- Jim Edwards

Prescription drug marketers are embracing a staple of packaged goods marketing: the brand extension.

Having only been allowed to market to consumers since 1987, the drug industry tends to be a step behind its packaged goods brethren. Until recently, most pharma brands were simple to promote: Ambien puts you to sleep, Lipitor lowers cholesterol and so on.

Now a new class of so-called "Swiss Army Knife drugs" has emerged that treat an array of oft-unrelated ills. They include Centocor's Remicade, Abbott Labs' Humira, Pfizer's Lyrica, Amgen's Enbrel and Eli Lilly's Cymbalta. The same pill can treat conditions as varied as depression or diabetic nerve pain.

The challenge is to advertise a single brand to multiple and completely separate patient groups. It's an art that packaged goods companies mastered long ago: Mr. Clean washes floors as well as cars and Special K is both a cereal and a "protein water."

With drugs, the job is harder because patients' brand loyalties won't transfer from disease to disease. So drug companies are developing campaigns that range from all-encompassing umbrella brand campaigns to strictly segmented and targeted efforts with minimal crossover. Some examples:

*Cymbalta is approved for depression, diabetic nerve pain and fibromylagia. Ads have so far focused on the former, with the theme, "Depression hurts." The ads feature sobering, shadowy vignettes in which depressed people sit slumped in chairs, ignoring their surroundings, while family members look on in bewilderment. The company's marketing team, led by Jacopo Leonardi, Lilly's U.S. Cymbalta brand leader, is now figuring out how to add on messages for pain. "How do we best speak to them specifically?" is the issue, Leonardi said. "We¹re not trying to build two different brands."

Amber Benson Link, group strategy director at IMC2 in Dallas, which handles the interactive side, said the choice is to have a megabrand or a mood campaign or a pain campaign: "For me, it's a hybrid solution. Cymbalta is going to be synonymous with something the way Febreze is synonymous with freshness."

The strategy will likely be governed by an "hourglass" structure: While the campaign may reach broadly and garner interest from all potential Cymbalta patients, ultimately those patients will be funneled toward an 800 number or Cymbalta.com. At that narrow point, the site re-segments them again and sends them out to the correct channel for their disease. Therein lies the risk of confusing the marketplace: the company wants to avoid patients with one problem thinking Cymbalta treats something else. "You've got to manage your credibility in the marketplace," Link said.

*Abbott's Humira addresses multiple indications: rheumatoid arthritis, ankylosing spondylitis (a spine condition) and Crohn's disease, and all are caused by chronic inflammation from an autoimmune condition. But the company has taken a much more segmented line than Lilly. "We do market them to the different patient groups, there¹s not one overall Humira," said Abbott rep Raquel Powers. "We do specific TV to Crohn¹s disease and arthritis." Abbott also has an hourglass structure in its campaign. The different ads "all point to Humira.com, but within that Web site there's different pages. We do try to keep consistent that way, the look and feel [of all the material] is similar, but then the language is different."

*Pfizer's Lyrica addresses fibromylagia and diabetic nerve pain. One TV campaign talks about the former while an unbranded TV and print campaign discusses diabetic nerve pain and fibromylagia. The brand has a consistent logo across all communications, but it doesn't have a tagline. Angela Hwang, Pfizer's senior director/group leader for Lyrica, added that although she did not use a CPG approach to her brand, "We have a lot of internal experts who come from that background."

One of the most innovative approaches was taken by Centocor for Remicade, which last year toured a free documentary in movie theaters titled Inner State about three people who suffer from Crohn's, rheumatoid arthritis and ankylosing spondylitis. One is a race car driver, another a country singer and the third is a restaurant manager. The film was unadvertised, relying on word-of-mouth and does not mention the brand or the company. "The documentary style provided an effective way to provide a broad range of information when it comes to such complex inflammatory diseases for many different audiences," said a Centocor rep.