December 19, 1997
Merck Readies a Media Blitz
For Its New Baldness Drug
By ROBERT LANGRETH
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Merck & Co. has its biggest marketing guns aimed at the heads of American
men.
Merck's Propecia, the first prescription tablet for treating male baldness, is
expected to get government approval for marketing any day now. The Food
and Drug Administration faces a deadline Friday to take some action on
Propecia's marketing application, although approval may be delayed for
several weeks while the FDA and Merck negotiate the final details of the
drug's labeling.
Merck is banking heavily on the success of
Propecia. The company needs new revenue
sources to offset an upcoming wave of patent
expirations in its drugs for lowering blood
pressure and cholesterol.
Thus, flush with cash from its traditional
prescription-drug business and anticipating Propecia's imminent release,
Merck is readying an unusually aggressive consumer campaign. The ads are
expected not only to promote the product's benefits but to counter its
significant hurdles. High on the list: a small but real risk that the drug will
cause reduced sexual desire or partial impotence.
Merck has hired the high-powered advertising agency of Young & Rubicam to
create print and television commercials, which analysts speculate will include
provocative "before and after" photographs of patients who have grown healthy
thatches of hair on the top of their heads.
Since Propecia isn't effective until it has been taken daily for several months
and must be taken indefinitely to retain its benefits, Merck's marketing efforts
will also include a "retention" campaign designed to keep patients on the drug
for the long term. Toward that end, Merck will also sell the drug in three
packs containing a three-month supply costing about $150 with a $10 mail-in
rebate.
The drug's packaging will be more "consumer friendly" than traditional
prescription pills. Merck says it will package the tablets in opaque white
bottles with a label dominated by a stylized "P."
Merck's marketers are also expected to emphasize the product as preventing
or retarding hair loss, rather than raising expectations too high by saying the
product grows hair.
Propecia's potential market is huge. Some 35 million American men suffer
from hair loss and now spend about $900 million a year on a wide variety of
hair-growth products and treatments. Indeed, whatever Propecia's drawbacks
may be, the possibility of combating one of the most common signs of aging
in a culture addicted to youthfulness has some analysts predicting that
Propecia will become one of the pharmaceutical industry's most successful
drugs. Jack Lamberton of NatWest Securities Corp. is forecasting peak sales
of $1.5 billion to $2 billion a year.
Analyst David Maris of Aros Securities believes doctors may cash in on the
demand for the drug by opening storefront clinics to cater to balding men,
much in the way diet doctors created walk-in centers to peddle "fen-phen,"
the prescription diet-drug combination that has been linked to heart-valve
problems.
Propecia is the same chemical ingredient, in a lower dosage, contained in
Merck's Proscar, a medicine for treating enlarged prostates. Generically
called finasteride, the drug works by shutting down an enzyme needed to
produce the male hormone dyhydrotestosterone, which promotes prostate
growth. The enzyme is also present in the scalp, and male pattern baldness
is rare in men with low levels of this enzyme.
First marketed in 1992, Proscar was expected to become a billion-dollar
blockbuster but only had sales of $450 million last year. As Merck tries to
resurrect the drug as Propecia (from alopecia, the medical term for baldness),
pessimists doubt that a new name, dosage and use will have much effect.
"This may catch on early," predicts Leonard Aronovitz, a hair-transplant
specialist in Michigan. "But I don't know how they are going to convince
people to take this drug once a day for years. That's hard to do [even] when
you are trying to treat a serious disease like asthma."
It is also hard to do when the end results are many levels below miraculous.
Merck told a Food and Drug Administration panel of scientific advisers last
month that in tests in more than 1,400 patients, 50% of those who took the
drug for a year showed some hair gain in before-and-after photos, compared
with just 7% of those on a placebo.
After two years, 66% of those on the drug showed some hair gain, compared
with 7% on a placebo. But the improvement is modest: On average, patients
on the drug for a year gained 80-90 hairs in a 1-inch circle at the top of the
head, in addition to the 850 or so they already had.
FDA advisers agreed that the drug worked -- at least for treating hair loss at
the top of the head. Some advisers said data weren't conclusive for treating
receding hairlines, and it wasn't clear if the drug would work in men over the
age of 41. The panel also had concerns about safety -- particularly whether
the drug can reduce sperm count in some patients or whether it may hide
early signs of prostate cancer.
As Merck prepares for the launch of Propecia, it can't help but be mindful of
rival Pharmacia & Upjohn Inc.'s experience selling its topical baldness drug,
Rogaine. When Rogaine was available only by prescription, it garnered a
scant 400,000 users, resulting in sales of about $100 million a year, about
10% of what some analysts had expected.
Rogaine's usage has soared since it became an over-the-counter medication,
with over 2.5 million men and women spending about $162 million annually on
the drug. Pharmacia & Upjohn also hopes to head off competition from
Propecia with a new extra-strength version of Rogaine, which will be marketed
by sports stars like basketball player Karl Malone.
Merck's planned campaign must overcome considerable resistance. "Half the
people I speak with at seminars have heard [the drug may cause impotence]
and won't touch it," says William Rassman, a physician and founder of New
Hair Institute, a chain of hair-transplant clinics based in Los Angeles.
Nevertheless, he says the drug appears fairly safe and he plans to try it on
some patients.
Aros Securities' Mr. Maris, more confident, sees it this way: "You shouldn't
underestimate male vanity."
Return to top of page
Copyright c 1997 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. |
