Let’s role play. You’re a pharmaceutical company who (allegedly) covered up the dangers of your last billion-dollar drug, for which you’re mired in costly and reputation-damaging litigation. You’re eager to launch a new, ground-breaking drug you can legitimately claim prevents cancer, and you want to avoid a barrage of articles comparing your new rising star to its fallen predecessor. You also need to break through consumer hesitation to early adopt, given your less-than-glowing track record. The new drug vaccinates against an STD. What do you do?

If you’re Merck, you lobby Congress to mandate that all preteen girls receive the vaccine before entering 6th grade, then sit back as the Christian Right single-handedly turns your drug into a blockbuster.

Last night I caught a glimpse of Merck's One Less ad campaign for Gardasil, the first human papillomavirus vaccine. The spot is a watered down rip-off of my favorite Wieden & Kennedy Nike offering: the celebrated 1995 If You Let Me Play. It features active young women asserting they will be one less statistic – in this case, one less victim of cervical cancer. You could swap out the images, inspirational music, and small-type disclosures with most other direct-to-consumer pharm ads. Yawn.  

The real genius of Merck’s Gardasil campaign ended February, when the company announced it would no longer lobby Congress to make the vaccine mandatory in most states for girls entering middle school. The Christian Right, who had attacked the vaccine as an aphrodisiac guaranteed to increase prepubescent sexual promiscuity, credited themselves for crushing Merck’s attempt to sully their innocent children. Truth be told, I think Merck ended the lobbying because it was no longer needed; the campaign had achieved every intended objective.

You’ll never hear me say this again, but President Bush was right: to build a quick group of fiercely loyal supporters, draw a line in the sand, and make your intended ally choose between you or its sworn enemy (sadly for the U.S., this strategy only works if the intended ally doesn’t consider you worse than its sworn enemy). The strategy did, however, work remarkably well for Merck. They needed to prevent comparisons between Gardasil and Vioxx and convince mothers who worried that their daughters might some day contract HPV to rush to get their daughters inoculated before they become sexually active. Their strategy? Go for the gold ring. Lobby Congress to force Americans to take your drug. There’s no downside. Best case, it works, and you have 40 million new customers. Worst case, you piss off the Christian Right, they try to block your bill, and the resulting controversy plays out for months in the media (awareness!) driving the Left (who instinctively defends anything the Right vilifies) to loudly advocate for your product. Voila! The story is no longer Is Gardasil the New Vioxx? but Christian Parents Choose Cancer Over Science! And the best part? Adolescent Christian girls (in theory) aren’t having premarital sex anyway, so you’re not alienating potential consumers!

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