UKIP Calypso: Experience Pays

Earlier this week (20 October), former BBC Radio 1 DJ Mike Read released a song titled "UKIP Third Party Ostensible Demarketing'.  What this clumsy term describes is the process where a product's sales are boosted by carefully managing calls to have it banned.

The 'album cover': picture from The Independent

Calypso".  Read said that the song was a harmless piece of fun, something in a long tradition of political satire.  But within hours two things were happening: firstly the song started climbing rapidly in the download charts at iTunes and Amazon; and secondly it was being castigated by media figures and politicians for being racist.  This looks like a classic case of what I call '

Perhaps this is too hard a judgement on Mike Read.  Today (22 October) he is all over the media apologizing if the song has caused offence, and reiterating that it was only a bit of fun. Perhaps: Read had first performed it at the UKIP party conference in October.  Earlier the UKIP leader Nigel Farage had been urging his supporters to buy the song with a view to getting it to Number One in the charts. A contrite Mike Read, though, said he had asked his record company to withdraw the track.

At the time of writing UKIP Calypso was still on sale on iTunes and on Amazon.  It was still available the next day.  So is Mike Read being disingenuous?  He should know better than most about the power of ostensible demarketing.  In 1984 Read as a DJ on BBC Radio 1 was largely responsible for getting an unknown Liverpool band's debut single to Number One.  He had objected to what he regarded as sexually explicit lyrics and refused to play the track.  The band was Frankie Goes to Hollywood and the song, Relax, stayed at Number One for 5 weeks.

Does Mike Read still have the winning touch?  On the basis of the first week, possibly not.  UKIP Calypso entered the charts at number 21, although this position was obtained before the announcement was made that the track was going to be withdrawn.  In the meantime, though, the controversy is keeping the piece in the news.  Provocation can be a powerful selling tool.


*** Update, 27 November.  UKIP Calypso  entered UK charts at number 43.  It had been removed from sale on iTunes some time on 24 November, while Amazon removed the track the following day. ***


Sources

• Official Charts Company, 22/10/2014, UKIP Calypso sits outside Top 20 on midweek Official Chart Update, http://www.officialcharts.com/chart-news/ukip-calypso-sits-outside-top-20-on-midweek-official-chart-update-3228/
• Grundy, Gareth (11 June 2011), Frankie Goes to Hollywood's Relax 'banned' by the BBC, The Guardian, http://www.theguardian.com/music/2011/jun/11/frankie-hollywood-banned-bbc
• Mason, Rowena (20 October 2014), Get Mike Read’s Ukip calypso song to number one, urges Nigel Farage, The Guardian, http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/oct/20/ukip-calypso-song-number-one-nigel-farage-mike-read
• Plunkett, John (22 October 2014), Ukip calypso song should be withdrawn, says repentant Mike Read, The Guardian, http://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/oct/22/ukip-calypso-song-mike-read-radio-1

Midodrine: keep taking the tablets

Photo: Steven Saltzberg's Genomics blog

What happens to patients when a drug they have relied on for years is suddenly due to be taken off the market?  This was the situation for users of Midodrine in 2010, when the US regulator the FDA announced that the drug's licence was to be withdrawn.  Goldacre (2012: 138-140) tells how the drug had been developed and patented, and had been approved in 1996, but with only limited clinical data to support its therapeutic claims.  Fourteen years later, the patent owner had still failed to provide this evidence (although the company disputed this). The FDA's announcement provoked a public outcry from some of the 100,000 US users of the drug, triggered in part by anecdotal evidence from patients published in the national and international press.  

Backing up the stories of patients desperate that something which, regardless of the trials, worked for them (there was no other clinically proven alternative on the market), was a Facebook campaign which helpfully linked supporters to their representatives in Congress.  When the FDA reversed its decision after just a month of lobbying, some of the same publications which had earlier criticised the FDA for ignoring the voices of patients (for example Miller 2010), now derided the same agency for ignoring its own stated principles of evidence-based decision making.  More bizarrely, the owner of the Midodrine patent), which had announced that it was to cease manufacturing in any case, changed its corporate mind and decided to continue to market the drug (Star Tribune, citing Associated Press 2010).  

The original action of the FDA I call 'third party demarketing', which is where an outside body - goverment, regulator, judge, etc. - intervenes to try and ban or restrict a product or service. This action often results in boosting demand, as the principle of psychological reactance kicks in. This theory states that withdrawing something that people have enjoyed the freedom of causes them to like it still more. In the case of Midodrine, patients felt this was something they could not do without. The flurry of press activity just after the FDA's original intention to withdraw the product licence may have been spontaneous, or may have been triggered by PR agencies hired by the manufacturers. The outcome was the same, though: the FDA backtracked and, despite the lack of clinical data, patients continued to be prescribed Midodrine.


References

Goldacre, Ben (2012), Bad Pharma: How drug companies mislead doctors and harm patients, London: Fourth Estate

Miller, Henry I. (2010), “Agency dithers, reputation withers - Ditsy decisions make for dizzy bureaucrats”, The Washington Times, 29 September 
Star Tribune (2010), “FDA backs off plan to withdraw Shire low blood-pressure drug midodrine from market”, Star Tribune citing Associated Press, 6 September