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.
The stunt represented several radical firsts in the various intersecting spheres of technology, publishing, and advertising. Pepsi’s head marketing guru congratulated himself, and deservedly so: “This is an extraordinary way to refresh how we interact with consumers.” The wizardry behind the interaction is more mundane than might be first imagined. A Los Angeles company named Americhip offers up the itty-bitty monitors, and attendant speakers, batteries and doo-dads, at a cost estimated to be around US$20 per unit.
It’s hardly surprising that ambitious marketers will continue to seek new frontiers. As long as there are emerging ways of extending messages to audiences, and evolving methods to apply to traditional communications vehicles, it’s only rational to expect commercial interests will take heed of the marketplace taking heed.
The continuing willingness of mainstream vendors, such as CBS and Pepsi, to embrace new tactics and early-stage opportunities underscores precisely how conventional and risk-averse marketers in the pharmaceutical sector have become.
It is not simply that gluing video screens into printed periodicals is a landmark idea that would never occur to the drugbiz. (In truth, it seems more like a gimmick destined to be forgotten quickly, as other attention-grabbing techniques spring from the labs.) Similarly, it is not that the drugbiz lacks for suppliers offering creative approaches. A glance at the Report on Healthcare Advertising Agencies in this edition of The Chronicle will provide an overview of the diverse resources and keen imaginations currently at the disposal of pharma marketers.
The thought is advanced, from time to time, that the problem lies in our industry’s institutionalized practice of self-regulating advertising claims. This argument seems valid only to a very limited extent. It is not so much the case that the approvals process specifically serves to stifle creativity (as some have tried to claim, with self-conviction), but it is undeniable that the mere existence of an approvals process creates strictures that encourage pragmatic thinking and messaging, to the possible detriment of the out-of-the-box variety. There are both good and bad aspects of that reality, but it isn’t a reality we would wish to change.
This risk-aversion has led to a set of circumstances which see the world changing rapidly, while pharmaceutical marketing appears to be changing slowly, if at all. Elsewhere in this issue you’ll see a report describing how stateside drug marketers, instructed by the FDA not to make use of search-engine advertising, acquiesced meekly with another shrug and another sighed apology. Result: The drugbiz finds itself cast out of the revolutionary new environment, where patients and physicians interact regularly on digital social networks, while we are left to stare and ask each other what just happened.
This much is clear: Pharma continues its prolonged period of struggling to get its message out, despite very capable assistance, and a wealth of new tools and techniques. One very misguided reaction to the frustration of being prevented from entering the social networking party is to curtail the usual forms of advertising to professionals, decrying enduring methods, such as journal ads, as ineffective and retrograde.
Clearly, that’s a classic example of removing one’s proboscis to spite one’s face. A strategy of not advertising runs against all obvious business sense, resulting in the certain invisibility of your product. It has the added effect of abandoning the podium to others who are prepared to make their voices heard. In this context, that means ceding the floor to the marketers of nutritional supplements and other unregulated health products, as well as the eccentric forces who depict all pharmaceutical products as unnecessary and/or demonic.
For all the challenges drug marketers face in effecgtively articulating our value proposition to our many various constituencies, the most daunting one has little to do with technology, creativity, or regulatory issues. Rather, it is the industry’s ingrained reluctance to seize on opportunities when they present themselves, and to tell our stories in a manner equivalent to grabbing the audience by its lapels.
Think of it as the message readers didn’t see on that tiny video screen, playing inside the issue of the obscure entertainment magazine. Think of it as another opportunity lost.