“A Drug is Developed:” Easier than Launching an Educational Facebook Game about Drug Development?
About six months ago in December, 2011, Boehringer Ingelheim (BI) teamed up with the Mainz Natural History Museum in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany, to create "Ein Medicament Entsteht" ("The development of a medicine"),...
Pharma Monopoly Rules! GSK Execs Get Out of Jail Free Card and Pass Go...
As reported in Bloomberg BusinessWeek, "Two senior executives at GlaxoSmithKline Plc (GSK) singled out by the U.S. Justice Department for pushing the Advair asthma drug for unapproved uses have moved on...
The DOJ v Pharma Settlement Planetary System
The Department of Justice (DOJ) just released a commemorative poster highlighting the six most-recent multi-million dollar settlements that drug companies have agreed to pay for inappropriately, and in some cases illegally,...
Paula Deen Loses 30 lbs. Urges Twitter Fans to Pig Out on Fourth of...
Whilst on the supermarket checkout line, I noticed the cover of the latest, July 9, 2012, People Magazine that featured Paula Deen (see image below). "How I Lost 30 Lbs!" was...
Pfizer’s Social Media Initiatives are Getting Old
On June 18, 2012, Pfizer launched "Get Old," a multi-year initiative supported by nearly a dozen advocacy organizations. Why? According to Pfizer, it is part of Pfizer’s mission to improve the...
Pharma Engages Patients in Real World, Not via Social Media
Some pharma pundits -- mostly consultants who want more pharma clients -- see great potential for pharma to use social media such as Twitter and Facebook to "engage" consumers and patients.
Yet,...
Drug Ads & Coupons: Who’s the Decider? The Patient, the Physician, or the FDA?
The FDA is concerned that the use of sales promotions such as free trial offers, discounts, money-back guarantees, and rebates in direct-to-consumer (DTC) prescription drug ads "artificially enhance consumers' perceptions of...
Bogus Predictions of Pharma Industry Online Ad Spending
Here's a headline, versions of which I have been seeing for years: "Pharmaceutical Advertising Spending Shifts to Digital." That's how Business 2 Community -- "an independent online community focused on sharing...
Boehringer Ingelheim Shows How to Support Patients via Twitter and Beyond
One of the uses for pharma Twitter accounts that many ePatient advocates recommend is to directly support patients seeking help regarding their Rx products (see, for example, this Pharma Marketing News...
FDA Concerned About Product (eg, Lyrica) Ads That are Too “Educational”
In a recent Federal Register notice (find it here), FDA outlined a study it plans to do to determine if disease awareness information in branded ads confuses consumers; i.e., if consumers...
