Race-Specific Drug 'BiDil': Nitromed's Marketing Challenge

Some industry analysts hailed the approval of BiDil as the first step toward personalized medicines. However, critics were alarmed at the development as they felt that marketing a race-specific drug could promote racial stereotyping and create a misconception that people of different races differed on a biological level. There were also many others who felt that the marketing of BiDil as a race-specific drug was motivated by commercial interests alone. They said that NitroMed only wanted to market this drug to blacks as, by doing so, they could extend the patent for BiDil. The patent for BiDil for use among the general population was valid up to 2007, but the new patent for use among blacks increased the "market exclusivity" to 2020.

Apart from the controversy surrounding the approval and marketing of BiDil as a race-specific drug, it posed a marketing challenge to NitroMed. Marketing to a specific community required a multicultural marketing approach- where the message, the media channel, etc. had to be in accordance with the needs of the black community. When BiDil was launched in mid-July 2005, some analysts predicted that the drug would touch US$ 200 million in revenues by 2007.¹⁴ However, despite a grassroots marketing effort and various rounds of sales force optimization, the sales of BiDil were far below the projections. Between mid-July 2005 and June 2006, the sales were just US$ 9.7 million.¹⁵