• by George Simpson , Featured Contributor, April 29, 2004

When tobacco and technology advertising went south, the OTC and prescription drug industry rode in like the financial cavalry to replace media company revenue. What could be sweeter for publications than advertisers that bought a page to do some nasal/anal/digestive/erectile/orthopedic branding, then had to buy another page to explain all the potential side effects and conflicts with other conditions and medications.

It wasn't long before prescription drug makers discovered they could use television to get consumers to badger their physicians for specific branded medications. Like the trips to "medical education" seminars in Rio and "consulting fees" weren't pressure enough on the doctors to pound out page after page of script.

But, because of an amusing federal regulation that says if you reveal to the consumer what the drug does, you also have to reveal the potential side effects, drug makers have produced perhaps the most obscure body of TV messaging in advertising history.

Your TV doesn't have to be on long before you are confronted by indescribably happy people doing really fun things, usually with similarly- attractive family members, in perfect weather, in picturebook backyards where clearly no one has irritable bowels or needs a bone marrow transplant. They look like their Orange Sunshine has peaked and they can sit back and cruise through six more hours of the Moody Blues and super hero comic books. Or, you begin to wonder which one is infected with the virus released on "24" and will start spewing the symptomatic bloody nose first.

If the drug makers are introducing a new brand and don't want to gross you out with warnings about anal leakage or four hour erections, they simply don't tell you what the product does or why you should ever take it. Their only advice is a solemn "Ask your doctor." I, for one, am tired of asking my doctor if I need some medication I saw on TV, only to have him retort, "Well, only if your menstrual periods are starting to bother you."

Of course the most fun you can have with your clothes on is seeing how creative agencies can be trying to signal that their drug can produce better hard-ons than the other drug. Geez, I'd take the drug just to be able to toss a football through a swinging tire (unless of course my aim was off because I had a stiffie.) The guy strutting through the office collecting admiring looks from co-workers either has a massive erection just below the screen or in reality just told his boss he was leaving this sweat shop for twice the salary across the street. Either has to be admired.

The guys jumping around because they finally got some action after apparently years of inability to perform could also be jubilant because it was their secretary who gave it up instead of their wives who long ago gave up on them.

The ad showing a man and a woman side by side, relaxing in matching but separate bathtubs makes you wonder if the woman isn't saying, "Let me know when you get it up and we'll take our wrinkly skin into the bedroom." It is clear that neither tub is large enough for bath sex. Not to mention that somebody has to have his or her back jammed up against the facet.

Who is the genius who thought up the idea of eating carpet tacks to symbolize indigestion? Or a good looking woman taking a pratfall to indicate bad cholesterol? And just how close to a bathroom does that golfer think she's going to get before her gotta go, already went?

However, nothing amuses me more than the world's fastest talkers reciting potential side effects that are so horrifying that I don't care what color the pill is or how long my erection can last, I'm not risking being part of that "2% in a clinical study" who experience nausea, diarrhea or heart attacks associated with the drug.

Unless of course I can get the attention of that secretary.