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It's time for the pharma industry to remember that we're here to help patients
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In every industry all marketing programs are being evaluated to determine their potential value for the brand and company. Even the glitzy "up front" promotional week in New York, where media buyers and big corporate people get a glimpse of upcoming fall TV shows, may be discontinued. Although some advertisers are willing to pay $2.6 million for a 30-second spot on the Superbowl others like P&G have decided that the price is too high and they can get a better return on their media dollars elsewhere.
As pharma moves into the next decades the model by which they sell and market their products is also going to have to change. A new younger crop of physicians is entering the workplace and these physicians behavior is much different that their older colleagues. They are aware that technology, such as PDA's, can help them save time and cut down on the maze of paperwork. They want to know more about new clinical trials and successful treatment profiles of other patients. They don't have time for programmed presentations from drug reps fresh out of school.
In a way this transformation will strengthen the industry. Pharma companies are going to have to invest in new technology and hire people who are more medical consultants than sales people so that they can successfully engage HCP's in a one on one meaningful relationship and share information that will strengthen the brand and company. Physicians have the same problem as most of us...we have gone from an age of too little information to too much information. Anyone that can provide them with the information that they are looking for will be seen as adding value, versus those people who come in to drop off samples and tissue boxes.
I saw this coming many years ago when, at Lilly, I observed sales people coming into our HQ's for training. Most were what I called "kids" fresh out of school and I thought to myself "how can they relate to a physician who maybe in his/her 40's or 50's and have a meaningful conversation?" Yes there was a time when it was about lunches for the staff and trips to top resorts for physicians but those days are gone. For a lot of pharma companies the future has arrived but the door is only now starting to open.
How many marketing people does it take to market a new prescription medication? At most pharma companies probably too many. When I was a product manager for consumer electronics I had direct responsibility, including P&L, for over $500 million in sales. What I have seen is that most brand teams within a pharma company have four people to do a job that can be done by one.
Here is what I believe you need on a branded pharma marketing team:
-Product Manager: Overall direct responsibility for the brand including financials, marketing and sales. Has to ensure that message development is integrated within the brand team members.
-Health Care Professional Marketing Manager: Responsible for marketing to HCP's including message development and evaluation of branding within the HCP area.
-Medical Marketing: Thought leaders & CME development.
-Patient Marketing: DTC Marketing execution to targeted patients.
The other support functions, such as medical, regulatory, legal, business to business and PR should be resourced to be cross functional so that they can support other brand teams. However, they could be grouped by speciality such as Neuro or Oncology. Of course there are some things that would have to happen to have such a small team. First pharma would have to allow agencies to become more of a strategic partner so that they can do what they were hired to do without micromanaging managers. Agencies would become an extended part of the brand team and be held accountable to quantitative measurement criteria just like other areas of the brand team. The Product Manager would have to shoulder the responsibility for the brands financial targets including the direct management of profitability and expenses.
With such a small brand team something else might happen that would surprise a lot of people...implementation with speed and quality (now that's novel isn't it!). You wouldn't have to have a dozen meetings to coordinate information within the team. When you give more people direct responsibility for their jobs a remarkable thing happens they tend to take more ownership and pride in what they are doing.
Sales people also are going to see their jobs redefined. Physicians want to talk to peers about new medications and clinical studies not programmed robots. I believe that more detailing will be done online and the sales persons role will evolve to a Regional Medical Coordinator. This person will have a medical background and act as a facilitator for the brand among the medical community bring together successful treatment guidelines so others can share what has worked and was has not. Imagine a meeting sponsored by a branded prescription product in which physicians do all the talking about how patients have responded to treatment and what to look for while patients are undergoing therapy. The brand can act as a conduit to share information within the medical community and thus work with the brand team to address issues which may impact the product.
Sometimes for change to work effectively it has to be evolutionary rather than revolutionary. However that evolution can't take too long as the environment in which we work is changing too quickly. It takes vision but the right leader can make it happen so that pharma can do what we intended it to do..allow patients to lead a better quality of life.
In the near future a lot of blockbuster medications are going to be coming off patent and lower cost generics will be readily available. Pharma companies can chose to conduct clinical studies that show new products are more effective than the older generics but benefit and program managers are under increased pressure to control costs. Why prescribe Cymbalta for depression when generic Fluoxitine may do just as well? Want to use Celebrex? Well according to a letter I received from my insurance company store brand Ibuprofen works just as well and costs up to 80% less.
With so many blockbuster medications coming off patent I am sure that more and more insurers are going to recommend that patients be prescribed the generic medications by their physicians. In some HMO's physicians have to write generic medications or go through a lengthy exception process for branded medications. As baby boomers get older they are going to strain a healthcare system already in trouble. Pharma cannot continue to ignore this reality and has to adjust the way they do business. Promotional and DTC spending are all likely targets for cuts and Pfizer's announcement that they are laying off 10,000 people may only be the start of consolidation within the pharmaceutical industry.
The Possible Future of Pharma Marketing & Sales?
Most brand teams within pharmaceutical companies are bloated with people. If you look at consumer packaged companies there usually is one product manager who is assisted by cross functional teams within the company. It's time for pharma to take a serious look at this model and determine if it can work with healthcare marketing. Physicians don't have time to meet with drug company representatives who have become high priced delivery people for samples and chatchkeys. Younger physicians entering proactive are well aware of the benefits of technology to stay on top of new trends and reduce costs within their office. eDetailing continued to grow every year and physicians now want to be able to interact using consumer generated media.
The bottom line is that change is coming to the pharmaceutical industry. As Mr Kindler, the new CEO of Pfizer said this week;
Mr. Kindler made clear that he aims to slash bureaucracy inside the world's largest drug maker by sales. But he acknowledged that he faces a daunting task. "Change on this scale is not easy," said Mr. Kindler. "It takes time to get it right."
It won't be easy but this is what separated leaders from followers. The challenge will be to ensure that these cuts don't effect the organizations ability to compete in a changing marketplace. This, after all, is why CEO's get the big packages. Let's hope they succeed this time and have the vision to ride out the storm.
Pharma marketer had better beware because the days of big marketing budgets without results are coming to an end very quickly. The business model for pharmaceutical brands in a transition and those DTC marketer that continue to allocate more dollars to channels that have a bad ROI are going to be paying a price. As a recent article in Ad Age said:
"What's true for the brand is true for the management," said Robert Passikoff, founder-president of the consultancy Brand Keys and author of "Predicting Market Success." "Awareness does not mean profitability. None of these people (referring to out of work high profile Chief Marketing People) got to where they are without doing something that was successful, but often that success sets up expectations that go unmet.
Yes
there are some marketers who "get it" but for the
most part most DTC online marketing consists of
getting a website up and purchasing some keywords on
Google and MSN. Website analysis and analytics are
mostly nonexistent in pharma organizations at a time
when companies are adding whole departments to
analyze their online programs. Pharma product
websites are often are rarely updated and the budget
usually drives the strategy for the allocation of
online dollars instead of the reverse. It's getting
to the point where pharmaceutical industry online
programs are actually the brunt of jokes from online
industry insiders. Agencies that used to specialize
specifically on online programs for health are
branching out because they are sick and tired of
presenting good data only to be told "we're going
with TV".
Will it change anytime soon? I don't think so..there
just isn't enough talented people out there who know
what they are doing and the ones who are doing it
right will move to other areas and be replaced by
someone who doesn't understand the Internet. So go
ahead DTC managers...keep ignoring the Internet and
when you budgets get cut because share didn't
increase don't even tell me it was about awareness
!
The pharmaceutical industry is known for doing a wealth of market research and development of messaging before launching branded ads. Why the industry doesn't band together and take this same approach to inform and educate consumers is beyond me. Instead we have the CEO of Merck talking about breakthrough products and Pfizer spots highlighting their R&D at the same time we read about Vioxx litigation and record profits for pharma manufacturers. This approach is about as credible as the oil companies charging us $3.50 for a gallon of gas.
The key question is "does DTC serve a public purpose?". The answer to that according to research is YES. Most of us want to have choices in our healthcare, including prescription drugs we put into our bodies. We want to be able to maximize the limited time we spend with our doctors asking educated and informed questions. DTC advertising can help make more people aware that certain conditions, if left untreated, can lead to a decreased quality of life not to mention adding a financial burden to our healthcare system. How many people have statins saved from coronary heart disease? How many people have beat cancer thanks to early detection influenced by advertising? These are all questions that need to be addressed when the government looks to reign in DTC.
ACTION PLAN
Here is what I believe needs to be done to address the skeptics in Congress and take a proactive approach to DTC enforcement;
1. Moratorium- Have a 120 day moratorium on DTC advertising for newly approved prescription medications. This would give pharmaceutical companies a chance to educate and inform HCP's about the new drug in preparation for a "hard launch". However, if a product is truly a breakthrough and could save lives than pharma should be allowed to ask for an "exception" and start DTC when the drug is approved and the spots have been approved by the FDA.
2. FDA Adds Staff- The FDA needs to add people to review all DTC advertising, especially people who are familiar with the Internet and message development.
3. Continued Research- The FDA needs to continue to sponsor ongoing market research to determine the effects of DTC on the public, including pharma-economics. This research plan needs to have buy in from skeptics in Congress so that they can quantify the effect of DTC on our healthcare costs.
4. Pharma Needs to Build Trust- Start from square one and build trust with a skeptical public and media. Invite reporters in to observe the DTC process and compliance training. Educate the public on how much it costs to develop a new drug and how many actually make it to market. Show the numbers of how many people are living a higher quality of life due to prescription mediations.
5. Allocate more money to disease awareness- The more people we can educate on early signs and dangers of certain conditions the more the industry can benefit.
6. Work closer with physicians on DTC -Yes, that's right ask for physicians input when developing DTC spots. Share research with them on what consumers and patients are saying about branded ads. Believe it or not physicians want to know more about their patients behavior and attitudes when it comes to healthcare choices.
Only when the industry bands together for the good of its patients will they be able to take that first step towards building trust with a skeptical public and media. We have a long way to go but sometimes the first step is the hardest.
I have worked with Web MD many times and found that they can "be a legend in their own mind". They claim to be to be the ultimate health portal on the Web and, while numbers show them in the top 5, my experience has found that the ROI they provide is not always the best it could be. When I do an online media campaign I am not interested in impressions or clicks. I only want to pay for cost per targeted action within my target audience. Pay for performance can be challenging to a lot of online media properties but in these times of shrinking budgets I need to get a high ROI in order to get continued funding. There are a wealth of sites out there who can and do deliver pay for performance models and so far my experience with these sites has been really positive (if you want to know which sites just send me an eMail)
Web MD does provide a destination for people who are looking for health-information but I also want to reach people who are caregivers and may not be in a health seeking mode with my brand message. The costs that Web MD charges can start in the low to mid six figures and go well into the millions depending upon the program that you chose. To their credit Web MD will work with you to develop a program that meets your objectives but you have to understand what your audience behavior is online and take the message to where they are not where you think they will be.
One thing that I feel Web MD desperately needs is a redesigned web site that is more user friendly. People don't read web pages they scan and there is just too much going on within the Web MD pages..too many calls to action and at times the site is confusing. They had better continue to evolve because it's only a matter of time before another site comes along and gets it right.
Well let's see before he could start painting he would have to spend time with market research to determine if the scene he planned to paint resonates with his target audience. Then they would take a picture of the scene and do some qualitative research to determine which one communicates the feeling behind the image more clearly. Now that Claude has gone through that he is ready to paint right? Not so fast...what size canvas should he use? Ooooops gotta go back and do some more market research to determine which size canvas has the right look and feel with our audience.
Well now after 3 or months of research Claude is ready to settle down and finally paint. He begins to paint the beautiful scene before him but as he is painting the manager who is funding the painting tells him that there is too much green and can we get some new talent to replace some of the colors. Well Claude is getting upset now and tells the manager that this is art but the manage says that research has consistently shown that people like pink in paintings so we need more pink.
The painting is completed and Claude finally shows it to the team upon which the market research person says "OK lets do some more qual to see if it talks to our audience". So the painting is shown to focus groups around the country and they give some input.."Hmmm one person says..I really like blue and there is no blue in the picture". A week later the DTC manager communicates to management that the research went well although there was a consensus that more blue is needed (she likes blue as well). So they send Claude back to the studio and tell him to add more blue.
Finally after months of touching up the painting they
are finally ready to show to millions of people. The
picture is aired on TV to huge crowds and everyone
likes it but after showing the beautiful painting for
a while IMS has shown that the orders have not
increased for Monet paintings?
"Oh our objective was awareness of colored Monet
paintings not to sell any" the DTC manager states .
"If we want to sell them than I need more money for a
bigger painting on another TV special".
So Claude is informed that he has to go through the
whole process again and develop some more paintings.
Claude is naturally upset, "this is art not science"
upon which the DTC manager responds.."hmmm
interesting let's research that in our next qual
group" !
Enablex is a new prescription medication for over active bladders. The spot shows a bunch of colorful balloons with water in them until you get the feeling that they are ready to bust. My guess is that their research told them that people with overactive bladders could relate to the image but the point is it does not communicate the benefit of the medication to the audience with a limited attention span. What this medication is really selling is the ability to go out do the things you enjoy without having to worry about the need for locating the closest bathroom. That is the USP (unique selling proposition) and that is what I believe they should be emphasizing in their commercials.
I am sure that Novartis and P&G did tons of research to determine the effective of this spot but that is what happens when marketing becomes more of a science and less of an art. Instead of focusing on the quality of life that one might enjoy with this medication they have resorted to cartoon images of balloons.
There are a variety of reasons for the decline in cancer deaths in the US at a time when they should be increasing with the aging population. There are many new drugs on the market, people are proactive in cancer prevention and early detection and of course there is a decline in people who smoke. While this is a good first start the pharma industry still has a long way to go.
I
really believe that the pharma industry needs to do
more to increase awareness of cancer, it symptoms and
possible treatment options. When my mother was
diagnosed with colin cancer 6 years ago I went online
to try and get information the problem was that there
was too much information and most of it was not
consumer friendly. Today sites like getbcfacts.com
are a model for what patients are looking for the;
the basic information of breast cancer and treatment
options. There should be site like that for all types
of cancer because today a diagnose of cancer does not
mean a death sentence.
One of the advantages of DTC is that it can increase awareness of disease conditions but the industry needs to do more. Instead of looking at the ROI of a campaign like this we need to know that by helping make people aware of early signs of cancer we can save lives. If a pharma company can spend as much on an unbranded site as a branded site they need to know that it will lead to a better customer perception of the industry and their brands. Anyone who has watched a close relative or family member die from cancer knows that if they only could have caught the disease sooner maybe their loved ones could still be around. This to me is what DTC is about...reaching and touching patients and making them aware that if their cholesterol is untreated it could lead to coronary heart disease..to let them know when to see a doctor if there is a lump in their breast. I think somewhere we have become so engulfed in numbers that we fail to see the patients who can lead a better life because of what we do. Maybe I am an idealist but if I can touch just one person and give them information that could lead to a better quality of life then I know it's a start....
DTC marketing is not an easy career field to learn and excel in. Often we report to people who have no consumer marketing background and don't understand that marketing is an investment in the brand. However what has made DTC even more challenging is the revolution of empowered consumers. Consumer generated media is at the growth stage of its life cycle and everyone who has a PC can talk about your brand and, more importantly, share the brand experience with others. One disgruntled customer can reach hundreds and thousands with a BLOG or a post on a message board. Yet we continue to read that DTC marketing people are continuing to allocate more and more money to TV while doing the bare minimum for the Web and engaging people in dialogue. Product websites are often stagnant with content that is rarely updated. Before implementing any programs months of market research is needed because marketers want to cover their ass and don't know all they should about their customers.
While working in DTC I have seen good people who made a difference in patients lives passed over for promotion while others who were in the right place at the right time get promoted. Sure these people maybe competent at what they do but when I build a team I want people with a passion for what they do not people who "fit a certain profile". How would you feel when an intern comes back to work for your company, after getting her MBA, and gets promoted within a year while over the past 4 years you, and a lot of people like you, have won awards for your work and made a difference in patients lives? Can you say "work on my resume, I'm outa here!"
Those of you who read my posts here know that I am extremely passionate about DTC marketing and the Internet. DTC, when it's done right can help patients take a more active role in their healthcare choices. What continues to frustrate me however is that with all the great work I, and others, have done those who control DTC dollars continue to look at TV as the "golden egg" to reach consumers and patients. I once presented data that showed that over 85% of website visitors to my product.com website came from online media and search yet the next year my budget was cut in favor of TV even though an online survey of test and control groups indicated a 20% lift in intent to ask their HCP for my product vs. those that had not read content on my website. These are the kind of things that drive people crazy and out of DTC marketing. There are too many old school marketers in the field and to be blunt..it shows.
George W. Merck said: "We try never to forget that medicine is for the people. Not for the profits. The profits follow, and if we have remembered that, they have never failed to appear"
Is this still true today? The answer to that is more no than yes and that is unfortunate. Because of litigation, lack of leadership at the CEO level and the power of Wall Street the pharma model today has evolved more into a business/proift model than a "medicine is for people" model.
The recent news that Genentech's profits soured 76% in the fourth quarter was hardly enough to impress the "what have you done for me today" crowd on the Street. Their stock did go up but then quickly corrected after analysts projected slow growth ahead. News like this is what CEO's are graded on, not the number of new drugs that can save or enhance patient lives.
Having a best in class drug no longer means success for pharma. Lilly's Zyprexa for example has helped millions of people live better lives but because of the weight gain issue Lilly has to pay out over a billion dollars to settle litigation. That's a billion dollars that will primarily go to lawyers..that's a billion dollars less that can be spent on new breakthrough products. It also means that some drugs in development won't get the funding needed to advance to next stage clinical trials because of cuts in funding.
While some CEO's retire with $83 million pay packages (hello Pfizer!) others come under intense pressure to please the people on Wall Street who grade their performance. Do you think that these people care about patients? They only care about one thing.....profits and long term financial outlook. Why do you think most CEO's have a financial background ?
With the costs of introducing new drugs increasing and pharma spending less time looking at new ways to reach patients and consumers the model is broken. Where have the industry leaders like George Merck gone? Almost overnight they have become accountants and forgot that the real reason we are here is to make a difference in patients lives but it is naive to think that good medicine will lead to profits in today's regulatory and cost environment...that is until someone steps forward and shows the industry how it can be done.
So are pharmaceutical companies public corporations who have a responsibility to shareholders and investors or not? Do they have a right to make profits and a return on investment ? The Times would have you believe that big pharma is evil and must yield control to the government because we can't trust them to do the right thing.It is time for the Medicare drug program to work harder for its beneficiaries without worrying so much about the pharmaceutical companies
There a millions of people who have a better quality of life thanks to prescription drugs. We can now control our cholesterol with statins; a diagnosis of AIDS or cancer no longer means a death sentence; and people with arthritis can still stay active all because, in part, to prescription medications. The Times however would have you believe that big pharma is interested in profits at the expense of patient safety. The recent series of articles on Lilly's Zyprexa was shortsighted and poorly researched. I can understand Lilly's settlement with more Zyprexa cases but for the life of me I don't understand why they allow the media to kick them around. It is a disservice to the people who work in the industry and to the millions of patients who continue to lead better lives because of Lilly products.
As a law student I learned that cases are based upon facts and only facts. To my knowledge there is no evidence that Vioxx causes heart disease yet in some litigation against Merck the plaintiff has won their case. Why? Because we want to blame someone and it's so easy to demonize the pharmaceutical companies and put them in the cross-hairs. Someone died and we want to be able to assign blame, right or wrong.
The Times definitely has an axe to grind with big pharma. Some senior editor or owner evidentially wants to socialize medicine so that pharma has less and less to allocate to R&D. They don't understand that it costs upwards of $700 million to get a drug to market and that only one of 7 products actually makes it to market. I hope the American public is smarter than the Times would have us believe. I hope that they can ask the questions which I have raised here today...if they can't than the American pharmaceutical industry as we know it today could be a thing of the past with fewer breakthrough products. Pharma needs a DTC program of its own to tell its side of the story..it's long overdue.
I used to shake my head at the pharma reps who came into HQ's for their training. Most looked like they were right out of school and they were taught to detail physicians using a script to the letter. The guys were all young and the women all tended to be very good looking (not by accident). If I were a physician, I often wondered, would I listen to these people to get my free my sample? Unless you have some new information on your product I probably wouldn't want to hear it. Yet big pharma continues to spend millions of dollars on sales people salaries, expenses, and travel. Sure some pharma companies have cut the number of sales people but there are still way to many out there.
What would happen if, in order to get samples, physicians would have to complete a detail online or via a CD-ROM( when THEY have time)? What would happen if pharma companies hired regional physicians to talk with physicians peer to peer via in person, online, or by phone? What if pharma companies could distribute the results of ongoing or new clinical trials to physicians without putting a spin on it? Could one company possibly handle samples for a number of pharma companies via mail thus reducing the need for pharma sales people to be expensive delivery people? These are things that pharma companies should be exploring NOW because the environment in which they compete is going to get worse and more competitive. They can't continue to funnel millions of dollars into a sales force that is becoming less effective.
There are some products that will require some type of sales force to keep HCP's abreast of changes in the market, most notably the sales people who sell speciality products like oncology products. But do we really need sales people to detail HCP's on Cialis, Viagra, Allegra, and other me too products? I am not sure what the direction or the answer is but pharma had better start testing a lot of programs to see what works and what doesn't because the people on Wall Street won't be kind when earnings decline and expenses continue to climb.
Speed is a competitive advantage in ANY industry except big pharma. Most of us work in a matrix environment which is a fancy word for meaning that you have to have at least 6 meetings just to go to decide what to have for lunch. Most of us are used to coming to work in the morning and opening up Outlook or Notes and seeing that we are booked in back to back meetings all day. Some meetings are useful but you would think in this era of PDA's, eMail and voice mail that we could launch one program without having to go through the maze?
What's it like? Well..a lot of us get, what we feel, are really great ideas to reach our audience with a great program. We just know that it will work but before we can even think about implementing this idea we have to support it via a PowerPoint deck that we have to create. Once the deck is done our Managers then go over it and tell us to change this and change that so that it barely resembles what we wanted to say. So then we go into the second round of PowerPoint hell and once again our Manager wordsmiths the slides and again we need to get on our managers calendar to get it approved. So maybe 2-4 weeks has gone bye we are still pumped about our idea but our manager has managed the presentation to a point that it doesn't get people excited. We then have to start the presell within the organization which can take anywhere from one to two months. Again people will make you change your slides and give you reasons why you "can't do that" here. So you incorporate their feedback by once again changing slides and have a meeting. At this meeting you maybe excited at the thought of your idea coming to fruition but you then learn that we have to do some market research to determine if this will work and that is another 6 months of the matrix world.
By the time everything is done your tired from trying to manage internal processes that were developed so anyone, even people without marketing experience, can do your job. Ohhh..and by the way there are a lot of people that are great at manipulating your data so even if it market research supports what you want to do someone can find a reason to say "I don't see that".
I tried once to implement with speed and quality and ran into more obstacles than a basic training confidence course. The problem with lack of speed is that by the time you implement tactics the market has changed and more importantly your competitors strategy may have changed. It has been my experience that there are not enough marketers willing to challenge the system and review processes so that they can be implemented with speed. They get absorbed by the culture and become part of the collective (just like the Borg in Star Trek).
While we continue to read about new marketing programs on the Web by people like P&G, Ford, and Apple Pharma seems content to use their old models and be an idle spectator. We would like to change but we need to do some market research to determine if change is a good thing.
Here is a summary of an article that recently ran on Cnn's Money about Sermo.com ;
Sermo was founded earlier this year by Dr. Daniel Palestrant. The surgeon noticed that many doctors saw the red flags for Merck's flawed painkiller Vioxx and Medtronic's dysfunctional pacemakers long before they turned into major scandals in the mainstream press. "We knew about these [problems,] but we didn't know how important they were," said Sermo chief executive Dr. Palestrant, based in Cambridge, Mass. "Maybe we could the get physicians themselves to determine what's important and what it isn't."
Dr. Palestrant noticed that doctors chatted with other doctors as they walked the halls of hospitals and clinics, but they didn't have an efficient way of reaching the wider medical community. That's why he created Sermo, which is describes as the biggest online physicians' community in the world. "What's motivating physicians is their desire to communicate with one another," said Dr. Palestrant. "So far, the biggest motivator that's causing physicians to log onto the site is for physicians to say, 'I'm seeing this,' or 'I'm seeing that.'"
"Dr. Palestrant said many of the drug-related online comments focus on unapproved and off-label uses for FDA-approved drugs. and Sermo also serves a tool for physicians to compare notes on the possibility of dangerous or unusual side effects in commonly used drugs Doctors talk about antidepressants that seem to cause rashes, statins that seem linked to cognitive problems, and vitamins that might be causing lumps. "It there's smoke, there's fire," said Dr. Palestrant. "There's something that needs to be done here. This is sort of the zeitgeist.
Doctors vote, in a Netflix-style five-star system, on their level of interest in various medical topics. They also answer multiple-choice questions about their opinions on questions posed by other doctors. Discussion topics have titles like "Lipitor nightmares," a reference to Pfizer's top-selling statin, "FDA warning on Tamiflu," referring to the bird flu anti-viral from Roche Holding (Charts), and "Viagra vs. Levitra vs. Cialis," a comparison of sexual dysfunction treatments.
.Doctors pitch questions and test theories, and anonymity is protected. A physician going by the moniker docDecaf wanted to know what other doctors thought about inoculating girls with Merck's (up $0.10 to $44.75, Charts) Gardasil, a newly-approved vaccine for a sexually-transmitted virus that causes cervical cancer, in patients as young as three. The purpose of inoculating at a young age is to make sure the girls are protected long before they become sexually active. The FDA has approved the vaccine for girls as young as nine. But another doctor wrote into Sermo, saying that three years is too young because the vaccine's protection is believed to last 10 years, so its potency would run out before most girls become sexually active
Not all the topics are serious. One of the online surveys asks doctors to vote for their favorite fictional doctor. The ballot includes Dr. Mark Greene of "ER," Dr. Gregory House of "House," and even Hannibal Lecter from "Silence of the Lambs." Dr. "Bones" McCoy of "Star Trek" is a write-in. At least 2,000 doctors are posting questions and voting on the site, said Dr. Palestrant, who noted that only physicians are allowed to participate and they're not charged for the service. The privately held company makes its money by charging institutional investors for the right to see the results on physician votes as they're coming in. The investors don't vote. "As long as you're a licensed physician, you can put whatever you want on the site," said Dr. Palestrant. "What's important is what your colleagues think."
Dr. Palestrant said he hasn't taken money from any drug companies so far, though that could change because he's in negotiations with them. The drug makers wouldn't be allowed to weigh in on surveys. But Dr. Palestrant said that physicians seem to prefer a Web site free from Big Pharma influence. Fran Hawthorne, author of "The Merck Druggernaut" and "Inside the FDA," said she wasn't familiar with Sermo, but an online forum is a great way for physicians to learn about side effects, as well as off-label uses not approved by the FDA, which account for about half of all prescriptions.
"[Doctors] find out through trial and error and schmoozing, so they need more communication, to find out about the good and the bad," said Hawthorne. Hawthorne said doctors could benefit from any source of pharmaceutical information "without it being a seminar from a drug company." But she suggested that anyone using the Internet as a source of information should adopt a healthy dose of cynicism. "Who's got an ax to grind?" said Hawthorne. "That's always the danger of the Internet. But in general it's a good idea, because you have doctors who presumably know what they're doing."
This is great site and one shows what one person with
vision can do on the Web to connect with physicians.
As younger physicians enter the workplace they are
going to be more tech savvy than their counterparts
and will be looking for ways to embrace technology to
improve patient outcomes and reduce costs. Too bad
that pharma hasn't learned this yet as usual they are
way behind the curve.
There are a lot of ways to spend money on the Internet. Search engine marketing, online advertising, eCRM programs and website development and upgrades can all add up to a lot of money yet pharma marketers would rather spend millions of dollars developing TV ads and testing messages for TV rather than allocate more money for the Web. This tells me that they don't understand how to measure their web initiatives and don't understand that web analytics can provide a picture of who is visiting their website, what they are looking at and the effect of a website visitor on intent to ask for a prescription. These analytics are all available and can be a valuable tool for marketers but they just don't don't get it.
As I have written previously on this site big world class marketers like P&G, Budweiser and Chrysler are all allocating less money to TV and more to the Web. Why? Because over the years they know that costs of TV have continues to rise, viewer-ship has declined and that TV does not provide the best ROI today. However, what really scares me is pharma marketers continued ignorance of today's empowered consumers. Consumers today have information available to them 24/7/365, talk to each other via consumer generated media, and mistrust marketers messages. Yet pharma marketers continue to push messages to consumers rather than engage them..they prefer to air horrible TV spots like Rozarem's "your dreams want you back" rather than think about talking to consumers one on one.
The lack of talent in DTC marketing is scary and I think it's time for pharma to start tapping some consumer marketing people to bring new life into DTC advertising. When I first started in the DTC world my manager told me "you need to learn more about DTC marketing" and my response was "no, DTC marketing needs to learn more from consumer marketing". Too bad that message is still true today.