Alternatives

1. Direct-to-consumer (DTC) marketing is a key means of developing and maintaining brand awareness and brand loyalty.

2. Aggressive product placement via health care practitioners remains a major means of keeping Lilly's market share of antidepressants at an optimal level. Promoting Prozac and other Lilly products at psychiatric conventions, seminars, hospitals, and private practices ensures that the drug will be highly visible, its name virtually synonymous with the treatment of depression and other mood disorders. By keeping the name Prozac on top consumers are more likely to ask for Lilly products, and psychiatrists are more likely to prescribe it.

3. Divert attention away from Prozac and toward emerging antidepressant and antianxiety medications. This alternative entails devoting more resources to research and development and less to marketing and would involve decisions at upper levels...

Psychopharmaceuticals evolve and improve as any product does and Lilly should not bank on Prozac being as permanently popular or useful as aspirin. Therefore, Lilly would do well to reduce its emphasis on branding and instead increase the Lilly company brand awareness in its DTC marketing and in its positioning amid health care practitioners. Presenting Eli Lilly and Company as the pharmaceutical industry leader for antidepressant and antianxiety medications would mean a long-lasting marketing campaign. The Lilly name can become associated with developing cutting-edge medications. Consumers would view advertisements for Lilly that would emphasize the company's commitment to ethical promotion of useful medications that treat any number of psychiatric…