tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-85504282012-01-27T10:34:57.570-05:00Pharma Marketing Blog<center>
A "Must Read" Blog for Insiders. --<i>Wall Street Journal</i><br>"...often-entertaining, always informative..." --<i>Christiane Truelove, Editor-in-Chief, MedAdNews</i>
</center>PharmaGuyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211557578124130640noreply@blogger.comBlogger15141100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8550428.post-25902649896197853392012-01-27T10:34:00.001-05:002012-01-27T10:34:57.626-05:00Allergan "Badly Let Down" by Employee TweetThe Prescription Medicines Code of Practice Authority (PMCPA) ruled that Allergan breached UK pharma's self-regulatory Code of Practice because an employee accidentally tweeted publicly about Botox (read the details here "Brits Versus Botox Tweet").
Basically, an employee sent a public tweet to a friend in which he/she mentioned Botox and said "... we could do something around stroke rehab..." PharmaGuyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211557578124130640noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8550428.post-52709836051965369412012-01-27T08:35:00.000-05:002012-01-27T09:05:22.230-05:00Taking the "Cool" Way Out of Having Rx Product Convos on Social Media
I have criticized pharma companies for mentioning Rx brand product names via social media. Mostly because they forget to include fair balance or don't educate the public (see, for example, "Novo Nordisk's Branded (Levemir) Tweet is Sleazy Twitter Spam!").
That doesn't mean, however, that I don't believe there is a way for pharma to engage in branded product discussions via social media such asPharmaGuyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211557578124130640noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8550428.post-67887635293199020802012-01-26T13:39:00.001-05:002012-01-26T14:47:17.832-05:00Should Pharma Disclose Payments to Celebrity Spokespeople?In my podcast interview of Ambre Morley (listen here or read it here: "Novo Nordisk Defends Choice of Paula Deen as Diabetes Spokesperson"), Associate Director, Product Communications, Novo Nordisk, I brought up the subject of compensation for celebrity pharma spokespeople like Paula Deen, the celebrity chef who was recently hired by Novo Nordisk as a diabetes spokesperson.
Obviously, Paula DeenPharmaGuyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211557578124130640noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8550428.post-38063156569880241682012-01-25T07:00:00.000-05:002012-01-25T08:27:26.813-05:00Did FDA Entrap Google with Those 14 NOV Letters?Con Artist Reveals All About Google Drug Ad Sting - How FDA May Have Entrapped Google Using Those 14 "Infamous" Notice of Violation Letters
In an interesting article in today's Wall Street Journal, a convicted con artist details how he was employed by federal agents -- including agents of the FDA's Office of Criminal Investigation -- to lead a sting operation against Google's illegal drug ad PharmaGuyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211557578124130640noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8550428.post-61986832195554785342012-01-20T09:39:00.000-05:002012-01-20T10:55:02.916-05:00Is There a Cure for Mediocre Pharma Mobile Apps?For new pharma marketing Graduates, I have just one word for you. Are you listening? Mobile!
Mobile is the new "shiny thing" of interest to pharmaceutical marketers. As evidence of this, there are more and more drug industry conferences that are dedicated to mobile or have tracks or whole days dedicated to mobile. Mobile Healthcare Communications 2012, for example, is one of them. I will be at PharmaGuyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211557578124130640noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8550428.post-28187846359270594402012-01-19T15:30:00.000-05:002012-01-19T15:30:46.020-05:00Three Companies Compete for Diabetes Market Share Using Recipes Rather Than Product EfficacyWhose recipes will reign supreme?!
My Twitter friend, @serious_skeptic, who has Type 1 diabetes, just tweeted: "why the hell would anyone want a recipe from a DRUG company anyway???" during a conversation we were having about celebrity chef Paula Deen and her new relationship with Novo Nordisk (read this for the background).
From reading comments made by other people with diabetes on PharmaGuyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211557578124130640noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8550428.post-69145543006652242832012-01-19T10:06:00.000-05:002012-01-19T14:46:27.848-05:00Novo Nordisk Defends Choice of Paula Deen Over Anthony Bourdain (for example) as Celebrity Chef Spokesperson
Yesterday, I spoke with Ambre Morley, Associate Director, Product Communications, Novo Nordisk, who answered my questions about why her company teamed up with celebrity chef Paula Deen as a spokesperson for type 2 diabetes treatment (listen to podcast of the interview here). In case you don't have time to listen to the whole interview, here are my takeaways regarding why Novo Nordisk chose DeenPharmaGuyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211557578124130640noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8550428.post-77632383816041172822012-01-18T08:46:00.000-05:002012-01-19T12:19:31.436-05:00Pfizer & PhRMA Lobby in Support of SOPA
Steve Jobs once said that he'd rather be a "pirate" than join the navy. What he meant was you must think out of the box to innovate. But the world's "innovative" drug industry is the "navy" as far as lobbying in support of the "Stop Online Piracy Act" goes.
The legislation's short title is SOPA (H. R. 3261; find it here). There are several anti-SOPA Facebook pages and at least one called "PharmaGuyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211557578124130640noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8550428.post-38671639628147480632012-01-17T07:44:00.000-05:002012-01-17T08:32:08.630-05:00My Bad! Paula Dean Shills for Novo Nordisk, Not Novartis[Alternative title for this post: "Paula Deen and Diabetes Prevention: A Recipe for Disaster!"]
Last week I reported on a story that celebrity southern-style chef Paula Deen has type 2 diabetes and that she is a spokesperson for Novartis's diabetes franchise (see "Sanofi vs Novartis: Paul Sorvino vs. Paula Deen").
It turns out that the source of this information confused Novartis with Novo PharmaGuyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211557578124130640noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8550428.post-68617738183638473882012-01-13T15:11:00.001-05:002012-01-17T07:48:48.423-05:00Sanofi vs Novartis: Paul Sorvino vs. Paula DeenIt is rumored that celebrity southern-style chef Paula Deen will soon announce that she has diabetes (surprise) and that she is a spokesperson for Novartis's diabetes franchise (see "Rumors Say Paula Deen Has Diabetes, Will Work for Novartis"). She will compete with Paul Sorvino and daughter who are currently the diabetes spokespeople for Sanofi (see "Diabetes Costars").
How Novartis plans to PharmaGuyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211557578124130640noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8550428.post-72298969383292946882012-01-13T14:03:00.001-05:002012-01-13T14:03:15.444-05:00Are You Part of My Social Media Mosaic?For a buck ninety-eight, I was able to make and download the following Pharmaguy mosaic image comprised of photos of my Facebook friends and in my photo album. Your face may be one of the images that was used to create this image on the mo.saic.me Web site.
Sorry if no one asked your permission to use your image!
At $1.98 a shot, it's going to take a lot of mosaics to pay for that ".me" domain PharmaGuyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211557578124130640noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8550428.post-10853818072396668872012-01-13T12:26:00.000-05:002012-01-13T12:26:45.487-05:00FDA Sends Warning Letter to Website to Cease & Desist: It Doesn't@skypen posted this tweet recently: "Interesting warning letter for flu med for false claims via web, twitter & facebook http://t.co/FWI0y4Ch," which I found in the ePharma Pioneer Club Forum.
What I found interesting about this letter is that it addressed an issue more serious than the typical "false claims" letter that Rx pharma companies sometimes receive. This letter pointed out that a PharmaGuyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211557578124130640noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8550428.post-70909500561956050552012-01-11T11:01:00.000-05:002012-01-11T11:01:29.435-05:00Despite Increase in DTC Ad Spending, WebMD Suffers2011 is shaping up to be a good year for pharma direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising -- that is, broadcast advertising, NOT Internet advertising.
According to Nielsen data prepared for DTC Perspectives Magazine, total pharma DTC ad spending -- excluding Internet advertising -- increased 3.2% for the first 3 quarters of 2011 vs. the same period in 2010 ($3.045 billion in Q1-Q3 2011 vs. $2.951 in PharmaGuyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211557578124130640noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8550428.post-16325327236927564522012-01-11T08:05:00.000-05:002012-01-11T08:19:44.662-05:00FDA's Advisory Committee Voting Double Standard
I learned today that the FDA allowed physicians with ties to Bayer to participate and vote in an advisory committee weighing whether or not the benefits of four popular Bayer AG birth-control pills outweigh the blood-clot risk (read the WSJ story here: "FDA Advisory Committee Members Had Ties to Bayer").
At least one of the physicians (Paula Hillard, Stanford Univ; see her financial PharmaGuyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211557578124130640noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8550428.post-74670934566327187902012-01-10T15:16:00.000-05:002012-01-10T15:19:03.774-05:00Thera Max YouTube Video "Social Media Strategy" Makes Americans Look Like Fools!"A reporter in Times Square gathered over 200 random people and allowed them to try Thera Max™ Cold and Flu right on the spot. The results provided would give a non-biased, random and unscripted evaluation of the product and the results it provided. The overall consensus was, 'It really works.'"
According to the press release (read it here) this was the result of "A Social Media Strategy in PharmaGuyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211557578124130640noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8550428.post-41790179410083692422012-01-10T07:22:00.000-05:002012-01-10T14:23:07.539-05:00Lilly Sales Reps Learn Marketing Lessons From Disney's Animal Keepers
Lilly sales representatives are learning about customer service by observing Disney Animal Kingdom workers as they "[greet] families at the gate and [answer] questions around the attractions," according to an article in today's Wall Street Journal (read "Drug Sales Reps Soften Pitches").
"Lilly's most recent national sales meeting, held at Disney's business training institute in Florida in PharmaGuyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211557578124130640noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8550428.post-73484421664953650942012-01-04T06:00:00.000-05:002012-01-20T07:02:49.351-05:00Predicting the Future of the Drug Industry: 2012 and BeyondIt's time to revisit a survey I ran a couple of years ago that attempted to predict future healthcare market scenarios that would impact the drug industry. The survey asks respondents how likely it is for certain events or conditions to unfold in the next 5 to 8 years (ie, 2012 to 2019).
You can take the survey here. But before you do that, let's review the first-round of results (ie, PharmaGuyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211557578124130640noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8550428.post-18821222390462491152011-12-29T10:33:00.000-05:002012-01-20T06:56:43.483-05:00Games vs. Mobile Health Monitoring Devices: Which is a Better Motivator?
What could possibly justify spending $8,000 for an electronic mobile ultrasound device vs. $100 for a stethoscope? Keep in mind that the stethoscope will likely last a lifetime, whereas the electronic device -- like my son's iPod -- may last only a couple of years before failing or becoming obsolete even sooner.
"Why would I listen to 'lub dub' when I can see everything?" said a doctor quoted PharmaGuyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211557578124130640noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8550428.post-87816155299965967482011-12-28T14:16:00.001-05:002011-12-28T16:14:11.335-05:00FDA Social Media Guidelines May Be Moot If This Court Decision Holds Up
Drugmakers dissatisfied with the FDA’s use of guidances as a form of policymaking -- including long-awaited guidance for use of social media by the pharmaceutical industry -- could find legal ammunition against the practice in the case "United States of America v. Franck’s Lab," which is pending appeal in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.
I noted before that the drug PharmaGuyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211557578124130640noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8550428.post-15399647199037154352011-12-28T12:38:00.000-05:002011-12-29T07:29:55.369-05:002011 in Images from Pharma Marketing BlogThese are my favorite images that appeared in Pharma Marketing Blog posts made in 2011. Enjoy and have a Happy New Year!
Pharma Marketing Blog: The Year 2011 in Images View more presentations from Pharmaguy PharmaGuyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211557578124130640noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8550428.post-33537393003518624462011-12-28T09:18:00.001-05:002011-12-28T09:40:41.235-05:00FDA Guidance on Responding to Unsolicited Requests for Off-Label Information Via Social MediaYesterday, while most of us were still on vacation, the FDA quietly issued without fanfare -- ie, no press release telling us about it or how to submit comments -- "Guidance for Industry Responding to Unsolicited Requests for Off-Label Information About Prescription Drugs and Medical Devices." You can find the document here.
Section VI. of this guidance addresses responding to unsolicited PharmaGuyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211557578124130640noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8550428.post-15387891737723475202011-12-21T13:49:00.000-05:002011-12-22T07:15:36.982-05:00Webicina's "Open Access" Social Media Guidelines for PharmaHealth Social Media advocates abhor a vacuum, especially when the vacuum is caused by the lack of FDA guidelines for use of social media by the pharmaceutical industry. To fill that vacuum, several more or less independent 3rd parties are developing guidelines for the industry in the hopes of spurring the FDA to eventually do the same or to bypass the new for FDA guidelines altogether.
In the PharmaGuyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211557578124130640noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8550428.post-34808657696991657862011-12-15T08:18:00.000-05:002011-12-15T08:18:51.452-05:00Proposed Rules for Physician Payment Sunshine Act: Some Clouds on the Horizon
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) released their proposed rule for the Physician Payment Sunshine provision of the Affordable Care Act (see "CMS Releases Proposed Physician Sunshine Act Regulations", where you can also download the proposed rule). Because CMS was late issuing this rule, the drug industry will NOT have to begin data collection on Jan. 1, 2012, as "required" byPharmaGuyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211557578124130640noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8550428.post-90363412314914487552011-12-14T15:16:00.000-05:002011-12-14T15:16:03.676-05:00Pharmaceutical Representative Magazine Closes. Blame CafePharma!
"Pharm Rep Closes After 41 Years" is the title of parting editorial by Reid Paul, Editor in Chief of Pharmaceutical Representative magazine, which was trade publication focused on pharmaceutical sales.
"Nostalgia from my days 'carrying the bag' makes me sad to see this publication go," tweeted Mike Capaldi (@mikecapaldi), Associate Vice President at Sanofi.
"The reality is that PharmaGuyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211557578124130640noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8550428.post-534354400244087212011-12-14T08:35:00.000-05:002011-12-15T12:52:48.817-05:00Crestor Grapples to Compete with Lipitor: #Fail!I just got this email from AstraZeneca via Pharmacist eLink, which is a National Community Pharmacists Association site sponsored by the pharmaceutical industry (click on image for an enlarged view):
As readers of this blog know, my doctor once recommended I switch to Crestor from my generic pravastatin, which costs me about $7 per month via mail order (it would cost me $4 if I weren't so PharmaGuyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211557578124130640noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8550428.post-42312213275657239552011-12-09T09:21:00.001-05:002011-12-13T10:12:28.098-05:00Sales Reps in the Wild: An Interesting Way to Promote a Sales Force Effectiveness ConferenceI received this Twitter DM (direct message) from @eyeforpharma: "Thought you might like this. youtu.be/gCDeBAD75Pg"
There was also this @eyeforpharma tweet: "Save pharma sales from extinction. This is serious. http://youtu.be/gCDeBAD75Pg #savepharma #e4p #hcsmeu #hcsm #pharma"
Eyeforpharma (aka "E4P") is a UK company that hosts pharma industry conferences, some of which I am paid to help PharmaGuyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211557578124130640noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8550428.post-6182016432308031752011-12-08T09:32:00.001-05:002011-12-08T09:59:17.147-05:00Lipitor For You! Actually, For Card Carrying Members Only!
"The LIPITOR FOR YOU program comes with the $4 Co-Pay Card so you can save on Lipitor, the medicine that's been helping you lower your cholesterol." So says Pfizer's new direct-to-consumer (DTC) campaign (see ad from the current issue of Newsweek on the right; click to enlarge).
I suspect we'll also be seeing these ads on TV soon. The ad, which features a nice family day at the beach, will putPharmaGuyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211557578124130640noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8550428.post-76836678475377762522011-12-08T07:12:00.001-05:002011-12-08T08:20:38.580-05:00December 7, 2011: A Date Which Will Live in Infamy for Women's Health!
"If I close my eyes...I might think I was in the Bush era,” said Michelle Goldberg (@michelleinbklyn), Senior writer for Newsweek/The Daily Beast, and author of Kingdom Coming and The Means of Reproduction. Her remark -- made via Twitter, of course -- was in reference to "Obama's terrible decision to override the FDA on Plan B."
She expressed my feelings precisely!
By now you've all probably PharmaGuyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211557578124130640noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8550428.post-79403348720768827282011-12-06T07:32:00.001-05:002011-12-07T06:55:04.741-05:00Be Aware of What's Behind a Pharma Mobile App: Disclaimers Only Tell Part of the StorySome time ago, I pointed out that certain mobile apps developed by pharmaceutical companies for use by physicians lack adequate disclaimers. Specifically, I was concerned about the software used in these apps that perform calculations to generate data to aid in medical diagnoses. A Psoriasis/PASI app by Janssen Pharmaceutica is an example (see "FDA Promises Still More Guidance! This Time It's PharmaGuyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211557578124130640noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8550428.post-72704550780300171062011-12-05T11:04:00.001-05:002011-12-06T07:16:35.854-05:00Gov't SoMo Media Aimed at Teen Smokers: We're Not Telling You What to DoI just learned that the National Cancer Institute (NCI) has launched a Mobile phone app ("SmokefreeTXT") and a social media campaign designed to help teens quit smoking (see "Nci Launches Smoking Cessation Support For Teens").
SmokefreeTXT is a free text message cessation service that provides 24/7 encouragement, advice, and tips to teens trying to quit smoking.
"Once they sign up, teens PharmaGuyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211557578124130640noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8550428.post-61329586571469595122011-12-02T07:01:00.001-05:002011-12-02T08:14:15.263-05:00Is the Pharma Industry Responsible for FDA's Delay in Issuing Social Media Guidelines?
I just read an interesting MM&M piece about how measures to curb the deficit might impact the pharmaceutical industry (see "Pharma Marketing Outlook 2012: Detailing D.C."). One small comment caught my attention: "A first draft of what is likely to be one of several not-crystal-clear guidances on social media and Internet communications has been circulating at FDA for most of the year, held up PharmaGuyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211557578124130640noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8550428.post-65704985492328097322011-11-29T09:18:00.001-05:002011-11-30T16:54:19.419-05:00Are Pharma Sales Reps Service Employees?The Supreme Court agreed to decide whether drug companies have to pay their sales representatives for working overtime hours, "a question that could have considerable financial impact on the industry," according to the Wall Street Journal (see "Supreme Court to Decide if Pharma Reps Are Exempt from Receiving Overtime Pay"). The question (see here) before the court in case "CHRISTOPHER V. PharmaGuyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211557578124130640noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8550428.post-82584033061879862382011-11-28T12:50:00.001-05:002011-11-29T08:21:04.089-05:00Deconstructing Pitts' Guiding Principles for Pharma Social MediaPeter Pitts over at DrugWonks Blog has put together 11 "principles that must serve as the basic substrate of regulated social media participation" (see here). Pitts offered these principles because he is urging the pharma industry to participate in social media and not wait for FDA guidelines "not because of its potency as a marketing vehicle – but because it’s the right thing to do." Let's take PharmaGuyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211557578124130640noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8550428.post-44836986319826678892011-11-28T12:19:00.000-05:002011-11-28T13:33:14.577-05:00What's On Pharma's 2011 List for Santa?At this time every year, the good "boys and girls" of U.S. pharmaceutical industry send a letter to Santa that includes a list "presents" they would like to receive. Help me create this list.
I've put together a list as a starting point. Please select the items you think are appropriate to include in Pharma's letter to Santa. Feel free to add an item if it's not on the following list. Also: @PharmaGuyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211557578124130640noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8550428.post-2023371308730739992011-11-23T07:46:00.001-05:002011-11-30T09:51:42.568-05:00Pfizer, World's Most Innovative Drug Company - Not!Pfizer is the world's most "innovative" drug company, not in terms of developing new drugs to treat, for example, high cholesterol -- which it failed at spectacularly (see "Why Pfizer Flopped"), but at keeping old drugs on the market beyond their patent expiration date and competing with generic drug companies. I am referring, of course, to its efforts to keep Lipitor on the market competing withPharmaGuyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211557578124130640noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8550428.post-69783090183410789092011-11-16T07:04:00.001-05:002011-11-16T14:11:38.589-05:00Calling Merck: Help Save the Honey Bee!The European Parliament has called on the pharmaceutical industry to play a role in finding a solution to halt the rapid decline of the honey bee (see "Can Big Pharma Halt Honey Bee Decline?"). There may even be(e) monetary incentives in the works for any drug company that agrees to develop new medicinal products designed to combat bee diseases.
Merck, which famously uses a honey bee as its PharmaGuyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211557578124130640noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8550428.post-21034273992482226802011-11-15T06:51:00.001-05:002011-11-15T07:32:29.069-05:00Cancer Drugs: Greener Pastures for Pharma R&D and Wall Street
Two news items regarding medical/pharmaceutical research caught my attention today. Both involve stem cells.
The first item was about research results revealed at the American Heart Association's annual conference. US researchers found stem cell therapy in humans has been "surprisingly successful in replacing damaged muscle and getting the heart to pump better" (see "Stem cells give new hope PharmaGuyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211557578124130640noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8550428.post-10255631440983847892011-11-14T08:40:00.001-05:002011-11-14T09:50:04.975-05:00Occupy Pfizer! Protest It's Deal to Block Sales of Generic Lipitor! #OccupyPFE"I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take this any more!"
I love that line from the 1976 movie Network. The whole scene in which fictional news anchor Howard Beale goes on a "rant" is even more appropriate today. You can watch the YouTube version at the end of this post.
Today, however, I'm mad as hell at Pfizer in particular and plan to boycott its products or even "occupy" its corporate PharmaGuyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211557578124130640noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8550428.post-72175963162630630372011-11-08T09:04:00.000-05:002011-11-08T11:15:45.018-05:00Your Wife, Your Choice - Diapers or Detrol (now Toviaz)?Pfizer's @pfizer_news Twitter account just posted this tweet:
"Toviaz top-line primary endpoint results positive in overactive bladder study of nocturnal urinary urgency http://t.co/OU60l6oZ" (see here).
The link is to a press release that reports the results of a study that purports to show that Toviaz (a reformulation of off-patent Detrol) is "statistically significantly superior to placebo" PharmaGuyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211557578124130640noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8550428.post-6326050630000035182011-11-08T07:24:00.000-05:002011-11-08T07:28:42.240-05:00Pharma Turns Up the Heat on Off-Label "Free Speech" Chilled by FDA - Implications for Social Media Marketing
"FDA’s regulations censor manufacturers," says the Medical Information Working Group (MIWG), an "informal" group of pharmaceutical companies that includes Allergan, Amgen, Boehringer Ingelheim USA, Eli Lilly & Co., GlaxoSmithKline, Johnson & Johnson, Novartis Pharmaceuticals, Novo Nordisk, Pfizer, Purdue Pharma, and sanofi-aventis U.S.
In a "friends of the court" brief to the court hearing PharmaGuyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211557578124130640noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8550428.post-64659790963571283132011-11-07T14:07:00.000-05:002011-11-07T14:07:29.021-05:00Do Women Take More Drugs Than Men Because They Need To or Because They Are Targeted by DTC Advertising?Aside from Viagra, there's hardly a prescription drug I've heard of that women are NOT the major users of. Take, for example, this bit of information regarding Ambien as reported recently in the New York Times:
"According to IMS Health, a health care consulting firm in Danbury, Conn., the use of prescription sleep aids among women peaks from 40 to 59. Last year, the firm said, 15,473,000 PharmaGuyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211557578124130640noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8550428.post-5975896712505556372011-11-04T08:17:00.000-05:002011-11-04T08:31:28.409-05:00FDA Moves the Cheese on Drug Approval NumbersThe FDA and the pharmaceutical industry are bragging about the number of "new" drugs approved in "fiscal year" 2011 (October 1, 2010 through September 30, 2011). In a report (find it on the FDA site here), FDA said it approved 35 "innovative drugs" during that period. PhRMA -- the drug industry's trade association -- said that 35 "new molecular entities" received FDA approval in fiscal year 2011.PharmaGuyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211557578124130640noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8550428.post-60573092122736819582011-11-03T08:17:00.000-05:002011-11-03T08:48:36.662-05:00Chantix May Be More Dangerous Than Smoking!Reuters reports (here) that Chantix is "eight times more likely to be linked with a reported case of suicidal behavior or depression than other nicotine replacement products, such as the nicotine patch," as reported by authors of a recent study (see "New study says Chantix raises suicide risks"). Here are more details as reported by Reuters:
The new study relies on adverse events from the FDA's PharmaGuyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211557578124130640noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8550428.post-26906365300404640002011-11-02T11:12:00.000-05:002011-11-02T11:12:19.307-05:00Google to Shutter Sidewiki on December 5, A Day That Will Live Famously!Yesterday, Google sent out an email (see here) informing users of its sidewiki service that it will close the service on December 5. Sidewiki allows users to post and read comments linked to specific web pages. It was launched in September, 2009, and I was one of the first people to use sidewiki to attach comments to a drug.com website (see "Google's Wacky Wiki is Whack! Pharma Should Demand PharmaGuyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211557578124130640noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8550428.post-39516621575002751692011-11-02T08:27:00.001-05:002011-11-02T12:12:24.183-05:00Are Pharma Reps Important to Docs or Not?Back in March, 2011, I reviewed a PhRMA sponsored survey of physicians the results of which PhRMA claimed shows that "nearly eight out of 10 physicians view pharmaceutical research companies and their sales representatives as useful sources of information on prescription medicines" (see "New PhRMA Survey of Physicians: Are Sales Reps as "Useful" as PhRMA Wants Us to Believe?"). If you look at a PharmaGuyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211557578124130640noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8550428.post-51326985203806021222011-11-02T05:55:00.000-05:002011-11-02T06:01:52.896-05:00Lipitor Won't Go Gentle Into that Good Generic Night
Today's Wall Street Journal reports that "Pfizer Inc. isn't rolling over and conceding the market for its cholesterol-lowering drug Lipitor after the blockbuster brand loses its U.S. monopoly at the end of the month" (read the article here). Pfizer has an aggressive co-pay card/PBM discount plan that it hopes will allow Lipitor to maintain a 40% share of the combined market for Lipitor and its PharmaGuyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211557578124130640noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8550428.post-78201302254018806892011-10-31T15:38:00.000-05:002011-11-10T09:23:38.914-05:00Pharma Sponsored YouTube Patient Videos "Not Transparent" Says Cleveland Clinic Researcher
According to the results of two separate social media-related studies unveiled today at the American College of Gastroenterology’s (ACG) 76th Annual Scientific meeting in Washington, DC, social networking sites like Facebook and YouTube may lack patient-centered information and can also be sources of misleading information that could potentially do more harm than good (see the ACG press PharmaGuyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211557578124130640noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8550428.post-69316188907783024372011-10-28T14:06:00.000-05:002011-10-28T14:27:07.662-05:00Angry PhRMA, Level 1: PDUFAYesterday I suggested a real "kick-ass" pharma-related game would be ANGRY PHRMA (see "Pharma & Fun, Not Oxymoronic? Here Comes Gamification!"). Below is shown "Level 1: PDUFA," the goal of which is to "knock down" those Senators trying to give FDA new regulatory powers as part of the bill -- or as PhRMA describes it, those "additional provisions that could create unintended burdens on the PharmaGuyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211557578124130640noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8550428.post-39960991117461230382011-10-28T07:50:00.000-05:002011-10-31T08:14:05.764-05:00BI's Facebook Game Syrum to be Launched "When It's Ready." Needs to Obey Privacy & FTC Laws First!I wrote a review of Boehringer Ingelheim's (BI's) long-awaited -- but not yet available -- Facebook game, Syrum, in yesterday's post to Pharma Marketing Blog (see "Pharma & Fun, Not Oxymoronic? Here Comes Gamification!"). Today, I brought up the topic of pharma-sponsored "gamification" during the #hcsmeu chat. BI's John Pugh -- who is in charge of the Syrum project -- saw the "bat signal" that PharmaGuyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211557578124130640noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8550428.post-24649989022058557192011-10-27T15:43:00.000-05:002011-10-27T15:43:36.455-05:00Pharma & Fun, Not Oxymoronic? Here Comes Gamification!Speaking of Boehringer Ingelheim's (BI's) long-awaited -- but not yet available -- Facebook game, Syrum, John Pugh, head of BI online communications, said it's about "pharma and fun.” He quickly added “This is not an oxymoron. You can have the two in the same sentence.”
The objective of the game is to "save the world, one disease at a time, by harvesting molecules (a little like Farmville) and PharmaGuyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211557578124130640noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8550428.post-85714038915013765972011-10-27T07:38:00.000-05:002011-10-27T07:38:21.694-05:00Pfizer's Facebook Fiasco: Chapstick Slapstick Ad Uses Woman's Ass as a Prop
The AdWeek article "ChapStick Gets Itself in a Social Media Death Spiral" caught my attention yesterday. It describes how Pfizer mishandled negative comments about a Chapstick ad image posted on its Chapstick Facebook page. Here's the play-by-play of the "death spiral" as reported by AdWeek:
"ChapStick posts weird image on Facebook of a woman, ass in the air [see photo at left], looking for PharmaGuyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211557578124130640noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8550428.post-42037332329006599482011-10-26T08:00:00.000-05:002011-10-26T08:00:34.906-05:00Channeling Steve Jobs to Solve Pharma's Innovator's Dilemma
There's a lot of buzz about pharma's current lack of innovative new products in the "pipeline" and what needs to be done about it.
"Innovation" itself is such a buzz word these days that AstraZeneca decided to sponsor an international "Innovation Survey" to find out "it means to different people and how valuable they thought it was to society" (see here).
When drug executives talk about PharmaGuyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211557578124130640noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8550428.post-62009859449676759112011-10-24T16:00:00.000-05:002011-10-24T16:36:43.435-05:00Physician Bailout Part Deux: On Average, Device Manufacturers Pay Every US Orthopedic Surgeon Over $9,000 Per Year!File this under Pharmaguy's Believe It or Not! An analysis of financial payments made by orthopedic device manufacturers to orthopedic surgeons -- published today in the Archives of Internal Medicine (Arch Intern Med. 2011;171[19]:1759-1765) -- documents that if these payments were evenly distributed to all 25,000 surgeons, each surgeon would have received $9,120! This dwarfs the $750 per US PharmaGuyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211557578124130640noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8550428.post-3422004075241727972011-10-24T07:39:00.000-05:002011-10-27T13:15:22.961-05:00Antidepressants: Top Advertised & 3rd Most Commonly Used Rx DrugAccording to a recent CDC Data Brief (find it here), antidepressants were the third most common prescription drug taken by Americans of all ages in 2005–2008 and the most frequently used by persons aged 18–44 years. From 1988–1994 through 2005–2008, the rate of antidepressant use in the United States among all ages increased nearly 400%.Key findings (2005–2008):
Eleven percent of Americans aged PharmaGuyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211557578124130640noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8550428.post-77896908474046933052011-10-22T14:53:00.001-05:002011-10-22T18:02:20.517-05:00Double Dip in DTC Spending Plus 33% Drop in Internet Display Ad Spending!Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) pharmaceutical advertising spending suffered a "double dip" recession between 2007 and 2010, according to data presented in the AdAge Insights Whitepaper "Pharmaceutical Marketing: Targeting Consumers & Connecting Online" (find the link to that report here).
Spending dipped 14% from a high of $5.4 billion in 2006 to $4.7 billion in 2008 and dipped again 9% in 2010 PharmaGuyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211557578124130640noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8550428.post-47646652083178335392011-10-19T06:47:00.000-05:002011-10-19T06:47:27.049-05:00AZ's Tony Jewell Receives 2nd Annual Pharmaguy Social Media Pioneer AwardYesterday, I figuratively gave the Hawaiian shirt off my back to Tony Jewell (@tonyjewell), Senior Director of External Communications at AstraZeneca US, for his pioneering use of Twitter. I picked Tony specifically because AZ was the first pharmaceutical company to host a Twitter chat (#rxsave; see "OMG! AstraZeneca Hosts Twitter Chat & World Does NOT End!").
This memorable event was PharmaGuyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211557578124130640noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8550428.post-17446219108583068162011-10-14T08:41:00.001-05:002011-10-14T08:41:24.141-05:00Was Lilly's #mmeds Twitter Chat a Discussion or a Press Conference?Yesterday, I participated in the #mmeds Twitter chat regarding Medicare hosted by Lilly (see "More Pharma Twitter Chats: Medicare is Topic"). I had high hopes that this would be an informative discussion, but those hopes faded once the official "chat" began.
Before the chat began, Lilly encouraged followers to ask questions: "Hope you can join @Modernmeds for a Twitter chat on #Medicare tomorrowPharmaGuyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211557578124130640noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8550428.post-90132835257865925922011-10-13T08:43:00.000-05:002011-10-14T08:44:12.862-05:00Is There an Upward Career Path Within Pharma for Social Media Pioneers?I just tweeted this bit of news: ".@Alex__Butler - 1st recipient of Pharmaguy SM Pioneer Award - leaves J&J to start online comms agency: @The_Social_Moon #hcsmeu #hcsmuk" Alex received the FIRST Pharmaguy Social Media Pioneer Award last year when he was Digital Strategy and Social Media Manager at Janssen UK (see "First Pharmaguy Social Media Pioneer Award Given to Janssen's Alex Butler"). His PharmaGuyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211557578124130640noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8550428.post-59881952926701899352011-10-13T06:30:00.000-05:002011-10-13T07:15:58.582-05:00More Pharma Twitter Chats: Medicare is TopicThe Campaign for Modern Medicines (@Modernmeds) and Eli Lilly & Company (@LillyPad) will host two separate Tweetchats on Medicare Part D to "help raise awareness on the value of the current system, and to learn how to prevent potential changes to it." As reported by PhRMA in a blog post (see "Join the Chatter on Medicare"), "the first chat will be held on Thursday, Oct. 13th from 4-4:30PM EST, PharmaGuyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211557578124130640noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8550428.post-12359076179337115502011-10-11T09:13:00.000-05:002011-10-11T13:43:20.969-05:00Without Free Gifts from Pharma to Docs, Would Research be Useless?
In a recent blog post (here), PhRMA said "Without Promotion Research will be Useless." To support its case, PhRMA cited "an interesting opinion editorial" in the latest edition of the Annals of Emergency Medicine – the medical journal of the American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP). In the op-ed, entitled "Limiting Gifts, Harming Patients," Emory University economist Paul Rubin, Ph.D. PharmaGuyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211557578124130640noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8550428.post-75219413556154651262011-10-06T12:14:00.000-05:002011-10-06T12:14:12.504-05:00In Memory of Steve Jobs Will Novartis Sales Reps Really Embrace iPads?Pharmalot reported today that "In a memo this morning, David Epstein, who heads Novartis Pharmaceuticals, wrote that before the end of next year, more than 80 percent of the sales reps will give up their PCs and switch all detailing and related work to iPads.'' The memo, which can be found here, is reproduced below:
Posted on 9:52 AM, 06 October 2011
In memory of Steve Jobs - a role model
"PharmaGuyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211557578124130640noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8550428.post-36212482943573556092011-10-04T08:01:00.000-05:002011-10-04T09:02:35.790-05:002nd Annual Pharmaguy Social Media Pioneer Award Goes to...Readers of Pharma Marketing Blog may recall that last year I presented the first ever "Pharmaguy Social Media Pioneer Award" to Alex Butler, Digital Strategy and Social Media Manager at Janssen UK (see here).
I've decided to make this an annual event and will present this year's award -- which is the coveted Pharmaguy Hawaiian shirt depicted in the illustration on the left -- to another PharmaGuyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211557578124130640noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8550428.post-71822384438286506332011-09-27T14:18:00.000-05:002011-09-28T14:13:04.515-05:00Chris Viehbacher, PhRMA’s Chairman, Masters the Art of "Proofiness"I just started reading the book "Proofiness: The Dark Arts of Mathematical Deception" by Charles Seife. The book promises to "conduct a thorough investigation into why so many of us find it so easy to believe things that are patently ridiculous. Why, for example, does anyone take seriously the idea that some vaccines can cause autism..."
I only read the first few pages of the introduction last PharmaGuyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211557578124130640noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8550428.post-2313732762524881052011-09-24T06:57:00.000-05:002011-09-26T07:45:01.801-05:00BI's Famously Unpronounceable Video Lives On!A day or two after I posted my impression of Boehringer's (BI's) new YouTube video that spoofs efforts to pronounce the company's name through "word of mouth" (WOM) marketing, BI made the video private and unviewable by the general public. BUT, thanks to "crazyparrot1000," the video has been uploaded here. I have also embedded it below:
Last night, I tweeted: "@Boehringer Sorry to see that PharmaGuyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211557578124130640noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8550428.post-64928010685444908832011-09-23T08:11:00.001-05:002011-09-23T11:41:23.841-05:00The Big C in the Big AppleI just received this tweet from Fabio Gratton (@skypen), Co-founder & Chief Innovation Officer of Ignite Health: "Have you seen the C in NYC? (disclaimer: client) http://t.co/8CmVJOun?"
No, I didn't "see" the C in NYC, because I haven't been there lately. So I clicked on the link. This lead me to HepC.tv, a YouTube channel sponsored by Vertex Pharmaceuticals, which coincidentally recently PharmaGuyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211557578124130640noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8550428.post-46661695726908721622011-09-21T14:21:00.000-05:002011-09-21T14:21:10.010-05:00BI Masters the Art of WOM through Its "Parrots," er, Spokespersons
Even Social Media Savvy, Personable, Fun-Loving Boehringer Ingelheim (BI) Can Bring Shame to the Pharmaceutical Industry!
No sooner did I give Boehringer Ingelheim (BI) kudos for its recent humorous and playful YouTube video (see here), than I learned it violated Clauses 2, 9.1, 3.2, 22.1 and 22.2 of the ABPI Code of Practice (see "Promotion of Pradaxa by Boehringer Ingelheim Breached ABPI PharmaGuyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211557578124130640noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8550428.post-85307066033116425782011-09-20T10:42:00.000-05:002011-09-24T06:01:12.164-05:00BI's Famously Buxom and Unpronounceable YouTube Video"In this brave new world there are better marketing tools than Facebook o Twitter," says Ray Cokes (@raycokes), the actor who plays the "new head of marketing" at Boehringer Ingelheim (BI) in a new YouTube video that spoofs efforts to pronounce the company's name through "word of mouth" (WOM) marketing. The agents for this campaign are parrots who are being conditioned from egg to adulthood to PharmaGuyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211557578124130640noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8550428.post-68951750845374094092011-09-17T08:55:00.002-05:002011-09-18T09:05:55.738-05:00Kevin Nalty Once Again Working Inside PharmaI have chronicled the career of Kevin Nalty (aka "Nalts") for a number of years (see , for example, "Nalts Talks About His Days at J&J, His ADHD, and His Merck Performance Review").
In 2009, he famously "quit" his position at Merck to become a YouTube comedy star on the basis of the popularity of his fart videos (see "Was Nalty's Fart Video the Straw that Broke Merck's Back or was it Some Other PharmaGuyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211557578124130640noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8550428.post-70297018127674375372011-09-09T09:22:00.001-05:002011-09-09T09:23:00.033-05:00My New Business CardPharmaGuyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211557578124130640noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8550428.post-494505410367243222011-09-09T08:06:00.000-05:002011-09-09T08:07:56.300-05:00Orphan Drugs Now "Where the Money Is," Says Willie Sutton's Ghost
When a dumb reporter asked "Willie" Sutton, the famous bank robber, why he robbed banks, he is reported to have said "Because that's where the money is." Duh!
Until a few years ago, if you asked a pharmaceutical company executive why his or her company developed and marketed an "orphan drug" -- ie, a drug for a disorder affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the U.S. -- you would likely have PharmaGuyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211557578124130640noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8550428.post-35664525885771602762011-09-08T08:55:00.001-05:002011-09-08T13:20:11.910-05:00Physician Bailout: On Average, Pharma Pays Every US Physician Over $750 Per YearThe pharmaceutical industry has been very generous in making payments to physicians. Last year (2010), for example, a mere dozen pharmaceutical companies paid $760 million to physicians and other health care providers for consulting, speaking, research and expenses, according to ProPublica's "Dollars for Docs" project. ProPublica has taken "translucent" -- ie, difficult to analyze -- data PharmaGuyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211557578124130640noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8550428.post-37243814090671406852011-09-07T12:14:00.000-05:002011-09-07T12:18:34.772-05:00How Sales Reps Can Use Tablets to Fool Their Sales Manager OverlordsWhile reading "How Pfizer Uses Tablet PCs and Click-Stream Data to Track Its Strategy" (see here), I was struck by two thoughts:
Pfizer's use of technology to collect sales analytics seems pretty basic; eg, David Kreutter, a Pfizer VP of US Commercial Operations, revealed a source of "predictive analytics" to be a simple Web log that shows what physicians click on and what they click through to PharmaGuyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211557578124130640noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8550428.post-86080334627124143472011-09-07T07:53:00.000-05:002011-09-07T08:24:53.398-05:00Boehringer Ingelheim and Ashoka Make More Health via Social MediaIn preparation for my participation in the panel discussion entitled "Social Media and Professional Marketing…What’s Really Working?" on October 4, 2011, during the PharmaForce conference (see here), I am on the lookout for examples of "what's really working" in the pharma social media realm.
I did warn program director Kristin Paulick that I usually focus on what's NOT working. Kristin, howeverPharmaGuyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211557578124130640noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8550428.post-78425842101878351072011-09-06T14:36:00.000-05:002011-09-06T15:52:06.545-05:00DDMAC's Bad Ad Program Catches Pfizer Using Google Style "bAdWords" on Lipitor Web SiteThis is rich!
Recall that back in April, 2009, the FDA sent 14 "warning" -- actually notice of violation or NOV -- letters to major pharmaceutical companies citing as violative several short Google Adwords such as this Pfizer sponsored Adword for CADUET (find the screen shot of this as archived by FDA here and the letter FDA sent to Pfizer here):
I called such ads "bAdWords" way back in PharmaGuyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211557578124130640noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8550428.post-63068772559633118222011-09-01T14:24:00.000-05:002011-09-01T14:28:20.237-05:00Pharma Walks, Devices Balk When It Comes to FDA User FeesWhile brand name drug manufacturers pay about 62% of FDA's $930 million drug review budget, medical device companies only pay about 20% of FDA's $292 million budget allocated to reviewing devices (see "Pharma Pays 62% of FDA's Drug Review Budget").
Are device manufacturers cheap skates?
I don't think so. My guess is that they don't have as many sympathetic people inside FDA as does Big Pharma. PharmaGuyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211557578124130640noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8550428.post-60854828800702895172011-09-01T09:54:00.000-05:002011-09-01T12:51:07.903-05:00Brand(o) Pharma Makes Offer Generic Companies Can't Refuse!
According to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), some brand pharmaceutical companies are imitating Marlon Brando's portrayal of the Godfather: They are making offers to potential competitors that they hope can't be refused.
As reported today in the New York Times (see here) "some drug makers are using an indirect method to delay competition from low-cost generic products by promising not to PharmaGuyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211557578124130640noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8550428.post-17446316689828817452011-08-30T13:07:00.002-05:002011-08-30T13:08:47.129-05:00New Big Pharma Economies of Scale: Less Patients Needed to Reach Blockbuster Sales"Meet the new blockbuster," reports the Wall Street Journal; ie, drugs that treat intractable diseases afflicting "small numbers of patients shown by testing to likely benefit from the drug. Such targeted therapies can be brought to market faster and at less cost, and health plans will pay high prices even for long courses of treatment" (find the article here).
One such drug is Pfizer's Xalkori PharmaGuyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211557578124130640noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8550428.post-81487128952068849842011-08-30T07:20:00.004-05:002011-08-30T08:24:18.948-05:00Should the US Government Step in to Ease the Current Drug Shortage Crisis?"The drug industry is floundering in its ability to provide the public with many of the basic medicines that are absolutely required for the treatment of a host of diseases," said Paul Torrence, former Section Chief, MIH, in a recent OpEd piece (see here).
Torrence called for a National Institute of People's Medicine that "would ensure that drug inventories are always well stocked. It would PharmaGuyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211557578124130640noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8550428.post-39886310764133434092011-08-25T13:07:00.001-05:002011-08-25T13:16:44.721-05:00There's Room for Only One Osteoporosis Celebrity Spokeswoman: Sally Field Is Out, Blythe Danner Is InAmgen -- the company that along with Pfizer signed on Phil Mickelson to shill for ENBREL -- has now signed on Blythe Danner to shill for PROLIA, a drug to treat postmenopausal osteoporosis (see the press release here).
Here's Blythe on the "Act 2 Reduce Fractures" fully-branded web site (click image for larger view):
You are probably not OLD enough to know who Blythe Danner is, but PharmaGuyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211557578124130640noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8550428.post-82516288355970089702011-08-24T11:43:00.005-05:002011-08-24T12:29:39.399-05:00Google's Settlement with Justice Department Paves Way for FDA Social Media GuidelinesGoogle has agreed to pay $500 million to settle DOJ charges. In the settlement, Google acknowledged that it helped illegal online pharmacies target ads through its AdWords platform. It was one of the largest forfeitures ever paid in the U.S. (see "Google Settles with DOJ - Admits Aiding Illegal Online Drug Sales").
This will help the pharmaceutical industry and FDA in their long-standing battle PharmaGuyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211557578124130640noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8550428.post-61486785367874013992011-08-23T07:53:00.004-05:002011-08-25T06:52:04.934-05:00Boehringer vs Facebook Social Media SocialismNow that Facebook's new commenting policy is forcing every pharmaceutical to rethink it's Facebook strategy -- ie, take down all disease-specific pages but keep corporate pages -- many drug companies are revising their corporate FB pages.
Boehringer-Ingelheim (BI) stands out in its attempt to stand out from the crowd of pharma FB pages by designing a colorful Welcome page and icons (see image PharmaGuyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211557578124130640noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8550428.post-85483981075519006172011-08-21T08:33:00.000-05:002011-08-21T08:33:38.727-05:00The NJ-PA Pharma "Brain Drain""In pharmaceuticals, they are not laying off 500 people here and there," said Alma Azua-Cassady, who worked in health-care marketing until she lost her job at AstraZeneca P.L.C. in December 2008. "They are laying off 12,000 people at a time," she said. Alma was quoted in today's Philadelphia Inquirer (see "As Big Pharma downsizes, a major loss of brain power").
The article included the chart on PharmaGuyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211557578124130640noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8550428.post-18537916043432657672011-08-19T10:04:00.002-05:002011-08-19T10:18:09.237-05:00Social Media "Flash Mobs": Pharma's Worst Facebook Nightmare!Last week I presented two case studies of how pharmaceutical companies are dealing with Facebook's new commenting policy that requires most pharma pages to allow commenting (see "Pharma Facebook Pages Being Phased Out: A Good Run While It Lasted! Did Facebook Kill the Beast?"). These cases illustrated two different approaches to shutting down pharma FB pages in anticipation of the commenting PharmaGuyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211557578124130640noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8550428.post-33125987745735796342011-08-19T05:57:00.007-05:002011-08-19T12:49:02.838-05:00Vast Majority of Drug Ads in Leading Medical Journals Don't Pass MDs' Sniff Test!A study led by Mount Sinai School of Medicine researchers of 192 pharmaceutical advertisements (83 full unique advertisements) in biomedical journals found that only 18 percent (15) were compliant with Food and Drug Administration (FDA) guidelines, and over half failed to quantify serious risks including death. The study was published online on August 17, 2011 in the journal Public Library of PharmaGuyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211557578124130640noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8550428.post-30754307245054273032011-08-18T08:14:00.002-05:002011-08-18T08:40:14.926-05:00NIH Genie Grants Pharma's Wish: Turning Old Drugs Into Cash MachinesFor the first time ever, scientists are using computers and genomic information to predict new uses for existing medicines. A National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded computational study analyzed genomic and drug data to predict new uses for medicines that are already on the market (see "NIH Program Predicts New Uses for Old Drugs").
It is predicted that this discovery will put greater PharmaGuyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211557578124130640noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8550428.post-89764961590500470192011-08-16T13:33:00.000-05:002011-08-16T13:33:50.621-05:00If FDA Published Social Media Guidelines as a Facebook Page, PhRMA Would "Like" It!PhRMA -- the US pharmaceutical trade association -- just now published an oblique critique of the FDA for fiddling with issuing its promised social media guidelines while pharma Facebook pages burn in response to new commenting policies (see "What We'd "Like": FDA's Social Media Guidance").
"After all," said PhRMA's Kate Connors, "the FDA is quite active online, with Facebook and several TwitterPharmaGuyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211557578124130640noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8550428.post-22656434922997912682011-08-16T07:15:00.004-05:002011-08-18T08:43:28.422-05:00Double-Dip Viagra Patent Means No Recession for PfizerPfizer proves once again that it's not all about the science when it comes to "innovation." It's also nice to hedge your bets by winning patent infringement cases to keep marketing exclusivity for as long as possible.
Yesterday, for example, Pfizer prevailed in its Viagra patent infringement action against Teva Pharmaceuticals USA, Inc. in the United States District Court for the Eastern PharmaGuyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211557578124130640noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8550428.post-29317003174561205452011-08-15T09:55:00.000-05:002011-08-15T09:55:25.208-05:00Pharma's Facebook Free Ride is NOT Over! Take Advantage of This Loophole DudesToday is the day that Facebook will no longer allow pharmaceutical companies to disable comments made to their Facebook pages.
"Today is the day that many pharma and healthcare companies that like their Facebook Pages hoped would never come. Remain calm," said Jonathan Richman on his Dose of Digital Blog.
As Jonathan noticed, so far it doesn’t appear that Facebook has actually turned on PharmaGuyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211557578124130640noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8550428.post-18903106317675618262011-08-12T14:50:00.001-05:002011-08-12T15:00:29.419-05:00Sarah McLellan Gives "Whole Lotta Love"You may know Sarah McLellan as the person who works for Pixels & Pills to interview attendees at pharmaceutical conferences. She interviewed me not too long ago at the BDI's Social Communications & Healthcare 2011 Case Studies & Roundtables conference (see "Pfizer, Show Us Your Social Media 'Playbook'").
There were always two things that impressed me about Sarah: (1) her beauty and personality, PharmaGuyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211557578124130640noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8550428.post-59472563229243947912011-08-10T06:06:00.003-05:002011-08-10T10:44:27.511-05:00Pharma Facebook Pages Being Phased Out: A Good Run While It Lasted! Did Facebook Kill the Beast?August is the cruelest month, especially for pharmaceutical company Facebook pages.
No doubt you've heard that as of August 15, 2011, Facebook will be opening up comments on ALL pharma pages with some exceptions (listen to these podcasts: "Implications of Facebook's Page Commenting Changes: Turning Off Comments May Be a Problem" and "Pharma Facebook Commenting Changes: The 'Final' Story"). That PharmaGuyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211557578124130640noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8550428.post-15723295923451242142011-08-08T11:02:00.001-05:002011-08-08T11:06:17.968-05:00Pharma Planet of the Apes!Grady Forrer over at the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers Association (PhRMA) blog laments that the new version of Planet of the Apes -- a movie I don't think he has actually seen -- does not jibe with reality (see Movie Dark Fantasy vs. Biopharmaceutical Reality).
"I do want to rail for a moment against the trite movie convention of the evil pharmaceutical company purposefully or PharmaGuyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211557578124130640noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8550428.post-70307146880818341152011-08-08T09:52:00.000-05:002011-08-08T09:52:32.332-05:00Two Doctor-Created Provenge YouTube Videos: Which One Would Dendreon Reps Prefer to Show Their Docs?I read with interest today a Pharmalot post about Provenge after seeing this tweet from @jackbilson3: "Outstanding article & comments about Provenge from @pharmalot http://ow.ly/5XGzH".
Provenge is a "controversial and innovative Provenge prostate cancer vaccine" that Pharmalot says is experiencing problems because "many doctors, particularly those in smaller settings, were slow to adopt the PharmaGuyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211557578124130640noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8550428.post-1131677292243510382011-08-05T08:55:00.008-05:002011-08-10T09:26:57.507-05:00Pharma Tweets: Followers Trump Content. Pfizer vs. Sanofi Case StudyEveryone is tracking how the pharmaceutical industry uses Twitter and other social media. Jonathan Richman maintains the Pharma and Healthcare Social Media Wiki, which lists dozens of Twitter accounts (no rankings, although Jonathan does give out awards). EyeOnFDA Blog maintains its TWANK! Pharma Twitter Rankings, which is ALL about numbers, especially followers. And I maintain the Pharmaguy PharmaGuyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211557578124130640noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8550428.post-53758300126856628812011-08-04T07:04:00.001-05:002011-08-04T07:05:42.349-05:00Is Over-the-Counter Lipitor in the Cards? One year's sales could cover original R&D costs!The Wall Street Journal (see here) reports that Pfizer is considering seeking approval from the FDA to sell Lipitor over-the-counter (OTC). Although OTC sales of Lipitor are likely to be only a fraction of the the annual $10 billion in global Lipitor sales currently enjoyed by Pfizer, OTC Lipitor may generate up to $1 billion in annual sales. That's almost enough to cover the original costs of PharmaGuyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211557578124130640noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8550428.post-35625062181881358732011-08-03T07:02:00.009-05:002011-08-04T07:06:28.830-05:00FDA Intern & the Quest for Social Media GuidelinesThere have been many theories attempting to explain why the FDA is dragging its feet in developing social media guidelines for the drug industry (see, for example, "FDA, DOJ, & Google: Conspiracy Theory, Part 2"). Whatever the reason, financially strapped and under staffed, FDA clearly needs help. To get this help, does the FDA plan to pull in any outside consultants, hire additional experts PharmaGuyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211557578124130640noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8550428.post-22092910532781737602011-08-02T08:15:00.002-05:002011-08-03T07:01:00.707-05:00Point-of-Care Pharma Marketing: When Is It Appropriate?In the world of smartphone apps for physicians, Epocrates plays a leading role. The Epocrates iPhone app is free (with a $99 PREMIUM upgrade option) to physicians -- and anyone else -- who can use the app to find information on drug dosing, interactions and insurance coverage while seeing a patient. According to a New York Times article (see here), 70% of Epocrates' revenue comes from pharma PharmaGuyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211557578124130640noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8550428.post-37047221409179837872011-07-22T08:01:00.001-05:002011-07-22T08:02:26.761-05:00PR vs Interactive: Agencies Vie for Pharma Social Media Campaign CrumbsYesterday, I received a call from a friend who works in an interactive ad agency. He/she was eager to point out that hackers gained access to Pfizer's Facebook by discovering an administrative password based upon information that Paul Dyer, the "guy in charge of this [Pfizer's] Facebook" (according to the hackers) placed on his LinkedIn page (here).
Dyer is employed by WeissComm Partners (WCG), PharmaGuyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211557578124130640noreply@blogger.com19tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8550428.post-61473848207585581732011-07-21T07:17:00.008-05:002011-08-22T10:18:27.365-05:00Four Useful Lessons Pharma Can Learn from the Pfizer Facebook HackBy now, you've probably heard that Pfizer's US corporate Facebook page was "hacked" by some "Kiddies" (see "Pfizer, If You Are So Smart, How Come You Were Hacked By 'Kiddies'?"). For several hours, the page was reconfigured to display messages and images from the hackers, including "**ATTENTION** Pfizer must be stopped. They're corrupt and the damage they create is senseless. Carelessness! PharmaGuyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211557578124130640noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8550428.post-20063589004998072562011-07-20T13:32:00.003-05:002011-07-20T13:37:04.406-05:00Pfizer, If You Are So Smart, How Come You Were Hacked By "Kiddies"?I read with interest the Pharmalot story about Pfizer's Facebook page being hacked by a "Kiddie" group (see "Pfizer Facebook Page Is Hacked By Script Kiddies"). I had tweeted about this and quoted the hackers who claimed that "[Pfizer's] security was laughable" (see here).
Here's what the Pfizer's FB Wall looked like when it was hacked and before it was taken down:
Pfizer has a penchant for PharmaGuyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211557578124130640noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8550428.post-67638281812273887592011-07-20T07:38:00.004-05:002012-01-20T07:03:54.040-05:00FDA Issues Long-Awaited Guidance - for Mobile Medical Apps. Janssen, Look Out!While one arm of the FDA -- the Division of Drug Marketing, Advertising, and Communications (DDMAC), the arm responsible for regulating drug promotion -- is dragging its feet issuing guidance for social media promotion (first promised for 2010, now completely off the 2011 guidance calendar; see "FDA Drops Social Media from Its 2011 Guidance Agenda"), two other arms -- the Center for Devices and PharmaGuyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10211557578124130640noreply@blogger.com0