Pharma Marketing
Many citizens are uncomfortable with pharma marketing, as it seems to be geared to influencing physicians to prescribe products that may raise their cost of health care and yet not be any better for the patient than a less expensive, generic product. Furthermore, the salaries of the reps and their supervisors must be offset by raising costs to the consumer.
DocBrain wants to reassure you that you have less to fear than you might believe.
Most of the glossy marketing pieces are done by marketing departments for information purposes only, and are less compelling and have less marketing value than the typical page of a mail order catalogue. After running through legal, these defanged detail pieces act mainly as something they can hand to a doctor (who then round-files it after the rep leaves).
Most reps are well trained in their products, but have little true marketing skills. The techniques used are often either right out of Maslow's basement ("Doctor, I made these cupcakes for you"[wink and nod to ex-rep Bob R.!]) or over the top incredible ("All the experts in this field only use my product!").
After several doses of rep a day, few physicians remain influenced by their presentations.
At the end of the day, few physicians are strongly influenced by the pharma marketing as it is currently done. However, it is the prisoner's dilemma. If one company has reps, the competitors must as well.
I have never seen a "generic drug" rep, so there is no real spokesperson for generics except for the heavy hand of the insurers.
The failure of reps to create ipod-like growth of products has led to all kinds of desperate actions from pharma companies, which I will not elaborate here. But, you know one already...direct to consumer marketing.
DocBrain thinks that health care would be better if the pharma companies and their reps understood marketing to physicians better. This would enable physicians to see the products as they really are, as they really should fit in their practice. Pharma marketing departments do understand marketing, but just don't understand physicians as well as they should.
Regretably, pharma does spin its wheels and spends its(our?) money. Smarter marketing is the answer. There are better ways.
If you are from a pharma company and are reading this and want some help getting your message to doctors, let me know. Perhaps, you need a dose of DocBrain!
DocBrain wants to reassure you that you have less to fear than you might believe.
Most of the glossy marketing pieces are done by marketing departments for information purposes only, and are less compelling and have less marketing value than the typical page of a mail order catalogue. After running through legal, these defanged detail pieces act mainly as something they can hand to a doctor (who then round-files it after the rep leaves).
Most reps are well trained in their products, but have little true marketing skills. The techniques used are often either right out of Maslow's basement ("Doctor, I made these cupcakes for you"[wink and nod to ex-rep Bob R.!]) or over the top incredible ("All the experts in this field only use my product!").
After several doses of rep a day, few physicians remain influenced by their presentations.
At the end of the day, few physicians are strongly influenced by the pharma marketing as it is currently done. However, it is the prisoner's dilemma. If one company has reps, the competitors must as well.
I have never seen a "generic drug" rep, so there is no real spokesperson for generics except for the heavy hand of the insurers.
The failure of reps to create ipod-like growth of products has led to all kinds of desperate actions from pharma companies, which I will not elaborate here. But, you know one already...direct to consumer marketing.
DocBrain thinks that health care would be better if the pharma companies and their reps understood marketing to physicians better. This would enable physicians to see the products as they really are, as they really should fit in their practice. Pharma marketing departments do understand marketing, but just don't understand physicians as well as they should.
Regretably, pharma does spin its wheels and spends its(our?) money. Smarter marketing is the answer. There are better ways.
If you are from a pharma company and are reading this and want some help getting your message to doctors, let me know. Perhaps, you need a dose of DocBrain!
posted by DocBrain at
4:38 AM
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