Why the silence?

March 24, 2009 – 8:54 am by Chris

You may have noticed the quiet around here recently. That’s because Josh and Steve and Gina and Andrew are furiously working on the April issue of Med Ad News. As the editor-in-chief, I get to pull my late nights after all the layout comes to my desk. And then I have to write the script for the Manny Awards. Fun times, fun times.

For now, I get to keep up a bit with what’s going on outside of here. Flying around on Twitter yesterday (you can find me here if you want) among the pharma types were variations on this news. The prediction that the number of pharma reps will slide down to 75,000 by 2012, from more than 100,000 in 2007, has a lot of people making anxious predictions of their own. The Internet-oriented, social media types are cautiously optimistic, though, because it does seem Big Pharma will have to “do something” and hopefully that something will involve more online engagement with physicians and patients. Everyone is still trying to work out what that engagement is. But the feverish intensity which some marketers have grasped onto tools such as Twitter and Facebook is a harbinger of things to come.

After the April issue is out the door, you’ll see more action here. Excuse me for now, though, I have 20 ad agency profiles to edit before lunch.