Coming soon to a screen near you - the caring way to quit

By DITA DE BONI

Unlike the Minister of Health, advertising and marketing agencies involved in the drive to get people off cigarettes try to view smokers with benevolent empathy.

In contrast to gruesome Government warnings about the effects of tobacco on pearly-pink lungs, nicotine replacement therapy advertisements aim to ingratiate themselves with the internal struggle of the aspiring ex-smoker.

The hurdle of the smoking "trigger" is the most common scenario presented.

Wrestling with the idea of a beer without a fag, beating the belief that coffee and a smoke in the morning is the purest legal form of bliss, overcoming the assumption that a few quick drags on a cigarette will prevent workplace violence - these concepts are the backbone of such advertising.

Advertising for a new product to be introduced to the market in August takes exactly the same approach.

Zyban, from GlaxoWellcome, is an oral medication, prescribed through a general practitioner but advertised direct to potential users.

Direct advertising of nicotine replacement anti-smoking aids to New Zealanders is not new.

Nicorette products from Pharamacia & Upjohn, including capsules, gum, patches and nasal sprays, are common in chemists; a Nicorette inhaler can be obtained with a GP's prescription.

Zyban costs much more than nicotine replacements products. For a bit more than the $8 to $10 cost of a packet of cigarettes a day patients can sign on for a minimum seven-week support programme for the drug. The price includes doctors' fees.

Clinical trials have shown a quit rate of 30.5 per cent 12 months after using the drug, the highest rate of any commercial product.

Glaxo Wellcome says even the vehemently anti-smoking brigade at the Ministry of Health is interested in Zyban, which began life as an anti-depressant.

The company has applied to Pharmac to have Zyban considered for a Government subsidy.

Television advertising will start on August 27, but product manager Virginia Clayton says the first step is to educate doctors about Zyban.

"The last thing we want to do is get doctors offside.

"There has to be a long lead-in for them to get comfortable prescribing it."

Mindful of the debate over direct-to-consumer advertising, Glaxo Wellcome sales and marketing director Ken Scott says the campaign, which will feature a smoker grappling with his desire to smoke, will be as low-key as possible, without Xenical-inspired artistry or Viagra's hot buttons.

"We are very much aware that DTC advertising is still under the spotlight," he says.

"So we are reluctant to do an extremely sensational, emotional campaign."

"We are going for a sequence that empathises with smokers and delivers a message of hope - a man faced with 'triggers' who goes to a mock doctor to get help, and then experiences the freedom of a non-smoker."

The advertisement's hero, a youngish part-Maori man, was chosen, says Mr Scott, because "men don't respond to female role models."

"The inclusion of a part-Maori actor was important because of the high incidence of smoking in the Maori community."

"It's fairly straight forward. We wanted an approachable campaign."

Budget constraints have also contributed to the campaign's flavour. As well as advertising the product, GlaxoWellcome says it is spending around 30 per cent of its budget - which it won't reveal - to set up support services around the product, including an 0800 number for health professionals and another for the public.

The campaign was designed by Auckland-based Insight Consultants, which has been involved with direct-to-consumer promotion of other Glaxo Wellcome brands, including Flixotide and Zovairax.

Director Angus Galloway, who admits the creative director on the campaign was a smoker - "which may have helped with the empathy factor" - says shaming or scaring people into seeking help for unhealthy behaviour does not work.

"Research around advertising for addictions like this show those kinds of tactics have the opposite effect - you just make people defensive."

Glaxo Wellcome says that although the product is not specifically aimed at men, it hopes men will be encouraged to raise the issue of smoking with their doctors after seeing the advertisements.

And it hopes it will overcome GPs' reluctance to bring up the smoking issue with their patients for fear of being seen as "naggers or preachers."

Roughly 750,000 New Zealanders - 26 per cent of the population over 15, are what might be described as "regular" smokers.

Nicotine replacement therapies generate $4 million annually for their makers.

Glaxo Wellcome hopes to expand the market with Zyban, but admits smokers will see the minimum $450 outlay as expensive, even though the cumulative cost of smoking is much higher.

High cost is a perception that might need to be rectified, but more importantly for Mr Scott, the proof of the product's worth will be its success in breaking smoking's stranglehold on its addicts.