Healthy Skepticism Library item: 15795

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

Noyes J.
Firm looks to build buzz around prescription drugs
Boston Business Journal 2007 Sep 7
http://boston.bizjournals.com/boston/stories/2007/09/10/story16.html

Full text:

The formula for the average prescription drug commercial typically involves ordinary people speaking to the camera as they talk about the benefits of the medicine. But what if average people could be recruited to go out and speak to friends and family about the prescriptions they take?

Andy Levitt, an entrepreneur with a 13-year background in the pharmaceutical industry, is planning to do just. He’s rolling out HealthTalker, a Boston-based word-of-mouth marketing firm specializing in building buzz around prescription drugs.

It’s a departure of sorts for the heavily regulated industry, which has relied on promoting drugs through television commercials and print advertisements to reach consumers. But it’s exactly those ads, which often spend just as much time hurrying through possible side effects as they do explaining what the product treats, that would make word-of-mouth campaigns attractive to big pharmaceutical brands.

“A lot of time the information that is presented in those ads, while it’s obligatory to the (Federal Food and Drug Association’s regulations), can be confusing to the average viewers,” Levitt said.

So Levitt decided to bring the world of word-of-mouth marketing, which engages ordinary consumers to talk up products among friends and family, to the realm of big pharma. HealthTalker would recruit, educate and send out people already using specific drugs and ask them to spread information for pharmaceutical companies during coordinated campaigns.

In the campaigns, those using a particular drug talk about the specific illness the drug treats to people they know. Future “talkers” — as Levitt calls them — would be provided with detailed literature about the drugs and made to fill out an online quiz to make sure they understood what they were talking about. The campaigns, which could range in size from a couple hundred people to a few thousand, would cost anywhere between $75,000 and $500,000.

Levitt, who says he has invested his life savings into the idea, has already lined up a major client for a fall campaign. Shire Pharmaceuticals Group PLC (Nasdaq: SHPGY) is planning to work with HealthTalker on a consumer awareness campaign.

Levitt said “talkers” will give full disclosure during pitches. “You don’t want to bastardize the authenticity of what they’re talking about, but you do want to give them some guidance,” he said.

Additionally, people who participate in campaigns won’t be paid for their services, Levitt said. Instead, HealthTalker will focus on handing out smaller rewards such as magazine subscriptions or healthy-food cookbooks.

But beyond the issues of transparency are the regulations that come with touting a drug, and those can be choking to a word-of-mouth marketer.

“My fear is that because of the regulations, it drastically changes the ability to stay open and honest within the communications,” said Dave Balter, CEO of Boston-based word-of-mouth firm BzzAgent.

“Once you say something about a product you have to follow it up with all the possible side effects,” said Balter, who has represented less-regulated over-the-counter drugs in the past.

Levitt, though, claimed his recruits will be well-educated and ready to provide information on even those side-effects that can often read like a litany of adverse reactions. To ensure he stays within the bounds of the regulations, he’s brought in Lou Morris, a former branch chief in the Division of Drug Marketing, Advertising and Communications at the FDA, to serve on his board of advisers.