Pharma top industry in slashing jobs

Oct/23/2008 08:14

With pharma in a deep funk caused by slow sales and blockbusters due to come off patent soon it should come as no surprise that pharma is the number one industry in slashing jobs. New products, in oncology and CV, will not benefit from DTC advertising as they tend to be data driven. Is this the beginning of a new strict diet for pharma? My guess is that unless pharma changes their "matrix" management philosophy they will be unable to do more with less which will lead to more stressed out people and being caught short when they will need assets the most.

When I moved from consumer packaged goods to pharma marketing I have to say that I was quite surprised at the number of people it takes to market drugs. Rather than have one or two people responsible for specific areas they seemed to have whole departments of people whose job it was to suggest and implement tactics. This leads to employee calendars being booked from early in the morning to late in the day and forget trying to sit down and really look at opportunities and analyze data.

So with pharma now buying pipelines, and concentrating on oncology products, one has to wonder if DTC marketing people are going to find themselves with greatly reduced budgets. Oncology marketing is very different from current traditional drug marketing. Oncologists tend to be very data driven and are very aware of new products and treatment options. Soon we will have the number one product in the world for high cholesterol in generic form, prescription allergy treatments are now OTC, generic Prozac is number one on a number of formularies as first line treatment option for depression, and while Nexium continues to do well a lot of insurers are suggesting OTC Prilosec instead.

So DTC marketing in pharma could be hurting in a number of ways; first new blood is going elsewhere and not looking at a career in pharma and second, people who have proved themselves and helped brands meet business objectives could be looking outside the industry for more challenging opportunities as budgets and products dry up. If DTC marketing was a life cycle I would say that it is in the declining stages.

Now my colleague John Mack said recently in one of his posts that pharma is hiring eMarketing people and I hope that is true. What I have found in a quick call to some agency and pharma people is that nobody is hiring and that the people that are coming into eMarketing do not have an eMarketing background. This means that a lot of pharma organizations are on the ramp waiting to get on an expressway where everyone is doing 100 mph.

If we, as an industry, really believe that DTC marketing educates and informs consumers and patients than Directors and Managers need to fight to continue to both retain talent and attract new talent. We have learned too much as an industry to be discarded by senior mangers who are only interested in numbers and don't understand the value of marketing. Who responds will be clear in the next 3-5 years. Those that made the investments in people and capabilities will excel..those that did not will continue to struggle to break through the clutter.