In a move that market analysts hope will save Christmas for the pharmaceutical industry, American drug giant Pfizer has launched a new marketing campaign this month to promote Heroin™, the company’s revolutionary new “wellness” drug.
Pfizer’s first ad, aired during a particularly painful recent episode of Joan of Arcadia, opted for stark minimalism, featuring a still shot of a satisfied Heroin™ customer, slumped over a very clean toilet, married with the slogan “Heroin™: The Other White Powder.” In addition to establishing their brand in the marketplace, this first ad served to differentiate Pfizer’s new product from rival Glaxo-Wellcome’s Angel Dust™.
Other early ads, run during football games, select MTV programs, and really sad chick flicks, have also been deliberately vague, aiming to raise brand awareness without mentioning the medication’s effects, enabling Pfizer to sidestep governmental regulations requiring pharmaceutical ads to disclose all of a drug’s side-effects. This tactic is especially shrewd with a product like Heroin™, since it’s tough to find a nice way to say “back-alley cocksuck” or “deadly constipation.”
While some consumer advocates have complained in the past that such direct-to-consumer marketing is predatory and harmful, drug companies like Pfizer argue that it’s actually very profitable.
“When there’s just some spaghetti-spined M.D. standing between customers and our products, consumer education becomes more important than ever,” contends Pfizer spokesperson Dennis Tanner. “Consumers shouldn’t have to trust that some kooky doctor is looking out for their best interest. They need a name they can trust, like Pfizer.”
Heroin™ is being marketed as a revolutionary “wellness” drug; one that Pfizer claims will “knock aspirin on its ass” and “make Prozac look like dogshit.” Rather than prescribing numerous non-Pfizer drugs to treat an array of patient maladies, the pharmaceutical giant hopes doctors will turn to their new wellness drug as a cure-all, one that leaves patients with a euphoric sensation of well-being, regardless of whether they are suffering from general anxiety, cancer, or baldness.
“That’s the miracle of Heroin™,” explained Tanner. “It doesn’t matter what’s wrong with you. From erectile dysfunction to agoraphobia, Heroin™ makes it all better.”
Due to FDA hang-ups regarding such a revolutionary new treatment, Pfizer has opted to avoid the usual years of getting-monkeys-high testing usually necessary to release a new drug. Instead, the drug giant has followed the lead of Merck’s Crack™ and AstraZeneca’s LSD™ by bypassing the usual established network of doctors and pharmacists, and is offering the drug through a network of authorized Pfizer representatives nationwide.
“Heroin™ will not be available in stores, but instead through a special network of independent distributors. It’s sort of like Amway,” claims the company’s latest ad. “Ask your dealer about Heroin™.”