Yaz Is Bayer's Top Seller Despite Blood Clot Suits, Ad Woes

Bayer's Yaz and Yasmin contraceptives appear to be recession- and scandal-resistant superbrands, if recent reports are to be believed. Bayer hit back at a German newspaper that reported the company was cutting back on pill production due to decreased demand. The original report, per Reuters, said:

... Bayer Schering Pharma, plans to cut production by a quarter this year to 180 million packing units, the newspaper said in a report which will be published in its June 21 edition.

But Bayer said the report was wrong:

"Revenue from our Yasmin product family continues to rise as planned," a Bayer spokesman told Reuters on Sunday.

Yasmin is Bayer's best-selling pharmaceutical product group. In the first quarter of 2009, Bayer reported sales of 319 million euros ($443.2 million) for the Yasmin range, a 7.4 percent year-on-year gain.

Those sales gains came despite the FDA forcing Bayer to spend an extra $20 million on "corrective" advertising to rebuff claims the company previously made that Yaz cures acne and PMS (it doesn't).

And they come after some attorneys have linked Yaz's unusual formula to fatal blood clots, the exact same condition that prematurely killed Johnson & Johnson's Ortho Evra birth control patch.

A glance at the books of J&J and Novartis -- whose Sandoz unit is a big maker of contraceptives -- shows that J&J's pill portfolio is now too small to be broken out in its financial releases and sales at Sandoz are in decline (although not for specifically pill-related reasons).

Bayer has thus achieved the impossible: a brand with increasing sales despite mistakes and scandals in a category riddled with generics.

Pictured: 1980's synth-pop duo Yaz.

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