CINCINNATI - A new round of marketing and promotional activity is in store for the feminine anti-fungal category. The Procter-Syntex Health Products Company plans to launch Femstat3 (butoconazole nitrate 2 percent) during May 1996. The joint venture recently received FDA clearance to begin marketing the Rx-to-OTC switch product.
Perfect timing
It couldn't have come at a better time. Femstat3 enters the anti-fungal category at a time when sales have grown sluggish and most of the manufacturer activity involves line extensions and repackaging. Femstat3 could change that and inject new life into a category where sales have stalled at around $260 million. The product appears to have a distinct marketing advantage. It needs only three days to achieve what the other leading anti-fungal brands accomplish in seven days, according to P&G/Syntex clinical studies.
Femstat3's shorter duration of action and comparable effectiveness is sure to be emphasized in consumer advertising. Translating a product's duration of action into a marketing advantage is something P&G/Syntex successfully exploited following the Rx-to-OTC switch of Aleve. The product's ability to provide longer-lasting pain relief than other leading brands served as the basis of Aleve's "all day long, all day strong" advertising campaign and helped the product become one of the categories leading brands in just 18 months.
However P&G/Syntex decides to positions Femstat3, it is the biggest news to hit the category since the spring of 1991. That was when the Rx-to-OTC switch of anti-fungal products Monistat 7 and Gyne Lotrimin greatly expanded a category that was practically non-existent before their arrival.
Popular remedy
Femstat3 was launched as a prescription product in 1986 and since that time approximately 13 million prescriptions have been written for the anti-fungal product. There are an estimated 13 million yeast infections annually in the United States.
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