The trouble with pharma advertising?
Start by looking at industry’s timidity
and risk-aversion

This month, thousands of readers of the US consumer publication Entertainment Weekly bolted upright in their La-Z-Boy recliners, dropped their Cheez Doodles, and took notice, after a page in the magazine literally came to life and began speaking. It seems that some copies of the September issue of the publication featured a small, flat video screen embedded into a printed page. The screen, engineered to become animated when the preceding page is turned, displayed 40 minutes worth of audio and moving images, in the form of advertising for the CBS television network and Pepsi-Cola. Read the rest of this piece

The Premier’s summer musical
To find one’s self in Ontario during the early summer of 2009 is to be transported back to small town Iowa in the year 1912. That was the place and time depicted by Broadway legend Meredith Willson in his Tony award winning stage hit, The Music Man. Read the rest of this piece 

The other healthcare system
In Canada, the job of providing your family with a doctor belongs to the government, which guards this task jealously under the hallowed Canada Health Act. But does the government always fulfill each mission it undertakes, or manage every project the way you’d want them to? They do not. Look at the gun registry fiasco, and the RCMP scandals. Look at Ad-scam. Listen to Karlheinz Schreiber. Read the rest of this piece

Eli Lilly draws back the curtains
Five hundred dollars won’t buy you a heck of a lot these days. It will pay for one of: a new set of medium-quality all-season radials; a pair of mediocre tickets to see the Buffalo Bills in Toronto; or, birthday dinner at a nice restaurant for the missus and her parents, before you factor in parking and the babysitter. If you’re a physician, however, 500 bucks will get you something special next year, and that is entry into the new data base Eli Lilly is setting up, to disclose honoraria and grants. The company recently announced it will likely begin revealing to the public the identities of doctors who receive any form of payments or incentive valued at 500 smackers or more, around Q3 of 2009. The registry will be accessible to all, through a web site. This is a significant departure from previous pharma industry practices. As Lilly CEO John Lechleiter says, “I think there is an element of risk at being the first.” Dr. Lechleiter may be slightly overplaying the hazard. A number of US states have already enacted legislation requiring disclosure of drugmakers’ payments to doctors, and the US Senate is likely to sanction laws under the proposed Physician Payment Sunshine Act before 2011. More transparency regarding the relationships between Big Pharma and doctors is inevitable; Dr. Lechleiter volunteered to make his company’s records public only slightly in advance of being compelled to do so by law. Read the rest of this piece

From Heroin to Moxie and beyond:
The future of outdated drugs
W here do old drug brands go when they die? What happens to the names that pharmaceutical marketers spend money, time and effort attempting to introduce into everyday usage, after their creators, and the trademark registry, have walked away and consigned them to the Mature Products' Retirement Village?
    In an industry where product patents routinely expire once every 20 years, there should be a stock answer to those questions. However, there isn't. Experiences seem to vary considerably.
    Consider the analgesic diacetylmorphine, once marketed under Bayer's cleverly conceived brand name, Heroin. Read the rest of this piece

Efficacious and cost-effective, here’s a great drug that isn’t even a drug
When it comes to persuading physicians of the efficacy of a particular product, you really have to hand it to the marketers of Obecalp. A recent poll of 679 U.S. internists and rheumatologists, just published in the British Medical Journal, found half the doctors surveyed said they used the therapy. That level of market penetration is consistent with similar studies conducted in Denmark, Israel, New Zealand, Sweden and the U.K. Plainly, in the Obecalp brand, physicians have identified a medicine in which they can believe.
    Disturbingly, however, Obecalp isn’t a medicine at all. It’s simply the backward spelling of “placebo,” with the added flourish of a capital letter. Read the rest of this piece

Lessons for the pharma industry from the auto sector debacle
The year begins with two parallel, but opposite, economic developments. The largest drugmaker, Pfizer, kicks off 2009 by announcing its intention to get even bigger, with the acquisition of Wyeth, while the largest carmaker, General Motors, plans to shrink itself in a fevered attempt to survive. Read the rest of this piece

Nino Avanti, Agent of Change
Thanks, Ed. Good morning, everyone. And thank you all for inviting me to attend the annual national management meeting of ______ Pharmaceuticals, here at the lovely Something-or-other Lodge, in beautiful Someplace. We certainly couldn't have chosen a better facility, and I tip my cap to the arrangements committee on a job done just superbly. Read the rest of this piece