My Man in Milan
You have to be a big guy or gal in the pharma social media arena to wear the shirt off my back.Davide Bottalico, MD, Digital Marketing Manager at Roche, Italy, fits the bill as is obvious from this photo taken at the IAB Forum 2013 Milano.Recall that Davide and the entire Roche Digital Academy Team received the 4th Annual Pharmaguy Social Media Pioneer Award back in October (see here).Davide, I have one request...Read more » (Source: Pharma Marketing Blog)
Source: Pharma Marketing Blog - December 6, 2013 Category: Pharma Commentators Tags: Digital Academy Pharmaguy social media award Roche Source Type: blogs
The Latest in Drug Safety: PhRMA Says Throw Unused Drugs in Household Trash
"For the second time," reports Pharmalot (here), "the pharmaceutical industry is challenging a local government over an ordinance that requires drugmakers to cover the cost of a prescription drug ‘take back,’ or disposal program."This time, the trade groups representing brand-name drugmakers, biotechs, generic drugmakers and over-the-counter purveyors have filed a lawsuit against the King County Board of Health in Washington."The plaintiffs are the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), the Generic Pharmaceutical Association, the Biotechnology Industry Association, and th...
Source: Pharma Marketing Blog - December 4, 2013 Category: Pharma Commentators Tags: Adherence compliance Drug Safety off-label promotion PhRMA Reputation Source Type: blogs
Pharma Needs Customer Experience Centers of Excellence
Lately, I've been hearing a lot about "centers of excellence" at pharma companies as in "Digital Center of Excellence" and "Content Center of Excellence." I heard the latter mentioned today in the #PharmaContent Twitter chat session, which follows ExL Pharma's Content Marketing conference now going on in Philadelphia.This slide from a presentation by Rebecca Lieb, Industry Analyst, THE ALTIMETER GROUP, and author of "Content Marketing," explains how to organize a "Content Center of Excellence": Wow! This is pretty complicated and involves multiple executive-level...
Source: Pharma Marketing Blog - December 3, 2013 Category: Pharma Commentators Tags: Content Marketing Customer Realtionship Marketing Source Type: blogs
FDA Product Name Guidance and Twitter: Overstuff That Bird! It's the American Way!
It's Thanksgiving tomorrow here in the U.S. and that means turkey, which is usually stuffed with breading, sausage, ducks, chestnuts, chicken, whatever!More often than not, we Americans like to OVER stuff that bird because its our tradition to stuff ourselves on Thanksgiving with … stuffing! The turkey is just the medium, but stuffing is the message.Similarly, pharma marketers stuff as much as possible in tweets. But when it comes to brand promotional tweets, it's difficult to "over stuff" that Twitter bird! That's because of FDA regulations regarding the necessary ingredients in branded tweet stuff...
Source: Pharma Marketing Blog - November 27, 2013 Category: Pharma Commentators Tags: FDA Guidance Regulation social media Twitter Source Type: blogs
FDA Orders 23andMe to Immediately Discontinue Marketing "Spit for Cancer" Kit
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) sent a WARNING letter to the CEO of 23andMe because the company is illegally marketing its 23andMe Saliva Collection Kit and Personal Genome Service (PGS). "This product," says FDA, "is a device within the meaning of section 201(h) of the FD&C Act, 21 U.S.C. 321(h), because it is intended for use in the diagnosis of disease or other conditions or in the cure, mitigation, treatment, or prevention of disease, or is intended to affect the structure or function of the body." Recall that Genentech teemed up with 23andMe -- a personal genetics firm -- to collect spi...
Source: Pharma Marketing Blog - November 25, 2013 Category: Pharma Commentators Tags: 23andMe Avastin Genentech warning letter Source Type: blogs
Bill Gates to Trevor Mundel: “Do you want to sell drugs for rare diseases for the rest of your life, or do you want to come with me and change the world?”
Steve Jobs successfully recruited John Scully to head up Apple in 1983 by making this legendary pitch to Scully:"Do you want to sell sugared water for the rest of your life? Or do you want to come with me and change the world?"Did Bill Gates make a similar pitch to lure Trevor Mundel away from Novartis to be President of Global Health at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation?Mundel was not enjoying his role as Novartis' Global Head of Development in 2011 when he went over to the "light side" of philanthropy as opposed to remaining on the "dark side" of capitalistic pharma.At Novartis Munde...
Source: Pharma Marketing Blog - November 25, 2013 Category: Pharma Commentators Tags: Gate Foundation Novartis orphan drugs Source Type: blogs
"Selling That New-Man Feeling" - NYT Quotes Pharmaguy on Low-T Marketing
Occasionally, mainstream media reporters call me for my opinion on the marketing of drugs.Several days ago I received a call from Nastasha Singer, a New York Times reporter. She interviewed me for a story published today in the Business section of the Sunday Times about the marketing of testosterone drugs. The title of that story is "Selling That New-Man Feeling." I've written several posts about the marketing of "Low-T"here on Pharma Marketing Blog (here, here, and here) and interviewed Adriane Fugh-Berman, MD, Associate Professor at Georgetown University Medical Center and Director of PharmedOut (...
Source: Pharma Marketing Blog - November 24, 2013 Category: Pharma Commentators Source Type: blogs
Pharma TV Ads Shouldn't Drop the "F Bomb," Says Expert. I Disagree.
My colleague Richard Meyer -- who is the author of World of DTC Marketing blog -- often gives his advice to pharma marketers about advertising to consumers. In a recent post (here), Meyer noted that "patients are more worried about quality of life when it comes to choosing healthcare treatments. This is something that all DTC marketers need to note because all the DTC ads in the world are not going to overcome a list of really bad potential side effects." He was talking about cancer treatments. One piece of advice Meyer offered was this: "If your product has fair balance that includes the word 'fatal'...
Source: Pharma Marketing Blog - November 22, 2013 Category: Pharma Commentators Tags: Celebrex Drug Safety DTC Advertising Source Type: blogs
The Slippery Slope of Pharma Physician Phreebies
Most physicians do not seem to know that "there is no such thing as a free lunch." Medscape's 2012 Ethics Report survey, for example, revealed that 72% of 23,710 physician respondents answered "Yes" to the question "Do you feel that you could be unbiased with prescribing habits if you accept lunches from pharmaceutical representatives?" (see here).But, according to other researchers, such thinking is a "slippery slope" on which "Physicians fail to recognize their vulnerability to commercial influences due to self-serving bias, rationalization, and cognitive dissonance" ...
Source: Pharma Marketing Blog - November 21, 2013 Category: Pharma Commentators Tags: Gifts to Physicians Source Type: blogs
Basic Science Plagued by Financial Conflicts of Interest, Says Adriane Fugh-Berman
We all know about the biases inherent in drug industry sponsored phase III clinical trials. Ben Goldacre, for example, cites evidence in his book Bad Pharma that claims industry-funded trials are "twenty times more likely to give results favouring the test drug" (see here). But even basic scientists who study the effects of drugs on lab rats and cells in petri dishes may be biased because of funding from the pharmaceutical industry.In other words, industry bias is present from the very beginnings of a drug's life cycle starting even before phase I trials and continuing through the publication of trial result...
Source: Pharma Marketing Blog - November 19, 2013 Category: Pharma Commentators Tags: Clinical Trials Conflict of Interest ghostwriting Research Source Type: blogs
Another PASI Calculator Mobile Medical App from Janssen: Simple, Sophisticated, But Short of a Full Deck
I just downloaded onto my iPad the "Psoriasis Severity Calculator" app, which is a PASI ("Psoriasis Area and Severity Index") calculator for use by physicians developed by Janssen Korea. It's optimized for iPad use.Another Janssen psoriasis diagnosis app for physicians that I reviewed (here) is "PASI Calculator," which was released by Janssen N.V. (Belgium). This version is optimized for the iPhone.The two apps are very different aside from the platforms they are designed to run on. The Janssen Korean iPad app, which is in English, is more sophisticated than the Janssen Belgium iPhone app,...
Source: Pharma Marketing Blog - November 18, 2013 Category: Pharma Commentators Tags: PASI Apps Janssen Self-Regulation Mobile Ethics Source Type: blogs
The Pharma Glass Ceiling: Women Executives Tend to Be in Lower Paying Positions
Gold Group, a UK technical and professional recruitment consultancy, in conjunction with PharmiWeb.com published its first annual "Pharmaceutical Salary and Market Conditions Survey Report." The survey was carried out with the intention of "digging deep into the Pharmaceutical industry to understand the trends affecting it, levels of remuneration across a variety of seniorities and sectors, employment conditions and how [UK] Pharmaceutical professionals on the front line really feel." Over 1000 professionals were surveyed between May and July 2013. One interesting chart is the distribution of pay of female versus male e...
Source: Pharma Marketing Blog - November 15, 2013 Category: Pharma Commentators Tags: Survey Source Type: blogs
LOL! How Much Did Pfizer Pay for @Pfizer? Merck for @Merck? Amgen for @Amgen?
Now that Twitter has had its IPO, pharma companies may get more serious about their Twitter accounts. And Twitter may be more amenable to helping their pharma brethren gain control of Twitter handles that rip off their trademarks such as their corporate names.Take Pfizer, for example. Like most pharma companies it was tardy getting a Twitter account. Back in 2009, it did not have one -- @pfizer was being used by someone else. At the time, I said this account was a "Pfizer Poser" on Twitter (see here)."@pfizer," I said, "appears to be Pfizer's entry into Twitter, but I suspect this is a 'phi...
Source: Pharma Marketing Blog - November 13, 2013 Category: Pharma Commentators Tags: Pfizer Twitter Source Type: blogs
J&J Is Now Top-Fined Company in the Pharma Criminal & Civil Settlement Planetary System: A Blot on Gorsky's Leadership
Johnson and Johnson (J&J) and its subsidiary companies Janssen Pharmaceuticals and Scios Inc. have agreed to pay more than $2.2 billion in fines for inappropriately, and in some cases illegally, promoting prescription drugs (see here). In addition, according to MarketWatch (here) J&J "plan(s) to announce a $4 billion settlement to resolve over 7,500 federal and state lawsuits involving recalled hip implant products." That's a total of over $6.2 Billion in fines, which may represent as much as 40% of J&J's annual profits!As a consequence of this news, the Pharmaguy "Pharma Criminal & C...
Source: Pharma Marketing Blog - November 13, 2013 Category: Pharma Commentators Tags: DOJ Gorsky Janssen Johnson and Johnson off-label promotion Source Type: blogs
How J&J's Alex Gorsky Tried to Negotiate a Smaller DOJ Fine
The Department of Justice (DOJ) just updated its commemorative poster highlighting the now seven highest multi-million/billion dollar settlements that drug companies have agreed to pay for inappropriately, and in some cases illegally, promoting prescription drugs. The latest addition to the poster is Johnson and Johnson, which will pay $2.2 billion to the U.S. government to end civil and criminal investigations into kickbacks to pharmacists and the marketing of pharmaceuticals for off-label uses. -- Pharma Marketing Blog (see here)Johnson and Johnson CEO Alex Gorsky (on phone): Is Eric there, please? Receptionist: May I ...
Source: Pharma Marketing Blog - November 12, 2013 Category: Pharma Commentators Tags: DOJ Johnson and Johnson off-label promotion Source Type: blogs
