Takeda's Rozerem ads needed a drastic rewrite. One of the company's top U.S. ads uses a beaver and Lincoln as images, but a previous ad used images of school kids, blackboards and a school bus. Although the ads clearly targeted worried and overworked parents in need of a good night's sleep, they indirectly appeared to suggest that the drug could also be used to treat children.
That ad earned the Japanese pharma company's U.S. division "first place" in consumer abuse, at an international congress of consumer groups which is meeting in Sydney.
Also cited were Coca-Cola for rebottling some U.K. tap water as Dasani , Kellogg's for its sugary kids' cereals, and Mattel for failing to discover, in time, that many of its toys were defective and contained high levels of lead. For more information, click here.
Perhaps Takeda's own inhouse marketing department at HQ in Japan could have devised a simpler, more direct sell. For an example from the 1990s, for an energy drink, click here.
AMS
