The internet as intelligence
In most of my conversations with health care marketers, campaign strategy is not complete unless it includes an internet strategy. Everyone wants and needs an internet strategy (and now a mobile...
View ArticlePhysician Marketing, meet CRM
A lot of ink has been spilled on the decline of the blockbuster and the search for a new specialty-product commercial model. But less attention has been paid to how that changes physician marketing...
View ArticleThe hammer is about to drop on marketing budgets
The hammer is about to drop on marketing budgets. While there will still be discretionary spend on mobile and tablet pilot projects, executives are looking for measurable productivity from their...
View ArticleGetting schooled at closerlook
I’m often asked why I never went back to get my MBA. We have two of the best b-schools in the world right here in Chicago. My answer is simple – closerlook is my grad school. Everyday I have the...
View ArticlePharma’s Tahrir Square
Our work has taught us many lessons, but probably none as important as the impact of relationship marketing on a pharmaceutical company’s organization and culture. Taking Baby Steps Relationship...
View ArticleStart Me Up
Until just a few years ago, conventional wisdom held that the pharmaceutical industry would continue its trend towards consolidation. The investment premise was that healthcare reform and pricing...
View ArticleTransforming Physician Insight Into Actionable Pharma Strategies
As marketing as evolved from mass advertising and promotion to a more sophisticated interactive approach, marketers have many new choices. But in this new environment, marketing decisions must be based...
View ArticleStepping into Your Customers’ Shoes
Physicians are justifiably skeptical when a drug rep walks in the door. The relationship is purely transactional. The rep wants the doc to commit to writing more of whatever the rep is selling. The...
View ArticleDeeper Relationships in Pharma: The “Give To Get” Side of Marketing, Part II
Recently I wrote about the idea of “Give To Get” marketing, the premise that you need to give value to your prospective customers before you ask them for their business. To further reinforce this...
View ArticleEmpathy: Why Good Physicians Will Always Matter
In the comments section of a recent blog post, a reader commented: The idea of using a computer to aid in making a diagnosis is not new. When hand held PDAs came out in the 90′s, I was one of the first...
View ArticleThe Nature of Superpowers
I recently spent two hours in a conference room with some really smart people and three accomplished musicians from a young, innovative Chicago-based chamber orchestra called Fifth House Ensemble. We...
View ArticleThree Key Strategies to Drive Better Patient Care
When it comes to health technology and new mobile apps, we often jump right into a discussion about cool features and social media. But the real question should be impact. What positive impact are we...
View ArticleThree Steps To Restoring Relationships in Pharma after a “Pinch”
At closerlook, we think a lot about relationships. We think about those that we have with our pharma clients, those that our clients have with their customers and especially those that we have with...
View ArticlePharma Banner Ads vs. Brand Websites – Where Should You Invest Your Marketing...
A recent study by the online research company comScore offered fresh data on the impact of various forms of digital marketing. What we’re beginning to see is a very interesting and dramatic comparison...
View ArticleGood patient data is not always meaningful patient data
I’ve been thinking recently about some of the newer sources of health data, namely patient-generated data. My working headline is something like “Good patient data is not always meaningful patient...
View ArticleCreating Pharma(x)
Mention change in the pharma industry today and you’ll get raised eyebrows along with a sarcastic alliterative remark suggesting you must be Sherlock Holmes… No, the question is not whether change is...
View ArticleClosed Loop(s) Marketing – It’s More Than Pharma Sales Rep Tablets
As I re-read a recent Gartner report on Closed Loop Marketing (CLM) in pharma, it struck me that while Gartner was very focused on the shortcomings of current tablet-based sales applications for...
View ArticleAchieving Escape Velocity from Pharma Corporate Inertia
After a few recent client meetings I’ve begun to reflect not just about the challenges facing pharma, but the nature of those challenges. More specifically, I wonder if they reflect normal cyclical ups...
View ArticleIs pharma doubling down on TV? Really?
The data is out on consumer ad spending in 2013. It wasn’t a surprise that TV and magazine ad spending was down significantly while digital spend was up. If you own a TV network, you can’t ignore the...
View ArticlePubli-com: the whole was less than the sum of its parts
The dissolution of the Publicis/Omnicom merger (or was it the Omnicom/Publicis merger?) provides a helpful cautionary tale for all of us. The moral of the story is not that you should decide your CFO...
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