Adland_ Searching for the Meaning of Life on a Branded Planet - James P. Othmer [67]
Once, I briefly worked on an over-the-counter pain-reliever account. In a few short weeks I learned about the difference between ibuprofen and acetaminophen, and acquired the equivalent of a master’s in semantics. It could be argued that in no other environment (scholarly, poetic, political) does a single word get the amount of critical attention that it does in a pharma ad. It is not uncommon for dozens of people gathered around a conference table to be discussing, for an hour, the merits and faults of an adverb.
For instance, one day, while I was presenting some print ads to the creative director, his phone rang. It was the agent for a recently retired baseball pitcher, a future Hall of Famer. The agent said that after giving it some thought, his client, our client’s high-priced spokesperson, was willing to say that the occasional slight lower-back pain he experienced was arthritis.
I briefly worked on one other pharmaceutical account when I was asked to cover for a recently fired creative director on a campaign for a drug that treated something called deep vein thrombosis syndrome, or DVT. The best I could tell, DVT was a real and deadly problem. People who sat in planes or on couches for extended periods without moving were particularly at risk. At the time I was fairly sure I was also about to be referred to as recently fired. My anchor account, KFC, was gone, and we had yet another chief creative officer who had said he wanted to energize the agency with hot young talent, so me and my senior vice president’s salary and billable-hours-free time sheet were feeling particularly vulnerable. And even though I wasn’t completely morally opposed to working on the DVT med business, I knew it was a risk for my reputation and standing within the agency ranks. This is because, although pharma business is incredibly lucrative for agencies, it is mostly considered an unimaginative and unrewarding quagmire—a creative ghetto.
Generally, pharma work at a mainstream agency (there are many solid agencies that specialize in pharmaceutical ads) is often given to a creative team that is willing to take a lot of shit and probably is not considered “hot” or terribly creative at the time. More often than not, they’re older, without an account to bill their hours against, and near the end of the line. So I spent a week working with an art director and seventy-five lawyers trying to settle on legally acceptable copy to accompany the visual of a digital ball of flame coursing heart-bound through the veins of unsuspecting, recumbent humans. On couches. In airplane seats. On park benches. At one point I suggested an electric chair but was told with a straight face by a junior account person half my age that this would be too distracting. It would take attention away from the solution.
Thankfully, something happened beyond my control (FDA intervention? a new strategy? or perhaps they realized I was completely incapable of taking this seriously), and my tour of duty on the pharma front came to an end.
In short order, during this evening’s NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams, there are ads for ED (erectile dysfunction [X 3 = 382]), arthritis (383), depression (X 2 = 385), allergies (386), and (prostate-related) weak urine stream syndrome (WUSS! [387]).
Several times in the past few years I made the mistake of asking my daughter to watch the evening news with me. I thought it would enlighten and educate her, but usually it just embarrassed me. I’m no prude, but do I really need to hear endless talk about boner pills, genital herpes, clinical depression, birth control, and leakage of the bladder, anus, and other orifices at 6:30 p.m.,