A survey done by IAG Research shows that the brands that make it into the top tier are current or extensions of current campaigns. "It's a pivotal time in pharma advertising," says Fariba Zamaniyan, SVP/healthcare practice for IAG.

"Several years ago, the types of ads that were on the air were fragments and not part of any unique creative concepts," she tells Marketing Daily. "There's been an evolution in direct-to-consumer advertising. Now, you see the embodiment of traditional advertising initiatives."

Zamaniyan cited advertising for the Gardasil vaccine against cervical cancer as having "very strong creative concepts that have been very successful in leveraging from the basic or core creative concepts." In the ads, women of all ages and backgrounds talk about the product while some of them repeat the theme line: "I want to be one less [victim]."

The Top 5 most-recalled ads were for Schering-Plough's Nasonex, Takeda's Rozerem, Merck/Schering-Plough's Vytorin, Pfizer's Lipitor and Pfizer's Chantix.

Zamaniyan remarked that the ads for Vytorin, now pulled from the airwaves after a study revealed that the product did not work as advertised, "did a fabulous job of building a consumer communications strategy."

In them, food products were twinned with portraits of relatives as in tuna casserole with peas and "your Aunt Louise." At the end of the day, says the IAG executive, the ads were "cleverly constructed."

The list of ads ranking above the average, she says, is "the best of the best that we've ever had."

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