Healthy Skepticism Library item: 13953

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

Publication type: news

Rubenstein S.
Anybody (Other Than a Doctor) Need a Pen? Clipboard? Clock?
The Wall Street Journal Health Blog 2008 Jul 10
http://blogs.wsj.com/health/2008/07/10/

Full text:

So now that drug companies won’t be handing out those ubiquitous pens and other trinkets to doctors any more, what are they going to do with the leftovers? Turns out getting rid of this stuff is a delicate matter, as we learned from talking with AstraZeneca today.

This “doesn’t mean we’re dumping stuff out there, or filling closets of favorite customers, or selling stuff on eBay,” says AstraZeneca spokeswoman Leslie Pott. “We’re very sensitive to the public perception of these items, and are not looking to flood the market.”

Pott rattled off a list of inventory AstraZeneca has on hand: pens, mugs, notepads, tissue boxes, hand sanitizer, clipboards, exam-room paper, clocks. Many of the items the company handed out “were of practical use,” she explains.

AstraZeneca’s sales reps, who number about 5,200 in the U.S., are not being told to throw away the freebies, Pott says. But they’re not supposed to pile them up in doctors’ supply closets, either. A governance team will meet in a couple of weeks to hash out a trinket-reduction action plan.

It’s not always so easy to give these things away: AstraZeneca recently offered some of its logo-laden clothing and blankets to the Red Cross to help out victims of the floods in the Midwest, Pott says, but the Red Cross didn’t accept the offer. She says the company got the impression the Red Cross just didn’t need the stuff – not that it was turned off by the concept of accepting items that advertised AstraZeneca products.