Steve Case, chairman and CEO of Revolution Health andco-founder of AOL, lamented pharma’s hesitation to embrace interactive andinject a greater share of promotional budget into online initiatives.
“It is astonishing to me how under-invested this industry isin digital media,” Case told delegates at the ePharma Summit in Philadelphia.“This is crazy.”
The biggest problem, he said, is that consumers are notactively engaged, referring to how easy it is to log onto the web to buy, say,U2 concert tickets, but how it is not possible to schedule an appointment witha doctor.
However, Case is confidentthat present hurdles to online initiatives, such as regulatory and privacyissues, will be overcome and the community will start to “experiment moreaggressively” and eventually embrace digital media. He recalled the early daysof e-commerce as an example of how online attitudes and user behavior transformover time. “If I’d stood up back then and suggested that consumers would entertheir credit card number onto [Amazon.com], that the number would be stored forfuture purchases, and that the site would recommend what they should buy nexttime, I’d have been run out of the room.”
From the March 01, 2008 Issue of MM+M - Medical Marketing and Media
