I have worked with many marketers from the pharmaceutical industry and I have to admit that they really are some of the best and the brightest. The pharmaceutical industry, as a whole, works really hard on tracking metrics and they have a detailed understanding how each commercial and each sales initiative impacts their bottom line. The more I learn about the industry the more I am in awe of their marketing power.
But what happens when you harness that marketing genius and add to it the pressure of running a public company – where quarter-to-quarter profit growth is the only judge of a company’s performance? What happens to ethics when you will lose your job if your don’t show quarter-over-quarter growth? It is clear that this is where regulation needs to come in to play. But just how do you regulate companies that can spend more on lobbyists than any other industry? Do you know that the United States and New Zealand are the only countries in the world that allow pharmaceutical companies to advertise?
Click on the binder below for some interesting videos on the marketing tactics of the pharmaceutical industry. Some of videos are funny and others are more deeply disturbing, but they are all very insightful.