How Kim Kardashian Got Hired to Shill for Diclegis by "Auditioning" in a Nutraceutical Ad

You may recall that the FDA sent a letter to Duchesnay Inc. because an Instagram post by Kim Kardashian promoting the company's morning sickness drug Diclegis violated the law (read "Kim Kardashian's Diclegis Instagram Post Raises Issues").

Some time afterward, Alex Peterson, SVP, Health Practice Director at Makovsky -- the agency that hired Kim to do the Diclegis Instagram social media campaign - claimed that Makovsky, through social monitoring, knew that Kardashian was struggling with nausea during her first pregnancy. She’d been talking about morning sickness for weeks (read this account).

No doubt Makovsky also knew that Kardashian promoted nutraceuticals years earlier in 2010. As reported by STAT, in a video ad for QuickTrim (see end of this post), "Khloe Kardashian rolls languorously in a tangle of white sheets and asks, 'Do you feel sexy? Do you have the body you’ve always dreamed of?' The shot switches to her sister Kim, shimmying out of a pool and commanding viewers to 'Create the body you deserve'" (read "Celebrity selfies, lax regulations drive booming supplement industry").

Makovsky claimed they reached out to tell Kim about Diclegis and found out that she was already taking the drug -- her doctor had just prescribed it.

But could Kim have been talking about her morning sickness as a prelude to working with Makovsky so that the above account by Peterson would sound perfectly plausible?

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FDA Acts on Violative Social Media Posts a Lot More Quickly Than It Does for TV and Print Ads

Kim Kardashian posted a violative Diclegis® ad on Instagram (read “Kim Kardashian's Diclegis Instagram Post Raises Issues of Transparency, Drug Safety, and Learning from History”). She was paid to do that by Duchesnay -- the company that makes & markets Diclegis.

But did you know that the ad also was posted to her Twitter and Facebook accounts?

Here's how the FDA depicted the campaign (find the original here):

Click on image for an enlarged view.

What does this show us? How did the FDA get so social media savvy? Note two things:

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Kim Kardashian's Diclegis Instagram Post Raises Issues of Transparency, Drug Safety, and Learning from History - i.e., Thalidomide deja vu!

Duchesnay Press Release (click for enlarged view)

By now you've probably read several media reports about Kim Kardashian's enthusiastic Instagram post promoting Diclegis, a prescription morning-sickness medicine. That's only because the FDA sent a Warning Letter to the drug’s maker, Duchesnay Inc.

The FDA said the post failed to give information about the drug’s risks, which is something I reported here on Pharma Marketing Blog back in July ("OMG. Kim Kardashian Shills for Pharma! No Worry - No Side Effects!").

FDA's letter ordered the company to "immediately cease misbranding." Kim -- obeying orders no doubt from Duchesnay -- removed her violative Instagram post, but it lives on in the media seen by millions and also in a Duchesnay press release (Kim Kardashian West Found Morning Sickness Relief with Diclegis).

Of course, the press release also contains all the necessary risk information, including a very troubling side effect in children.

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