A LONG-running ad for cold sore cream, Zovirax, has been pulled from national television after a rival drug company complained its medical claims were not substantiated.
The GlaxoSmithKline commercial for Zovirax shows a woman removing a motorbike helmet and making the claim that “nothing works faster”.
The Therapeutic Goods Advertising Code Council (TGACC) has upheld a complaint by Novartis that the statement could not be verified.
Novartis launched a competing product, Vectavir, earlier this year.
The expert panel decided that clinical evidence provided by both companies showed that the active ingredients in each product “showed comparable efficacy”. It ruled that although the words “Zovirax: nothing works faster” “did not amount to a claim that Zovirax was faster than all other cold sore medicines, it still breached the advertising code because it couldn't be verified”.
“The panel did not consider that an absence of evidence, or merely ambiguous or inconclusive evidence, could meet the standard of already verified required by the code,” the council stated.
“Rather, such inconclusive evidence left open a significant possibility that another product might well be faster than Zovirax.”
GlaxoSmithKline was ordered to withdraw the ad and directed not to use the phrase in future marketing.
The TGACC also reviewed 20 other complaints, mostly directed at alternative therapies, upholding all but two. Nine sauna companies were forced to pull ads that claimed their products could improve health and wellbeing. Ads were also withdrawn for Womanzone, which claimed to be the female Viagra, the dry skin product Nutri-Synergy, an electronic therapy called Acticare TSE and air therapy Airnergy. But the panel threw out a complaint claiming an ad for weight loss product Trimspa, featuring US celebrity Anna Nicole Smith, “promotes unrealistic weight loss expectations through the use of a well-known personality”.
— AAP