Posts Tagged ‘Pharma’

How to Get the Most from Mobile Marketing in Pharma

Click on the image to visit Med Ad News and read the full article.

Our interactive director, Joe Doyle, weighs in on the criteria needed for successful pharmaceutical DTC smartphone apps. The full article in Med Ad News from PharmaLive includes a full view assessment on digital, social, and experiential marketing strategies from leading healthcare marketing strategists.

Read the full article here.

HCB Health Wins Seven Rx Club Awards

HCB Health won seven awards at this year’s Rx Club Exhibition and Awards Ceremony, an international competition recognizing creative excellence in medical advertising.

The VASER it Campaign Makes a Splash

We claimed top prize in the direct-to-consumer print category, winning a silver medal for “VASER it,” a campaign created for Sound Surgical Technologies’ VASER body shaping systems. The campaign also won an Award of Excellence in the Integrated Campaigns category, continuing a winning streak that began in April when “VASER it” received a MANNY award from the editors of Med Ad News for the best medical device campaign of 2011.
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FDA Guidelines in the Era of Social Media

What happens when the fast-paced world of social media collides with the careful guidelines of the FDA? Our own Joe Doyle weighs in on this complex problem in the latest issue of Pharmaceutical Commerce.

HCB Explains What Agencies Want

Our agency was featured in the November 2011 issue of Medical Marketing & Media. We’re featured in the first paragraph of “What Agencies Want,” while Doug Saltel, the president and CEO of our client, Edgemont Pharmaceuticals, was mentioned in the sister article “What Clients Want.” It’s a great double-whammy for HCB Health! Read more at MMM online.

Medical Device Recalls 101: My Device Was Recalled. Now What? (Part 2 of 2)

Part Two of a two-part series

The FDA’s overarching position (PDF) is not that they expect a company to be “recall free,” but they expect a company’s recalls to be conducted properly. Device marketers have to be on top of their game when responding — because, let’s face it, recalls happen. A locked-and-loaded communication strategy is a must.

Bottom line: you can’t always control the action, but you can control your reaction.

Depending on the class of the recall, you will have varying positions and responses. Here are some rules of thumb to get you over the hurdles:

FOUR-STEP RECALL RESPONSE CHECKLIST

1. Plan Ahead

As a marketer, you should be heeding the Boy Scout motto, “be prepared,” by putting together your crisis communication plan in advance. Make it a part of your annual strategic planning process. Consider various scenarios for potential recalls, and appropriate actions (and point persons), in order to react as swiftly as possible. Continue reading »

Are You Ready for the Mobile Majority?

According to an article published last year by Mary Meeker at Morgan Stanley, in 2013, more people will access the web from a mobile device than from a computer. This prediction could dramatically change the digital marketing landscape. And healthcare marketers can’t afford to lag behind.

Many of us wait to test new options, allowing the experiences of our peers — and competitors — to determine whether those options are good for business. Preliminary trends in mobile marketing favor early adopters. Consider these four reasons to invest in mobile advertising: Continue reading »

Creating Sales Aids for Pharma and Device Reps: Six Strategies

Although our clinical clients’ greatest breakthroughs occur in laboratories and hospitals, their successes often are credited to sales representatives — those employees actually out there pounding the pavement. As a member of HC&B’s clinical account team, I often help our clients create sales aids for sales reps. And, as a former “bag carrier” myself, I know what it takes to make those sales aids truly useful.

Some background: I worked in sales for two of the largest pharmaceutical and medical device companies on the market. In my experience, a few lucky sales reps will be given a large amount of time with a surgeon to discuss their product. In many scenarios, however, a rep is given as few as 10 seconds to make an impact.

With that in mind, here are six key strategies for creating sales aids: Continue reading »

BP Uses Google AdWords for Damage Control

Lost in last week’s excitement over Google Instant was an interesting Ad Age article on BP’s Google AdWords spend. The statistics raised a few eyebrows:

In two months, BP went from spending very little on search advertising — about $57,000 a month — to becoming one of Google’s top advertisers, dropping nearly $3.6 million in the month of June alone…

BP targeted broad search terms related to the Gulf oil spill. They then launched paid text ads (one reads “BP Response: Learn About BP’s Response On The Gulf Of Mexico Response Effort”) leading to the company’s dedicated Gulf of Mexico response page.

Spin Doctoring or Regulatory Mandate?

This is an old-school damage control campaign using new-school methods. In an era where bad press can quickly spiral out of control, the use of AdWords becomes a powerful tool for corralling interested spectators and pointing them to positive information. Continue reading »