As a public official preparing for international negotiations, I was taught by the U.S. State Department to always know exactly what you want and what you’re willing to give up before sitting down with a skilled international trading partner. It looks like pharma representatives were well prepared recently when sitting down with the country’s new Negotiator-in-Chief, President Donald Trump, but they should be mindful that the other shoe has yet to drop.
Mixing milk with a socially minded marketing agency – AbelsonTaylor – and farmers in East Africa can make for impressive health benefits all around.
QuintilesIMS’ annual survey of pharmaceutical and device manufacturers was initiated in 2009 – when only a handful of U.S. states required disclosure of certain healthcare practitioner payments. Since then, of course, state, federal and global requirements have continually evolved and expanded. Our latest survey findings, which reflect responses from 112 manufacturers, underscore that while the bar keeps getting higher, manufacturers’ confidence and sophistication are also on the rise.
Taking advantage of the moment – whether it’s a seasonal opportunity, such as allergies or the flu, or a moment of awareness, such as Breast Cancer Awareness Moment – challenges marketers to consider the marketing mix and the best ways to reach target audiences with brand messaging. Increasingly, with a spend approaching 10 percent of the $5 billion DTC market, pharmaceutical marketers are including POC as a key marketing strategy because they know that it works.
“Failing to plan is planning to fail” states time management guru Alan Lakein. Nowhere does this axiom ring more true than in the tightly controlled world of Rx launches. Given the time and expense required to bring a prescription drug to market, coupled with its limited exclusive lifespan, we must maximize every moment from market conditioning to loss of exclusivity (LOE).
When it launched in February of 2015, Meerkat looked like it was going to be the hottest social application since Facebook. Two years later, Meerkat’s live-streaming platform is gone, taken down in the fall of 2016 after losing a battle for users with the similar (but Twitter-backed) platform Periscope. But although the players have changed, interest in live streaming has stuck around – and in some cases, grown quickly as users see the possibilities for it and existing social platforms begin adding it to their arsenal of features.
In today’s world, consumers have come to expect personalized experiences – it is not a nice-to-have, but rather, a point of entry if you want to remain a competitive brand. At the crux of personalization is, you guessed it…data. Personalization can look like many things – an advertisement for a famous seafood restaurant in Miami, even though you live in Boston (but you did recently book a vacation to Miami?); or it might look like a kiosk in a drug store with a platform to stand on to find out your perfect in-sole thickness and density.
Data is everywhere! And, as marketers, we should leverage data to improve our ability to reach the target audience that is most likely to be receptive to and engaged with our messages. As pharma marketers, we have a unique challenge, as the highly restrictive advertising landscape that we work within presents its own set of obstacles. But we’re up to the challenge; we know that if any industry can benefit from the ability to use data to increase the relevancy and results of digital campaigns, it’s the pharma industry.
WPP, the global communications services group, has announced the formation of WPP Health & Wellness. The new sub-holding company unites WPP’s broad capability under one banner to significantly advance its offer and partnership with clients across the spectrum of health and wellness. WPP Health & Wellness is headed by Global CEO Mike Hudnall, a 20-year marketing veteran with deep experience in healthcare marketing and global client leadership.
Celine Vita, a former executive at CDM, has been appointed president of Centron’s advertising division.
