I was at a convenience store the other day buying the usual – beef jerky and Mountain Dew – when I noticed the pen at the checkout counter. The storeowner had Scotch-taped a white plastic spoon to the pen, figuring that customers will be less likely to forgetfully leave with the pen after signing a check or credit card slip.
But the thing that really caught my eye was a logo on the side of the pen: Viagra.
Now I’m 86 percent certain that Viagra is not available for purchase at your average 7-Eleven (although a Zoloft Slurpee would be an excellent choice prior to bedtime).
By whatever means that convenience store owner acquired it, his Viagra pen has now become a collector’s item. That’s because, as of the first of this new year, drug companies can no longer offer branded goodies to doctors.
You’ve seen the stuff sitting around the examination room as you waited to get your blood pressure checked: Lipitor coffee mugs, Ambien tongue depressors, Prozac desk calendars and Boniva paperweights. All of those much-cherished gewgaws, knickknacks and fribbles are passing from the great American scene – at least in the drug business.
I had always believed it would have made more sense for the various drug company trinkets to have tied in more obviously with the products themselves – like, say, a Valium hammock or a Botox no-wrinkle T-shirt.
The new drug industry guideline is supposed to counter the suggestion that gifts to doctors might influence them to use certain products more than others. In other words, you don’t want your allergist prescribing Zyrtec instead of Allegra, just because Zyrtec gave him a free Chia nose.
Of course, the drug industry is hardly the first to use promotional items, although nobody knows for certain when the idea began. Some say that in this country, it started with commemorative campaign buttons supporting the presidential election of George Washington: “Vote for George Washington for President. He is first in war, first in peace, and first in (continued on other button) …”
But maybe promotional trinkets go even farther back in history. A close study of a European cave drawing from 32,000 years ago might reveal a sketch of a guy wearing a T-shirt: “Shop at Spears and More!”
Today’s NASCAR drivers have branding all over their cars. Maybe ancient racing chariots did, too: “Goodyear Wooden Wheels!” And the kids
back then probably showed up at the stadium in droves for “Ben-Hur Bobblehead Day.”
But maybe it’s for the best. A close reading of the original rough draft of Hippocrates’ Oath, written in 420 B.C., shows that he crossed out the line, “I will not accept branded pens or staplers – unless, of course, they’re really cool.”
