Seed Newsvine
Woefully underspent
The continued lack of investment in the online channel by pharma is further indication, to me, that they don’t understand the interactive channel. When talking to people within pharma I hear phrases like “legal won’t allow us” and “I don’t have the budget”. It has gotten so bad that a lot of people are starting to leave Internet and DTC marketing all together.
When I was working on the Cialis team I was lucky enough to have a DTC manager who knew the importance of the online channel and as such I received a nice slice of the pie to move forward with online initiatives. However with budgets getting tighter and tighter what I have seen, in talking to associates, is that the online channel is being cut in favor of TV and in some cases even print.
What is it about the online channel that scares so many DTC managers? Well first, in order to really take advantage of online you have to spend money and it could be a lot of money. You can’t repurpose videos from other channels on the Web you have to understand what your audience is looking for and what the barriers are to therapy adaption. People will read medical and health information on the Web but it has to be in terms that speaks to them as an audience of one rather than specific segments.
CPG marketers are increasing dollars to online but
overall pharma
is really lagging.
Then there is social
media, BLOGS, message boards etc. Pharma is so afraid
to even approach this part of online that they don’t
even talk about it anymore. Believe it or not there
is a way to engage your audience online and not
violate FDA DDMAC guidelines but that would mean
sitting with your legal people to gain their trust
and understanding and not many people have time for
that today.
Finally there is capability in the “e” channel. I can
tell you firsthand that good eMarketing people are
hard to find and once someone distinguished
themselves in the online channel they are usually
moved to another job within pharma. You lose all that
knowledge while someone new is trying to understand
how “e” works and how to measure it.
More and more advertisers are showing up on You Tube
and rather than pushing information so marketers have
made the brand interaction entertaining and
insightful. DTC marketing is an art, and an artist
understands that the canvas is white until the brush
is applied. DTC marketers would prefer to keep it
white with just a couple of brush strokes.
I will continue to point out that this channel is
underfunded until someone finally says “we tried
this”.....