aQuantive company. i-FRONTIER is ranked among the top 100 interactive agencies by AdAge, AdWeek and Media Magazine, and has been honored with numerous awards from groups including AdAge, Cannes, Deloitte & Touche, PricewaterhouseCoopers, American Advertising Federation, KPMG and others.