Warning: not all direct-to-consumer advertisers will experience the same results.

Often, those in hospitals and health systems who are looking for a quick fix to a business challenge such as outmigration or dropping market share will call for increased consumer advertising, arguing in part by pointing toward how pharmaceutical companies have gained success over the past decade advertising direct to consumers. The prevailing wisdom has been that given the mass amounts of money spent on this strategy ($4.7 billion in 2008, according to TNS Media Intelligence) and the ongoing complaints of physicians dealing with this phenomenon, drug companies must have been wildly successful with this tactic. But a study cited in this week’s BusinessWeek article titled “Ask Your Doctor If This Ad Is Right for You” throws some cold water on the notion that direct-to-consumer advertising has been successful for drug companies.

According to the article, market research firm Verilogue recorded 12,500 patient-physician conversations in 2008, and in only 23 instances did they find a patient making a specific request for a drug by name. That’s a .0018% success rate for those of you counting. What makes this study legit is that rather than asking consumers how the ads impacted them (and as we’ve discussed before, it’s hard to trust those answers), they used ethnography to study the actual behavior of consumers. Undoubtedly even more troubling for pharmaceutical marketers, the research showed that when drugs were mentioned specifically by name, it was often to inquire about those nasty side effects. For example, popular sleep aid Ambien (one of my favs!), was “often remembered for side effects like hallucinations, sleep eating and other problems.” Not surprising, given how much time/print-space must be given in drug ads to outline all possible side effects (nothing better than hearing about a new drug for helping to cure stomach discomfort that has a potential side effect of causing stomach aches). Perhaps the negative impressions generated by the side-effect content helps explain how Ambien sales declined 37% last year, despite a $151 million in direct-to-consumer advertising.

Putting aside the fact that selling drugs is a completely different business than selling hospital services, what can hospital marketers learn from this?

For one, it gives more ammo to the philosophy that the impact of “old” marketing, or “above the line” marketing (defined as paid mass media advertising) is waning (see great discussion on that topic from last week on our blog). Perhaps more importantly, it goes to show that marketing healthcare products and services is rarely as simple or direct as promoting other products where consumers can react immediately to a message. (Though it would be fair to say there are likely other studies showing how these drug ad strategies are having an impact, or at least did).

But maybe the best lesson is that this study reinforces one of our favorite mantras: just because other organizations are pursuing a marketing strategy doesn’t make it right for you, or, for that matter, doesn’t mean it’s effective at all. As we’ve stated before, healthcare providers are notorious for driving marketing strategies based on what they see others in their market doing, whether it’s featuring a physician on a billboard or running a print ad touting the latest award. But if much of what is being done in hospital marketing is based on outdated philosophies or ineffective strategies (which, in our humble opinion, much of hospital marketing is), then the last thing you’d want to do is copy what the other guy is doing. With this study showing the ineffectiveness of direct-to-consumer pharma ads, healthcare marketers have one more piece of evidence backing that contention.