2010 is almost
here and a lot of people will be trying to get
back into the groove of going back to work after
a lengthy holiday break. Will it be more of the
same ol' same ol' or will there be an effort to
think of new ways to interact with empowered
patients and consumers who mistrust big business
? Here are some ways to take it up a notch in
2010.
Read More...
Tags: 2010
Dec/27/2009 10:38 Filed in:
DTC
Marketing
There's no doubt
that consumers have changed their behavior as a
result of the recent recession. Some marketers
believe that that it's temporary but I think the
Internet and mistrust in big pharma is redefining
how consumers approach and think about
healthcare. The key issue now ? Will DTC
marketers and the drug industry change the way
they market to consumers or will they continue
down the same path as before as the wait for the
FDA to issue guidelines ? Click here to
download my presentation called
"Where do we go from here"
Read More...
Tags: 2010
Dec/21/2009 06:20 Filed in:
Trust and
healthcare
Trust. It's a
small word but it means so much to consumers
today and it's getting harder to earn and keep,
especially when consumers keep reading bad
stories about our industry in the media. A recent
Gallup poll indicated that consumers trust
pharmacists and nurses more than doctors. As if
physicians didn't have enough to worry
about..
Read More...
Tags: Gallup
Dec/18/2009 06:03 Filed in:
#mobilemarketing
Mobile Marketing
is getting ready to explode next year but
marketers who apply old marketing to a new
channel are quickly going to learn that their
efforts are going to waste. If you want to
leverage mobile marketing you need to thing apps,
integration is user and business needs and
evolution. Read More...
Tags: Future of DTC
Dec/17/2009 06:00 Filed in:
Social
Media
We're still
analyzing the final report from our recently
completed research with eHealth consumers but
with 35% of consumers starting their health
searches on social media we wanted to know
exactly what they expected to find. We found that
people want to connect with others who have
similar experiences and want advice on how to
live a more normal life with a health condition
or disease.
Read More...
Tags: EHealth Consumers
Dec/16/2009 01:36 Filed in:
Search
Marketing & Pharma
One of the
issues that consistently comes up when I do
research with consumers on the Internet is that
they are often overwhelmed with search results.
Where do they go? What is credible? Where do they
start? It looks like a new website that launched
today finally solved that problem. Welcome
to Healthbase
Read More...
Tags: Search Engine Marketing
Dec/14/2009 04:47 Filed in:
Drug
Industry & The Media
What to do in an
era of transparency and free flowing information
thanks to the Internet. That is a question that a
lot of companies are asking themselves right now
but the pharmaceutical industry is different from
consumer packaged goods because it takes hundreds
of millions of dollars to development drugs and
the clock can start ticking on patent expiration,
and sales, long before the drug is approved for
sale. Here is a recommendation as to what to do
when patients are consumers of healthcare.
Read
More...
Tags: Side Effects & Patients
Dec/11/2009 03:04 Filed in:
Cost of
healthcare
70%
of all health-care costs are the direct result of
patient behavior and 74% of all health costs are
confined to four chronic conditions
(cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes and
obesity) with 80% of cardiovascular disease and
diabetes is preventable, 60% of cancers
preventable, and more than 90% of obesity
preventable. These
statistics are from the CEO of Safeway who is
taking action to lower health costs resulting in
a four-year period of per capita health-care
costs that were flat (that includes both the
employee and the employer portion), while most
American companies' costs have increased 38% over
the same four years. How are they doing this? By
using the same model that auto insurance
companies use to determine our risk as drivers.
Read More...
Tags: Safeway's Health Model
Dec/10/2009 06:52 Filed in:
Search
Marketing & Pharma
I usually like
the research that Pew Internet publishes but the
report on search on health is "duh 101"; We've
found consistently in our health surveys that a
general search is the first stop for health
consumers on the Internet," Fox says. Fox says
half of online health queries are for someone
else. And women are more likely to conduct health
searches than men. If your agency is telling you
to spend more money on search because of data
like this you need to run away because they
should be saying "we've found a way to maximize
your search dollars while spending less".
Read More...
Tags: Working with an Agency
Imagine you're
on the road and trying to eat right.
Sanofi's GoMeals™ makes it
easy to access nutritional information, find
restaurants and keep track of your food
intake. If you have a health condition like
diabetes, knowing information like calories,
fats and carbs can be critical. GoMeals was
developed to help consumers get the
information they need to make better meal
choices at home or on the go. This is a great
app but this is just the start of a lot of
mobile tools to come if pharma can prepare for
the future and anticipate the opportunities of
mobile apps plus the Apple tablet.
Read More...
Tags: The future of DTC?
Dec/08/2009 05:54 Filed in:
Cost of
healthcare
The price of the
new drug, called Folotyn, is at least triple that
of other drugs that critics have said are too
expensive for the benefits they offer to
patients. The cost is $30,000 a month and while
drug companies have the right to set prices to
recoup costs the cost of this product is surely
going to bring more unneeded attention to the
drug industry and their pricing tactics.
Read More...
Tags: Side Effects & Patients
Dec/07/2009 10:58 Filed in:
DTC
Environment
So what's wrong
with this picture? Drug companies are going to
see a lot of big named brands come off patent and
in addition it seems that the $80 billion of
concessions via the new healthcare bill is not
enough for Democrats who want to squeeze the
industry like a sponge. So rather than ramp up
marketing as they realize that empowered patients
are consumers of healthcare they are waiting for
an ever cautious Federal agency to issue
guidelines that maybe outdated as soon as they
are issued?
Read More...
Tags: FDA Guidelines
Dec/07/2009 08:23 Filed in:
Social
Media
"The
concept and value of the social medium as this
unconstrained exchange is not consistent with the
regulatory constraints," said Chris
Kuenne, CEO of Rosetta Stone. Excuse me but that
is wrong on so many levels and shows why the
pharma industry is so behind the times when it
comes to DTC marketing.
Read
More...
Tags: Agencies that don't get it and some
that do
Dec/06/2009 04:43 Filed in:
Working
in the drug industry
Change, we all
talk about it but implementing change is a hell
of a lot harder than you would think. Before you
can change though you need to do a self
examination of your processes and determine if
they are still relevant in a market that demands
speed. Way too many drug companies are "matrix
organizations" which translates into a lot of
meetings and Power Points before you can
implement the simplest of actions.
Read
More...
Tags: Meetings
Dec/06/2009 09:39 Filed in:
Where
do we go from here?
Finally
business
publications and
marketing people are beginning
to realize that social
media, alone, is
not the answer to the riddle of empowered
consumers. The fact that so many consumers
don't trust the FDA or the the drug industry
is just one of the many symptoms that DTC
marketing is one very sick patient. So what
can marketers do to make DTC marketer relevant
again?
Read
More...
Tags: DTC Marketing
Dec/04/2009 06:46 Filed in:
HCP
Marketing
42,000 and
counting. That's the number of jobs that have
been shed by big pharma this year, mostly in the
sales force. Are there more to come? Well, if big
pharma wants to maintain a nice healthy profit
margin (the biggest by the way of ANY industry)
they are going to have to continue to cut costs
and at a time when the sales force is becoming
less effective I expect a lot more cuts in that
area.
Read More...
Tags: Sale Force
