EyeForPharma just interviewed Baba Awopetu, Manager of Brand Strategy, EMEA at Stryker that highlighted the challenges that big pharma faces in a period of decreasing profit margins. “The future of pharma marketing” offers an interesting perspective of strategic shifts to come:

• Pharma will be looking for people to help solve its problems which new kinds of marketing skills. Think less hiring from within the industry and a more open-minded look at “pure marketing” that taps other industries
• Greater reliance on multi channel approaches in the ways brands are built and products marketed
• Emphasis on “innovating value” that places greater value on “out of the box” approaches that emphasize ROI and profit.

And in a shot across the bow of status quo, he suggests:

Less of what we have at the moment, which is agencies driving strategies in conjunction with brand managers. In the future, he says, marketers will be held more accountable for driving and developing brand building strategies.

All of which to say is the end of big budgets, big spends, and carpet-bombing sales tactics may be at an end. The layoffs in sales forces, disappointing pipelines and the prospect of significant healthcare reforms come post election would tend to back up his admonition that “the secret to success is paranoia.”