Marketing can only take a product so far, and then market realities set in.
Could that be happening with drugs for impotence, or erectile dysfunction, or ED (as marketing types prefer to call it)?
The New York Times reports: "Seven years after Pfizer made Viagra a cultural touchstone and commercial blockbuster, the market for impotence medicines appears to have fallen well short of what was once predicted.
Heavy advertising to consumers, totaling more than $400 million in 2004, has made Viagra and its newer competitors, Cialis and Levitra, among the best-known drug brands in the United States, and their combined global sales reached about $2.5 billion last year. But the number of new prescriptions for the drugs has fallen steadily this year. Doctors wrote about 10 percent fewer new prescriptions in October than they did in October of 2004. ... The drop in prescriptions comes as sales of other heavily marketed medicines, like antidepressants, are also stalling, and it may be another sign of the limits of consumer advertising to drive demand for drugs. In the late 1990's, drug makers used television advertising to introduce treatments for chronic conditions like arthritis and heartburn. But today, with many patients angry about drug prices and worried that companies are downplaying side effects, drug advertising seems to have lost some of its power. "