By John O’Dwyer

Nancy Caravetta, Founder and President of Los Angeles-based Rx Entertainment, knows there’s an image to be found in the healthcare industy. In August she rebranded her firm, Celebrity Healthlink, to reflect the extensive work she was doing to match up celebrity spokespersons with healthcare clients. “It is an understatement to say that the pharmaceutical and entertainment industries operate vastly different which can make collaborating on a project quite challenging,” Caravetta said.

At first glance, they seem like opposing forces. Besides the complicated disclaimers necessary with any pharmaceutical product pitch in broadcast media, there’s also the very conservative framework of pharmaceutical companies that runs counter to the Hollywood mindset.

Caravetta, who started her career at Ruder Finn before moving to a Senior VP spot at Cooney | Waters, said Hollywood is used to handshake deals regarding product placement in a movie or TV show. This means that a certain number of scenes where a product will appear will be promised at the outset but the end result might be different and that’s just the breaks in the mind of a studio. Pharmaceutical companies, on the other hand, need to see everything in writing.

Pharmaceuticals have been appearing in TV shows for some time, but usually in the background. Products like Organon placed posters for its Nuvaring contraceptive in the backgrounds of NBC’s “Scrubs” and CBS’ “King of Queens” starting in 2005. However, a big breakthrough occurred in 2008 when actress Caitlin Van Sandt from the CBS soap “Guiding Light” asked her producers to write into the script her real-life experience with the Lap-Band Adjustable Gastric Banding System. A current example of a celebrity pitching a pharmaceutical is actress Claire Danes’ commercials for Latisse eyelash lengthener, Caravetta noted.

Over-the-counter pitches are a lot easier. An example is Yankee pitcher Andy Pettitte’s work for Dove Men+Care. Roche opted to avoid overt placement by purchasing the rights to use the characters from the movie “Happy Feet” in its commercials for Tamiflu for a reported $28 million in 2007.

Caravaetta admits that even though there’s a lot of hesitation by the major phar-maceutical companies to engage in product placement in film and TV shows, and the practice invites a lot of controversy, the trend is here to stay.

“At the core of our agency is the skill to navigate the unique rules and regulations that govern the healthcare industry when it comes to entertainment-driven campaigns,” she said. “We tell our clients, we know your business because we are in your business. No other entertainment marketing firm out there can make this claim.” The U.S. and New Zealand are the only two countries where direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising of prescription drugs is legal. But the drug industry is lobbying to open up the European and Canadian markets.

In 2006, Nielsen Product Placement counted 462 mentions of prescription medicines on TV shows, which was double the 2005 figure, and since then the number has nearly tripled, Caravetta pointed out.

Avoid celebrity pitfalls

Caravetta said a degree of unpredictability will always exist when working with a celebrity, but this can be mitigated though.

“Make sure that early on in the process you get on board with the publicist, manager, agent, assistant, etc., because these are the people you’re going to have to deal with,” Caravetta said. “I try to steer my clients away from working with A-list celebrities because usually they’re too busy and hard to deal with.” However, Caravetta said it’s a good idea to try to book a celebrity who has something else going on at the time, be it a new show, movie or recent award.

“You might not be able to get them on “The Ellen Degeneres Show” but if they’re going on there already, that’s a great deal,” she said. “Lots of due diligence is necessary when choosing a celebrity spokesperson,” she said.

Actress Caitlin Van Sandt from the CBS soap “Guiding Light” talking about her her real-life experience with the Lap-Band Adjustable Gastric Banding System.