Abbott Laboratories has pleaded guilty and agreed to pay $1.6 billion to resolve its criminal and civil liability arising from the company’s unlawful promotion of the prescription drug Depakote, the U.S. Justice Department said Monday. In the meantime here in California lawyers have been running commercials for a class action lawsuit against the makers of Pradaxa at the same time Pradaxa is running DTC ads. Are pharma marketers deaf, dumb and blind ?
Does anyone really believe that consumers trust pharma marketers messages anymore when they don’t listen and refuse to engage consumers ? As one person who recently commented on my BLOG said “how can I trust new drugs when their always seems to be problems with them?” Yet companies like BI keep running push DTC ads as if everything was great in the Rx drug market.
Late last year in some market research with HCP’s one of the key findings we presented was that HCP’s felt that DTC marketing & advertising was not driving patients into their practice to ask for advertised drugs. ”Before if a drug solved a patients problem patients would come in and ask for them. Now I don’t see patients asking for as many drugs by brand name anymore.” Considering that less people are going to see their doctors that is disturbing.
In my opinion there are two primary challenges facing prescription drug marketing to consumers;
1ne: Budgets are being cut and tightened at a time when more money is needed to ramp up marketing with engagement. This means more people who can listen and respond despite the FDA lack of guidance on social media marketing.
2wo: A lot of talented marketing people are leaving drug marketing. It seems that every week I hear of a colleague who has moved from the drug industry to the consumer products industry where marketers are more in tune with consumers needs and wants.
The lingering effects of this recession are that consumers are less willing to trust any big company or advertiser. However until pharma marketers wake up and transform their marketing they are going to be as useful as snake mittens.
Related articles
- The truth about prescription drugs (worldofdtcmarketing.com)
- Time for the drug industry to get serious about digital marketing (worldofdtcmarketing.com)
- Findings from online health seekers (worldofdtcmarketing.com)
- How to save $550 billion in healthcare costs (worldofdtcmarketing.com)
Passionate healthcare marketer with over 10 years of experience I believe that what's best for patients is best for healthcare marketers. I also write a monthly DTC Column for PM 360 Magazine and have written many articles on healthcare marketing in an age of empowered patients.
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Rich,
This is such a loaded topic, so much more to discuss on this front. As you know guidelines prevent a lot of different types of communications and therefore pharma marketers become limited (often un-interested too!). However, don’t forget all the good things pharma and pharma marketers do, there are many non-mainstream drugs that are marketed to select targets that most people don’t know or hear about that are life saving medicines.
I’d love to hear more about the survey results, since this was new to me. Did any of the HCP’s have suggestions on how to better reach consumers within guidelines?
In addition to your challenges noted, I also think the media often highlights more of the negative about pharma, which may explain the blog comment you received. “Big Bad” companies will always be targets no matter what the industry. Thanks for the engagement!
DISCUSSION? Heck with discussion, FIRE THE DRUG COMPANIES, stop believing their lies and the scams of more research concerning the evils they do, the murders they do and the mass destruction of the US population using toxic potions. WHAT is to discuss. Stop buying their drugs and start growing some herbs and getting smart that doing EVIL does not equal health. How can you buy into to the LIE that the side effects are necessary evils. IT IS NOT SIDE EFFECTS, IT IS POISONS harming your body. STOP BEING DUMB SHEEP BEING LED TO THE SLAUGHTER JUST SO THE GREEDY CAN HAVE MORE MONEY. They don’t use herbs cause they can’t sell herbs at a high price, nor can they patent the herbs.