If unemployment has you down, Viagra wants to help

This a total cheap shot headline but – of course – I had to go for it. The actual marketing effort from Pfizer is a remarkably cool thing for the company to do.

The world’s biggest drugmaker will provide more than 70 of its prescription drugs at no cost to unemployed, uninsured Americans, regardless of their prior income, who lost jobs since Jan. 1 and have been on the Pfizer drug for three months or more.

The drugs to be given away include covered include several diabetes medications and top money makers like  Lipitor, Celebrex, Lyrica and Viagra. It also includes antibiotics, antidepressants, antifungal treatments, several heart drugs, contraceptives and smoking cessation products. The company says it doesn’t know how much the program will cost and hasn’t put a cap on spending for it. Last year the company made $8 billion profit on $48 billion in revenue.

Advertisement

Viagra — it’s not just for mammals anymore

Viagra truly is a wonder drug — and not just for humans. First it rescued us from the horror of jet-lagged hamsters. Now comes word that it does wonders for bivalves … or at least their marketing. Some Aussie is feeding the stuff to oysters and claims that the result is a super-aphrodisiac.

“First of all, oysters are the greatest natural aphrodisiac, second, you lace it with Viagra, and third, it’s a laugh,” said George May.

Until he came down with prostrate cancer Mr. May was — no surprise — a marketing exec. You can tell he’s an Aussie marketing exec because he was honest enough to say, “it’s a laugh.” He faces only two problems with his new product: 1) He can’t sell his oysters in Australia because they contravene strict regulations; and 2) Pfizer won’t let him use the V word in his marketing.

May now has some 10 million oysters in cultivation and says he eats one to two dozen each day without any ill effects of consuming a foodstuff containing some medication.

But what kind of pearls do you get from them?

Great corporate weasel words: When in doubt blame ED or Elvis

1. Bob Dole's favorite malady, erectile dysfunction, is to blame for GM getting all limp. At least that's how I interprest the fact that GM decided to announce that it has to spend $17M a year on Viagra, Cialis and other erectile dysfunction drugs. While the company does cop to the fact that's a small fraction of GM's overall health care costs ($5B last year) "company executives often use the example to illustrate what they said are out-of-control health care costs," according to the AP. Best line in the story: "Ford Motor Co. declined to say how much it spends on erectile dysfunction drugs, and a spokesman for DaimlerChrysler AG's Chrysler Group could not provide figures." You can blame the ED or you can blame the fact that you've made a lot of crappy cars. You decide.
2. The King is blamed, long live the King. Execs as the UK bakery Kingsmill would like us to believe that an ad campaign — featuring Elvis Presley, no less — is why they lost a third of their market share. The campaign was a tongue-in-cheek one built around the fact that on his one brief stop in the UK, Elvis ate some the company's bread and therefore the bread is made "By Appointment To The King." Kinda clever actually. Best line of the story: "Analysts said that Kingsmill had lost about a third of its market share to Hovis and Warburtons because of the advert and production issues." AND: "The problems come after the loss of [parent company] Allied’s deal to supply Asda with own-label bread after a dispute with the supermarket group." While "critics" blasted the ads as some sort of sacrilegious thing, I think the only way a campaign could kill a third of your market share is if it made joking reference to Hitler. After all, Starbucks was recently endorsed by Chinese dictator, er, president Hu Jintao and it doesn't seem to have hurt them.