What's really important? Patients of course

The new CEO's that are taking over America's top pharma companies are going to have their hands full. Perhaps the first priority of executives is to get back to basics and install a sense of pride with employees over what we do and what we could do. This means putting customers and patients first and I don't mean with some nice company motto I mean through actions. If we really believe that our products can help patients than we should be willing to use a variety of channels to reach patients with engaging messages. Pharma cannot hide behind "data" in clinical studies but rather has to be transparent in communicating risks vs. benefits, especially with ongoing clinical trials. If you believe your patients don't know about new side effects that are being reported by patients than you are sadly mistaken. Just look at what is happening with the sales of Byetta as more and more people on message boards discuss potential side effects of pancreatitis.


The technology now exists, via a CRM program, to send people more personalized communication based upon a variety of segmentation criteria including psychographics &demographics. People are using the Web to look for health information and the fact that pharma marketers have not tried to reach these people more effectively with targeted, engaging communications is a terrible oversight.


In order to think outside the box though the climate within pharma organizations need to change. Way too much time is spent trying to convince people that "we need to do this" and then because of outdated legal requirements much of what marketers wanted to do is watered down to a program that is ineffective.


DTC marketers who are successful need to stay in a DTC marketing role and not be promoted to other positions within the organization where they cannot use what they have learned. Marketers who take risks and break new ground in reaching customers should be rewarded. We have to learn to do a lot more with a lot less today and that means redefining the marketing mix from top to bottom.


Above all marketers need to implement with speed. This means less dependency on market research to support what you already should know and more feedback from you current customers to keep them engaged with the brand.


As for CEO's they have the so called analysts from Wall Street breathing down their necks looking at short term gains rather than long term strategic business objectives. Rather than cater to these MBA types pharma needs CEO's who can guide the organization for the long term while they, the CEO's, take the heat from investors. If it wasn't for pharma's success with past products like Lipitor the expectations would not be so great for another blockbuster.

Pharmaceutical companies will become stronger and better able to compete when the storm passes but they are going to have to reset expectations with both investors and employees. Those of you who read my BLOG know that I am very passionate about the use of the Web and I believe that pharma needs more passionate people in the ranks to succeed. We should not need an ethics or compliance hot line because passionate people know in their hearts what is right and wrong. The people who are in pharma for the "bucks" are the ones that are leaving now because they know that the good old days of 50-70% bonuses are over. What they forgot is that the real bonus is seeing a patient with cancer living longer because of our products or knowing that someone with depression can live a normal life because of treatment options and DTC advertising. Time to get back to this....