The Search Engine Strategies for Pharmaceutical Marketing Conference held a great kick-off workshop led by Rebecca Murtagh of Karner Blue Marketing.  In the audience were senior pharmaceutical marketers with active projects, so their questions tended to be insightful and interesting.  Here are the top 3 discussions from that day’s workshop. Give Your Site The Common Sense Test. Read more »

As reported in MediaPost Marketing Daily,  the results are in from marketing services firm Epsilon.  Consumers would rather learn about prescription drugs via Web sites and email than through traditional offline advertising and marketing…  While an in-person conversation still topped the list of sources for new information, Epsilon reported that receiving an email from a physician was significantly less desirarble at just 14%.   Other findings include: Consumers who opt to receive emails from pharmaceutical companies are more likely to fill prescriptions and take them properly (42% of respondents said the emails have a direct impact on such offline activities). More loyal to the sender’s products and brands (60% said they have a more favorable opinion of the senders, 53% expressed more loyalty to those products and brands, and 44% said they are more likely to stay on a drug). Read more »

Fuel-Lines, a blog focused on ad agency news, asks the question “Is Your Ad Agency Prepared for the Magnitude of Digital Growth?”  suggesting that we are living in times of exponential growth. How fast is fast? Read more »

URCH reports in their newly available Cancer Market Trends 2008 – 2012 that Roche is expected to overtake Amgen as the top seller of oncology products. Only Genentech and Merck are expected to post double digit growth, causing a shift in balance for former leaders anofi-Aventis, AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson. Read more »

So I’m walking Big Dog to the park and I see fresh plywood emblazoned with the words “Post No Bills”. And I think to myself “Oh yeah… really? How about “no more financial meltdown”, “no BS”, and as long as we’re at it, “no more Nigerian spam emails”? Read more »