About the Pharma Marketing Yearbook™

Events I Witnessed, News You Made, & People We Met
2010 Pharma Marketing Yearbook, Part 1

The year 2010 was all about me. By “me” I mean Pharmaguy, which is the Twitter handle and Facebook name of John Mack, Editor and Publisher of Pharma marketing News. Increasingly, that me encompasses much more than me personally. In 2010, almost everything about that me was shared with thousands of Twitter followers and beyond; i.e., you.

The same goes for you too! You also have shared your interests with me and with the thousands of people who follow you. And so on. This Pharma Marketing Yearbook is devoted to you AND me, to us.

All this “sharing” and talk about “us,” of course, is a direct result of social media, which dominated the attention of pharma marketers around the world in 2010. It’s no wonder, then, that a substantial portion of this yearbook is devoted to social media issues facing the pharmaceutical industry.

Topics include:

• Your Contribution & Support
• Pharma Marketing Yearbook 2010 LinkedIn Group Member Comments
• TIME Person of the Year: Pharmaguy
• Pharma Marketing & Social Media
• Pharma’s Christmas 2010 Wish List
• Scrooge FDA

Pharma Social Media Trials & Tribulations
2010 Pharma Marketing Yearbook, Part 2

Are we reaching the saturation point with social media? Hopefully, by devoting sufficient attention to social media in this commemorative yearbook, it will cease to be the top story in 2011. Unless, of course, FDA comes out with that guidance we all seem to be waiting for.

Nevertheless, social media occupied a good deal of our attention in 2010 and many of the pharma people Pharmaguy met and interacted with in 2010 are involved in social media campaigns in one way or another.

Topics include:

• An Analysis of Comments Submitted to FDA by the Industry
• Will the FDA Adopt the FTC’s “Reasonable Man” Approach?
• WHAT (who?) is a “REASONABLE MAN?”
• FDA Fan Club – Join Today!
• Is Social Media Pharma’s Friend?
• The Disgruntled Patient Episode
• The Hawaiian Shirt Off Pharmaguy’s Back!
• It’s Social Media Intern!
• Fake Patients
• A Match Made in Pharma Marketing Heaven

Pharma Spending on Internet, DTC, and Docs
2010 Pharma Marketing Yearbook, Part 3

Enough About Social Media! There must be something else that was memorable about pharma marketing in 2010. There were, for example, some runmblings about pushback in the onliine realm and vexing data about pharma media spend. And then there was the focus on physician payments.

Even before the new healthcare reform “sunshine” laws kick in requiring all pharmaceutical companies to publish details about payments made to physicians, a few “bad” companies (more about that below) released their data in 2010 in order to comply with legal settlements. There was also pressure from Congress on medical societies to reveal their sources of funding.

Still, we should not celebrate this as victory for “transparency” within the pharmacomedical- industrial complex just yet. Things are more “translucent” than “transparent.” Luckily (or unluckily, depending on your viewpoint) investigative reporters and entrepreneurs have made it easier for us mere mortals to analyze the physician payment data that has been slowly coming out in 2010.

Topics include:

• Where do Health Information Seekers Go Online?
• The Internet Can Be Depressing
• Feeble-Minded Too!
• Ad Spending is Up, But Not So Much
• Focus on Physician Payments
• Pharma-Physician Relations
• Telephone eDetailing
• Medical Schools Don’t Ask
• NAMI’s Pharma Funders
• Banned from Pharma’s Garden of Eden

Pharma Companies Behaving Badly
2010 Pharma Marketing Yearbook, Part 4

Every year without fail there are revelations about one, two, three, or more pharmaceutical companies behaving badly — companies that have been charged with crimes such as making kickbacks to physicians, engaging in Medicare and Medicaid fraud, promoting products off label to physicians or companies that are called to testify before Congress about sub par manufacturing practices.

The year 2010 seems to be unique in both the scope of bad behavior and the companies involved. No less than 8 of the top 10 Federal fraud settlements in 2010 involved pharmaceutical companies. In 2010 we also witnessed the missteps of a company that historically has been one of the most admired and trusted companies in the healthcare sector. That company is Johnson and Johnson (JNJ). Not even its expertise in social media relations could help JNJ when its executives didn’t behave properly.

Aside from the seriousness of some of these issues, the pharmaceutical industry and its leaders always make good targets for humorous blog posts, such as the ones referenced in this section of the 2010 Pharma Marketing Yearbook.

Topics include:

• Japan vs. U.S. Pharma Innovation
• PharmaWikiLeaks
• Allergan Sues FDA
• Goggins Testifies Before Congress
• Parallels Between BP and JNJ
• What are YOUR memorable pharma marketing highlights of 2010?