Is good pharmaceutical marketing possible?

14 years ago (on August 8, 1997, no less), the FDA issued guidelines that allowed for drug manufacturers to advertise. As the NY Times reported that day, Michael Friedman (then FDA’s lead deputy commissioner) had this is to say about the reason for the guidelines: Today’s action can help promote greater consumer awareness about prescription … Continue reading

Trust or not trust pharmaceuticals — is there a place for branded marketing?

To paraphrase Hamlet — to trust or not trust pharmaceuticals, that is the question. A recent study shows that use of pharmaceutical branded websites are on the rise, based on web activity from January 2010 to January 2011 as measured by comScore and as illustrated below: Moreover, comScore “found that visitation to a branded website … Continue reading

Can a Patient Adherence Program be Self-Funded?

According to the report “Ensuring Profitable Patient Adherence Programs: Using Analytics and Metrics to Improve the Bottom Line”, pharmaceutical companies spend nearly 97% of their marketing budget to capture initial market share.  This means that 3% of their marketing budget is devoted to on-going efforts, like patient adherence. As the report’s author, Dr Andree Bates, … Continue reading

Drugs Like Cars

The pharmaceutical industry and the car industry are very similar in the way they sell. They both sell their goods like they did a hundred years ago — through salespeople: one in a showroom; the other going door-to-door pestering doctors (or if you will, going town to town selling snake oil) … and both types … Continue reading