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How Marketing with Meaning Can Save Pharma — Part 1



You know that I love hyperbole-sounding titles for my posts and today’s certainly appears to be no exception. But it is an exception. This isn’t an exaggeration.

There’s no question that pharma is in trouble. There seems to be a scandal a minute (whether real or created). Billion dollar fines seem to be the norm instead of billion dollar products. Sales growth has stalled for many and workforce cuts seem to come everyday.

That’s all pretty bad, but it doesn’t even capture the number one problem and it won’t come as a surprise to anyone: public opinion of pharma is terrible. Not just bad, terrible.

As a regular user of Twitter, I use Tweetdeck and one of my columns shows every tweet with the word “pharma” in it. Today, I noticed this tweet:

pharmatweet

I thought it was maybe just one anti-pharma zealot. Then I saw it again. And again. And again. In fact, after searching, I realized there were hundreds of this exact same tweet (see for yourself). Hundreds of tweets all with the same message: a pharma conspiracy. Pharma conspiracy theories aren’t new, but this one stood out for me.

For those not familiar with the story, Natalie Morton was a 14 year-old in the UK who received a government-mandated injection of the cervical cancer vaccine and died hours after receiving it. In the UK, it’s mandatory for all teenage girls to receive the vaccination. For good reason too, it prevents a leading form of cancer, cervical cancer. A vaccine to prevent cancer. Imagine that. Back when Nixon declared a “War on Cancer” in 1971, how thrilled would be to know we had a vaccine to prevent one form of cancer? Instead today, it’s not seen that way at all. It’s just another pharma conspiracy to get more profits.

Back to Natalie’s sad story. Immediately after Natalie’s death, several news organizations jumped on the story. Here’s what Huffington Post ran. It appeared to every anti-pharma person that they’d finally been vindicated. Here was big pharma’s vaccine killing a perfectly healthy girl. Of course, none of them mentioned that 1.8 million girls had already received the vaccine without a single death similar to Natalie’s reported. Of course, the anti-pharma outrage should have stopped today, when an autopsy was performed and found that Natalie died from complications of an undiagnosed tumor. The medical examiner reported the following: “The heart was heavily infiltrated by a tumor which extended to the left lung. It was so severe death could have arisen at any time. The role of the immunization appeared to be minimal.”

End of story, right? Wrong. That’s when the tweets started. Rather than concede that the vaccination didn’t cause this girl’s death, she was used to infuse a little emotion into the anti-pharma zealots’ rhetoric. Yes, it’s really easy to fake a massive chest tumor during an autopsy.

Why is it like this?

Instead of praising pharma companies for potentially eliminating the approximately 11,000 incidences of cervical cancer each year and preventing about 4,000 deaths in the United States alone, “big pharma” gets beaten up. Why?

No doubt there are countless reasons, some of which the industry has brought upon itself with some questionable marketing tactics and scandals followed by massive government fines. But this isn’t the only reason. People are very passionate about the cost of the medications (but not very passionate about the costs of the other aspects of their helathcare). Since most people don’t know what an MRI costs and many don’t pay for a dime of the cost of one, they don’t get upset when their insurance company gets the bill. But when you pick up your prescription at CVS and have to shell out your cash, it’s a different story. That makes people mad.

Clearly, I’m not going to be the one to solve that problem. I’m not going to tell you I know how to completely fix all the PR issues pharma has. But I think we can make a dent.

So, let’s look at three major pharma problems:

  1. Horrible PR and public perception from  marketing tactics perceived as questionable
  2. No public belief in the cost to value equation for pharma products (i.e., people don’t think they should cost so much, which means they think the products aren’t worth it)
  3. Falling sales and profits

Question: Can Marketing with Meaning improve all three of these?

Answer: Not overnight, but yes, it can.

Question: Does pharma really need this now with all of its other challenges to worry about like patent issues, healthcare reform, and increased government scrutiny?

Answer: Because of these challenges, there’s no better time.

Interested?

In part 2 of this post, I’ll tell you all about how Marketing with Meaning can do all this. In the meantime, you should read up on what Marketing with Meaning is all about. You can also register yourself for the upcoming E-Patient Connections conference where I’ll be presenting this concept (in 6 minutes and 40 seconds). If you do register, use promo code jr500 to get $500 off. Finally, a perk from this blog.

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Possibly related posts (auto-generated):

  1. How Marketing with Meaning Can Save Pharma — Part 3
  2. How Marketing with Meaning Can Save Pharma — Part 2
  3. Pharma Marketing with Meaning Pecha Kucha


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  • Paulo Machado
    Great post Jonathan! This is a topic that pharma, insurers, physicians and other stakeholders should address as a team. If all of the key stakeholders are able to communicate with one consistent voice to patients then their concerns of conspiracy theories will be reduced. All of the key stakeholders need to address the issue of public trust and one of the most effective ways to accomplish this is through transparency and aligned messages.
  • Great point, Paulo. And as Sydney mentioned in the comment below, there's certainly more to this issue than one conspiracy theory and the Morton case has to do a lot with the anti-vaccine rhetoric as well. I used this example because it was a very fresh one. I agree with your point that transparency is a key issue to be sure. I almost count that as table stakes. That is, you HAVE to do that no matter what or nothing else really matters. So, assuming we do that well, I still think there's much more that needs to be done. Part of my point is that if there was more trust and the public thought that pharma companies were in it for them (which they generally are), then these anti-pharma conspiracy people would be shouted down by all the pro-pharma people. You don't see them though...at least not yet.

    One way this can be done is by doing what I mention in this post (and the one coming tomorrow) about creating a new type of marketing. How much more comfortable and happy would the public be if it wasn't bombarded with DTC TV ads for pharma (or any other industry for that matter)? Of course, if you eliminate that as a marketing channel, you need something to replace it. I think that's where this Marketing with Meaning concept comes in. In tomorrow's post, I'll show you a bunch of examples where this is working for many companies and in the post after that (yep, a series), I'll show you exactly how a bunch of pharma brands could do it if they wanted to.

    Stay tuned.
  • Sydney
    As usual, a provocative post. And while your point on the pharmaceutical sector's need to improve its reputation is spot on, the particular example you gave may not be the best.

    The outpouring on the Natalie Morton case has more to do with the power of rabid anti-vaccine activists than it does with rabid anti-pharma critics. Just look at what has happened with Gardasil in this country: http://www.bio-medicine.org/medicine-news/Texas... Absurd.

    I would argue that the Natalie Morton case is more about the ability of a well-organized, vocal minority to impose its will over common sense, medical fact and the well-being of young women than it is about pharma's awful reputation. The anti-vaccine movement has gone after all sorts of vaccines over the last decade. And, as a result, we now face a growing problem with diseases, like polio, that had been brought under control through a vaccination program that was one of the great triumphs of 20th century public health.

    I'll climb down off the soapbox now, and look forward to hearing all about Marketing with Meaning at e-Patient in Philly.
  • Sydney, Great point. I hadn't considered the differences between these groups. Either way, and I think you'll agree, it's not a very good situation pharma companies find themselves in (whether they make vaccines or some other products). Perhaps the vaccine group is the most vocal of the anti-pharma groups and might even be considered a bellwether for what the rest of the industry might have to contend with should it continue on this same path.
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