BITTER ADS TO SWALLOW

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TALK ABOUT SPLITTING HEADACHES. For both consumers and America's $2.7 billion over-the-counter pain-killer industry, the advertising war between Johnson & Johnson's No. 1 brand Tylenol and American Home Products' No. 2 Advil has begun to feel like a migraine.

The pounding began last fall when Johnson & Johnson launched a television attack ad that soon had the two companies decrying the side effects of each other's products. You know, the ones in which a very serious-looking actor "discovers" that Brand X just might possibly be more harmful than, say, swallowing drain cleaner. The confusing charges and countercharges prompted the major TV networks to pull the harshest spots; ABC went so far as to ban all drug commercials that take potshots at rival remedies.

Undaunted, the combatants have now resumed their fight in print, where American Home Products, a $13.4 billion maker of such brands as Anacin and Preparation H, launched an assault on Tylenol last week. The company paid for a full-page ad in the New York Times and other papers to reprint an open letter written by Antonio Benedi, a former appointments secretary for George Bush, who blames Tylenol for the liver failure that forced him to have an emergency transplant in 1993.

Johnson & Johnson was furious not just about the letter but also at the fact that the newspapers published it without labeling it advertising. Worse, in J&J's view, at the bottom of the ad was a message that Whitehall-Robins Healthcare was underwriting the reprint "as a public service." Not exactly, since it's the unit of American Home Products that makes Advil.

This latest attack led industry watchers to warn that the infighting could become suicidal. "This has exploded out of control," says Paul Kelly, president of Silvermine Consulting in Westport, Connecticut, which advises consumer-products companies. "Sooner or later people are going to get concerned about the whole category [of pain-killers] and stay away." There is, in fact, no real cause for such consumer concerns.

Despite the hysteria, all over-the-counter headache remedies today are generally safe for the vast majority of consumers, as long as they follow the recommended dosage. (See chart.) But, as for all drugs, there are exceptions, some of which are minor, some rare--and all of which must be noted by the manufacturer, providing plenty of ammunition for adversaries to attack.

The scorched-earth campaigns have pointed out the hazards of widely used headache remedies such as Tylenol and Advil as dramatically as any critic could. And that can't be good for business. J&J's McNeil Consumer products unit, which makes Tylenol, has sold 240 billion tablets and capsules of Tylenol over the past three decades. Tylenol represents more than $800 million in annual sales for J&J, which last year had total sales of $18.8 billion. But Tylenol's market share has been slipping, to 30.1% last year from 34% in 1994.

Tylenol is being challenged by new over-the-counter drugs such as naproxen (brand name: Aleve) and ketoprofen (brand name: Orudis), as well as aspirin. Advil, which is ibuprofen, holds a 12.9% market share and has sold more than 48 billion doses since it became nonprescription in 1984. It contributes some $350 million annually to American Home Products' coffers.