26 June 2000

By JAMES S. BOURNE.

HEALTHCARE - VIAGRA - Where to now for Viagra? Viagra is the blockbuster drug to end all blockbuster drugs - but what happens now that there's the prospect of some competition? James S. Bourne takes a look at the PR strategies of Pfizer and a host of newcomers in a soon-to-be competitive market.

Since Pfizer introduced it in 1998 as the first pill for erectile dysfunction (ED), Viagra has pretty much owned the market, swamping competitors while it popularized ED as a euphemism for the barely whisperable 'impotence.'

But all honeymoons must end. If the FDA acts as expected, by next week a second, reportedly faster-acting oral medication, Uprima, will be approved. Others wait in the wings.

Not all erectile dysfunction drug makers are ready to discuss PR strategies, but a pattern emerges nonetheless: most are willing to take shots at the market leader - and each other - as they try to hitch a ride on Viagra's coattails.

'Naturally, we're keeping an eye on them,' says Pfizer's vice president of media relations, Andy McCormick. McCormick's company is experienced at mixing it up in the drug marketplace. 'I wouldn't say we welcome the competition, but we'll certainly be prepared to deal with it,' she says.

In addition to Uprima, marketed by TAP Pharmaceutical Products of Lake Forest, IL, no fewer than six other ED remedies are in the pipeline, developed by everyone from behemoths like Bayer, Eli Lilly and Bristol-Myers Squibb to a company without any products currently on the market, Lexington, MA's MacroChem. Most drugs in testing are pills or tablets; MacroChem's is a gel, for direct application. Vivus of Mountain View, CA, hopes to unveil its second urethral insert; its first, Muse, introduced in 1997, lost a huge chunk of sales to Viagra.

Whichever medications pass the FDA approval gauntlet, they'll owe an enormous debt to Pfizer. Viagra's PR broke through the cone of silence surrounding impotence by appropriating the term 'erectile dysfunction' from the National Institutes of Health and talking about ED as a treatable medical affliction rather than a secret psychological shame.