Close-Up: Live issue - How should Pfizer advertise Viagra?

What's the best way to tap into the potentially massive UK market for Viagra, James Hamilton asks.

When it comes to iconic drugs, Pfizer's diamond-shaped blue pill is to the pharmaceutical industry what Coca-Cola's famous curved bottle is to soft drinks.

Viagra is arguably the best-known pharmaceutical brand in the world, and is the market leader in the US, where the erectile dysfunction (ED) market is estimated to be worth more than dollars 1.5 billion. So the news that Pfizer is talking to agencies in the UK as it prepares to launch a pan-European consumer campaign for the drug, which it is planning to sell over the counter, will have agencies falling over each other to win the business: it's not every day that you get to work on a truly global brand with such creative potential.

Thus far, the UK's experience of ED marketing has been limited to a print ad starring Pele urging men who are suffering from ED to seek advice from their doctor. The ad was funded by Pfizer, although it made no mention of Viagra or pharmaceutical remedies for ED.

That will all change if Pfizer successfully petitions the European Union to make the drug available without prescription. And while a Pfizer statement attempts to cool agency ardour, arguing that the drug company 'regularly works with marketing and communications agencies on both disease and brand awareness campaigns', it stops short of denying it is planning an over-the-counter petition, continuing: 'Viagra is only available on prescription, and should only be used in accordance with its approved labelling.'

That said, Viagra has had a successful over-the-counter test in three Boots stores in Manchester. The pilot, which fittingly launched on Valentine's Day this year, enabled men aged between 30 and 65 to purchase four pills for pounds 50 after a consultation with the pharmacist.

Boots estimates that only one in ten of the three million men in the UK who suffer from ED are being treated, which equates to a rich market for the first treatment to go 'over the counter'.