How to Make WebMD Great Again!
World of DTC Marketing blog author and pharma marketing consultant Richard Meyer has some advice forWebMD, which may be looking for a buyer (read “’Same Amount of Eggs, More Baskets’ – Lesson Learned by WebMD re Pharma Digital Spending”).“WebMD needs pharma and medical device companies, but pharma doesn ’t needWebMD, ” says Meyer who has some suggestions about how to MakeWebMD Great Again“Even thoughWebMD is the top health portal on the web, turning traffic into revenue is hard to do as a lot of websites have found out, ” says Meyer. “There are opportunities, butWebMD has to act fast. ”Here is what...
Source: Pharma Marketing Blog - March 3, 2017 Category: Pharmaceuticals Tags: DTC Advertising WebMD Source Type: blogs
Is " Right to Try " a Good Idea?
Last night, President Trump called on the FDA to speed the approval of drugs to treat life-threatening diseases,"deriding the agency ’s current process as'slow and burdensome'," according to thisSTATnews article.One solution to alleviating FDA ’s “slow and burdensome” approval process and getting potentially life-saving drugs to patients is"Right to Try" laws that would allow people with fatal illnesses to gain access to experimental medicines, even though they are not enrolled in a clinical trial. VP Pence and other lawmakers support this approach (seehere).“We should reform FDA so it...
Source: Pharma Marketing Blog - March 1, 2017 Category: Pharmaceuticals Tags: Drug Approval FDA Pence Right to Try Trump Source Type: blogs
To Boost Sales, Gilead's Hep C Awareness Ad Focuses on Baby Boomers
Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) drug ads are less and less effective according to several studies including the eyeforpharma Whitepaper “The Great DTC Shake-Up: Patient perspectives on direct-to-consumer advertising. ”One reason for this is a"negative reaction to the use of what could be perceived as'scare tactics' or shock value to garner attention in a crowded media environment."In that report, I was quoted as saying “scare tactics might be good for awareness.” Now, however, I'm beginning to rethink that, especially whendisease awareness adsare scaring a large portion of the population to get teste...
Source: Pharma Marketing Blog - February 23, 2017 Category: Pharmaceuticals Tags: Gilead Harvoni Hepatitis C HepC Sovaldi Source Type: blogs
Bob Ehrlich of DTC Perspectives Should Do Better Research & Fact Checking Before He Calls Out Media for " Misreporting " on DTC Off-Label Promotion
I just received an email missive from Bob Ehrlich (@BobEhrlich_DTC), Chairman of DTC Perspectives, Inc., with the subject line " Media Misreporting Advertising Off-label Use. "Ehrlich said " I was shocked to see media stories saying DTC may expand to cover off label use. What! This erroneous idea came from an FDA open meeting held 11/16 to discuss off label use based on court cases allowing drug companies the right to discuss them. "WRONG!I first reported that the FDA was interested in hearing comments about off-label drug promotion to " patient and consumer audiences " back in September, 2016, after reading this in the Fe...
Source: Pharma Marketing Blog - February 17, 2017 Category: Pharmaceuticals Tags: Bob Ehrlich DTC Advertising FDA off-label promotion Source Type: blogs
Pharma CEOs Speak Out About Drug Prices
Pharmaguy ’s Selected List of Pharma CEOs’ Words of Wisdom Regarding Drug Prices, Jobs, and TaxesCEOs include:PHARMA BRO ’ MARTIN SHKRELIALLERGAN CEO BRENT SAUNDERSPFIZER CEO IAN READMYLAN CEO HEATHER BRESCHMARATHON CEO JEFF ARONINLILLY CEO DAVID RICKSREGENERON CEO LEONARD SCHLEIFERNOVARTIS CEO JOESEPH JIMENEZACORDIA CEO RON COHENPharma CEOs Speak Out About Drug Prices fromPharmaGuy.com (Source: Pharma Marketing Blog)
Source: Pharma Marketing Blog - February 17, 2017 Category: Pharmaceuticals Tags: Drug prices Pharma CEOs and Big Wigs Source Type: blogs
Pharma is Spending More on DTC Advertising But Its Effectiveness is Decreasing, Says New Survey
“The DTC Attitudes, Behaviors, and Preferences Survey” conducted by Health Stories Project – Insights (HSPi) and published within the eyeforpharma Whitepaper “The Great DTC Shake-Up: Patient perspectives on direct-to-consumer advertising” in partnership with Health Perspectives Groups shows that as investment in DTC increases its effectiveness is decreasing. Only 22% of patients interviewed liked seeing advertisements for prescription drugs versus 52% in 1999.What is more, says eyeforpharma, Pharma ’s approach to DTC is"decoupling from patient needs causing patients to disengage from traditional tactics. O...
Source: Pharma Marketing Blog - February 13, 2017 Category: Pharmaceuticals Tags: DTC Advertising eyeforpharma Source Type: blogs
Who Is the Most “Fantastic” Person Trump Has in Mind to Lead the FDA?
In a recent email,STAT: The Readout asked"Who's the next Mr. (or Ms.) Fantastic?":"President Trump has a'fantastic person' in mind to nominate as his new FDA commish. While we wait for his announcement, we're asking for your vote: Who is most likely to hear'You ’re Hired!?'"5 candidates were put forward. It turns out that NONE is a woman.Balaji Srinivasan, the long shot: This Silicon Valley darling may have expressed just a touch too much derision for the FDA on Twitter.[FromSTATnews] Srinivasan, for his part, has claimed the FDA creates “catastrophes” to increase its fundi...
Source: Pharma Marketing Blog - February 6, 2017 Category: Pharmaceuticals Tags: FDA FDA Commissioner Trump Source Type: blogs
DTC Drug Ads Are Effective, But Confusing to Patients Say Physicians
Results from a new"microsurvey" (N = 319) performed byInCrowd, a provider of real-time market intelligence to the life sciences and healthcare firms, reveal"perhaps surprising" U.S. healthcare provider (HCP) perceptions on the efficacy of direct-to-consumer (DTC) ads. Specifically, HCPs say DTC drug ads drove patients to asks three times as many questions today than they did 5 years ago, but 87% observed patient confusion with ads.This sounds impressive, but looking at the data, HCPs say they receive only 6 questions about DTC drug ads per week from patients vs. 2 times per week 5 years ago. It just may...
Source: Pharma Marketing Blog - January 26, 2017 Category: Pharmaceuticals Tags: DTC Advertising InCrowd Source Type: blogs
PhRMA Should Have Listened to THIS " Guy in a Hoodie "
Last year I suggest that the pharmaceutical industry put some distance between it a"Pharma Bro" Martin Shkreli. I said (here):"Frankly, I'm getting tired of it all. Shkreli had his 15 minutes of fame. Let's move on. It's time for the pharma industry to get its 15 minutes of fame by doing something substantial to distance itself from the likes of Shrkreli."But, I added a caveat:"The mainstream drug industry cannot distance itself from'wolves' like Shkreli merely through better corporate communications."Unfortunately, the drug industry (aka The Pharmaceutical Research and Man...
Source: Pharma Marketing Blog - January 25, 2017 Category: Pharmaceuticals Tags: PhRMA Source Type: blogs
Pfizer's New Viagra TV Ad Has a Unique Mobile " Call to Action "
As reported by FiercePharma (here), Pfizer ’s new TV commercial for Viagra, which encourages patients to text a keyword from their mobile phones to receive special discounts, appears to be " a first " for pharma Marketing.I decided to have some fun with a few stills from the ad: (Source: Pharma Marketing Blog)
Source: Pharma Marketing Blog - January 19, 2017 Category: Pharmaceuticals Tags: Viagra Source Type: blogs
Does FDA Guidance About Pharma Communications with Payors Open a Path to Off-Label Discussions?
At the November, 2016, FDA public hearing on off-label promotion, representatives of the drug industry made a case for allowing companies to inform payers of off-label uses of their products.Payers “play such a gatekeeping role with respect to patients,” said Kellie Combs, an attorney for Ropes& Gray, who testified at the hearing on behalf of the Medical Information Working Group. “There's a real interest in getting information to payers as soon as possible. ”In addition, certain types of data, like demonstrating a drug's use in subpopulations and sharing pharmacoeconomic data, are examples of informati...
Source: Pharma Marketing Blog - January 18, 2017 Category: Pharmaceuticals Tags: FDA Guidance HCEI off-label promotion Payors Source Type: blogs
Fact Checking Puzzling Criticisms of a " Puzzling " DTC Study Proposed by FDA
I get periodic emails from Bob Ehrlich, Chairman of DTC Perspectives, Inc., giving his opinion on various direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising issues.Although I often do not agree with Ehrlich on many issues, I value his perspective and often respond to him via this blog (read, for example,"Are We at the Saturation Point Viz-a-Viz Celebrity Pharma Endorsements?"). We've even had a head-to-head podcast debate (listen to"Are Drug Marketers an Endangered Species?").In a recent email missive, Ehrlich calls FDA ’s recently proposed study of deception in DTC ads (read “Another FDA Study: Can HCPs and ...
Source: Pharma Marketing Blog - January 15, 2017 Category: Pharmaceuticals Tags: Bob Ehrlich DTC Advertising FDA Study Source Type: blogs
Top Pharma Companies on Facebook
Back in August, 2011, Facebook opened up comments on ALL pharma pages, which meant that the pharmaceutical industry no longer was able to shut off comments on their product-related pages. Consequently, several companies decided to shut down their pages (read, for example, "Pharma Facebook Pages Being Phased Out" and "Janssen to Shut Down Psoriasis 360 FaceBook Page" ).These days Facebook offers new opportunities and tools for the pharmaceutical industry to do promotions such as disease awareness campaigns (e.g., "Novartis, Queen Latifah,& American Heart Association Team Up on Facebook Live Broadcast" ) and ads that com...
Source: Pharma Marketing Blog - January 12, 2017 Category: Pharmaceuticals Tags: FaceBook Source Type: blogs
FDA Study is Designed to Justify a New BadAd Program for Consumers, IMHO
The FDA plans to do two new studies supposedly to gauge the “ability of consumers and healthcare professionals (HCPs) to independently identify deceptive prescription drug promotion” (see the Federal Register Noticehere).A closer examination of the proposal, however, suggests that the real goal is to promote the Agency's BadAd program and open it up to consumers.TheBad Ad Program is administered by the agency ’s Office of Prescription Drug Promotion (OPDP) in the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research. The program's goal is to help raise awareness among healthcare providers about misleading prescription dru...
Source: Pharma Marketing Blog - January 9, 2017 Category: Pharmaceuticals Tags: FDA Study Source Type: blogs
Pharmaguy's Top Five 2017 New Year's Resolutions for the Pharma Industry
As is my tradition – as well as the tradition for many other editors/pundits – it’s time for me to tell pharma what I’d like to see included in its list of 2017 New Year's Resolutions.Last year I noted that 2015 wasn ’t an especially good year considering that “the media and politicians have found a face for evil pharma and rising drug prices: Martin Shkreli!” (here).It ’s déjà vu all over again! Only this time many more evil pharma faces have come forward including the CEO of Mylan, aka “Pharma Sis” (read “Mylan ‘Gamed the System’ and Refuses to Testify at Senate Hearing About EpiPen Costs ...
Source: Pharma Marketing Blog - December 29, 2016 Category: Pharmaceuticals Tags: Celebrities Drug prices DTC Advertising FDA New Year ' s Resolution off-label PhRMA Guidelines women Source Type: blogs
