Player Profile: Hutchins gambled early on health of DTC market; `MediZine' head endured `uncool' years at the start.(Traver Hutchins; MediZine Guidebook)(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)

Advertising Age, July, 2001 by Goetzl, David

The direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical ad category is arguably the most explosive in recent years. But well before network and magazine executives were salivating over accounts such as Claritin and Viagra, Traver Hutchins hit the hustings pitching DTC as the next big thing to major drug companies.

In 1994, a then-33-year-old Mr. Hutchins gambled $25,000 of his savings to launch MediZine Guidebook, a DTC-heavy wellness magazine distributed free to consumers in pharmacies and doctors' offices. In the pioneering years of DTC, before the U.S. Food and Drug Administration opened the floodgates in the category in 1997, Mr. Hutchins' venture endured its share of bumps.

``Nobody knew whether there was any big future potential,'' said Mr. Hutchins, MediZine's...