Dear Celebrex,
After the whole Vioxx fiasco, I understand that you have to be very clear with consumers about how your product just may kill them. That being said, I don’t think an entire commercial of fine print is the way to go. While most ads show happy people feeling better with a blurb about horrific side effects towards the end, your entire animated ad is nothing but over two minutes (YES, OVER TWO MINUTES) of explaining the multitude of risks. Let’s have a watch:
I don’t have arthritis, so I don’t know how bad it sucks, but all of those side effects (like dying) sound a whole lot worse.
The laundry list of things to worry about includes:
Not to mention, it’s incredibly boring. Your best bets are to A) hire a new media planner and B) maybe lay off the advertising until something fresh has come out of R&D.
Cheers,
K
PS - I’m not saying you should hide the risks (see: Vioxx), but what I am saying is that a product with so many risks may need to rethink advertising until it is a bit safer.
PPS - I’m still not entirely sure this isn’t some sort of punishment from the FTC. That’s actually the best explanation I can come up with for this trainwreck…
[...] have written about fine print in pharmaceutical and financial advertising - both industries where one would expect fine print - and now I write [...]