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Ambien Wakes Up To The Bad Press

There’s nothing like a few weeks of TV news horror stories to get a marketer motivated. From Ad Age:

Two weeks after news that taking Ambien could result in binge eating and driving while asleep, sales of sleeping medications began tanking, finally causing Sanofi-Aventis to wake up and advertise the safety of its product. And it looks like rivals won’t be far behind.
The print campaign for Ambien, the $2.1 billion leader in the insomnia category, began three weeks after The New York Times reported March 8 that Ambien was linked to traffic arrests around the nation by drivers who had no memory of getting behind the wheel, and two weeks after researchers at the Minnesota Regional Sleep Disorders Centre and the Mayo Clinic found that some people who take Ambien binge-eat while sleeping.

Frankly, Ambien isn’t the problem. It’s our modern society that’s the problem. The light bulb and electricity have only been around for 125 years or so, and our bodies haven’t adjusted to the changes modern society has wrought. So we don’t get enough sleep, at least not on a natural cycle. Hence, you get things like binge-eating (out of the refrigerator) while sleeping. C’mon, let’s go back to the hunter-gatherer days!

About Dan Goldgeier

Dan Goldgeier is a Seattle-based copywriter with experience at advertising agencies across the U.S. He is a graduate of the Creative Circus ad school, and currently teaches at Seattle's School of Visual Concepts. Dan is also a columnist for TalentZoo.com and the author of View From The Cheap Seats and Killer Executions and Scrubbed Decks.

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  1. nancy says

    c’mon that electric thing ?
    a bit far fetched. Here’s part of the problem. Get some fresh air. Go outside, runaround the block. Ride you bike. Go jump in a lake.
    Shag some balls in the park.
    I know this to be true. It was the secret weapon of old country mom’s pushing perambulators. The babies would all fall asleep in the light of the sun.

  2. Todd says

    Sorry to post again, but I just couldn’t resist sharing the idea I had today: Sleep Camp – A boot camp for the over-extended where they discover the body’s natural balance between sleep and activity. But mostly they just sleep.
    My own little fantasy perahps.
    Sleep Camp Extreme is where concerned family members arrange to have you kidnapped and then taken and forced to chill out and rest.

  5. mark says

    i wish they would stiffen up on the advertising of ambien!i don’t think it is as safe a drug as they are promoting it to be!,mark

  6. wm manske says

    Took Ambien to sleep.
    Sleep walked, woke up on the wrong side of a road when red lights awakened me.
    DUI charge.
    Anyone who takes Ambien after what we now know has to be crazy

  26. Pepper says

    I took 5 mgs. of Zolpidem a substitute for Ambien prescribed by my primary care physician for 10 days. I believe it caused my irregular heart beat to intensify and ended up in the emergency room for a cardio version to get the heart rate back to normal. However, I slept great while I was on it. It’s a dangerous drug!