Articles

Vol. 3, No. 3: March 2004 - CONTENTS Feature Article Scenarios on the Future of Pharma Marketing: No Time like the Present to Think the Unthinkable...

Patient compliance may be a core objective for pharma marketers, but an international quorum of compliance experts at the recent eyeforpharma Patient Compliance 2004 conference in London agreed that the very term 'compliance is incorrect. In 22 in-depth presentations over 2 days, 30 speakers and panelists agreed that marketers need to stop analyzing compliance, and start understanding patients.

This article summaries a presentation made by Diane Stafford, Head of Patient Relationship Marketing for Pfizer UK at a recent industry conference. In her presentation, entitled 'The E-nabled Patient: Using Technology to help build valuable patient relationships,' Ms. Stafford demonstrated how to implement 1-to-1 electronic relationships to deliver improved compliance, analyzed emerging new compliance initiatives using technology, and discussed successful approaches to develop patient 'loyalty' programmes and demonstrated their value.

Speaking on the topic of marketing at the Strategic Research Institute's 2nd Pharmaceutical Marketing Global Summit held in Philadelphia, PA, February 26, 2004, Stevens offered advice for pharmaceutical marketers on how not to make their marketing suck.

New Written Prescriptions (NWRx's), which are uncontaminated by managed care intervention and patient fulfillment issues, are the ultimate measure of physician behavior and, therefore, the purest measure of promotional effectiveness, according to Nancy S. Lurker, CEO of ImpactRx. This article highlights real world examples of the differences between analyses performed using ImpactRx's NWRx's for patients new to or switching therapy versus those using traditional dispensed new prescription data.

This article focuses on what marketers need to do to face the tough 2004 DTC environment. It summarizes a presentation made by Robert Ehrlich, CEO, DTC Perspectives Inc. at the Achieving DTC Success Conference in October, 2003. Ehrlich talked about TV ad creativity, government regulations, the issue of brand retention, DTC ROI, and the challenges of a consumer-centric approach.

This article reviews how tailored behavior change programs can increase acquisition, compliance, persistency or brand loyalty. A smoking cessation program is presented as a case study.

On February 4, 2004, the FDA issued long-awaited draft guidance documents designed to improve communications to consumers and health care practitioners about health conditions and medical products. The most eagerly anticipated guidance concerns the acceptable alternatives to the lengthy, detailed, and technically-written brief summary of risk information for consumer-directed print advertisements for prescription drugs.

The Super Bowl debut of DTC advertising was tainted by all the brouhaha over the half-time show. Perhaps as many people complained about the erectile dysfunction (ED) ads of Cialis as complained about the half-time show. Was it appropriate to run these ED drug ads during the SuperBowl? Which DTC campaign-including Viagra, which did not run and ad during the game-is most effective and why? These questions and others were included in a survey of PHARMA-MKTING listserv members. The results are summarized in this article.

This article is a summary of a presentation by Lynn Benzing, President, The Patient Marketing Group at the Achieving DTC Success Conference in October, 2003. Ms. Benzing presented results from her company's Consumer Relationship Satisfaction Survey, a groundbreaking comparative study on how pharmaceutical marketers are handling key consumer touch-points that impact brand loyalty. This study profiles over 50 brands across all major therapeutic categories.