Pharma in the US has had a rough go over the past several years getting crushed by bad PR, new legislation, and a few monster fines. Of course, a lot of it the industry brought upon itself, but some is owed to the fact that nothing is more regulated than prescription drugs in the United States (perhaps plutonium is slightly more regulated, but not much). This regulation is partly where pharma places blame for slumping sales. They argue that their hands are tied and that’s it’s extremely difficult to get the word out about the benefits of new and existing products (or to simply get them approved). Of course, it is easier in the US than pretty much anywhere (except New Zealand), as the US does have the benefit of being allowed to do DTC advertising. Imagine what it would be like without that. Not that bad, right? Maybe, maybe not.

I’m not going to argue whether these regulations  are good or bad. That’s a whole other issue. Today, I’m just going to make a few observations. 

The big awards show for pharma marketing is The RX Club. The winners of the latest round of awards were announced back in November, but I was reviewing some of the winners’ work again yesterday and something stood out to me. The RX Club is an international competition. Anyone can enter. It’s not just pharma, but also medical devices as well (OTC products is a different competition). What struck me as so odd this year was the list of Gold and Silver winners (the highest level awards). There were 29 Gold or Silver winners this year who get a slick trophy like this:

Here’s how the winners break out:

• 14 of 29 Gold or Silver winners were for campaigns outside the US.
• 3 of the 29 were agency self-promotion
• 1 was for the RX Club Awards itself (hmmm…)
• 12 of 29 were for US based product campaigns
• 0 (yes, zero) of 29 were for digital programs (websites, email, e-detailing, etc.)

Two observations. Of all the winners, only 40% were for US based product campaigns. The wide majority went to campaigns outside the US. So, is this because the international agencies are so much better than their US counterparts? Or, is it because they are free to do a lot more than what is permitted here in the US? As an employee of one of these US agencies, Bridge Worldwide, I don’t think it’s the former. As a former pharma marketer, I know it’s the latter. I’ve watched great concepts get watered down, picked apart, genericized to the point that they are unrecognizable and hugely boring all to meet either FDA (DDMAC) or internal regulations. The fact is that, in the US, you can’t get away with some of the winning campaigns that were done outside the US.

I’m not taking anything from the winners. They are excellent. Perhaps I’m jealous. I wish that we were permitted to do this type of work here. Are the regulations that make this exceptionally difficult really protecting anyone? I’ll leave that one for you to debate.

The bigger concern to me is that none of the Gold or Silver winners went to digital campaigns. A number of Award of Excellence prizes did (including 2 to our company for digital campaigns), but not the big prizes. Instead, the big prizes went to TV, print, mailers and the like. But there were no digital winners (InVivo Communications did win a Gold for a great animation, but not a campaign).

So, why is this? Last year (2007), 3 of 38 Gold or Silver winners were digital work…that’s a two-year total of 4.4% for digital. So, it’s not just an off year in 2008. It’s ongoing. Is the digital work not up to snuff or are the judges not as comfortable with digital which makes it harder to evaluate opposite a simple one page advertisment? How do you compare them? It’s easy to compare a good versus bad print add, but how do you compare a good digital program versus a good print ad? My thought is that they don’t know how to compare the two and maybe no one does. 

That’s the point of this blog. Digital is still seen as another tactic that you bolt on at the end and never the lead tactic or overarching strategic idea to lead a marketing effort in pharma. In other industries, this isn’t the case and our agency works on quite a few like this, but pharma still isn’t there. Why? I think I spelled out a number of reasons in my recent Healthcare Marketing New Year’s Resolutions series especially “Pick a Fight with Your Regulatory Team.” There’s a lack of education among healthcare marketers about what good looks like in digital and how to press their agencies to deliver it. In addition, for all the great digital agenies out there, there are an equal number of not-so-great ones skating by because few people can call them out.

Do I have evidence? I guess I do now. The biggest pharma awards show and not a single digital program winner. Looks like I’ve got a lot more work to do.

Possibly related posts (auto-generated):

1. 2010 Dose of Digital Dosie Award Winners
2. Pharma Company of the Year in Social Media — Dosie Awards
3. An Award for Dose of Digital…Thanks