A psoriasis TV ad—with its peppy, nonsensical jingle—gave me a full-blown case of Stuck Song Syndrome.
Image: Peakpix.com / Creative Commons 0
Three percent of the US population has psoriasis. Specifically, 2.5-2.7% have Plaque Psoriasis, and the other .4-ish percent have Psoriatic Arthritis. All together, that’s a very small percentage of people. So, why do U.S. drug manufacturers target 100% of us with psoriasis drug advertising?
I used to tune in to CBS and ABC for the news. However, according to MediaRadar, those are the two networks that receive the lion’s share of prescription drug commercials. Like this one from Skyrizi. Sing it with me: “Nothing is everything-ing-ing!” It’s responsible for my recent defection to PBS for news.
There seems to be a lot of competition in the psoriasis drug space, with Tremfya, Skyrizi, Otezla, Cosentrix, and others all vying for the attention of psoriasis sufferers. That’s quite a few advertising jingles hoping to get stuck in the right person’s head.
Here are a couple of interesting drug advertising facts from The Campaign for Sustainable Rx Pricing:
- Big Pharma spent nearly $14 billion on DTC advertising in 2023, causing Americans to lose more than $1 billion in tax revenue since the Pharma companies write off ads as business expenses
- The U.S. is one of only two countries that allow direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising for pharmaceuticals (the other is New Zealand)
I teach advertising, so I should appreciate the catchiness of the commercials. Stuck Song Syndrome is fantastic if you’re the brand or creative agency behind the sticky jingle. But I’m trying to wrap my head around why drug manufacturers use wide-reaching broadcast television to sway minuscule audiences. Surely, digital tactics like search and social media would be more effective, both in terms of cost and targeting (reaching just the folks who are searching for information about the unfortunate conditions).
The drug companies undoubtedly use both digital media and broadcast TV (and print ads, too) to engage us with their brands. However, television is the best medium for jingles. (Never heard a song play in a Google Search Ad.) So, one might infer that billions are spent on TV drug commercials because of their ability to embed jingles into our brains.
Part of me admires this superpower of broadcast TV. The part that no longer wishes to hear “Nothing is everything-ing-ing” isn’t thrilled about it.
Interestingly, our Health and Human Services Czar, RFK Jr., is cracking down on DTC drug ads. He’s not looking to ban them outright, but the policies he’s considering (as of June 2025) would ban drugmakers from writing off ads as business expenses. The legislation would also force advertisers to elaborate on drug risks, making the commercials longer and thus, more expensive. All this could reduce the number of times we are exposed to the ads. Hurray! Right? (My apologies to the clever agency behind Skyrizi’s jingle, and to the TV networks that will lose tons of revenue when Big Pharma runs fewer commercials.)
To date, my general beliefs and actions have yet to align with those of RFK Jr. (I’d never invite young children to swim in a polluted creek, for example.) However, on the issue of DTC prescription drug advertising, he might be on to something.