Farewell old friend

Apr/15/2008 06:06 Filed in: Agency Side
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Yesterday I received a call from a friend with whom I have worked with for over 9 years saying that he had decided to resign from his business and take a year or two off. He was the owner of a digital interactive agency that specialized in working with pharma and as I listened to his rationale I heard the frustration of someone who knew that pharma could do a hell of a lot more online but was tired of the pharma matrix merry-go-round.




Mr Mack's survey on Pharma Marketing Blog seems to indicate that most feel the pharma industry is indeed in a recession and frankly I would have to agree. The pressures on pharma to both develop new blockbusters and satisfy Wall Street has left them in a no win situation. CNN.com reported yesterday that Boomers could potentially bankrupt the healthcare system and insurers are raising co-pays for branded drugs to ever higher levels.


This of course all comes at a time when new media is becoming more and more relevant according to a new study on eMarketer. So why does pharma turn a deaf ear to new media and continue to use marketing from the 60's? Well the answer to that question is all too apparent; first, senior management believes the Web is important but they don't understand the implications of social networking nor do they understand how to measure such initiatives as everything in pharma is driven by ROI. Second, once someone in a DTC role gains expertise in online marketing he, or she, usually moves onto a new role and is replaced with someone who knows very little about online marketing.


Online marketing is changing rapidly and eMarketers have to stay on top of trends to push the envelope and find meaningful ways to measure online programs. Online marketers now are aggregators while DTC marketers are still stuck in push marketing modes.


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Social Media is here to stay and is becoming more important to most marketers, except DTC marketers of course.

I understand the frustration of my friend taking a year or two off but I think he'll be back as he loves this business too much. Will pharma marketers ever push the envelope and truly embrace the Web? Maybe someday they'll move to Web 2.0 but by that time the Web will have moved to 3.0. Yep, pharma marketers are always one step behind and a decade too late.

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