When awards equal self promotion

Nov/03/2007 07:52 Filed in: The agency side
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When Rozerem wins an award, any award, for their really bad campaign featuring Abe Lincoln and the talking beaver you know that the sun now rises from the west. Yet that was the case at the recent Medical Marketing & Media awards in New York. If this industry is ever to acknowledge their shortcomings they are first going to have to ditch these “pat on the back” self-promotional awards.




Medical Marketing and Media has these yearly awards to promote agencies to pharma companies. It doesn’t matter that your sales suck and that you’re not meeting brand objectives just as long as you did something creative like digging up Abe Lincoln and using a talking beaver. Please !


This is nothing new to the advertising industry. They have been giving themselves a pat on the back for a long time. You see the agency people never get to be in the limelight they just get to supply you with really bad creative and bill you big sums of money. Somewhere in all this self appreciation however someone forgot about our customers.


It’s all about customers and patients and always has been but while the rest of marketers understand that the power has shifted to consumers pharma marketers continue to push information via Web 1.5. and state “we can’t do anything more than that because we are a regulated industry”. But Medical and Media Marketing’s purpose is to suck up to the agencies and pharma marketers so that they can continue to publish stories that are as close to reality as weapons of mass destruction.


Yes there have been some good things done but the truth is that 95% of all DTC is marginal at best. Websites continue to be nothing more than information repositories and customer service is non-existent. When a product does get media attention because of a possible side effect pharma companies seem to take a “those that know don’t tell and those that tell don’t know” rather than be transparent to patients.


So some DTC marketers will be able to pad their resumes with “Won 2007 Medical Media Marketing Award” and it may help agencies promote themselves to pharma marketers who are looking to make a big splash but somewhere in this self promotional frenzy the real focus of the ALL DTC has been lost: the patients. DTC is about our patients and prospects and acknowledging that they now have more power over their treatment options than ever before. Awards? No this is not a recognition of anything other than proof that networking has rewards.
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