Pfizer does hard sell on Viagra

Heather Stewart

Buy six erections, get one free: Viagra users were invited to sign up for an unusual loyalty card scheme yesterday as Pfizer stepped up the fight to defend its share of the impotence-drug market.

With the kind of selling tactics more often used to shift baked beans or toothpaste, Pfizer is offering its regular US customers one free little blue pill for every six they pay for.

The Value Card for Viagra scheme was promoted as marking the sixth birthday of the first and best-known mass-market impotence pill. But analysts said a more likely motivation was the tough competition Pfizer is facing from two new entrants to the erectile dysfunction market in the US.

Cialis, manufactured by US firms Lilly and ICOS, had already seized an 18% share of new prescriptions by mid-March, after its launch late last year. It has been nicknamed "le weekend" in France - where it has been available for about a year - because its effects can last as long as 48 hours. And Lilly says that unlike Viagra, Cialis's effectiveness is not dulled by food and drink.

"If you're going out for a romantic meal with your partner, you can take your Cialis, have a glass of wine - and you've got a significantly longer timescale to let events unfold," a spokesman said yesterday. "Erectile dysfunction is not just about erections."

GlaxoSmithKline and Bayer launched their own rival, an orange pill called Levitra, in the US in August last year, and have been promoting it aggressively, sponsoring the national American football league. They have been offering free samples, inviting men to take the "Levitra challenge", and stressing "erection quality" as a selling point.

A spokesman for GSK said yesterday it was also about to launch a new big advertising campaign in the US.

Viagra was originally developed as a heart drug, but during clinical trials it was found to have interesting side-effects. Since it was launched in 1998, it has been prescribed to more than 23 million men. Pfizer's promotion of the drug is credited with raising the profile of erectile dysfunction, which is thought to affect as many as 50% of men over 40. The loyalty scheme launched yesterday will only be available to men who pay the full price of their medicines - not those covered by insurance.

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