BrandweekNRX

It's Official: This Blog is Unbiased (Mostly) Toward the Drug Industry

John Mack gives some partial results from his pharma blog survey, and the graphic shows that BrandweekNRX is (nearly) right on the 'Neutral' line in terms of hostility or friendliness toward the industry. Thanks to  those who voted and thanks to Mack for doing it.

Separately, I placed a note at the end of this recent Mack post to clear up something related to the J&J blogger summit.

'Why Won't the Liberal Media Write About All the Good Things Drug Companies Do?'

That, in essence, is the conclusion of a new report from the Business and Media Institute, a conservative think tank. The BMI has taken a long look at all the evidence and -- by amazing coincidence! -- come to the exact conclusion that the drug industry was hoping it would come to. If you want a nice dissection of the report -- and some gossip on the people who funded it -- click here.

In the meantime, here's my two cents:  Does the media really ignore Big Pharma's 'good news'? The answer is no. Good stuff is just as likely to get written about as bad. It's just that the news media's job is not to describe the world when it works properly, but rather to describe the most interesting or most unusual parts of that world. As such, failure, crisis and disaster are much more likely to be given prominent play than a story whose headline might be "Business as Usual at Major Corporation."

And besides, you the evil reader have a part to play here. We members of Big Media watch our traffic stats. And despite all your protestations, we know that readers actually read bad news stories much more than they read good news stories.

Against the Grain: Small Pharma Co. Has Reps on Commission Only--and Force Size Doubles

No, I'd never heard of Auriga Labs either. They make  "Aquoral for the treatment of xerostomia, Akurza and Xyralid dermatology products, and the Zinx, Extendryl, and Levall families of products for relief of symptoms associated with a range of acute respiratory diseases," it says here. In a recent press release the company claims it has just doubled its sales force to 200 even though they are on commission-only compensation.

Given that other drug companies are cutting back on reps because their productivity in a saturated market is down, this is something to watch. One has to wonder whether there are Big Pharma CFOs out there who're slapping themselves on the forehead and saying, "why didn't we think of this earlier?"

Will it catch on? Depends. I suspect it is easier to detail unusual or speciality drugs than it is to be constantly updating docs on old, commonly used scrips, and thus the model might be useful for specialty brands but not for the statins and antibiotics of the world.

One potential danger: When a rep's compensation is based entirely on scrip numbers, you don't really have a doctor education force, you have a mercenary force. If ever there was a temptation for reps to detail off-label, then commission-only compensation would provide it.

(Thanks to Internet Drug News for spotting this one.)

Are We Looking at the End of the Golden Era of DTC?

There’s a lot of fuss and bother this week about DTC. First, Congress has two bills that would restrict advertising to at least two years after a new drug launch. Second, two Democratic reps have asked Amgen and J&J to stop advertising their anemia drugs Procrit, Aranesp and Epogen. (Although Internet Drug News points out that one drug isn’t advertised at all and another hasn’t been advertised for two years.) And lastly, J&J cut back on its ad budget by about $250 million last year, moving money out of traditional media and into non-traditional avenues.

J&J is a bellwhether for other companies, or has been in the last few years, because other marketers tend to copy it. And with the choppy waves in Washington it begs the question:

Is this the end for DTC?

Let’s look at the numbers. First, DTC spend was up 14.5% last year according to TNS Media Intelligence, from $4.1 billion to $4.7 billion. So J&J is actually going against the tide of dollars—in reality there’s more money flowing into DTC, not less.

Second, there’s a big difference between bills proposed in Congress and actual laws passed. Restrictions on DTC have been proposed before and have not passed. True, with the Dems in control things may be different this time around. But remember that there’s actually a whole cottage industry of professionals out there whose job it is to keep drug marketers worried about this stuff.

Now let’s compare J&J (where spend on Rx drugs sunk to $81 million from $257 million) with other Big Pharma companies. The first thing to know is that J&J is not alone in pulling back from major media. Spending at these companies also declined last year:

Abbott Labs ($81 million down from $89 million)
Allergan ($79 million down from $114 million)
Barr ($11 million down from $17 million)
Novartis ($186 million down from $221 million)
P&G’s Rx brands ($60 million down from $62 million—even though Ad Age accused P&G of not pulling back from major media)
TAP ($4 million down from $72 million)
Wyeth (71 million down from $78 million).

But before all you ad agency types throw yourselves off a bridge, consider who showed up to the party last year with extra DTC spending.:

GSK ($858 million, up from $707 million—and now the largest spender on the planet)
Pfizer ($557 million up from $425 million)
Merck ($476 million up from $370 million)
Lilly ($203 million up from $159 million)
BMS ($259 million up from $166 million)
Boehringer Ingelheim ($76 million up from just $1.6 million)
AstraZeneca ($438 million up from $418 million)
Sepracor ($297 million up from $215 million)
Sanofi (stayed the same at $242 million)

So what does this mean? As I’ve stated before, it doesn’t mean a lot. The overall level of drug spend is more dependent on companies’ product cycles, new launches, and new money coming from smaller companies than it is on Top 10 Big Pharma spend or what’s happening in Washington.

Even if the bills pass on Congress, it will only take two or three years of spending out of the cycle before the money comes back. And unless The Hill is going to turn its attention away from fired US Attorneys, Iraq and the potentially tanking economy, even that won't happen.

Diabetes Association Chief to 'Talk People Out of Using Exubera'

Another beat in the death knell of Pfizer's billion dollar bong, Exubera, was heard today in this AP story. In it, Dr. John Buse, president-elect of the American Diabetes Association, who participated in Exubera's trials, says: "There is no advantage to Exubera and there may be a safety risk. I see it as my job to talk people out of (using) it."

That's a shocker.

It's no secret that the brand is performing poorly, but there's even more bad news: "WellPoint Inc., the country's largest insurer, is either not covering Exubera or placing it in the most restrictive tier, with higher copays, depending on the plan."

Pfizer's Susan Silberman, svp of worldwide commercial development, said she thinks a DTC campaign will turn things around. If that happens, Pfizer's brand managers would be Marketer of the Year candidates.

BrandweekNRX Commentary Roundup: Who's Complaining About What on This Blog?

Jack Friday from Pharmagossip says of the J&J dinner: "Did you ask the J&J folks how things were getting along with their 'improper payments in two small-market countries' issue?"

Adriana Lukas, who was at said dinner, says: "I'd rather have meaningful change and innovation over an anarchic shake up. But your interpretation of my position reads a lot more sensational."

Corporate Ferret says: "Communications does not equal anarchy, however much your inner control freak tells you it does."

Sherry thought my Ambien math post was "interesting."

WSJ Drug Blog: Quite Good

So what do we think of the new WSJ health biz blog? Overall I like it, but it feels a little like 'here's a bunch of stuff we wanted to write but couldn't fit into the paper.' It also feels somewhat edited. Nonetheless, judging by reaction at the J&J dinner the other night, it is making a splash. People are paying attention. And it adds to WSJ's clout as the dominant reporter on health news. (And in so doing makes it more difficult for folks like me).

Big NYT Doctor Payment Story Today; Folks at Pfizer and Amgen Groaning Loudly in Their Cubicles...

The NYT looks at drug company payments to doctors in Minnesota and finds that "through 2005, drug makers paid more than 5,500 doctors, nurses and other health care workers in the state at least $57 million. Another $40 million went to clinics, research centers and other organizations. More than 20 percent of the state’s licensed physicians received money. The median payment per consultant was $1,000; more than 100 people received more than $100,000."

The story singles out Amgen (for its kidney drugs), GSK (for Imitrex) and Pfizer (for—you guessed it—Lipitor) as handing out particularly large checks

This story is old news to anyone in the business. I did a version of it two years ago.

And many in the industry will be angered that the talking heads quoted are Jamie Reidy, Katherine Slattery Moschkau and—again, you guessed it—Marcia Angell, all prominent critics of the biz who haven't worked in it for years.

Bottom line: despite the story's age and its choice of yakkers, the issues it raises remain true: paying the middleman (ie a doctor) is always a conflict of interest, and medicine is one of those areas where patients don't like conflicts. Want to see the end of these type of stories? Then end payments to prescribing physicians.

I'm expecting an angry post from Peter Pitts at DrugWonks any second now...

J&J Hosts Blogger Summit. Much Wine Consumed.

J&J last night treated about half-a-dozen pharma and medical device bloggers to dinner and drinks at Beppe, a small Italian restaurant on 22nd Street in New York.

The aim of the meeting was for J&J to learn about pharma bloggers, who we are, how we work, and whether the company should get involved in blogging in any way. I made it clear that I have absolutely no idea what I’m doing, and they still wanted me to show up.

They wisely hosted an open bar.

Biggest surprise of the evening: One idea floating around New Brunswick is giving all 120,000 J&J employees their own blogs on which they could bitch and whine about management. I'll believe it when I see it (more on this later).

Attending from J&J: Heidi Youngkin (executive director/global marketing group), David Swearingen (vp corp comms), Mark Monseau (a director of media relations), Jeffrey Leebaw (Monseau’s boss) and Ray Jordan (vp public affairs and corp comms). There were other J&J execs there too, all mainly from the corp comms division, but I didn’t get a chance to say hello to them all or nab their business cards.

Attending from the blogosphere: Fard Johnson of Healthcare Vox, Nicholas Genes from MedGadget, Peter Pitts from DrugWonks, Steven Palter from Doc in the Machine and Ed Silverman from Pharmalot. And me.

John Mack from Pharma Marketing Blog was invited but cancelled at the last minute, thus insuring that we gossiped about him behind his back.

Silverman turned up fashionably late and was clearly the belle of J&J’s ball—Pharmalot in a short time has come to occupy a high profile in the drug blog area because of Ed’s prolific posting. Turns out Ed is now blogging for the Star-Ledger full time, works from home, and doesn’t do any more reporting. (Mack has previously speculated he has  a team of bloggers working for him.)

At dinner I was seated across from Heidi Youngkin. J&J really got their money’s worth from Youngkin last night—she lives in Pennsylvania, commutes to New Brunswick and somehow managed dinner in New York also. She indicated that the J&J acquisition of Pfizer’s Consumer Health Care brands was going smoothly and the culture clash between the aggressive Pfizer culture and J&J’s more family-friendly culture was overblown.

Next to me was Jeff Leebaw, who ate the biggest steak I’ve ever seen.

On the other side of me was Adriana Lukas, a consultant to J&J for the past year on blogging. (That’s her pictured.)

Lukas told me that she’s trying to get J&J to give all their 120,000 employees a blog, on which the workers could write whatever they liked. When I put it to her that this was a journalist’s dream and a brand manager’s nightmare, she asserted that the power of the internet will essentially grind all businesses like J&J into a sort of mob-driven series of collaborative networks run by empowered individuals who answer to no one but themselves. Ray Jordan “totally gets it,” she said.

Lukas was one of the most combative, self-confident people I’ve ever met. Having a conversation with her is a bit like being stuck in an argument-hurricane. She made Peter Pitts look shy.

I look forward to the day that J&J devolves into an anarchic, Ayn Rand-style free-for-all, but suspect that Wall Street might have something to say before Lukas gets her wish.

To conclude: A fascinating evening all round. Despite J&J’s image as being a drug company that’s so safe and conservative your mother would approve of it taking you to the prom, the company appears to be grappling substantively with the future. Look at where it’s putting its money, for instance. And besides, which other drug company would host such a meeting?

Robinson, Lerer & Montgomery: Corporate Bad News Spies

Peter Rost has written an interesting post which mentions that his blog is read every day by a pr firm called Robinson, Lerer & Montgomery, which, he claims, works for Pfizer. Rost and Pfizer are locked in a legal-and-PR deathmatch stemming from this.

I wouldn't normally mention this as it's not drug marketing related, but the name of the PR firm rings a bell with me. So I went back through my collection of business cards and pulled out an RLM card for svp Anne Granfield. Turns out, years ago, when I was covering the Ogilvy & Mather corruption trial, Anne was assigned by O&M to monitor me. She certainly wasn't assigned to give me quotes from O&M, because the trial lasted weeks and she didn't give me anything.

We spoke about her assignment before the trial started when I noticed she was sitting near me in court with a notebook that had my name on the top of the page, and a description of what I looked like underneath it. My very own PR stalker!

RLM's web site indicates that indeed they are spinmeisters for truly troubled companies. They specialize in "“reputational programs … Crisis management, [and] Litigation support.”

One question: What exactly is Pfizer getting for its money with RLM? Rost certainly isn't getting any quieter. And I have difficulty getting Pfizer to return calls even on the days when I've got good news to write about them.

(Note to Pfizer pr Pfolks: Guys, not every story has to be bad news. This, for instance.  Try picking up the phone. Transparency is a powerful thing. Just because you're not talking doesn't mean all my other sources disappear—why give them all that free mileage?)