Sep/29/2009 01:44 Filed in:
DTC
Effectiveness
According to
Forrester 48% of
consumers today now believe that they have the
right to decide whether or not to receive
advertising. Anyone who still
believes in push marketing needs to retire to the
markters old age home and watch reruns of The
Lucy Show. The Internet has led to a revolution
in consumerism where consumers are fighting back
against meaningless, interruptive marketing with
their own voices through the power of social
media and the Web. Read
More...
Tags: Engagement
Sep/28/2009 07:31 Filed in:
Media
(TV)
DTC marketers
love affair with TV advertising maybe forced to
come to an end as ROI for TV ads continue to
drop. Not only are consumer marketer realizing
that TV ads are providing a really bad ROI, most
are trying to shift a LOT of money to digital
while pharma once again is behind the changes and
evolution of marketing to today's
consumers. Read
More...
Tags: Media
Sep/27/2009 06:54 Filed in:
DTC
Effectiveness
With DTC
spending down by double digits a lot of DTC
marketers are going to be facing the reality of
doing more with less next year. Someone recently
asked me "can you launch a brand online?" and my
answer to that is absolutely. Not only can you
launch a new pharma product online but I can
reach more people online and get a better ROI
through interactive than with ANY other
channel. Read
More...
Tags: Budgets
Sep/24/2009 03:05 Filed in:
DTC
Marketing Talent
Some people in
pharma remember the 90's as a great time to be in
pharma marketing. DTC advertising was permitted
and drugs like Prozac, Viagra and Lipitor took
off DTC marketing took shape. Times were good,
people earned good salaries, bonuses were good
and more and more money began to flow into DTC
budgets as sales increased. But something else
was happening as well; a fundamental shift in the
way pharma thought of the business from patient
centric to Wall Street centric.
Read
More...
Tags: Working in DTC Marketing
Sep/24/2009 05:14 Filed in:
Social
Media
Recently a
friend of mine within the drug industry sent me
the metrics for his website from his IT group. It
consisted of 5 lines of data showing visitors,
number of pages viewed and average number of
visitors per day. When I asked him about more
detailed data he responded with "that's all I
have". Since this product is a $500 million drug
I thought there would be more but this is one of
the key reasons why pharma doesn't get it and is
not ready for the digital revolution.
Read
More...
Tags: Social Media
Sep/23/2009 04:03 Filed in:
Brands in the
news
Be afraid..be
very afraid ! Amgen is getting ready to launch
their osteoporosis drug later this year and they
have already started some premliminary marketing
with an unbranded site knowmybones.com. The FDA did
their best to handcuff Amgen's new drug but if
they are marketing savvy it could be a winner
but their unbranded sites shows that they have
a lot of work to do. Read
More...
Tags: Amgen
Sep/23/2009 09:21 Filed in:
DTC
Marketing Conferences
It's become fun
to hear the speakers promote, I mean present
insights to pharma marketers about how to market
in an era of empowered patients. Today's
insights? Pharma needs more people who grew up
digital, social media means learning to listen
and physicians want materials they can give to
patients after diagnosis.
The obvious is that which is never seen until
someone expresses it simply.
Read
More...
Tags: Conferences
Sep/23/2009 09:10 Filed in:
Social
Media
You can’t blaze
new paths without going deep in the woods. If the
drug industry really believes that social media
can benefit patients than they should be willing
to risk a letter from the FDA and fight back for
its customers. Today it seems every drug company
wants to stay far under the radar of the FDA even
though the FDA might not understand new media and
empowered patients. This approach is leading to
marketing practices that are dated and does not
consider what is best for the consumer. The real
issue is can the drug industry use social media
to inform and educate without a marketing person
getting in the way and trying to sell
someone. Read
More...
Tags: Social Media
Sep/23/2009 05:34 Filed in:
DTC
Environment
Engagement,
transparency, brand aggregators, these are all
the elements of marketing to today's consumers
but it requires a completely new way to think
about your customers and an approach that many
pharma marketers may not be willing to take as
they continue to hide behind "we're a regulated
industry". Read
More...
Tags: Branding
Sep/22/2009 10:35 Filed in:
DTC
Environment
What does the
drug industry need to do NOW to ensure their
survival in the future and where is the industry
headed ? The lack of visionaries who are able to
install a sense of urgency and change within
pharmaceutical marketing is amazing considering
that most CEO's earn enough money in one year to
retire on. Here are some key points that pharma
needs to embrace to stay relevant in the coming
decade. Read
More...
Tags: Future of DTC
Sep/22/2009 06:28 Filed in:
DTC
Environment
The
fundamental nature of medical risk in the United
States has changed over the past 20 to 30
years—shifting away from random, infrequent, and
catastrophic events driven by accidents, genetic
predisposition, or contagious disease and toward
behavior- and lifestyle-induced chronic
conditions. Treating them, and the serious
medical events they commonly induce, now costs
more than treating the more random, catastrophic
events that health insurance was originally
designed to cove. What’s more, the number of
people afflicted by chronic conditions continues
to grow at an alarming
rate. This quote
from the McKinsey Quarterly ought to send a wake
up call to everyone who has something to do with
the healthcare industry. Read
More...
Tags: Consumers lifestyles
Sep/22/2009 05:16 Filed in:
Social
Media
Those of us who
have worked in pharma/medical device industries
know all too well that you don't get a cup of
coffee without doing an ROI analysis. One of the
many reasons that big pharma is in trouble is
that their ROI analysis has taken control of too
many marketing programs at a time when
consumers are saying "I am not
a segment". According to
eMarketer 84% of professionals do not measure
ROI for social media and you had better
believe that one of the biggest barriers to
pharma doing anything on social media is going
to be "how do we calculate ROI?"
Read
More...
Tags: Social Media
Sep/21/2009 01:23 Filed in:
Social
Media
Consumers today
are telling companies "if you aren't open with
me, I won't trust you". Trust and transparency
have become essential building blocks for any
branding campaign and big pharma is not trusted
by consumers as the healthcare debate gets more
intense. There is however a bigger issue here:
the need for transparency. Without transparency
even great social media marketing efforts are
going to be wasted on an audience that is
skeptical of the message. Read
More...
Tags: Social Media
Sep/21/2009 07:53 Filed in:
FDA Social
Media
Quick someone
call the Cost Guard and let them know the Titanic
is in trouble ! Too late? Well that is exactly
the FDA response to their public forum on Web 2.0
and social media for pharma marketers. Sure, it's
a step in the right direction but here's news to
the FDA: Web 2.0 has come and gone and consumers
don't want to hear from pharma marketers on
social media unless they listen and bring people
together. That sound you hear is hell freezing
over as people really believe this will lead to
new DDMAC guidelines. Read
More...
Tags: Social Media
Sep/20/2009 05:31 Filed in:
DTC
Environment
Lipitor is the
best selling prescription drug of all time with
sales in excess of $10 billion but is this drug
truly a miracle wonder or is it twisted marketing
and defensive medicine gone wrong?
If these
medications were without side effects, then you
may be able to justify the risk - but they cause
muscle damage, sexual dysfunction, liver and
nerve damage,e and other problems in 10-15% of
patients who take them. It has risks and too may
people maybe taking this drug when they should be
cutting down on the real enemy:
sugar. Read
More...
Sep/16/2009 09:07 Filed in:
Social
Media
If you're a
pharma marketer you know how important social
media is and that it's a great platform to listen
to what consumers are saying about your brand but
how do you get a handle on what social media is
important and identify key influencers and
threats to your brand? I just may have an answer
in Spiral16 an amazing
social media monitoring service that provides
marketers with an easy to understand dashboard
of what's going on within the social media
world around your brand. Read
More...
Tags: Measuring Social Media
Sep/16/2009 05:57 Filed in:
DTC
Environment
There are two
stories this week which possible point to a
demise, or at the very least a big cutback, in
DTC spending. The first was that Lunesta sales
continue to rise despite the fact they are not
doing any major DTC advertising. The second was
the announcement of 5,500 layoffs at Lilly as
drugs in the pipeline fail and the impending loss
of $1 billion in sales from the loss of Zyprexa
as it comes off patent. If you think cuts in DTC
this year were bad just wait till 2010.
Read
More...
Tags: Budgets
Sep/14/2009 10:02 Filed in:
DTC
Effectiveness
The news about
Lilly's planned layoffs of 5,500 people spread
like a California wildfire on Cafe Pharma. With
the loss of over $1 billion in sales from Zyprexa
coming off patent the CEO of Lilly decided that
it's time to act like a $20 billion company and
accept an environment that is not conducive to
growth. People are always telling me that change
is good. But all that means is that something you
didn't want to happen has happened.
Read
More...
Tags: Future of DTC
Sep/14/2009 06:15 Filed in:
Social
Media
The growth of
Twitter has been amazing and it seems that
conservatives have seized this social media
platform to spread misinformation about
healthcare to the point that people don't want to
check facts and form their own opinions. Some of
the images from the march this weekend in
Washington clearly showed that there are a lot of
ignorant people in our mist and that the message
is being blocked by those who feel it is better
to divide our country than provide healthcare for
one of the wealthiest nations on Earth.
Read
More...
Tags: Twitter
Sep/12/2009 06:47 Filed in:
DTC
Environment
There were
e-mails that Merck knew about these effects since
1999 and they weren't putting any warnings on the
drugs. This is a quote from one of the jurors in
Merck Fosamax case. Although the result of the
case was a mistrial it is a further indication
that sales come before patients safety and health
in this authors opinion. Read
More...
Tags: CRM
Sep/10/2009 07:57 Filed in:
DTC
Effectiveness
According to a
case study by Coke Oasis, 3 out of 4 of the top
media vehicles for increased brand fame are
online. DTC marketers please take note..
ONLINE not via TV ! With Manhattan
Research confirming that more people are online
looking for health information than ever before
why in the hell would you continue to spend most
of your DTC budget on TV when it provides such a
poor ROI ? Read
More...
Tags: Media TV
Sep/09/2009 12:22 Filed in:
DTC
Environment
The 2009 Survey
of Health Care Consumers, conducted by the
Deloitte Center for Health Solutions, is
Deloitte’s second- annual study of health care
consumers’ attitudes, behaviors and unmet needs.
Among the key findings is what a lof of us have
known for a long time; patients are becoming
consumers of healthcare. Read
More...
Tags: Health Care Survey
Sep/08/2009 02:33 Filed in:
Drug
Industry & The Law
With the
whistleblowers scheduled to receive a LOT of
money from the recent Pfizer settlement I knew it
was just a matter of time before more people,
hoping for a big payout, would be coming out of
the woodwork. Now salespeople are saying that
Pfizer promoted several drugs off label. When
will it stop and are these claims true or just
zealous salespeople trying to cash in?
Read
More...
Tags: Whistleblowers
Sep/07/2009 07:20 Filed in:
DTC
Environment
As we enter the
last quarter of 2009 I'm sure a lot of DTC
marketers will be saying "goodbye and good
riddance". This has been a rough year for drug
and medical device companies but there are a lot
of challenges that lay ahead. Will DTC marketers
chose the road of irrelevance or will they
finally understand concepts like patient
empowerment ? Read
More...
Tags: Future of DTC
Sep/04/2009 06:49 Filed in:
Social
Media
Perhaps the
reason people don't want to use social media to
talk to their doctor is that they prefer a
communication channel with at least a little
privacy ?!
Tags: Social Media
Sep/03/2009 12:16 Filed in:
Drug
Industry & The Law
Do
people check out statements made by bloggers,
Twitter users or e-mailers before considering
them factual? Social media noise can drown out
the facts and the fact is that there is a lot of
noise about both the healthcare debate and a
variety of prescription drugs.
Read
More...
Tags: Search Engine Marketing
Sep/03/2009 06:59 Filed in:
DTC
Marketing Talent
There was a time
not too long ago when I was proud to wear my
Cialis DTC team shirt or Eli Lilly shirt to show
people that I worked in the drug industry but I'm
not too sure that is the case anymore. The drug
industry continues to move from stormy seas to
the eye of the hurricane. Read
More...
Tags: Working in DTC Marketing
