With competition threatening its top-selling drug Prevacid, TAP Pharmaceutical Products Inc. is calling on a two-time Super Bowl champion quarterback to help it recapture market share among heartburn remedies.
The Lake Forest-based drugmaker has tapped John Elway, the former Denver Broncos quarterback known for taking his teams on clock-beating, game-winning drives for touchdowns, to be its new spokesman for the drug.
The company is expected to announce the deal as early as Thursday in Houston, site of Sunday’s Super Bowl. Elway will be featured in an education campaign as well as television ads slated to begin this spring.
TAP said Elway is similar to most male sufferers of acid reflux disease, in that he had the condition for 10 years before he sought treatment from a doctor.
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TAP says most people, men in particular, wait three to five years before seeing a physician about acid reflux. Elway has taken TAP’s Prevacid since the spring, TAP said.
“He had suffered heartburn for 10 years, with repeated burning in his chest, and he had trouble swallowing,” said Michelle Priefer Walbert, director of Prevacid consumer marketing for TAP.
TAP said it hopes to capitalize on Elway’s image as a “tough guy.” If a future Hall of Fame quarterback “needed to do something [about his heartburn], maybe you could do something as well,” Walbert said.
The success of the campaign, called the “Road to Relief,” is critical for TAP and its owners, North Chicago-based Abbott Laboratories and Takeda Chemical Industries of Japan.
Prevacid was the nation’s fourth-best-selling drug last year, with $3.2 billion in sales. But Prevacid’s U.S. sales were down 6 percent in the fourth quarter, to $828 million, despite a $100 million TV ad blitz last year.
There also was a 30 percent expansion of Prevacid’s sales force in 2003.
Prevacid’s competitors, which include Nexium, made by AstraZeneca PLC, also are spending heavily on advertising. Nexium has been gaining on Prevacid, though TAP’s drug is still the most prescribed of the so-called proton-pump inhibitors on the U.S. market, according to industry studies.
Prevacid and Nexium also face pressure from generic and over-the-counter copies of the well-known heartburn drug Prilosec. Health plans, citing doctor preference and scientific studies, increasingly prefer to cover generic Prilosec because it is similar to Prevacid and Nexium, analysts say.
Yet TAP isn’t about to give up on the potential of its blockbuster drug. TAP marketing executives say they plan to spend another $100 million on television advertising in 2004 and may spend more, Walbert said.
“We are basing the campaign on the success of last year’s campaign, and we will continue to invest in similar levels,” she said.