2011

How much money the pharmaceutical industry spends on Internet marketing, direct-to-consumer advertising, and physician detailing are always topics of interest and 2010 was no exception. 2010 was, however, a turning point in bringing more attention to payments made to physicians for speaking, consulting, and research.

A conversation with Michael Heinley, Corporate Vice President, Leadership and Employee Communication, and Bill Price, Vice President, Media Relations, Johnson & Johnson, about the company's Employee News Network (

More and more pharmaceutical company employees are using Twitter. Pharmaguy is looking at pharma employees who have personal Twitter accounts, how they use these accounts, who follows them and whom they follow, and how influential they are. This article is an introduction to the first round of members of this group.

Pfizer's US corporate Facebook page was hacked by some 'Kiddies.' What should the industry learn from this experience?

Lipitor Won't Go Gentle Into that Good Generic Night. Pfizer is taking a number of steps to protect it's Lipitor franchise and it hopes that many patients currently taking Lipitor will remain loyal to the brand.

The authors of a physician survey published in the November 8, 2010, issue of Archives of Internal Medicine conclude 'given that 83.8% of physicians have PIRs, it is clear that industry still has substantial financial links with the nation's physicians. These findings support the ongoing need for a national system of disclosure of PIRs [Physician-Drug Industry Relationships].' Such a system is part of the Physician Sunshine Law, which is scheduled to go into effect in 2012 with public disclosure of payments scheduled to begin September, 2013.

Welcome to Volume 10, Issue #9 (18 MAY 2011) of Pharma Marketing News.

Plenty of attention being paid to pharmaceutical marketing fraud and abuse cases in blogs and in the general media. But there hasn't been much attention paid to good compliance solutions or best practices. That's the mission of the Good Promotion Practices Alliance (GPP), which is co-sponsored by Reprints Desk and Prolifiq Software.

A summary of the highly anticipated 2011 results of Kantar Health's annual Stakeholder Effectiveness survey, which revealed that over two-thirds of respondents from leading companies in the pharmaceutical sector think that customer retention is a key performance measure.

Welcome to Volume 10, Issue #6 (30 MARCH 2011) of Pharma Marketing News.