OPENING: DTC marketers have relied too much on TV advertising. Despite data that shows that people are watching more TV than usual during the pandemic, there has been an overall and steady decline in traditional TV viewing in the past few years. Just 59% of US consumers watched traditional TV on a weekly basis in 2020, compared to 83% who did so in 2017. New ways to reach consumers need to be explored.
Category Archive: Contrarians POV
QUICK READ: Our industry is inundated with trade magazine pseudo awards that don’t mean a damn thing to the patients we serve. The dirty secret is that these trade magazines use these awards as a business tactic to draw in more readers and ad dollars.
QUICK READ: DTC is going to be a bigger challenge now than ever before. You need to be able to quickly shift resources from one channel to another to increase your metrics. Be pearled to fail if you don’t listen and keep talking to your audience for feedback as well.
QUICK READ: The American healthcare system is too damn profitable for any reasonable reforms. If we don’t address this issue head-on when will we?
QUICK READ:
- According to a study on Healthline, “consumers will then search the brand name and visit consumer brand pages to find unbiased information about the product they saw on TV.
- In fact, 42% will request the brand from their medical professional after seeing an online ad in conjunction with a TV ad, while only 22% will after seeing a TV ad alone.
- The study fails to take into account website visits in relation to frequency and reach.
- Drugs that have been advertised for long periods of time have a negative correlation between TV ads and the search for online health information.
QUICK READ: Just as I had written on this site a Chief Digital Officer for a top pharma company has left after just twenty-four months on the job. Culture destroys even the best business intentions. Digital is so important to pharma but so is old business models driven by a merry-go-round of pharma lifers.
QUICK READ: According to Fierce Pharma “mostly because DTC works. Study after study finds that patients follow the well-worn DTC advice and actually “ask your doctor” about a condition or a specific medicine after they’ve seen ads for a prescription drug on TV or online”. Uh…no
SUMMARY: Pharma is just a business and according to a report from Harvard Business Scool “business as a whole engages in politics in ways that are bad for public trust in business and bad for America”.