"Surprisingly, it's the pharmaceutical industry that's been at the forefront of moving the FDA to issue social-media rules," reports TIME Magazine reporter Steven Gray in a story published online today (see "Drug Companies Take Their Pitch to Social Media — Carefully").
Steven interviewed me for this story and quotes me in this passage: "The companies realize their traditional websites and advertising strategies are no longer sufficient tools to promote products in a competitive marketplace in which doctors, pharmacists and consumers aggressively trade information about medicine on blogs. The companies are also aware that 'if they can't fully participate in the social-media conversation, they get marginalized,' says John Mack, publisher of Pharma Marketing Blog, which attracts about 25,000 industry readers a month."
I thank Steven for this 10 minutes of fame.
Steven's article focuses exclusively on Novo Nordisk's Race with Insulin Twitter campaign (@racewithinsulin), which is described as "one of the most provocative examples of how pharmaceutical companies are cleverly navigating the emerging, largely unregulated social-media space." "Provocative," yes. "Cleverly navigating," not so much. I only need to point out the story about how sanofi aventis not so cleverly launched a Facebook page to debunk that (see "Where's Your Social Media Crisis Management Plan?").
The article is actually a very good PR piece for Novo Nordisk and Race with Insulin. Although I mentioned to Steven my blog post heard about Kimball's infamous branded Tweet heard round the world (see "Novo Nordisk's Branded (Levemir) Tweet is Sleazy Twitter Spam!"), this wasn't mentioned in the article. That particular tweet was not particularly clever, although I agree that it was provocative.
You've no doubt heard from many industry people that the media is out to get them and write negative stories about the drug industry. In fact, that's the kind of story I was expecting Steven to write. He, for example, wanted me to OK his use of the word "provocative" to describe the Race with Insulin social media campaign. The TIME piece, however, is not provocative and does not attack the drug industry for its efforts, which is fine with me. Just remember this the next time an industry executive complains about the media!
Showing posts with label Media. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Media. Show all posts
Friday, December 17, 2010
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
Sex, Lies, and the Media: Did Businessweek Distort the Relation Between ED Drugs and STDs?
The headline in a recent story reported in Bloomberg Businessweek tells it all: "Men on Viagra, Cialis Show Triple Rate of Sex Diseases in Study." This was duly summarized in the Blogosphere on PharmaGossip:
You have to read down to the 11th paragraph of the 16 paragraph story to learn that the study does NOT prove that taking ED drugs leads to more unsafe sex. Quite the contrary: users of these drugs actually showed a DECREASE in STDs AFTER taking the drugs compared to BEFORE taking the drugs!
That paragraph states the study results: "The risk of getting HIV in the year before taking the pills was 3.32 times higher in drug-takers and 3.19 times greater in the year after, compared with those not taking the pills." [Find the article here.]
In other words, the groups of men who were prescribed ED drugs were in a high risk group BEFORE being prescribed ED drugs. In the abstract, the study authors were careful to point out "Significant changes in STD rates from the year before to the year after the first ED drug prescription was filled were not documented." [Find the abstract here.]
Pharma often complains that the media are "anti-pharma" and often emphasize the negative aspects of clinical trials, advertising, etc. (see, for example, "What's the Cause of the Drug Industry's Bad Reputation?"). The BusinessWeek article is just one case where I have to agree, although overall I sense that the industry gets a lot more positive traction from the media than negative (see, for example, "Academics Exaggerate, Journalists Regurgitate. What About Bloggers?").
What do YOU think?
"Men on Viagra, Cialis Show Triple Rate of Sex Diseases in Study - BusinessWeekReading just the headlines and summaries such as the one above, you might be lead to believe that ED drugs CAUSE unsafe sex, which leads to more sexually-transmitted diseases (STDs). Right? WRONG!
"Men taking drugs for sexual potency showed almost triple the rate of sexually transmitted diseases compared with those not taking the medications, a Harvard University study found.
"The results, from an analysis of the health insurance claims of men aged 40 and older, may have more to do with the nature of the men using the impotence drugs than with the medicines leading them to have riskier sex, the research report said. The study, looking at men taking Pfizer’s Inc. Viagra and Eli Lilly & Co.’s Cialis, was published today in the Annals of Internal Medicine."
You have to read down to the 11th paragraph of the 16 paragraph story to learn that the study does NOT prove that taking ED drugs leads to more unsafe sex. Quite the contrary: users of these drugs actually showed a DECREASE in STDs AFTER taking the drugs compared to BEFORE taking the drugs!
That paragraph states the study results: "The risk of getting HIV in the year before taking the pills was 3.32 times higher in drug-takers and 3.19 times greater in the year after, compared with those not taking the pills." [Find the article here.]
In other words, the groups of men who were prescribed ED drugs were in a high risk group BEFORE being prescribed ED drugs. In the abstract, the study authors were careful to point out "Significant changes in STD rates from the year before to the year after the first ED drug prescription was filled were not documented." [Find the abstract here.]
Pharma often complains that the media are "anti-pharma" and often emphasize the negative aspects of clinical trials, advertising, etc. (see, for example, "What's the Cause of the Drug Industry's Bad Reputation?"). The BusinessWeek article is just one case where I have to agree, although overall I sense that the industry gets a lot more positive traction from the media than negative (see, for example, "Academics Exaggerate, Journalists Regurgitate. What About Bloggers?").
What do YOU think?
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