Vol. 5, No. 1: January 2006 – EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Welcome to the latest issue of Pharma Marketing News. This is the Executive Summary version. See Article Summaries below.
Download the full-text version of the complete newsletter at:
www.pharma-mkting.com/news/pmnews5_1dren.pdf.
Access this summary online at:
http://ec2-54-175-84-28.compute-1.amazonaws.com/pharma-mkting.com/news/pmnews5_1dren.htm
CONTENTS
- Pharma Trends to Watch in 2006
- ED DTC: The Good Poster Boy?
- Direct to Physician Telemarketing and Sales
- Pharma Sudoku Challenge
- Pfizer France: Viva la SFE Difference!
- Women in Pharma
- The BEST of Pharma Marketing Blog in 2005
Article Summaries
Pharma Trends to Watch in 2006
This is the time of the year when we all look into our crystal balls and try to come up with predictions for the new year. In December, 2005, for example, Pharmaceutical Executive Magazine published their 2006 Forecast based on interviews with a few experts. Pharma Marketing News also hosted its 2006 Pharma Trend Survey online beginning January 9, 2006. The Pharma Marketing Roundtable met by conference call on January 12 to discuss trends as well. This article summarizes the collective wisdom from these sources.Topics covered include:
- Survey Topline Results
- Increase in Generic Competition
- Brands Caving-In to Generic Onslaught?
- Brand Differentiation
- R&D and the Pipeline of New Drugs
- Dreaded Precautionary Principle
- FDA Regulation of DTC: To Be or Not To Be?
- Risk: I Say Relative, You Say Absolute
- New Directions Part 1: Alternative Media
- New Directions Part 2: Unbranded DTC
Click here to take the 2006 Pharma Trend Survey. You will be able to see a summary of the de-identified results to date immediately after completing the survey.
Access this article and the complete newsletter at:www.pharma-mkting.com/news/pmnews5_1dren.pdf
ED DTC: The Good Poster Boy?
To achieve better alignment with what the industry says in its PR, DTC ads must become more educational and also better at communicating risk. Oddly enough, the therapeutic category that is leading the way is the erectile dysfunction (ED) category, which has been the “bad” poster boy for the drug industry for years and exemplified everything that was wrong with DTC.
Access this article at: Pharma Marketing BlogDirect to Physician Telemarketing and Sales
When Outsourcing Makes Sense
The point of diminishing returns in the sales trench warfare has been reached. For most companies it makes no sense economically to add field staff, especially to cover “white” territories spread across large, mostly rural areas. Another option is telemarketing offered by companies such as ADG Pharmaceutical Biotech Marketing (ADG), which specializes in providing hosted telemarketing services for the pharma-ceutical, life sciences and biotech industries.
Topics covered include:
- Outsourced Telemarketing
- Demonstrable Return on Investment — A Sales case Study
- Market Research
- Seminar & Webinar Recruitment
www.pharma-mkting.com/news/pmnews5_1dren.pdf
Pharma Sudoku Challenge
The object of this brain teaser is to fill a 9×9 grid with numbers so that every row and every column contains the digits from 1 to 9, without repeating. See if you can solve it! Fax your correct solution to 215-504-5739 before midnight 22-Jan-2006 and you will be eligible to win a free quarter-page ad in Pharma Marketing News.
Access this puzzle at: www.pharma-mkting.com/news/sudokuchallege_1.pdfPfizer France: Viva la SFE Difference!
Our European correspondent, Denise Silber, met Annick Pichavant Ruty, VP of Sales for Pfizer France, at a recent pharmaceutical industry conference in Europe. The following interview was the result of this meeting. Surprisingly, lack of sales rep time with physicians is not a problem for Pfizer France. The company, however, had other internal issues that needed to be addressed to build an effective sales force following two mergers that doubled the number of reps.
Topics covered include:
- Pfizer France: Pharma Sales Department Stats
- Nine Enablers for Short and Mid-term Actions
www.pharma-mkting.com/news/pmnews5_1dren.pdf
Women in Pharma
If you want to focus on women as an asset to your business, then look at what women can actually do really well that male leaders struggle with:
- Link [rather than rank] workers;
- favour interactive-collaborative leadership style [empowerment beats top-down decision making];
- sustain fruitful collaborations;
- comfortable with sharing information;
- see redistribution of power as victory, not surrender;
- favour multi-dimensional feedback;
- value technical & interpersonal skills, individual & group contributions equally;
- readily accept ambiguity;
- honour intuition as well as pure “rationality”; (this is one of my personal favourites, but as a male, most women already knew that)
- inherently flexible;
- appreciate cultural diversity.
The BEST of Pharma Marketing Blog in 2005
I can’t resist the urge to do a TOP TEN list! Of the more than 120 posts made to this blog in 2005, the following are my picks for the TOP TEN, based on my own criteria and feedback from readers. Most of the these address in one way or another the TOP concern I have about the pharmaceutical industry and pharmaceutical marketing: a lack of transparency… a lack of transparency about drug risks, a lack of transparency in DTC advertising, and a lack of transparency about issues like drug reimportation. You’ll have to read some of these TOP TEN posts to see what I mean. Or read this article: “Blogs and the Pharmaceutical Industry.”
Access the TOP TEN at: Pharma Marketing Blog
