2015 New Year's Resolutions for Pharma Marketers

My #1 New Year's Resolution is the same every year: 

Stop telling pharmaceutical marketers what to do all the time.

Unfortunately, I have never kept that resolution. So, here's my list of 2015 resolutions for pharma marketers:

1. Forget about using Twitter to promote brand name drugs to consumers.

Although most pharma marketers know that it is impossible to "fit a square peg in a round hole," they still want to believe it is possible to "fit" all the FDA-required important safety information in a branded Rx tweet as long as they can convince the FDA to sanction the "one-click rule."

Granted, in the past the FDA has itself used this rule in its own tweets about Rx drugs. But it no longer does that and PhRMA's argument that "what's good for the goose is also good for the gander" (see "Drug Industry Rips Into FDA Over Social Media Guidelines") just won't sway the Agency, IMHO. So let's just call the whole thing off and get on with using Twitter for more meaningful dialogues with stakeholders; e.g., tweet chats (see "OMG! AstraZeneca Hosts Twitter Chat & World Does NOT End!" and "How to Host a Successful Pharma TweetChat").

I have a few more.

Free polls from Pollhost.com

Should pharma forget about posting Rx branded tweets on Twitter?

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Brand Update : Where is Fastrack heading ?

afaqs! today carried an interesting piece about Fastrack's new OOH campaign titled " Sorry for What".The new bold campaign features various models showing their shaven heads, unshaven armpits, guys wearing thongs and with nipples pierced . The campaign has the theme " Sorry for What ".  

Over the last few years , the brand has been trying to project itself as an iconoclastic brand. I think the brand is trying little too hard in driving its message. While the attempts are creatively nice and clutter breaking, the brand seems desperately trying to create controversy propelled image probably inspired by the likes of UCB.

Although there is nothing wrong in trying to be the Indian UCB, the brand should not be seen trying too hard to be rebellious. Its always uncool if you are making an effort to be Cool.

One grouse about this brand is that although the brand is for the younger crowd, the brand is pricing itself out of the market. No advertising can justify an out-of-value pricing. Fastrack's recent helmet launch was  priced too high to justify the value.

Having said that , I like the way Fastrack trying to create a differentiation using the brand image. It is experimenting and one should give credit for that. 

Critique of an Ad Seen in "Modern Pharma Guidance" Magazine

The ad shown on the left is the subject of an FDA/OPDP "untitled letter" (definition), which took aim at a Sunovion professional print ad for seizure med Aptiom.

According to the FDA reviewer of the ad: “Although Aptiom may reduce seizure frequency, FDA is not aware of substantial evidence demonstrating any effectiveness of Aptiom on patients' feelings of confinement associated with seizure."

A typical letter for a typical drug ad seen in a physician-targeted publication/journal.

Imagine, if you will, a parallel world in which exists a trade publication for pharmaceutical legal/regulatory professionals. Let's call the publication Modern Pharma Guidance™. 

I envision this mag containing articles that review FDA guidance documents and the industry's response to those guidances. You know, very similar to these Pharma Marketing News articles: PhRMA Tells FDA How It Wants to Correct "Misinformation" and FDA Tweet Blocks Pharma.

What would the ads look like in Modern Pharma Guidance, assuming the ads are designed by the same agencies that design drug ads in physician journals?

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Pharma: The Year 2014 in Images

These are my favorite images and posts that appeared in Pharma Marketing Blog in 2014 (see embedded slide deck below - you can also view this directly on slideshare here).

It was a very interesting year, especially since FDA finally released some long-awaited social media guidance for the pharma industry. 2014 was also notable for the proliferation of pharma mobile health apps, which is another emerging area that needs FDA guidance. FDA has said that the guidances it has issued so far do not include mobile. Finally, it was the year of high prices - for both branded and generic drugs.


See below for notes.

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Et Tu, Amgen? Blincyto's Bling! Bling! Price Tag!

FDA approved Amgen's Blincyto (blinatumomab) on December 3, 2014, as a second-line treatment for Philadelphia chromosome-negative precursor B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia, which affects around 6,000 patients in the US.

The price tag of $178,000 per two-cycle course makes it one of the most costly drugs on the market.

This is just one of the record number of 15 "orphan" drugs approved by the FDA in 2014 (read "43% of New Drugs Approved by FDA in 2014 were for Treatment of Rare Diseases").

FDA considers Blincyto a "breakthrough" therapy, which means preliminary clinical evidence demonstrates the drug "may have substantial improvement on at least one clinically significant endpoint over available therapy."

On FDA Voice (FDA's blog), commissioner Margaret A. Hamburg said "Consider for example, Blincyto, approved just last week to treat Philadelphia chromosome-negative precursor B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia. CDER employed all of its expedited review programs to help get this drug to market as early as possible, five months ahead of its review goal date. The sponsor also benefited from incentives for drugs that treat rare diseases."

Despite the extraordinarily high price of Blincyto, payers are not likely to complain about the price as much as they complained about the price of Sovaldi. Read on to learn why I believe that is true.

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Pfizer's "Humorous" Menopause Ad Mentions the "V" Word

Pfizer marketers have done it again! First it was an all-female Viagra ad campaign for the treatment of ED (erectile dysfunction; read "Oh Yeah, Baby! Show Me More!... Viagra TV Ads Like This. But Don't Let My FDA See It!").

Now, it's an all-female disease-awareness ad campaign about "vaginal atrophy," which appears to be a symptom of menopause that women don't talk about - hence the name of the video featured in the campaign: "The Talk" (it's embedded at the end of this post).

Three generations of women -- a teenager, her mom, and her grandma (mom's mom) -- act out how difficult it is for women to talk about "woman problems" as my mom would say.

The mom first tries to talk to her teenage daughter about "becoming a woman." "Mom! I know!," says the daughter as she slams her bedroom door. Then, the mom acts the same way when her mom tries to talk to her about menopause. But her mom comes straight to the point: "What about changes to the vagina?," she asks. Grandma then "changes the dialogue" and specifically talks about vaginal atrophy.

Changing the dialogue -- the tagline for Pfizer's letstalkaboutchange.com website -- is what Pfizer hopes this campaign accomplishes because it has a drug to sell: ESTRING - "a local estrogen therapy used after menopause to treat moderate-to-severe menopausal changes in and around the vagina."

Will this ad be criticized as was the Viagra ad?

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37% of New Drugs Approved by FDA in 2014 were for Treatment of Rare Diseases

New data from the FDA (here) shows that 2014 was a banner year for orphan drugs, which are drugs that treat "rare" diseases/disorders affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the U.S.

The drug approval data from 1994 through 2014 (to date) are plotted in the following charts:

NME=New Molecular Entity, BLA=Biologic License Application; Source: FDA

Let's dig deeper into the numbers.

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Back to the Future of Mobile Health Apps with Professor SYRUM's Nephew

There is no more cherished and insulting image of a scientist/researcher than the "mad scientist" persona often depicted in cartoons.

A case in point is "Professor SYRUM" from Boehringer's EU-only Facebook game of the same name (see "Happy Holidays from Professor Syrum"). That's him on the near left.

Recently, I became acquainted with an unnamed scientist (physician? pharmacist?) in an animated piece produced by IMS Health to promote its new mobile health app review program (see "Is IMS Health's Mobile Health App 'Certification' Program Doomed to #FAIL?"). That's him on the far left of the image shown above. Let's call him "Doctor IMS."

Do you see the similarities between Professor SYRUM and Doctor IMS? Read on to learn my theory about how they are related.

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Is IMS Health's Mobile Health App "Certification" Program Doomed to #FAIL?

"Welcome to the wild, wild, west of mobile health apps," says the voice over of an IMS Health animated Youtube video (embedded at the end of this post) that promotes two new mobile health app services:

AppScript - "a secure, cloud-hosted mobile health prescribing solution that helps providers create custom app formularies to prescribe, reconcile and track mobile medical apps"; and 

AppNucleus - "the industry’s most secure app development and hosting platform that offers a flexible, cloud-based publishing platform and pre-built secure messaging, personal health record/wallet and survey tools."

Recall (here) that the IMS Institute for Healthcare Informatics published a report that included an analysis of about 10,000 apps among the 40,000+ healthcare apps available for download from the U.S. Apple iTunes app store and an assessment of the potential value they provide throughout a patient's journey. The assessment found that "healthcare apps available today have both limited and simple functionality... [and] do little more than provide information."

Obviously, there is a lot of room for the improvement of mobile health apps. I've written about this many times as it relates to the pharmaceutical industry (see, for example, Reigning in the "Wild West" of Mobile Health Apps and A Formula for Patient-Centric mHealth Apps).

Let's just focus on AppScript, which promises to "classify and evaluate more than 40,000 mobile healthcare apps currently available for download on iOS and Android platforms." I have some reservations about how successful this "Software-as-a-Service"/certification program will be.

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La Maladie du Grand Print Out: A Condition Abetted by Pharma Marketing & "Patient Centricity"

"Of course I was familiar, from my own practice, with the phenomenon of patients making lists, but I'd never known it had a name," says Suzanne Koven, M.D. in a NEJM piece titled "The Disease of the Little Paper".

"I confess that these lists sometimes irritate me, as they do many doctors."

The original term for this condition -- in French -- is "La Maladie du Petit Papier" and is defined as a condition in which “an exhaustive list of purported ailments — [is] carried around by a neurotic patient, often accompanied by extensive documentation of each bowel movement or sip of water.”

Dr. Koven pointed out that in recent years, the diagnosis was expanded to “la maladie du grand print out,” a nod to the indispensability of the Internet to the modern hypochondriac. I would expand it further: "la maladie des mobile et wearables."

I found this interesting because it's possible that online pharmaceutical marketing is a major cause of these maladies. In the pursuit of "patient centricity"pharma also may be driving a wedge between patients and their physicians.

How so?

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SKINN : Every Day French Perfumes

Brand : SKINN
Company : Titan Company

Brand Analysis : # 552

Titan Company has forayed into the Rs 2000 crore Indian perfume market with the brand SKINN. This is the first launch from Titan after the company has rebranded itself as  Titan Company. 

The launch of SKINN is a smart move because in my personal opinion, Indian perfume market is at a nascent stage with very little penetration.Business Line puts the penetration at 4%.

SKINN as a brand is launched with an endorsement from Titan. It was wise for Titan not to launch this brand as a sub-brand like Titan SKINN, rather SKINN is launched as an independent brand from the launch itself.

The perfumes are created in India but bottled and imported from France. The brand is positioned as  a " French Perfume".

According to reports, the company did ethnographic studies to understand the preference of Indian consumers towards this product category. French perfume houses Olivier Pescheux of Givaudan developed the men's range and Luc Berriet developed women's range. ( source)

The brand is running their launch campaign. The launch TVC however falls into the " Seduction" genre - which in a way is sad. I expected something different from Titan. Rather than seduction, the brand calls it Passion Ignited. SKINN has the tagline  " Everyday French Perfume for him/her" which is rather an  unimaginative tagline.

Watch  the ad here : launch ad of SKINN

The brands are priced in the range Rs 990  for 50 ml and Rs 1790 for 100 ml which makes it pretty expensive for an average Indian consumer. The brand is said to be targeting the young of the 23-27 age group. 

While there is a definite potential for a brand in the Indian perfume space , I wonder whether the brand has priced itself out of the market. Rs 1800 for a 100 ml makes this brand out of reach for many . At the same time, the brand does not have the equity to compete with the established imported brands. By pricing it aggressively, SKINN has lost an opportunity to be a Masstige brand which could deliver decent volumes. At the same time the premium positioning is not reflected in the launch TVC which somehow pegs the brand in the league of the Seductive Deo brands. So IMHO, it is an opportunity lost for SKINN to capture a fair-share of the growing market. 

Galderma and PMCPA Tangle in a Toxic Tussle

Galderma and PMCPA Tangle in a Toxic Tussle

Galderma tried to lay the blame on a rogue Key Account Manager (KAM), but PMCPA would have none of it. You won't believe what PMCPA did.

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US Internet Users Don't Need No Stinkin' Mobile Apps!

Pharmaceutical companies have a lot of apps in the market, and have been making apps for a long time, but their apps aren’t seeing downloads and usage on par with the apps from other industries.

That’s the conclusion of a new report from Research2Guidance (R2G), which analyzed more than 725 apps from 11 pharma companies. According to R2G, the top pharma companies have 65 apps in the Apple and Google Play app stores on average, compared to 1 to 2 apps from the average health app publisher. However, even the pharma companies with the most downloaded apps have only accrued 6.6 million downloads since 2008 and can boast less than 1 million active users.

But app downloads are poor across the board. Data compiled by eMarketer (shown below), for example, indicate that the percent of US Internet users who do NOT download any apps (39.6%) is greater than the percentage of users who download FREE apps (35.7%)!

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