Lay-offs in DTC on horizon?

Jul/30/2008 06:28 Filed in: Working in pharma
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Well it does in fact look like some serious cuts are coming to DTC marketing. I talked with two people yesterday, a Senior Director and a Director, and they both confirmed that not only are their DTC budgets getting whacked but they are going to lose a significant amount of people who are either going to be reassigned or offered severance packages. As one of my contacts told me “last year we were talking about new campaigns and programs, now we are talking who stays and who goes”.


Layoffs are a risk we all face in todays business environment. It’s a hell of lot easier to lay people off to make the street happy than to come up with new ways to increase sales. CEO’s are under enormous pressure to make the numbers and it seems the path of least resistance is to cut marketing people and DTC budgets. At Lilly Cymbalta sales have been increasing but have never reached the level of the blockbuster Prozac. Vytorin is all but dead and Avandia is now a niche product, if that what’s you want to call it.

These are indeed sad times for marketing and marketing people.

A lot of this however can be blamed on DTC marketers themselves. Their willingness to “go along” with the program and use the same old reach and frequency methodology with TV and print it partly to blame. Never has an industry needed more change and an infusion of new talent yet remained stagnant. While other advertisers are using social media to make the brand the star of consumer engagement DTC ads and websites continue to push information to consumers and have no interest at all in starting a conversation. DTC marketers continually waste tons of money testing messages and then go back to their cubes to develop Power Point slides to show that the messages are motivating while ignoring the consumer segments of “one”.

Will DTC rebound? Yes I believe it will once a couple of new drugs are introduced and the media turns its attention away from drug side effects and negative stories. Pharma companies today are way too bloated with people and it’s time to make brand teams a lot smaller anyway. What really has me puzzled is why pharma continues to rely so heavily on the sales force at a time when physicians are turning away sales people more and more. Oh, that’s right most executives CAME from sales and as thus they despise marketing people and their budgets.

In the meantime if you’re in DTC marketing it might be a good idea to polish up the resume and start networking, and whatever you do don’t go to Cafe Pharma. The rumors their of lay-offs are all over the place and can only make you more anxious about doing your job.
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