ADVIL LAUNCHES NEW VOLLEY IN ADVERTISING WAR ON TYLENOL.

Byline: Steve Sakson Associated Press 

It just keeps getting uglier.

Makers of the painkiller Advil opened a new front in their advertising war with Tylenol this week by publishing in major newspapers a patient's letter blaming Tylenol for destroying his liver.

The attack came less than two weeks after the major television networks said they were yanking commercials for both pills. ABC, which led the trend, said the drug makers were unduly alarming consumers by overstating the dangerous side effects of each other's products.

The confrontations illustrate a big change in strategy for the leaders in the nearly $3 billion market for headache remedies. Instead of touting the potency of their own products, Tylenol and Advil have spent the past few months tearing each other down in increasingly blatant spots.

Marketing experts said Friday if the sniping doesn't end soon, some people will get so scared that they'll stop taking all over-the-counter painkillers.

"I see this as similar to the attack ads in the political arena. There's a lot of evidence that the bottom line is fewer people are going out to vote," said Al Ries, owner of the Great Neck, N.Y. marketing consultancy Ries & Ries.

Laurel Cutler, a director of marketing with the big ad agency Foote, Cone & Belding said the ads risk making a cynical public distrustful of all advertising.

What the ads fail to mention is that doctors have long said all over-the-counter painkillers are safe for nearly everyone.

Last fall and earlier this year, Tylenol warned people who have ulcers or who take high blood pressure medicines about potential dangers of ibuprofen, Advil's main ingredient.

In February, Advil ads began pointing to a warning on Tylenol labels telling those who drink daily to consult their doctor before taking Tylenol or other painkillers.

On March 8, ABC announced it had pulled both the Tylenol and Advil ads and would ban future drug ads that question the safety of competitors. Other networks followed ABC's lead, to varying degrees.

Advil's barrage resumed Wednesday, first in The New York Times.

Without identifying itself as the maker of Advil, Whitehall-Robins Healthcare Co. reprinted a full-page advertisement originally placed March 14 in The Washington Times by Antonio Benedi of Virginia.

Benedi won an $8.8 million verdict in 1994 against Tylenol when he convinced a jury that the combination of Tylenol and his habit of two to three alcoholic drinks per day destroyed his liver, necessitating an emergency transplant.

Benedi said he was angered by Tylenol ads touting it as "the safest type of pain reliever you can buy."

"We proved in a court of law that the makers of Tylenol had known for more than a decade about the danger of devastating liver injury caused by Tylenol in people who regularly drink alcohol," the ad said. "Liver disease experts had asked the company for many years to warn the public about the risk. Tylenol ignored the plea."

Ron Schmid, a spokesman for Tylenol's maker, McNeil Consumer Products, said Friday that the reprinting of the Benedi ad was "outrageous and set a new low in negative advertising."

Particularly galling, said Schmid, is that the Food and Drug Administration has recommended alcohol warning labels on all over-the-counter painkillers since 1993 - including Advil.

"We voluntarily put the warning label on our product. They did not, and now they're taking advantage of the situation," he said.

At Whitehall-Robins, a division of American Home Products Corp., spokeswoman Carol Dornbush defended the company's refusal to put the warning on Advil.

"There are no clinical data to support an association between liver damage and ibuprofen, and I think everybody agrees with that," she said.

McNeil President Brian Perkins said his company, a unit of Johnson & Johnson, has tried to tone down the fervor in recent days with ads featuring actress Blair Brown explaining the history of the alcohol warning label. "That is not inflammatory advertising. That is not sniping," he said.

Tylenol remains the No. 1 painkiller, with about a 30 percent share of the market compared to Advil's 13 percent.

While acknowledging Tylenol's sales declined in 1995, Perkins said sales were up 4 percent in the fourth quarter and will probably rise an additional 8 percent in the first three months of this year.

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