Jack Lipton, senior VP, client services

Wendy Blackburn, the executive VP at Intouch Solutions, a pharma marketing agency, says agency officials have “high hopes” for Intouch’s recent expansion into New York City, especially given the agency’s 400 percent growth over the past three years.

The new office, located in Midtown Manhattan at 1001 Avenue of the Americas on 6th Avenue between 37th and 38th streets, also comes with a new employee – Jack Lipton, who has been hired as the senior VP, client services. Senior management from Intouch Solutions’ Kansas City headquarters will oversee New York operations. The agency, which also expanded in Chicago in 2008, was named Agency of the Year by Med Ad News in 2010.

“New York’s reputation as an advertising and media mecca – as well as a hotbed for innovation and growing companies – makes it a great fit for Intouch,” says CEO Faruk Capan.

Having been based in the Midwest, it has “always been easy to get to the East Coast or West Coast, but we’ve also really recognized it’s important to be close to our clients,” says Ms. Blackburn, who notes the company has many existing clients located on the East Coast. There is also new opportunity abound on the East Coast, where agency officials hope to build business with perspective clients.

In addition, “we’re always looking at how Intouch can grow and evolve and better serve our clients,” says Ms. Blackburn. “With the incredible talent pool in the New York/New Jersey area, we’re hoping to add a range of talent to our team – very pharma specific, very healthcare specific – that can help expand our services from our existing base.”

Mr. Lipton, who joined Intouch Solutions in September, brings years of pharma marketing experience, including through agencies like G2 and MRM.

“He is a born and bred pharma marketer,” says Ms. Blackburn of Mr. Lipton. “He has a lot of experience with and a lot of contacts with the companies who we are interested in speaking with. His background is very much in the customer-relationship marketing space.”

Ms. Blackburn says Intouch will be teaching Mr. Lipton about the agency’s digital initiatives and its other products, “but he will add a lot of new expertise to our wheelhouse as well.”

One of the reasons Mr. Lipton was persuaded to join Intouch Solutions was his excitement about sharing the agency’s products, like PharmaWall (the “Pharma-Friendly Facebook Wall Alternative), with potential clients in New York, who may not have been familiar with them previously, says Ms. Blackburn.

“Everybody is excited here in Kansas City and Chicago that we’re expanding,” she says. “Literally, we’ve been talking about it for years. We’re excited to see it come to fruition.”

“That’s crazy,” says Mr. Bough. “You’re going to see more and more companies move to put digital efforts forth. Now, it’s a world of two-way engagement; it’s a world of consumer engagement overall.”

After all, how does a company expect to reach out to consumers when it doesn’t even have technology that is compatible for their use? Despite being the most heavily regulated industry, pharmaceuticals are not exempt from the need to change their current advertising and marketing practices, which includes improving their digital efforts. Gone are the days where television advertisements or ads in print publications will suffice.

“One of the biggest lessons that can be learned from other industries is you have to go where your consumer is, and you have to change your business model to match that,” says Mr. Bough. “We are rapidly becoming a 100 percent digital society.”

In fact, pharmaceutical companies, many of which have only viewed digital communication as an “add-on” and not as central to their marketing and advertising campaigns, are going to have to redefine their efforts if they do not want to be left behind. At least that is what the members of Pozen’s Digital Advisory Board discussed during a roundtable discussion with the media on September 16.

Pozen established the Digital Advisory Board to help progress the company’s vision for revolutionizing its traditional pharmaceutical commercial model as it plans to launch its new products. The new model will be at core of the company’s efforts, and consumer engagement, Pozen’s DAB members agree, is of utmost importance.

Meredith Ressi, president at Manhattan Research and another member of the advisory board, noted that there have been 25 percent fewer drug launches over the past decade. In addition, she says, physicians are now crunched for time, and they can no longer fit meetings with sales representatives into their busy days.

Reaching consumers in the platforms they use, abandoning the one-way messaging model to patients, and instead, moving from a patient-centric model to more of a consumer-centric model – one that also views physicians as consumers – will be crucial.

“It’s about jumping in and really listening to what consumers are saying,” says Raj Amin, CEO and co-founder, HealthiNation, who is also a member of the board.

According to Mark Monseau, the founder and principal at MDM Communications, and former director of corporate communication, social media at Johnson & Johnson, the digital landscape is enabling individuals, whether patients or physicians, to redefine relationships: they are able to self-publish and connect with like-minded individuals. They are also becoming more empowered to make their own decisions. Unfortunately, the traditional pharma model is not consumer-centric, but rather very formal.

That is why a cultural shift within the companies is needed, says Dr. Dan Palestrant, M.D., CEO and founder of Sermo, and another member of Pozen’s DAB. At the end of the day, the biggest hurdle for companies, he says, may not be to determine the appropriate platform – rather, it’s being able to decide the right resources internally. This may require reallocating resources away from existing strategies and dedicating them to one that focuses on a core digital program.

Ineffective organizations, Mr. Bough says, are those that look at digital marking as an “add-on” to traditional strategies. The key, adds Mr. Amin, is to develop a holistic strategy to focus on creating a relationship between the physician groups and the consumer groups.

Dr. Palestrant says pharmaceutical companies also need to realize that controlling the message, including the conversation taking place between the physician and consumer, is no longer possible. Pharmaceuticals need to find ways to become a part of that conversation. He says he was approached by a person he calls an “e-patient advocate.” The woman, who maintained a blog about diabetes, had more than 20,000 people reading her posts each week. Despite the fact that she had this level of readership, the industry was not involved, Dr. Palestrant says.

“Her concern was there is a lot of information that is incorrect or lacking detail, and people were crying out for accurate information in a timely way presented in a format” that they could access, Dr. Palestrant says. “The way to go about doing that is to start figuring out ways to understand that ecosystem and have the structures in place to be able to inject yourself in an appropriate way in the manner in which people are looking for it.”

What’s worse is this: “It will become negligible for companies not to listen to what’s being said in the digital space,” Mr. Bough adds.

Recent efforts by pharmaceutical companies to move into the digital world need improvement, primarily in the realm of building communities. Dr. Palestrant says product portals set up by these companies have been a “100 percent failure. I have yet to see one that actually succeeds.” Rather, if a physician wants to find information, the place he or she is one that is run by the pharmaceutical company.

Ms. Ressi says that while physicians do visit product websites, there will need to be a more distributed model. Companies will need to ask, “How do you be where physicians are?”

Other questions companies can ask: How are they changing their organizations? How are they changing their strategic plans? Is the agency record still focused on traditional approaches only?

“The message is critical in this environment,” Mr. Amin says. Providing real-time information back to consumers when they need it and in the platform by which they can access it is the way to go.

Pozen plans to share the company’s plans for the digital model with other pharmaceutical companies as the company moves forward.

Stay tuned for links to recorded tidbits from the roundtable discussion.

Pozen has formed an unprecedented Digital Advisory Board (DAB) to identify untapped digital strategies as it prepares to commercialize its pipeline.  In doing so, Pozen officials are hoping they can set a new trend that will change the way pharma companies market their products.

Pozen has assembled what the company calls an “esteemed group of digital thought-leaders to help progress the company’s vision for revolutionizing the traditional pharmaceutical commercial model.” In doing so, the company’s new DAB will host a roundtable discussion from 11 a.m. to noon on Friday, September 16.

Not only will Pozen’s newly formed DAB focus on digital strategy, but the board will draw from experts outside of the pharma industry. Members of the board include:

• Raj Amin, chief executive officer and co-founder, HealthiNation; previously vice president of business development, N2 Broadband
• John Bax, chief financial officer, LivingSocial; previously chief financial officer, RecycleBank and Walmart.com
• Bonin Bough, director of digital and social media, PepsiCo; previously director of Global Interactive, Social and Emerging Media Practice, Weber Shandwick
• Marc Monseau, founder and principal, MDM Communication, LLC; previously director of corporate communication and social media, Johnson & Johnson
• Daniel Palestrant, M.D., chief executive officer and founder, Sermo; previously founder of Azygos, Inc.

“The pharmaceutical industry has only begun to scratch the surface of employing digitally-based commercialization approaches,” says Liz Cermak, executive vice president and chief commercial officer of Pozen. “As Pozen moves forward to commercialize its PA pipeline, our goal in collaborating with these advisors is to look beyond the industry to identify untapped digital strategies that will help us deliver an affordable and accessible product to our customers.”

Ms. Cermak says the company formed the idea when discussions began over commercializing the first product from the company’s pipeline, and company executives realized they would have to build the strategy from scratch.

“We’re putting together what we think our launch strategy is going to be for a product we anticipate two years from now is going to hit the market,” Ms. Cermak says. “We think there is a lot of learning from real experts in communication, which is why we put together the Digital Advisory Board.”

Pozen expects the DAB to give the company a much more lean, cost-efficient, and engaging marketing infrastructure and approach. Taking lessons from experts outside of the industry will allow Pozen to have a “more robust” relationship with customers, she says. Bringing in experts from companies like Wal-Mart, HealthiNation, PepsiCo, and Johnson & Johnson will help bring an eclectic mix of new ideas.

“We invited Raj [Amin] because it’s really all about patient education in a new way,” says Ms. Cermak. “That’s a cornerstone of what it is that we’re trying to do. It’s going to be a really great learning experience and a guiding body for us.”

One aspect of digital marketing may include social media. FDA still has not provided guidelines to the pharmaceutical industry regarding use of websites, like Twitter, for product marketing, and many companies are worried about being reprimanded for violating regulations through use of such sites. Facebook and Twitter, however are just one portion of the larger realm of digital communication, Ms. Cermak notes.

“There are lots of ways to engage with customers, even without the use of social media,” Ms. Cermak explains. “The industry is going to figure this out.”

Ms. Cermak says this notion is not unlike the days before direct to consumer marketing, when pharmaceutical executives never imagined advertising drugs on the television could be possible because of the strict regulations. Eventually, industry experts were able to figure out ways to do so legally.

“This too shall pass,” Ms. Cermak says of the uncertainty that digital communication brings.

For example, pharmaceutical companies can take advantages of infrastructures that are already established on the digital level, including sites like WebMD and Medscape, which can provide new ways to engage, Ms. Cermak says. “Those are trusted sites with trusted information engaging a lot of people,” she says. Epocrates, a nationally trusted physician platform, is another area that allows pharmaceutical companies to communicate with physicians.

This is where experts like Sermo’s Daniel Palestrant can lend their expertise to the board. While there is no advertising by pharmaceuticals allowed on Sermo at the moment, the use of Sermo by pharmaceutical companies is “only going to grow as we identify areas of mutual benefit between Sermo and the pharmaceuticals,” Ms. Cermak says, adding that pharma companies can ask questions, engage in dialogue at the clinical level, and have some interaction.

“What we like about this group is that they’re so visionary,” she says. “We’re so excited to start to learn from them. It will be fascinating for people to see how they think and what we can borrow from other industries, and how different it can look for pharmaceutical marketing.”

Increasing collaboration, growing globalization, rapidly changing compliance requirements, and increasing cost pressures are all having an impact on life sciences content management. Traditional life sciences content management systems, meanwhile, have remained largely unchanged, built on the same basic platforms and technologies and often only affordable to larger organizations with significant time and resources to invest in systems development projects.

“The parallels between the CRM marketplace when we founded Veeva in 2007 and today’s content management market are stunning,” says Matt Wallach, chief strategy officer, Veeva. “The traditional leaders have been acquired, their technology is antiquated, the solutions cost a fortune just to maintain, and customers are frustrated. Really frustrated. That’s why we created Veeva Vault. Using the very latest cloud computing technologies, Vault lets life sciences companies more effectively manage their regulated content at a lower cost. Better and cheaper, just what the industry needs today.”

According to Veeva executives, well-designed and built cloud-based business solutions are more flexible, more mobile, and easier to use, share, and maintain than traditional on-premise software solutions.

Veeva Vault is led by Jen Goldsmith, who has helped life science companies design and implement content management solutions for more than 15 years. “Vault is the first cloud-computing content management system that’s built specifically for the life sciences industry,” Ms. Goldsmith told Med Ad News. “There are other cloud content management systems out there, but none of them cater specifically to life sciences and address things like 21 CFR Part 11 compliance or even the process specific components that exist or are necessary for different areas within life sciences.”

According to Ms. Goldsmith, the Vault was built from the ground up specifically for the needs of this particularly regulated industry. “We’ll be able to do everything from a platform perspective: store the content, version it, have review and approval work flows around it, place the appropriate security around it, and in addition to that base regulated content management capability, we’ll also have what we call process-specific applications,” Ms. Goldsmith says. “These are a set of application capabilities that allow you to enable specific business process in life sciences, out of the box.”

Cloud computing expert Eric Bezar has been in charge of designing and building Veeva Vault. “Life sciences companies have forever been forced to build custom applications on top of generic content management platforms like Documentum and Sharepoint,” Mr. Bezar says. “This is a frustrating and costly approach. With Vault, we are delivering both the platform and the applications this industry needs, and the results will be nothing short of breathtaking.”

Known for its customer relationship management products, Veeva Systems has never been in the business of closed-loop marketing. But that changed today with the unveiling of Veeva iRep, which the company is billing as the pharmaceutical industry’s first complete customer relationship management and closed loop marketing solution built exclusively for the iPad. 

The login screen for Veeva's iRep

I was in attendance this morning as the company held a launch event at the Four Seasons Hotel in Philadelphia along with a number of Veeva’s partners, including Apple, Accenture, Cognizant, HighPoint Solutions, Mavens Consulting, and salesforce.com. iRep was introduced to the assembled guests by Peter Gassner, CEO of Veeva Systems. 

Also in attendance was Faruk Capan, CEO of Intouch Solutions. Veeva is partnering on the launch with the interactive pharmaceutical marketing agency. As the inaugural Veeva Web content provider, Intouch will be developing custom creative content for iRep, such as copy, visuals, video, and other interactive components. 

While Intouch Solutions is the first agency to develop CLM content for iRep, Veeva’s Chief Strategy Officer Matt Wallach assured me that iRep is open to all. The specifications for developing detailing materials for iRep will be made available to whatever content partner a client may bring to the table. 

The launch of iRep coincides with an article I had already been preparing for the February issue of Med Ad News. Continuing my long-running series on sales force effectiveness, I wanted to look at the exploding popularity of the iPad within the pharmaceutical industry as reps enjoy the device’s ideal size, long battery life, instant-on capability, and ease of use. I also wanted to highlight the broad range of vendors, like Veeva, who are stepping up to meet the CRM, CLM, and detailing needs of the industry’s sales reps. 

In designing iRep, Veeva did not want to simply port its existing CRM system over to the iPad. Instead, to take advantage of the iPad’s strengths, the multi-channel Veeva CRM functionality in iRep has been completely redesigned specifically for Apple’s touch-screen tablet. 

Veeva iRep's CRM functionality allows users to manage their accounts.

The platform then combines Veeva’s CRM functionality with a content viewer that enables users to present e-detail materials, deliver interactive presentations, and show visual data and video content with built-in recording and reporting functionality to close the marketing loop. 

Veeva iRep's CLM capability allows users to rate a physician's reaction to the product detail.

iRep will be available in February 2011. According to Veeva, during the next few months five leading pharmaceutical organizations in the United States and Europe are already set to hand their reps iPads installed with iRep. 

For more on iRep and other new pharma solutions for Apple’s iPad, look for the full story in the upcoming February issue of Med Ad News.

More information on the consolidation of the companies and the agencies involved in launching the new corporate brand and the new product will appear in the Business department of Med Ad News’ December issue. I spoke with Mark Iwicki, president and chief operating officer of Sunovion, to get more insight into the rationale for the new corporate identity and the organization’s plans for the future.

Mark Iwicki, president and chief operating officer of Sunovion

Med Ad News: What was the strategy behind bringing Dainippon Sumitomo Pharma America and Sepracor together under the Sunovion name, and what efficiencies have been achieved?

Mark Iwicki: The whole idea behind it was a strategic opportunity that DSP [Dainippon Sumitomo Pharma] saw. The history of the company is, they’ve been in Japan for many, many years. The Dainippon part goes back around 100 years. Then they merged with Sumitomo chemical about five years ago and realized that although a major strength in Japan, as many of the other companies have done – Takeda, Astellas, all the predecessor companies, Yamanuchi Fujisawa – that in order to truly be a world class company, they had to expand globally.

The opportunity to do that was around this product lurasidone, Latuda, which we just recently got approved. One of the things that is great about our story is that it’s much more around the strategy of building a global company, whereas a lot of the mergers or acquisitions are purely about synergies. Which corporate infrastructure can we reduce and save some money? That was never the focus for us.

Of course there was a little bit of that that occurred, but in the U.S. there was very minimal overlap, truthfully. The DSP America organization was set up as a CNS research and development group that brought Latuda through Phase II, Phase III, and now the approval. Of course, we have some other indications we’re working on, like bipolar, and some other products. But that organization still exists today. In fact, we’re excited to keep building that out. It’s in Fort Lee, N.J.

Sepracor is an organization that was built on CNS and respiratory history. We have six products in the market, now seven with Latuda. It was a great match because DSP wanted to expand globally, they had Latuda, this great organization in Fort Lee developing the product, but also needed a strong commercial organization to be able to launch that product. They looked at three different opportunities: build it out themselves, partner with a big pharmaceutical company – do a co-promote or something like that as a way to get into the marketplace – or merge or buy a company to expand. And, of course, we’re thrilled that they looked at Sepracor and subsequently purchased us.

Our strength in the commercial area is, I think, the major reason that they wanted to purchase us, and our research and development was very synergistic with what they were doing. We have CNS expertise both in the research area as well as development. We developed lurasidone, we’ve had several other CNS products in development. So, it turned out to be a great fit. Now, with the launch of Latuda, we have a tremendous opportunity to build a new company, Sunovion, and have a really strong presence in the U.S. In some ways, we’re a fully operational and integrated pharmaceutical company with research, development, commercial, everything right here in the United States, and then we have this wonderful backing support and resources from one of the strongest Japanese pharmaceutical companies that also has a great research and development pipeline.

Med Ad News: How have the corporate cultures of DSPA and Sepracor aligned?

Mark Iwicki: I think there’s a very nice influence. This is a very strong company in Japan, and what I’ve come to realize over my first year of being with the new organization is that as much as there are some cultural things that are a bit different, the language of business and of pharmaceuticals is so similar. And the way that DSP Japan has gone about its business was a great fit for how we do it here in the U.S. as well. The real focus is on the long-term vision for the company. They’re very committed to becoming a global organization. Back at Sepracor, that was one of our long-term visions. We were mostly a U.S.-focused organization and were in the process of developing our plans to decide how we wanted to expand globally.

Culturally, the first thing I look at is, are our business philosophies aligned? And they very much are. The second piece of that business philosophy is that DSP and Sepracor, now Sunovion, are both focused on differentiated, specialty-focused brands. Earlier in both companies’ life cycles we both had more of the marginally differentiated blockbuster profile of products, just like many big pharmaceutical companies had. For us it was the isomers, with Xopenex, Brovana, and Lunesta. For them, they had hypertension products and diabetes products.

They realized that the future is in the highly differentiated products and also moving toward higher unmet need areas. Those areas are not always the multi-billion dollar opportunities. It’s always good to have a couple like that in your portfolio, but also where there are the higher unmet needs, you have the chance to do great science and improve the lives of patients.

That’s the same strategy we were embarking on here at Sepracor. So, from a cultural standpoint, it’s been a great fit. We were both independently moving in the same direction toward the specialty-focused products. We ourselves had started to reorganize our own portfolio toward these areas, and so had DSP. And now together, we have a chance to get focused using both R&D pipelines and highlight those products we think will create the biggest differentiation and make the biggest benefit for patients.

We’ve had a great opportunity culturally to blend the best of both companies. They also have been very excited about learning the American way of doing business, and we’ve tried to reciprocate by doing the same thing, to learn the Japanese way of doing business. This is where we found there are way more similarities than there are differences, and they’ve enabled Sunovion to continue in large part to be run fully as an American organization. The vast majority of our management has a lot of American experience. Even our CEO, Saburo Hamanaka, was 35 years with Takeda, and a large part of his experience at Takeda – he started TAP and then started Takeda Pharmaceuticals in the U.S. – was helping Takeda start their U.S. businesses.

Its been very good for us, the way they’ve approached the U.S. market, and allowing us to run our business and grow, I would say in a very measured way, bringing our two companies together so that we both built on each other’s experiences rather than having to concede to one way of doing things or another.

Med Ad News: With that in mind, a very important part of career growth for executives is getting overseas experience. Will there be opportunity for some of your executives to work abroad in Japan or other global markets?

Mark Iwicki: Yeah, we’re really excited about that. In fact, we’ve already started to integrate some of our senior leaders in with the Japanese team. One of our top attorneys has gone over and will probably stay there for a year or longer. We’ve had several of the Japanese executives come over to our organization. Our head of R&D is Nobuhiko Tamura. He’s been in the U.S. for four years already. He was one of the people that started that R&D organization down in Fort Lee, N.J. I’ve mentioned already Saburo Hamanaka. We have three or four other Japanese leaders who are here, and we think there is more opportunity for our American leaders not only to go to Japan… I think the bigger opportunity actually is to start forming global teams. Global R&D teams, global business development teams are probably where we have the most synergy, and that gives a chance, rather than someone having to move from one country to the next, but the chance for us to work together and share learnings and become a much stronger team between the two organizations.

In the corporate development and licensing area, this is a big focus for the company. We very much want to continue to bring products into the pipeline. We’re active in all stages. We’re looking at research collaborations. We announced one a couple of weeks ago with SanBio. We’re very interested in Phase II assets and even look at Phase III oriented assets.

This has been right from the beginning a global effort. So, there are members from Japan, there are members from our Fort Lee R&D organization, and there are members from Sunovion here in headquarters. I think that has been one of our biggest successes so far, working together. That is creating more opportunities for these global teams to emerge.

Med Ad News: The intention has been stated to expand the Sunovion brand in certain strategic international locations. Can you elaborate on those plans at this time?

Mark Iwicki: Right now we have operations in China for DSP. And there’s a DSP operation in Europe right now. And we’re still, I’d say, working on a strategy, but the intent is to use Sunovion and our U.S. headquarters as a way to expand in Europe and South America. I think that’s where our global CEO and the board feel that the U.S. strength can be leveraged to expand in those markets.

Job number one for us is to make sure Latuda is successful. That we keep building our pipeline here, that we grow Latuda as quickly as we can. That will be the springboard, then, to start looking at Europe, South America, and other emerging markets as well. We of course are working hard to see if Latuda can be a viable product in other markets, and that activity is going on and can be a stepping stone for future expansion.

Med Ad News: Obviously a corporate brand is important on the customer-facing side. What does the launch process for the new corporate identity involve?

Mark Iwicki: One of the most exciting things was to create a new brand image for our new company, not only internally, which helps build a culture and spirit of starting something new – this really is a new company – but also for our customers, for them to understand that there is a new brand in the marketplace. For us to build new equity in that brand for what we stand for, our new launch of Latuda. We realized it was very important for us to do it before Latuda was approved, and we did it just in time. We thought that Latuda had a great chance for a first-cycle approval, and of course it did receive that first-cycle approval. About two weeks before that approval, we officially launched the name Sunovion – the strength of the sun and the power of human innovation.

We ran advertisements in Boston. We ran advertisements in the Newark Star Ledger. We’re going to run advertisements in trade journals and other publications. Our sales force is out there already. We have almost 1,200 sales reps. They’re out there now with materials about Sunovion, who are educating the physicians on our vision and what we want to do in the future as Sunovion.

And just to be really simplistic about it, there is nothing better than launching a new product. That gives us a great chance to launch the new product and new name at the same time. So, we’ll be working on that over the next six to nine months. We’re changing all of our packaging as we speak, and we’ll roll that out over the next year or so. We’ve rebranded all of our corporate headquarters. So far, I’d say it’s gone very nicely. Our employees are excited. We’ve had nice feedback from our thought leaders and customers. Our reps are excited to talk about the new company, the new culture. And of course the new approval.

Med Ad News: What are your personal priorities for the organization?

Mark Iwicki: Right now, first and foremost, we are doing everything we can to have a great launch for Latuda. We think the product is going to help millions of patients. We received a very strong label from FDA that is a good representation of all the hard clinical work that was done for the product. We had four trials that demonstrated efficacy for the product. We have a favorable safety and tolerability profile. So, the majority of the company right now is focused on doing a great job with the Latuda launch.

We of course have the rest of our six brands in the marketplace. Lunesta and Xopenex are our biggest brands. And then we have some brands that we launched over the last couple of years: Brovana, Omnaris, Alvesco. We’re focused on growing those brands as well. This is a chance for us to make a mark on the pharmaceutical industry with Latuda but also show what we can do with some of our other brands.

Right along with that comes the job of nurturing our new culture. When we think about our values, it’s doing the right thing for patients first, and it’s making sure we do the right thing for the company and for the employees. So, this has just been a great chance for all of the Sunovion employees to come together, build not only a new culture externally, but a great new spirit.

We try to do things a little bit differently at Sunovion. We launched a new commercial model in 2009. As you know, many pharmaceutical companies use mirrored sales forces where they send three or four reps into the same doctor about the same product. We broke from that. We think we were the first or among one of the first mid-sized to large companies to break away from that model, recognizing that it was a bit outdated.

We have single accountability for our brands with our reps that inspired our company, starting in the beginning of 2009. Our performance on key brands actually improved. We reduced the number of multiple reps selling a brand, improved our performance, and that put wind in the sails for Sepracor and now for Sunovion.

This is a great chance for us to keep building the spirit with our employees. Just bringing the company together has created a lot of development opportunities.

Do a great job launching Latuda, manage our business, and take care of our employees and build this great new company together: those are the things I focus on the most.

Earlier this year I had interviewed Mr. Kamp for our Podcast series, The Med Ad News Show. In that discussion, we talked at length about how the pharmaceutical industry narrowly avoided an elimination of the marketing expense tax exemption in the healthcare reform bill. Mr. Kamp talked about how he believes that the idea remains popular in Washington and could rear its head again with potentially devastating effect for the healthcare communications industry.

In light of yesterday’s events, that idea could have more life than ever. The country is clearly deficit obsessed, so this will be a key issue for politicians in the coming year.

“The deficit is going to be something everybody from the Tea Partiers to even the far Left are going to focus on,” Mr. Kamp told Med Ad News. “And nobody is going to want to raise personal taxes between now and the presidential election, so there are going to have to be taxes on businesses. But nobody is interested in taxing business either in the middle of a ‘jobs, jobs, jobs’ economy. So there isn’t a lot of room.”

Every possible source of revenue is going to be on the agenda, and the revenue that could come from eliminating the tax deductibility of marketing costs could be enticing.

As far as the healthcare reform legislation itself is concerned, Mr. Kamp does not expect attempts to repeal will have much traction in the short term. “Last night’s vote means that nobody is going to control either house,” he says. “The only thing they’re going to control is the gavel. They won’t control the votes. Every vote is going to have to be bi-partisan, and I don’t smell a lot of bi-partisanship happening today. The idea that somebody could, in that context, totally reverse the healthcare reform vote and not get it vetoed by the President is just not going to happen.”

Some Republican ideas that Mr. Kamp expects could garner some Democratic support include the possibility of tort reform, enabling of low-cost insurance policies for low-income workers, and insurance reform that allows insurance competition across state lines.

One of the major changes will be the fact that Henry Waxman will no longer be chairman of the House Commerce Committee. “That means we’ll have less noise from him,” Mr. Kamp says.

Mr. Kamp cautions, however, that this does not mean Republicans will necessarily be PhRMA’s best friend. “PhRMA enabled healthcare reform, working with the Democratic president,” he says. “There’s going to be some old bad feelings there. I’ve heard, for example, that the new speaker of the house, John Boehner, is very upset with PhRMA as an institution.”

Overall, Mr. Kamp believes that industry will need to remain vigilant in light of the election results. “It’s a mix,” he says. “The battles that were fought last year will be part of the context of the battles next year.”

“With Vimovo now available in pharmacies across the country, AstraZeneca is excited to launch this new Web site, which puts healthcare providers just a click away from important information about Vimovo,” says Lisa Schoenberg, VP, commercial brand leader-specialty care, AstraZeneca. “With the launch of VIMOVOtouchpoints, AstraZeneca has created an interactive and convenient forum for physicians to learn about a new treatment option for osteoarthritis pain in patients at risk of NSAID-associated gastric ulcers.”

The Web site enables physicians to click to connect to a personal account specialist and have 24/7 access to information about the product. The resource provides physicians with a variety of helpful tools and information about Vimovo.

Healthcare professionals are able to click to chat with a personal account specialist; order Vimovo samples online; watch physician-led online meetings about Vimovo; as well as learn more about the product through in-depth information on efficacy, safety and tolerability, access, and affordability.

“Many of the 27 million Americans affected by osteoarthritis treat their symptoms with NSAIDs,” says Robin K. Dore, M.D., rheumatologist and clinical professor of medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Anaheim and private practice in Tustin, Calif. “However, one half of chronic users are at risk of developing NSAID-associated gastric ulcers, which may compromise effective management of the disease. In a single pill, Vimovo delivers both the proven osteoarthritis pain relief of naproxen while reducing the risk of developing NSAID-associated gastric ulcers.”

Crucial conclusion for the eyes of pharma marketers: nearly half of the physicians surveyed say they require or prefer appointments to be made by reps prior to one-on-one meetings, while about 23% of doctors refuse to see sales reps at any time at any of their practice locations.

According to the SK&A survey, the percentage of doctors who will not allow access unless an appointment is scheduled increases measurably when their practices are owned by hospitals or health systems. In many cases, the appointment must be made through a headquarters location rather than the practice site itself.

Some other important findings:

• 98% of respondents report that their offices are visited by up to 20 industry reps per week or one rep an average of every two hours.
• Specialty physicians are less likely to grant sales reps access than general practitioners. The top-three most accessible physician areas are allergists/immunologists (4.2% no-see rate), orthopedic specialists (5.1%), and diabetes specialists (7.6%). The least accessible physicians are diagnostic radiologists (92.1% no-see rate), pathologists (91.8%), and neuroradiologists (90.6%).The access rates for these specialists have remained constant for the last two bi-yearly reporting periods.
• Offices with fewer patients seen daily are less likely to see sales reps. Sites with a daily patient volume of one to 10 have a no-access rate of 28.9%, while those with a daily patient volume of 31 to 40 have a 13.4% no-access rate. Sites that are less busy are often staffed by one physician who is not able to take a break from patient appointments to visit with industry sales reps.
• Health system- and hospital-owned offices are less likely to grant sales reps access. Health system- and hospital-owned offices have no-access rates of 30.8% and 29.6%, respectively. Non-health system and hospital-owned offices have no-access rates of 21.4% and 21.7%, respectively.
• Larger practices are less likely to grant sales reps access. Offices with one to two physicians have a no-access rate of 13.3%, while offices with 10 or more physicians have a no-access rate of 42.2%.
• Physician offices in the Western United States are least likely to allow sales reps access. The South had the lowest no-access rate of 19.4%, and the West had a 28.4% no-access rate.

The Cure for the Common Celebrity Search:  Rx Entertainment

New Agency Focused on the Healthcare Entertainment Marketing

This wasn’t the best-written leader ever – you’d think it was about Grey’s Anatomy, and the “the” in the second line is unnecessary – but it caught my eye enough to read further and find out what it was really about: an agency that pairs celebrities with healthcare brands for marketing campaigns.

And THAT was interesting. I’m certainly aware of many of the prominent celebrity campaigns for pharma brands – that Mandy Patinkin commercial for Crestor has been stuck in my head for years now – but didn’t know that somebody could make a living out of engineering such marriages. So I had a little digital talk with Nancy Caravetta, the founder of said agency, and she had some very interesting things to say.

Josh: What brought you to this particular endeavor?

Nancy: I had been in healthcare public relations for many years working at many of the top international agencies, based in NYC. I owned a global healthcare boutique called CPR Worldwide which I sold with my partners to Omnicom in 2003.

Josh: How does someone get into the business of pairing celebrities with healthcare marketers?

Nancy: As the rules of direct-to-consumer advertising changed in the 1990s, using celebrities in pharmaceutical campaigns became much more popular.  Since I had been in pharmaceutical public relations for 16 years, I already had a large client base of pharmaceutical companies and PR and advertising agencies.

When I sold my agency in 2003, many of my clients began asking me to find celebrities for them.  I had implemented many celebrity campaigns when I worked on the agency side and I also went to USC film school, so I had a plethora of friends who worked in the entertainment industry.

Josh: Can you give me some examples of deals you’ve done between celebrities and prescription pharmaceutical brands or companies?

Nancy: Although I cannot speak of campaigns we currently work on, we have worked with top celebrities, chefs, and athletes.  I’ve worked with:

-      Keri Russell on a campaign for Sanofi-Aventis  on the Sounds of Pertussis vaccine campaign

-      Angelica Huston to help launch the well-known Merck Manual

-      Elisabeth Hasselbeck and Marg Helgenberger for a fundraiser sponsored by P&G where all the proceeds went to breast cancer research

-      Robert DeNiro to help launch a nicotine patch. He was premiering one of his films in NY and we coordinated a fundraiser for cancer research tied to the event.

-      Dara Torres; we worked with Dara, Centecor, and The National Psoriasis Foundation on a public service campaign to raise awareness for psoriasis

-      Hector Elizondo on a campaign for CaringforAlz; campaign focused on the caregivers of Alzheimers patients and Hector’s mom suffered from the condition. This was a national campaign supported by the Exelon brand team at Novartis.

Josh: Tell me about the process of selecting a celebrity for a particular campaign. How involved are you in that process?

Nancy: We are very involved.  Initially, our clients either share just the campaign overview and we brainstorm together the best type of celebrity that would resonate with their target audiences or they have already determined what parameters they need for a celebrity spokesperson.  At that point, we begin to cull our proprietary databases that include information about the celebrity’s connections to certain healthcare issues or diseases; and more basic information about their latest and upcoming projects, demographics and how they appeal to a variety of audiences.  We will then provide the client with a research report that includes our input on which celebrity opportunities might be the best fit for their campaign.

Rx Entertainment manages the negotiation process from beginning to end.  In order to have consistent communication amongst all parties during this sensitive time, we assign one senior staff person to be on call for every aspect of the campaign.  This goes beyond once the contract is signed; we also work to coordinate media trainings, media days, interview requests and any other appearances.

If the campaign we are working on involved product placement or branded integration, the process is even more involved.  Our team spends a great deal of time working with major movie and television studios and production companies looking for properties that would be appropriate to pair with healthcare brands and integrate them into the story line of the show.  This includes both over-the-counter products, prescription medications, and unbranded awareness campaigns.

Josh: Do companies usually come to you saying, “I want XYZ celebrity,” or is it more of a discussion/negotiation/process of figuring out who best fits the campaign?

Nancy: It’s really a combination of both of the above. Some have a precise idea of who they want. In other instances, it can take a fair amount of discussion and brainstorming to find the right fit.  Because we have spent years cultivating data on celebrities, we are often able to make recommendation that fit the bill pretty quickly once we know the client’s needs and goals.

Josh: As nearly as I can tell, the list of celebrities involved in prescription pharmaceutical campaigns is a relatively short one, and a few of them (like Robert Jarvik) have gotten into trouble along the way.

Nancy: I think you would be surprised at the actual number of Rx campaigns involving celebrities. Often times the campaign is strictly focused on disease awareness and there won’t be mention of the brand or related pharmaceutical company. We actually have a pretty robust database on our site that lists most of the campaigns that have been launched in the past 10 years. Some of the more recent ones include:

-      Claire Danes and Brooke Shields for Latisse

-      Food Network’s Ellie Krieger for Centecor in the area of arthritis

-      Gretchen Wilson for LapBand

-      Jennifer Lopez for childhood vaccines

-      Vanessa Williams and Virginia Madsen for Botox

-      Sally Field for Boniva

-      Jim Belushi, Bruce Jenner, Danica Patrick, and Patty Loveless for COPD

Josh: What would your pitch be to a prescription pharma marketer who is nervous about the risks of tying their brand to a celebrity?

Nancy: I would tell them that the most important factor is that the celebrity has to have a legitimate tie to the disease. In fact, I’ve never worked on a campaign where this wasn’t the case.  At Rx Entertainment, we are known for due diligence, to ensure there are no other issues that may arise as a result of the partnership.  Our years of experience have given us a feel for which celebrities are more or less volatile, which is another factor that we base our recommendations on.

We often advise clients to tie in a charitable cause to the campaign, as opposed to a straight product endorsement. Folks want their celebrities to be relatable and they want to learn about support programs that can benefit them; they are adverse to the hard sell.

Another factor that we strongly suggest to our clients is they not always go for the A-list celebrity. The A-listers do bring a lot of cache, but they also bring a litany of scheduling issues, an entourage, and additional difficulties.  There are many relatable, likeable celebrities that can bring as much recognition and enthusiasm to your campaign, with less headaches, you just know need to know where to find them.

Josh: What benefits can they get out of the arrangement that might not be available through other strategies?

Nancy: Like it or not, our society is a bit obsessed with celebrities. Most of all there is nothing like putting a human face on a disease. Nothing is more powerful than when someone you know says, “I have this problem and I’m learning to deal with it in this way.”

It’s why social media campaigns can be so successful. People like to hear about things through other people with similar experiences and we all like to feel that we can have something in common with a celebrity.

Josh: What do you think are some of the biggest success stories in the recent history of celebrity/pharma brand relationships? Why so?

Nancy: I think the Sally Field/Boniva campaign was a home run. I don’t know anyone who hasn’t seen that campaign in both advertising and public relations. Most folks know the drug and the disease it treats. You can’t get any better than that. Doctors I’ve spoken to say they get patients coming in all of the time who ask for the “medication” Sally Field is taking. GlaxoSmithKline invested a tremendous amount into this campaign, but it definitely paid off in brand recognition and awareness.

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