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March 2007 Issue of MMM

Editor's Desk

Something for the weekend

As a young lad growing up in small-town England, my parents would insist that every six to eight weeks I visited the local barber for ...

Features

Headliner: Stan Woodland of CMI/Compas

Communications Media, Inc. founder Stan Woodland probably knows professional media buying and planning better than anyone, and he remains bullish on medical journal advertising.

The Highs and Lows in Cholesterol

Cholesterol drug marketers still say lower is better. Yet many in this $18 billion category are betting on a higher order of treatment.

Are NDA Laws Constitutional?

It will be an interesting month for the drug approval process, with Federal Circuit Court, FDA and Congress all considering whether terminally ill patients should ...

Maestros of Medical Advertising 2007

Last month three more marketing and publishing luminaries joined the elite ranks of the Medical Advertising Hall of Fame. Matthew Arnold chronicles the contributions of ...

A Day in the Life of Your Customer

Fly-on-the-wall observational techniques can reveal a range of information where traditional marketing research techniques often fall short. Barry J. Cerf looks at the benefits of ...

Antidote

This month I’d like to take on a whopper: that drug companies have routinely withheld their expertise in HIV and life-saving treatments from the Third ...

Washington Insider

As I see it

Now come the ad police to ask for user fees from marketers. Admittedly, it’s just for TV ad previews, but the FDA’s Prescription Drug User ...

FDA responds positively to IOM report

FDA commissioner Andrew von Eschenbach on Jan. 30 unveiled a comprehensive series of steps now being undertaken in direct response to last September’s Institute of ...

Sens. Kennedy and Enzi present drug safety bill

Outgoing Senate Finance Committee chair Chuck Grassley (R-IA) has written HELP Committee leaders with a laundry list of FDA shortcomings that he hopes they will ...

Schering Sales Corp. to pay $435m in settlement

Schering Sales Corp., a division of Schering-Plough, will pay $435 million in connection with Medicaid fraud and illegal sales and marketing programs under a Jan. ...

FDA reveals $94m user fee increase

FDA drug and biologic user fees will jump almost 30% next year—from about $300 million to almost $400 million in 2008, according to details released ...

Cell Therapeutics reaches agreement with government

Cell Therapeutics has reached agreement with the federal government to pay $10.5 million to resolve the investigation of its business practices in marketing the cancer ...

Bayer settles with 30 states over Baycol marketing

Bayer has reached a settlement with 30 states to resolve a consumer protection enforcement action over the marketing of Baycol, a cholesterol-lowering drug withdrawn from ...

Public Citizen's Wolfe says Medtronic's DTC campaign is misleading

Public Citizen Health Research Group head Sidney Wolfe says Medtronic’s new DTC ad campaign on sudden cardiac arrest is highly misleading and tries to frighten ...

Genentech sends “dear doctor” letters

Genentech has sent a “dear doctor” letter to warn about a higher risk for stroke in patients taking 0.5 mg of Lucentis, indicated for treating ...

Woodcock named to new position at FDA

Janet Woodcock was named to a newly created position as FDA chief medical officer in a management reshuffle that brings in John Dyer to hold ...

Media Notepad

Quadrant purchase adds CME muscle

Quadrant HealthCom plans to beef up its med ed offering through four titles recently acquired from Jobson.

Publishers scrap over open access

An effort by scientific and medical publishers to push back against the “open access” movement ignited a spat in the pages of Nature magazine.

Macmillan names Elduff SVP of sales

Macmillan Medical Communications named Elsevier’s John Elduff SVP of sales.

Ingersoll forms Ingersoll Media Consulting

After 16 years as the in-house media maestro at Euro RSCG Life, Lisa Ingersoll is striking out on her own with Ingersoll Media Consulting.

Wiley & Sons acquires Carpe Diem Comms

John Wiley & Sons acquired Carpe Diem Communications, publisher of several food and drug-related titles including PFQ (Pharmaceutical Formulation & Quality), Contamination Control and Food ...

Gray named SVP for media strategy at InVentiv

Former FCB media chief Elizabeth Gray has been named SVP for media strategy at InVentiv Communications, a new group-wide position.

Media Forum

How directors master their domain

It can be overwhelming for directors to get their arms around the market while managing a media department.

CME Report

Instability in funding has medical schools nervous: report

Commercial CME funding for medical schools has increased appreciably over the last 12 years, through mid-2005, a new survey suggests.

Neurontin settlement funds education efforts

A Georgetown University Medical School professor recently launched a Web site offering links to non-commercially supported CME.

Bradshaw says firms shouldn't fear enforcement

Sheldon Bradshaw, FDA chief counsel, said firms shouldn’t fear enforcement if they disseminate a peer-reviewed journal article in a manner that complies with the safe ...

Davis challenges perceptions of didactic CME lectures

Dave Davis, MD, challenged the notion that didactic CME lectures don’t work, even though his body of research has shown that purely didactic talks don’t ...

CME improves docs: study

Studies suggest CME improves and maintains the knowledge, skills and performance of docs, said an AHRQ analysis.

Wuerth joins Curry Rockefeller Group

The Curry Rockefeller Group hired Laura Wuerth as director, account management.

CME Outfitters launches neuroscienceCME TV

CME Outfitters is launching neuroscienceCME TV, a one-hour, live and interactive CE activity broadcast via satellite, Webcast and telephone audioconference.

E-marketing

Summit addresses need for innovation

Pharmaceutical e-marketing experts called for more innovation in online efforts as the Web enters its second and third incarnations.

WebMD undergoes first overhaul since its launch

Web Watch

The ePharma Summit meeting in Philadelphia at the end of January confirmed just how hot the online health market is right now.

Direct Marketing

DMA names '07 pharma council chair

The Direct Marketing Association has named Dominque Hurley, VP and general manager for the Dendrite-owned relationship marketing firm Optas, as chairperson of its Pharmaceutical Marketing ...

Roska unit centers around healthcare

Roska Direct Advertising has restructured into three distinct units, including a rebranded healthcare advertising arm.

New River names new VP of sales

New River Pharmaceuticals named James Shaffer as VP of sales and marketing to oversee the anticipated launch of the company’s attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) drug ...

Eli Lilly asked to turn over Zyprexa promotion info

Eli Lilly has been asked by state prosecutors in Illinois and Vermont to turn over info about the way it promoted Zyprexa, its antipsychotic drug.

HealthEd adds new staff

HealthEd, a patient-education marketing firm, has added three new staff members.

Endo issued subpoena regarding Lidoderm promotion

Endo Pharmaceuticals was issued a subpoena by the Department of Health and Human Services regarding the promotion of its post-shingles pain patch Lidoderm, requesting documents ...

MicroMass hires marketing vets

MicroMass Communications, a relationship marketing firm, has hired marketing vets Dave Rockenbaugh and Gina Pettaris as associate creative directors, and James Pietz, as VP, interactive ...

DTC Report

King bets big on unbranded Bowl spots

King Pharmaceuticals courted controversy with its big bet on an unbranded disease awareness Super Bowl ad to drive sales of Altace.

Kessler, study get emotional over DTC

Emotional messaging trumps information in TV drug ads, according to a study published in the January/February 2007 issue of the Annals of Family Medicine.

Gardasil DTC driving force behind Merck expense increase

Gardasil DTC was the chief factor behind a 21% increase in Merck marketing and administrative expenses for the fourth quarter of 2006, followed by consumer ...

Digene launches TV spots

Digene, the maker of an HPV test, is piggybacking on Merck’s HPV awareness ads with TV spots of its own, which launched last month in ...

Wyeth CEO says industry's ED ads went overboard

Wyeth CEO Robert Essner told The Wall Street Journal that the industry went overboard with ED ads.

Companies waiting over a year to advertise newly approved drugs

Drug companies have been waiting an average of 15 months after approval to advertise drugs to consumers, according to TNS Media Intelligence.

Public Relations

Ferring courts sporting seniors for Euflexxa

Sports sponsorships and awareness campaigns aimed at seniors are staples of pharmaceutical communications.

Publicis picks up Sanofi vaccines PR

Sanofi Pasteur has handed the communications business on several key vaccines, including the prospective launch of Pentacel, to Publicis Public Relations.

In Focus

Congress eyes restrictions on DTC, med ed

The new Democratic Congress is living up to expectations with plenty of bicameral pharma-bashing rhetoric, but has so far failed to implement price controls and ...