Oh my god! drug side effects killed kenny!
I just received a press release in my email inbox announcing the creation of "South Park Pharmaceuticals." I kid you not!WEST HILLS, N.Y., Aug. 13, 2013 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- KannaLife Sciences, Inc. ("KannaLife") and Biotech Inc. ("Biotech"), 50/50 joint venture partners of South Park Ventures, LLC announced today, the creation of South Park Pharmaceuticals, Inc. ("SPPI"), a pharmaceutical company established for the purpose of developing, testing, marketing and selling botanical medicaments, naturopathic compounds and phyto-medical products for health and wellness.Jason Cranford, CEO of Biotech stated, "It is becoming appa...
Source: Pharma Marketing Blog - August 13, 2013 Category: Pharma Commentators Tags: medical marijuana traditional medicine Diddies and Spoofs Source Type: blogs
Can a $5 Million per Quarter DTC Ad Campaign Turn Around an 8% to 17% Drop in Provenge Sales?
File this under "When pigs with wings fly." Let's do the math.It has been reported (here) that Dendreon's Provenge sales were off 8% in the second quarter year-over-year and 17% in the first quarter. Let's say the 2013 sales will, on average, be 12% less than the 2012 sales. Last year Provenge sales totaled $321.5 million. Twelve percent of that is about $39 million. According to a MM&M article (here), Dendreon CEO John Johnson remains "optimistic, because of 42 new accounts added in the quarter and because of increased consumer interest since initiation of a television DTC [direct-to-consumer] campaign March 7 for pro...
Source: Pharma Marketing Blog - August 13, 2013 Category: Pharma Commentators Tags: ROI Dendreon Provenge DTC Advertising Source Type: blogs
Over-Drugged Medicaid Children
As reported in the Wall Street Journal (here):"Federal health officials have launched a probe into the use of antipsychotic drugs on children in the Medicaid system, amid concern that the medications are being prescribed too often to treat behavioral problems in the very young. "The effort applies to a newer class of antipsychotic drugs known as "atypicals," which include Abilify, the nation's No. 1 prescription drug by sales. The drugs were originally developed to treat psychoses such as schizophrenia, but some now have Food and Drug Administration approval for treatment of children with conditions such as bipo...
Source: Pharma Marketing Blog - August 13, 2013 Category: Pharma Commentators Tags: Cymbalta Seroquel medicaid anti-psychotics Children Abilify Source Type: blogs
72% of Online Adults Use Social Media, But Only 18% Use Twitter: Implications for Social Media Guidance from FDA
According to Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project, 72% of online adults use social networking sites, but only 18% use Twitter. See the chart below, download the report here.Young people (18-29) dominate Twitter, which may be one reason why pharmaceutical marketers are not so keen on Twitter. Why risk regulatory action when most of your key target audience (older adults) are not there? Better to stick with Facebook where a much higher percentage of older online adults are frequently seen.PEW points out that there has been a sharp rise in use of social media by older online adults: "Those ages 65 and ol...
Source: Pharma Marketing Blog - August 12, 2013 Category: Pharma Commentators Tags: PEW FDA social media guidelines Legal/Regulatory #fdasm Source Type: blogs
Spit for Research: Will Genentech's Online Promotion Succeed?
According to @Genentech, the official Twitter account of Genentech, “The #DNA in spit from cancer survivors may help scientists better understand cancer.” That being the case, the next logical step is to collect as much spit from cancer survivors as possible. To accomplish that, Genentech teemed up with 23andMe -- the personal genetics firm that aired its first TV ad Monday in a bid to build the audience for DNA sequencing (see here) to launch the InVite Study, which recruits patients online. The goal of the study is to collect spit to find out why people respond differently to Avastin -- Genentech's expensive (up to $...
Source: Pharma Marketing Blog - August 7, 2013 Category: Pharma Commentators Tags: Avastin YouTube R and D Source Type: blogs
Are African-Americans More Distrustful of Clinical Trials Than All Other Americans? Depends on How You Chart the Data
I read with interest the piece "A Matter Of Trust: Minorities Are Suspicious Of Clinical Trials" by Ed Silverman, author of Pharmalot blog. The post summarized key points of a Research!America poll of U.S. adults conducted in May 2013."A key issue is a lack of trust," noted Silverman. He was probably referring to a chart on page 8 of the survey report (find it here). This chart plotted the percentage of respondents -- broken down into racial categories -- who said "lack of trust" was a reason individuals do not participate in clinical trials. From the looks of this chart, it appears that African-Americans are very much mor...
Source: Pharma Marketing Blog - August 2, 2013 Category: Pharma Commentators Tags: trust Clinical Trials R and D Privacy Reputation Source Type: blogs
Do Negative DTC Ads Improve a Drug's Efficacy viz-a-viz the Competition? Another Lesson Pharma Can Learn from Politics
A study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) -- of all places -- suggests that watching a direct-to-consumer (DTC) ad makes the advertised pill "more effective." DTC advertising is often defended by the drug industry as beneficial to the public's health because it motivates people to visit their doctors (see, for example, "Rethinking the Value of DTC Advertising"). PhRMA, the US drug industry trade organization, says in its DTC Guiding Principles:"DTC advertising of prescription medicines can benefit the public health by increasing awareness about diseases, educating patients about treatm...
Source: Pharma Marketing Blog - August 1, 2013 Category: Pharma Commentators Tags: Zyrtec Claritin DTC Advertising Source Type: blogs
Pharma Marketers Should Hire the Directors of the Documentary Off Label to Do "Real Patient DTC" Ads
Coming soon (August 8 or 9) to a theater that may be near you - if you live in Missoula, MT (or in a few other lesser or greater cities) - is the documentary Off Label, which asks the question: "What's in your medicine cabinet?"If your medicine cabinet contains psychotropic drugs such as Adderall, Ambien, Zoloft, and Prozac, you may want to see this movie. "Often these drugs are combined in polypharmacy cocktails or are given out for unapproved or untested indications, leading to abuse, dangerous side effects, and heavy dependence," says the movie synopsis (here).The movie premiered last year in East and West Coast Intern...
Source: Pharma Marketing Blog - July 31, 2013 Category: Pharma Commentators Tags: off-label promotion FDA social media DTC Advertising Chantix movie Source Type: blogs
Fans & Bananas: Viagra Ads in Japan
Hat tip to my friend @blogaceutics (Miguel Tovar) who tweeted about a "novel twist" on Viagra advertising in Japan: paper fans that promote Viagra (see above).As reported by RocketNews24 (here), hand-held fans like these -- emblazoned with commercial messages and logos -- are popular in Japan when it gets hot. Personally, I'd rather die of heat exhaustion than use these fans in public! (although I'd love to get my hands on one :-)According to RocketNews24, "while many applauded the creativeness of these fans, many net users wrote it off as 'gay' or 'just for fujoshi.'" According to wikipedia, fujoshi is a self-m...
Source: Pharma Marketing Blog - July 29, 2013 Category: Pharma Commentators Tags: Diddies and Spoofs Pfizer Viagra Source Type: blogs
Pharma’s Social Media Influence Measures Faulted
Andrew Spong, author of STweM blog across the pond in the UK, doesn't like the way pharmaceutical companies and their agencies measure social media "influence." At least that's how I interpret the following:"Hankering after a means of measuring the solid reassurance of an ‘influence’ expressed through proclamatory, monological, univocal press release-style may have allowed third parties hundreds of opportunities to sell in dashboards, listening posts and bamboozling number-crunching interfaces, but unfortunately this isn’t the way influence works."According to Spong, "Rather than being exerted in this muscular, famil...
Source: Pharma Marketing Blog - July 25, 2013 Category: Pharma Commentators Tags: Awards ROI social media marketing Source Type: blogs
Gsk, gsk, gsk: tsk, tsk, tsk!
Revelations about the China bribery scandal involving GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) continue to emerge in the media and each day brings new shockers. A story in today's Wall Street Journal, for example, suggested that a top GSK compliance officer engaged in stalling tactics when confronted with whistle blower allegations of wrong doing in China. According to the WSJ article (here):In June, Glaxo told the Journal that for four months it "used significant resources to thoroughly investigate each and every claim from this single anonymous source" and found "no evidence of corruption or bribery in our China business." This week, Glaxo...
Source: Pharma Marketing Blog - July 25, 2013 Category: Pharma Commentators Tags: Drug Safety GSK compliance Avandia Legal/Regulatory DOJ Source Type: blogs
Bad GSK in China --> Lower Drug Prices for Patients. Bad GSK in U.S. --> Money for Bureaucrats!
"Savings made as a result of proposed changes to our operational model will be passed on in the form of price reductions (my emphasis), ensuring our medicines are more affordable to Chinese patients."That's how Abbas Hussain, GKS's President International – Europe, Japan, Emerging Markets & Asia Pacific ended an official statement regarding recent meetings with Chinese authorities to discuss how GSK senior executives appeared to have violated Chinese law.By "operational model," I assume Hussain means using travel agencies as vehicles to bribe doctors, hospitals and government officials in order to sell more drug...
Source: Pharma Marketing Blog - July 23, 2013 Category: Pharma Commentators Tags: consumer fraud GSK Source Type: blogs
Pharma Seeks Digital Innovators: A New Phase of the "Pharma Digital Hype Cycle"
The pharmaceutical industry has often been criticized for being behind the "digital curve," meaning that it lacks the expertise to fully take advantage of the Internet and other technology to improve marketing and communications. Although some pharma companies are digital "dunces," others are digital "geniuses" (see, for example, "Is Your Brand a Digital Genius or a Feeble-Minded Idiot?").Lately, several major pharma companies have initiated programs to (1) identify, reward, and work with innovative technology companies, and (2) increase the digital "smarts" of their employees via structured educational activities.Recently...
Source: Pharma Marketing Blog - July 19, 2013 Category: Pharma Commentators Tags: Bayer Roche Johnson and Johnson Digital Pharma Sanofi Innovation Source Type: blogs
#Pharma100: A Ludicrous, Leveraged Popularity Contest
"Stop using #pharma100," says Andrew Spong. Spong says it's "a ludicrous popularity contest... that degrades the health conversation on the Social Web." Quite a few commenters to his post (here) agree with him.#pharma100 was set up by Henry Gazay, CEO and founder Medimix International, to supposedly identify the "top 100 influencers in Pharmaceutical Social Media" through a voting process: between July 4th and July 14th 2013, any one could nominate someone they considered to be among the top 100 influencers. All they had to do was post on twitter "I nominate @xxxx for #pharma100 top100 influencers in #pharma social media"...
Source: Pharma Marketing Blog - July 17, 2013 Category: Pharma Commentators Tags: Awards social media #Pharma100 Klout Source Type: blogs
AZPurpleZone: A Nexium Branded YouTube Channel. "Unusual" for Pharma? Yes. "Engaging Social Media?" No!
"AstraZeneca believes that it is important to share information with patients by engaging with them online," says Ken Graham, Commercial Business Leader, GI, AstraZeneca, in a post to AZ Health Connections Blog (here). "To that end, AstraZeneca recently launched a NEXIUM YouTube channel." It's called "AZPurpleZone."According to AZ's own "white paper" on social media (see attachment to this post), social media is the "catch-all term for internet activities that engage or encourage engagement through online discussions or interactions. While static websites are often the first 'online step' for many companies (e.g., homepage...
Source: Pharma Marketing Blog - July 17, 2013 Category: Pharma Commentators Tags: YouTube AstraZeneca social media Nexium Source Type: blogs
