Hair Today, Hair Tomorrow?

Even after marketing Rogaine for the past decade, Pharmacia & Upjohn isn’t posting the profits it should be. According to Monday’s Wall Street Journal, income from Rogaine is slumping behind that of Merck’s Propecia — the market’s other, more powerful anti-baldness drug. It seems that in the course of wooing balding men, Pharmacia & Upjohn has tripped over its own advertising claims: The Rogaine web site boasts that the product is “medically proven to regrow hair,” while following pages back away from such strong language, focusing instead on various caveats to be kept in mind by prospective users: Some men may experience only slowed hair loss, and others may experience nothing but a thinning wallet. Once you get past the initial fanfare of optimism, the prognosis is not particularly hopeful.

Now, the Wall Street Journal reports, the makers of Rogaine are putting a new, happy face on their product, pitching it as a preventive measure to men who simply want to hang on to the hair they’ve got. “Rogaine” trumpet the latest ads, “Stronger than heredity.” The marketing mavens at Pharmacia & Upjohn may be onto an elemental truth: Men who are worried about losing their hair are far more obsessive about their scalps than men who have actually stared into the shiny face of baldness. And in the ongoing tradition of avoidance, this new marketing tack allows men who harbor dark fears about their follicles’ future to take decisive action to stave off potential hair loss, all while avoiding the dreaded “b” word. “The new campaign doesn’t say: You’re a bald person,” the campaign’s creative director told the Journal. “It’s about offering an option.”