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Consumer ads pull-back for Xenical, Meridia
Hoffmann-La Roche's initial run of newly crafted TV spots for weight-loss drug Xenical has ended. Not necessarily news-TV ads for the one-time would-be blockbuster have come and gone before since the drug's 1999 launch-but this time they may be gone for good.
Meanwhile, the new marketer of competitor Meridia, Abbott Pharmaceuticals, said last month it will halt all direct-to-consumer ads behind its drug.
Turnarounds are rare in drug marketing. Increasingly, with a rapacious Wall Street demanding instant success, marketers are under pressure to successfully launch a blockbuster in the U.S. Any stumble and skeptics will write it off.
Fair or not, Xenical has become sort of a paradigm of how a muchanticipated drug launch can founder and have wide-reaching effects, from less-than-stellar revenue to big layoffs. This spring, Roche let go goo employees in the U.S., including 600 sales reps. And Myron Holubiak, president of marketing arm Roche Laboratories, resigned.
The new campaign, launched in February, doesn't seem to have given the brand a noticeable...