Envisioning 2.0

Today, the Wall Street Journal has an article focusing on how unbranded advertising (or commercials that don’t mention a specific product) is gaining traction. The Journal writes:

“Unbranded . . . advertising is gaining popularity among drugmakers, which in recent months have come under renewed fire from lawmakers for the ways in which they promote drugs directly to consumers.”

The Journal also suggests that companies are using this type of advertising in order to avoid talking about the side effects associated with their medications.

The Journal’s focus on unbranded marketing is certainly interesting, but this strategy has always been popular — at least with some drug firms. Pharmaceutical companies (especially in non-US markets) regularly use this type of advertising to educate and raise awareness about issues related to a product.

In addition, I doubt Pfizer has aired these advertisements to avoid talking about drug side effects. It just makes good marketing sense. In a market where your product stands virtually unchallenged (Chantix is only one of two drugs approved by the FDA for anti-smoking uses – the other, Zyban, has lost patent protection), it makes a lot of sense to run unbranded advertising First, there is less likelihood that you are building a market for a competitor. Second, by pushing people to an unbranded Website, you get that much closer to driving them to a online property focusing on the drug.

The latest edition of the Health Wonk Review is up at Workers Comp Insider.  Be sure to read the interesting posts about the return of Harry and Louise.  This time, they are for comprehensive health reform.

Over recent months, the Massachusetts universal health insurance plan has received some knocks because people were hesitant to enroll in the program and its ever-increasing costs.  Now, a new government analysis provides us with a better sense of how the plan is doing.  Massachusetts reports that “since the implementation of health care reform, enrollment in private insurance has grown by more than 191,000.”  In  addition:

o    Massachusetts employers have not dropped health insurance

o    Outlays for emergency room visits decreased by 37%, saving the state $68 million

o    The percentage of patients seeking certain types of preventive care has increased

You can view the government report by clicking here.

A few weeks ago, the Kaiser Family Foundation hosted a forum where a panel of bloggers and experts discussed the “growing influence of blogs on health news and policy debates.”  I took the time to listen to the event’s podcast  on my way home from work one day and found it to be interesting and somewhat informative.  However, in many respects I was disappointed by the session.  I  list the primary reasons for my disappointment below.

1.    Lack Of Data: I think attendees of the event would have been well-served by an overview of the current state of the health blogosphere.  Specifically, data points from Pew on the number of Americans writing health blogs and case studies focusing on instances where they have influenced mainstream media coverage (there are many) would have been very helpful.  Several members of the audience had questions along these lines, which (unfortunately) went unanswered.

2.    Lack Of Diversity:  The panel was staffed by members of the media, high-level political aides and representatives of think tanks.  I was happy to see John McDonough on the panel, as he was interviewed for a report my firm developed back in 2006 on the health blogosphere.  However, there are many other individuals that have had a significant influence on the development of the health policy blogosphere.  One of them is Joe Paduda who launched the Health Wonk Review.  It would have been nice to see people like this included on the panel.

3.    Lack of Strategy: I found Secretary Michael Leavitt’s talk on why he decided to start a blog fascinating.  However, I kept wondering when he was going to focus more on the strategic thinking behind HHS’s various forays into the blogosphere.  For example, he started blogging during the HHS’s pandemic flu initiative.  What was the impact on that effort on communications with the Department’s stakeholders?  How did the feedback provided on the HHS blog influence policy?  In addition, the Secretary is using his blog to bypass traditional media sources in order to ensure the Department’s perspective reaches its key stakeholders.  How effective has that effort been?  Has his blog influenced reporting on HHS in the blogosphere and mainstream media?

These are just a few of the questions I was left with after the Kaiser event.  I’m sure that Kaiser will continue to focus on health blogging in the future.  While this session was a decent introduction, I’m hoping that in future years they dig a lot deeper.