Lilly’s Off-Label Promo Shenanigans
Recently, Eli Lilly agreed to plead guilty and to pay $36 million in connection with its "illegal promotion" of the drug Evista, which is approved by the FDA for the prevention...
Pharmaceutical “Tribal Marketing”
Tribal marketing n. A marketing strategy that attempts to create social groups or communities that are centered around a product or service. The credo of tribal marketing is that postmodern people...
Marketing “Acceptable Risk”
A few days ago I posted comments regarding Merck's hand in the last minute editing of an important Vioxx clinical trail article published in the New England Journal of Medicine (see...
Merck’s Hand in the Cookie Jar
It seems that Merck has been caught with its hand in the cookie jar. The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), that bastion of medical journalism and former bully pulpit of...
Less DTC, Better Public Image?
A lot of attention is being paid these days to pharma's tarnished public image. The prominence of direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising has been linked to the deterioration of this image and some...
J&J Scores High in Reputation Quotient Study
Results of the recent Harris Interactive corporate reputation study, reported in today's Wall Street Journal (see "Ranking Corporate Reputations"), place pharmaceutical companies low on the overall reputation totem pole (only tobacco...
Why are ED drug sales falling?
As reported in Sunday's New York Times, sales of erectile dysfunction drugs (Viagra, Cialis, Levitra) are falling (see figure at left). "...the market for impotence medicines appears to have fallen well...
Coming Soon: Sexy eDetailing?
There's a lot of interest these days among pharmaceutical marketing and sales executives in sales force effectiveness (SFE). The brisk sales of a compilation of reprints I have put together on...
Jerry Hall, Women and Pharma Marketing
This week's post "Sexy Reps Sell Rx" generated an interesting thread on women, beauty vs brains and pharmaceutical marketing on the PHARMA-MKTING online discussion list (see below).
In the midst of that...
Merck to Shed Fat, But Not in Sales & Marketing
As reported by Gary Haber in The News Journal, Merck plans to cut 7,000 jobs (11% of its global work force) and improve manufacturing efficiencies to maintain its profit margin despite...
