Posts Tagged ‘ Drug Marketing ’

Pharmaceutical Companies Want YOU to Want Them

January 21st, 2010. By Kristine B

Last week, we saw how pharmaceutical companies target medical professionals in their marketing. This week, Pleading Ignorance looks at how they target you, the patient. 

When you are targeted in an advertisement or marketing plan for pharmaceuticals, that’s called direct-to-consumer advertising (DTCA). Now, it may seem a bit silly for pharmaceutical companies to target patients—after all, the patient has to rely on the doctor to first diagnose a health problem and then prescribe the medication. 

But, if you notice, the tv ads encourage you to “talk to your doctor about [insert name of drug here].” They expect that you will see the ad, identify with the list of symptoms or the general health issue mentioned, and go straight to the doctor, demanding you get a prescription for that particular drug. 

So, if consumers are being given the drugs they want and need, is there really a problem with DTCA? 

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL,ncsl.org), there are concerns about DTCA advertising. 

One concern is that the costs of drugs are “soaring” (their word) and becoming more and more difficult for people Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Drug Marketing, FDA, Pharmaceutical Marketing, Pleading Ignorance
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Pleading Ignorant on Drug Marketing

January 13th, 2010. By Kristine B

Last week, Pleading Ignorance briefly looked at what “off-label” means when talking about drugs. This week, I thought I’d take a slightly more in-depth look at drug marketing—starting with how pharmaceutical companies market drugs to doctors. You sort of already know how drugs are marketed to consumers (i.e., YOU) because you see the ads. But pharmaceutical marketing to physicians is a little less transparent. So let’s talk about it.

Drug companies have two target audiences that they market their drugs to: the doctors, which makes sense because the doctors are the ones who write the prescriptions; and you, the consumer. That’s why, more and more frequently, you see ads on tv telling you to talk to your doctor about a certain drug. How often do you watch tv and see some sort of ad that starts off “Do you feel down?” or “Are you in pain?” Drug companies know that if you said “yes” to those questions you might just go in to your doctor and ask about the drugs they’re advertising. But it’s not so easy to do that with the doctors.

Marketing to doctors is definitely different from marketing to consumers (I can’t imagine too many doctors would respond to a tv ad that says, “Does your patient feel down?”). Marketing to doctors is more about scientific information. That’s all the somewhat boring stuff—found on the monograph for the drug—that lists things like “Indications” or “Adverse Events” or “Co-morbitidy,” stuff that the scientists understand but we may not. There are Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Drug Marketing, Pharmaceutical Marketing, Pleading Ignorance
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