While I at Lilly I was selected to work with the Cialis DTC team and worked with a brilliant DTC consumer manager named Paula who is now leading the companies consumer marketing.
Because I was able to work with the DTC team and justify the strategic importance of the Internet I received several awards while at Lilly including two Presidents Awards and a Marketing Excel Award. We also won the Yahoo! Purple Chair Award for best online ad campaign. Manhattan Research acknowledged that Cialis.com, at the time, was the number one pharma website in driving Rx conversion.
One of the tactics that we
executed with Cialis was to launch the Cialis 3-Point
challenge
during March madnesson Yahoo.
The objective was to take the message to our audience where
THEY were
online and in the first week we had over 2,500 people
register at the site. Subsequent research indicated a
substantial
lift in brand awareness.
I am currently consulting
in eMarketing and in the process of looking to join
a progressive
company that values eMarketing. Working at Lilly was a
lot of work and a fantastic experience but to this day I am
proud that I worked for Lilly and lucky that I was able to
implement so many online initiatives including a message
board for Sarafem.com when it was owned by Lilly and before
social media became so important.
Now if you have read any
of the posts on this site you know that I am very
passionate about the Web (me? Nahhhhh!). This to me the Web
is all about but the challenge to marry business objectives
with user needs. Having a consumer products background and
working for companies like Sony and Canon has given me a
unique education on how to engage customers and market to
them.
I want
everyone who reads my BLOG to know that these are my
personal opinions. I am not
going to sit here and pretend I know it all in fact I am
still learning. There have been a number of people in my
life who I consider great teachers such as Doug, Anne and
Paula at Lilly.
To me DTC is too important to be satisfied with the current
state of affairs. We are selling products that can make a
difference in people's lives but today our customers are
more skeptical of marketing messages and are connected to
each other like we have never experienced. They talk to
each other and listen to what is said about brands and new
products and that is especially true for prescription
drugs.
I have an MBA from the NY Institute of Technology and live
in California with my wife, two dogs and two cats. I spend
a lot of time reading business publications as I love to
learn and see what others are doing, especially on the Web
and usually read everything I can get my hands on. Anytime
I can talk to someone about the Web I am in heaven and
believe that pharma has yet to tap its true potential.
Smokey & Dusty cat
Buster T. Wumpus (Curmudgeon dog)
Bella (I'm so cute pet me)