Pharmaceutical advertising

This Best Practice paper looks at the issues involved in advertising pharmaceuticals, especially to Western consumers.

Pharmaceutical advertising

Communicating effectively with doctors and consumers

Advertising for pharmaceuticals is complex, and intimately tied into domestic regulations in individual countries, which vary quite widely in their detail, even within the supposedly harmonised markets of the EU.

The primary distinction affecting the market is between prescription-only products and those sold over the counter (OTC) to the public. OTC medicines can be advertised, but are subject to tighter regulation than most product categories. Prescription-only products can be advertised direct to consumers (DTC) only in the US.

However, first in the US, before the DTC regulations were loosened by...

Not a subscriber?

Schedule your live demo with our team today

WARC helps you to plan, create and deliver more effective marketing

  • Prove your case and back-up your idea

  • Get expert guidance on strategic challenges

  • Tackle current and emerging marketing themes

We’re long-term subscribers to WARC and it’s a tool we use extensively. We use it to source case studies and best practice for the purposes of internal training, as well as for putting persuasive cases to clients. In compiling a recent case for long-term, sustained investment in brand, we were able to support key marketing principles with numerous case studies sourced from WARC. It helped bring what could have been a relatively dry deck to life with recognisable brand successes from across a broad number of categories. It’s incredibly efficient to have such a wealth of insight in one place.

Insights Team
Bray Leino

You’re in good company

We work with 80% of Forbes' most valuable brands* and 80% of the world's top top-of-the-class agencies.

* Top 10 brands