Jun/26/2008 06:35
I
have to admit the more I see the Evista ad the more I
believe it is one of the strangest ads I have ever
seen. Granted TV ads should grab your attention but
is showing a bunch of post menopausal women wrapped
in nothing but a towel the way to do this? I have
received a lot of eMails from people who thought that
the ad is both strange and offensive. Of course the
bottom line will be the new Rx’s that this campaign
generates before Evista comes off patent.
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Jun/10/2008 09:36
So
what do you do when your brand is being talked about
negatively in the press and on social media sites?
Well first you hold a round table that only has one
side and then you launch a back approach to
advertising with general disease information that
leads people to your brand. This back door marketing
approach has no respect for people’s intelligence and
stinks. Rather than address the issues head on Pfizer
has chosen to ignore it with double talk.
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Jun/03/2008 06:25
One of the key
objectives and measurements of DTC campaigns is
awareness. For some reason a lot of DTC marketers
believe that awareness equals new Rx’s but that is
not necessarily true. In the era of information at
everyones fingertips, via the Web, awareness may
increase your brands share of mind but it will also
do a lot co increase your competitors share of mind
as well.
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Jun/02/2008 05:08
Well several media
people, via BLOGS on the Web, feel that the new
Evista spot is indeed creepy but the “buzz meter”
indicates that people are talking about it. Jacob
Leffler on “short attention span theatre said “ for
the record since this is a product for women, and not
men, I am not in the target so maybe I am not
supposed to get it - so for the record my wife was
equally as disturbed by this freaky spot. She ran to
the fridge and proceeded to drink tons of milk for
fear that osteoporosis would sentence her to the
towel only Stanley Kubrick-esque alien spa wear the
women in this spot seemed to be hanging out.”
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May/19/2008 05:59
Watching TV this
weekend I was surprised to see a new Evista DTC spot
that featured a bunch of women wearing nothing but
towels or bed sheets. After that caught my attention
I was extremely surprised to see that this was a new
DTC ad for Lilly's Evista. I found the ad to be
informative and the cast of women to be believable
although some looked like models rather than post
menopausal women. Read
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May/15/2008 05:49
In
addition, there is the pharmaceutical
industry's relentless advertising. With those factors
unlikely to change, doctors say the proportion of
Americans on chronic medications can only grow. This
tasty nugget from an article in today's WSJ reporting
on the increases of prescription drug use. Relentless
advertising? DTC is a lot of things but this author
would certainly not call it relentless.
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May/14/2008 05:54
It
looks like there be somewhat of a little battle going
on between Lilly and Amylin over the marketing of
Byetta. It seems that somehow Lilly thought that
Byetta sales would approach blockbuster status with
an infusion of $40 million in DTC ads. However the
people at Amylin thought different and, according to
posters on Cafe Pharma, even had proof that the DTC
ads were not effective. The result? Byetta sales are
a "disappointment" to Lilly per the last earnings
call. Read
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May/03/2008 10:31
I
have to say that of all the DTC ads on TV right now
the one I like the best is the "Depression Hurts"
campaign for Cymbalta. I like it because it shows
what depression can feel like and how it can effect
others. This is what DTC should and can do, show what
it's like to suffer through some of these conditions
so that people can seek help via an informed decision
with their HCP's. Read
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Apr/26/2008 09:11
In
my early morning surfing of bookmarked Websites I was
surprised to see an online ad for Lialda from Shire.
Lialda is Shire's product to treat ulcerative colitis
a condition that effects 700,000 people in the US.
With such a small target market one would have to
wonder what in the hell this ad would be doing on the
NY Post Page Six page ? I guess that maybe they used
demographic targeting since UC starts in people aged
15-30 and is five times more likely to effect people
of Eastern European Jewish decent but this ad could
surely do better somewhere else. Read
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Apr/22/2008 05:36
Pharmaceutical
companies need to adjust to the current realties of
their customers and adapt quickly. Challenges
currently facing traditional sales and marketing
media include tightening pricing and reimbursement
controls, increasing pressures on physician time, and
public skepticism of the Pharma industry all
compounded by a tightening regulatory framework. So
reads the executive summary in a report from
Datamonitor. So if this has been a long time coming
why is pharma still in a funk? Read
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Apr/19/2008 06:05
"There is a
substantial gap between what marketers believe is
relevant to the consumer, and what consumers rate as
valuable," said Lori Connolly, director of research
at Merkle. A substantial gap? Imagine that ! This is
an example of why pharma marketers can't get CRM
right. To them it's all about one message fits all
and "what good is the message if it doesn't drive
business? Unfortunately the rules of CRM are changing
because of the volume of eMail and it is not longer
satisfactory to send one message to your
segments.
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Apr/18/2008 05:27
A
proposal in Congress that drug ads contain a phone
number that consumers can call to make complaints to
the Food and Drug Administration is being floated
around. Can you imagine the costs this would add to
the FDA not to mention the headaches of formalizing a
complaint protocol. There is a much easier way to
collect this information by simply following a good
customer CRM program on the Internet.
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Apr/08/2008 05:44
My
friend over at the Pharma Marketing Blog, John Mack,
recently ran a survey to ask if pharma was in a
recession. I'm not sure of the results of his survey
but my informal survey of 15 DTC marketing people
clearly shows a "retraction" of spending in all areas
especially the Internet. In this informal survey with
DTC marketers I asked questions like "are you
planning to spend more. less or about the same on DTC
ads" and "is it harder to get dollars for DTC
programs this year than previous years". I was not
ready for the venting that most DTC marketers
unloaded on me and my ear is still ringing.
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