Insanity
Feb/17/2008 07:33
Old marketing, it interrupts consumers with a message that is not relevant to them. It creates noise and clutter in an era where there is already information overload. New marketing really makes old school marketers, most of whom seem to be in DTC marketing, nervous because for the first time marketers have to acknowledge that they don't have control of the message. Some organizations might be aware of new marketing but to date I have seen zero tactics employed by pharma to leverage new marketing. And don't give me the "we're a regulated industry BS either" because that is just an excuse to do the same old thing and spend money with little ROI.
Rather than look at new marketing and ask who within your organization is responsible for implementing new marketing programs you should be changing the basic structure of your organization to leverage these new ways to communicate with your customers. Of course this means a radical change in the way you think about your patients and customers but if marketing is continue to become relevant to pharma then it has to prove it to senior managers and executives who for the most part are clueless.
Agency people especially have to come in with new marketing ideas and try and get pharma marketers to respond rather then the same "spend money here and here" canned pitch. If they run into a room full of blank stares or people that are so entrenched in the matrix organization that they can't be moved then the agency needs to consider the ramifications of launching the same old programs over and over again. It will have a negative reflection on them and their future business. Recently a collegue who is getting ready to launch a new drug called me to inquire about a big New York agency that has a pharma top 10 account. I told him to watch the ads for these products on TV and go to their websites and he later sent me an eMail and said "it's the same old thing, we really need to cut through this clutter and I'm not sure that throwing more money into the bucket will help". Bingo ! He is starting to get it. The first year the drug is launched his DTC budget is predicted to be $100 million but he doesn't want to go the traditional route he wants to build awareness quickly so that they can then translate awareness into action (asking for the product). "I guess that agency is not what we are looking for" he said..
So the question remains...what is pharma marketing doing to embrace new marketing and where will it lead? My guess is that there will continue to be a lot of the same old tactics and that's just too bad. Pharma marketers have become integrated within the matrix and are too comfortable in just getting buy-in on their strategies to think outside the box. The same tactics but expecting different results...now that is insane.
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