Working at Eli Lilly & Company
Dec/29/2006 08:49 Filed in: Pharma
Business
Since the NY Times does a great job of kicking big pharma around I thought that I would share with you some of my experiences during my five years at Eli Lilly at Indianapolis. I was primarily in the eMarketing area and worked on several brands including Prozac, Sarafem & Cialis. I learned a lot during my five years and although I am not an ideologist I would have left Lilly sooner if I thought there was any truth to claims that Lilly pushed "off-label promotion of ANY product.
While employed at Lilly we were required to take quarterly compliance training. During this class we were given instruction by our legal, medical and regulatory people on what we could do and, more importantly, could not do. Each employee, including Directors, then had to take a test to ensure that they understood the course materials. In addition there was a book of ethics that Lilly maintained called the Lilly Red Book. Again we were required to read this book and take a test to ensure that we understood the materials.
When preparing marketing materials we were required to go through a MLR review (medical, legal and regulatory). I can tell you first hand that this team tended to be very conservative in both DTC and DTP materials. If it didn't say it on the label then we didn't say it to physicians or consumers, end of discussion. I can't tell you how many times we argued with the MLR team but their word was final as they were the ones who had to sign off on all materials. As a marketer I often shared with them insights that we had learned during consumer or physician research so they had a better understanding of why we were proposing certain tactics. This led to a better session and after working with my MLR team I gained their trust but they continued to scrutinize every marketing message.
During my time with Lilly one thing always seemed to guide me. The Director of Marketing Services told us in a group meeting once that we should do everything just as if a patient, or consumer, were sitting right by our side. Lilly's slogan is "answers that matter" and in everything I observed and did we always tried to provide patients with the answers to questions on our products. In the rare occasion when a brand team received a letter from the FDA the MLR team would immediately go into action to amend or suspend the materials in question. Management told us, in so many words, that a letter from the FDA was unacceptable and that "it won't happen again". (translation if it does there is going to be hell to pay)
I was proud to be a Lilly marketer and I am still very proud to list Lilly on my resume. A company is only as good as the people it hires and retains. Yes, there might have been some mistakes made by some people in the past but for the most part they were shown the exit. Because of my time at Lilly I am a better marketer and while there I was able to convince some senior people that the Internet was a great channel for communicating with our audience and that the Web was about users, not about pushing information to visitors.
I read the NY Times everyday and for the most part I consider it a good newspaper. They have had some major blunders of their own in recent time but I won't hold that against them. I am extremely disappointed at the recent set of articles that ran in the Times on Zyprexa however. It was old information and the Times never seemed to question the motives of the lawyer who released the information. That's ashame because there are a hell of a lot of good people at Lilly who deserve better and who are trying to make a difference in patients lives..and that is what it is all about.
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