THE TRACKER: Drug Product Placements Flying Under FDA's Radar

- Jim Edwards

IN a recent episode of NBC's Scrubs, Hooch, an occasional character, appeared in the hospital clutching a white medical clipboard with a logo on the back for the contraceptive brand NuvaRing.

The placement was a subtle one. "The characters have usually used a silver-finish clipboard," said Michelle Miko, who operates a Scrubs fan site (Scrubs.mopnt.com), but the logo was "clearly visible for about 10 collective seconds."

The move raises a question: Is prescription drug product placement—an area in which marketers are increasingly interested—legal?

The answer is unclear. The Food and Drug Administration has no specific rules on it, and its officials declined to comment.

Generally, FDA rules require that drug companies give a balanced account of benefits and side effects in their ads.

However, "in a product placement, that just isn't going to work," said Peter Hutt, a former general counsel to the FDA and now a partner at Covington & Burlington, Washington. The FDA does allow so-called "reminder" ads that only mention the brand and no other information. Hutt said a mere name-showing might therefore be legal.

NuvaRing—owned by Organon USA of Roseland, N.J.—was not mentioned in Scrubs, merely seen as a logo. Nicholas Hart, Organon senior director for contraception, said he believed the deal was well within the FDA rules. "We're held to a higher standard" than non-drug brands, he said.

NuvaRing appeared 11 times in that episode, mainly in the form of posters in the background. The placements earned NuvaRing fourth place for most-seen prescription drug brands on prime time network TV this year. NuvaRing also has been placed in CBS' The King of Queens, Hart said, and Organon is in negotiations with other shows. "We continue to do it because we think it's valuable."

The company is not alone.

Pfizer staffers have also discussed—but not executed—product placements for their prescription brands, according to a Pfizer agency which is actively placing an unnamed Pfizer over-the-counter brand in TV shows and movies in Canada.

And Sanofi-Aventis, maker of the sleep drug Ambien, bought an in-program sponsorship on Court TV's The Takedown this summer.

There were 166 mentions of prescription drug brands through Oct. 18 of this year, according to Nielsen Product Placement. The top three were Botox, Viagra, and Prozac, which tend to get incidental unpaid mentions as punch lines.

The FDA is currently reviewing all promotional activity following calls by medical and activist groups for a total ban on the direct-to-consumer promotion of prescription drugs. But product placement is not on the review's published agenda.

It is, however, a sensitive issue among marketers themselves. A Johnson & Johnson exec earlier this year suggested at a conference that placement was something marketers should look at, but then immediately backed off that statement.

Generally, marketers assume that a mere brand showing won't require a listing of side effects. "If we make any sort of claim . . . then I have to go talk about the side effects," thus no claims are made, said Hart.

Movie plots do sometimes turn on drug efficacy, however. In 2003's Something's Gotta Give, Pfizer brands Viagra, Lipitor and Procardia were all used by Jack Nicholson's aging playboy character, Harry, who had an active sex life and a heart problem. Elsewhere in the movie, Harry's assistant procures him McNeil's Tylenol for a headache. The shout-outs were so prominent that some viewers simply assumed they were placements. ("Viagra gets mentioned so many times in this movie you figure there had to be some advertising money from Pfizer put into the movie," wrote one armchair critic on Epinions.com.) Both Pfizer and McNeil said they had nothing to do with those mentions.

Pfizer's OTC Nicorette gum was placed by Vancouver agency PropStar into Bravo Canada sitcom Godiva's (which revolves around the waitstaff in a restaurant) and a CTV drama called Eleventh Hour (in which one character uses Nicorette to give up smoking). Packs also have appeared in the Wesley Snipes vampire movie Blade Trinity. (Pfizer owns Nicorette in Canada but not in the U.S.)

"We've had talks with some of the other Pfizer brands that have prescription products and we haven't yet embarked on a campaign for them," said Nancie Tear, PropStar's founder.

Tear is hoping to expand her relationship with Pfizer. "We had started to talk to the prescription side and basically both of us needed to go away and understand" what the rules and possibilities—if any—might have been, Tear said. Those discussions are currently in limbo, she added.

A representative for Pfizer in New York strenuously denied the company intended to do any product placement.

Last year, Pfizer engaged the William Morris Agency for six months to explore "entertainment marketing opportunities," according to The Wall Street Journal (Sept. 2, 2004). The experiment came to nothing: "We're not looking at it," said Pfizer rep Michal Fishman. Product placement "was not the nature of the relationship," he said. "Our relationship has been terminated with them for quite some time now. It was a six-month experiment . . . and that's all it was."

E-mail: jedwards@brandweek.com