Healthy Skepticism Library item: 19926

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

Ed.
Pharma's constant shadow
eyeforpharma.com 2005 Nov 15
http://social.eyeforpharma.com/uncategorised/pharmas-constant-shadow

Full text:

The pharma industry’s image problem is one it has yet to adequately address and it simply isn’t going away any time soon, it seems, until it does.

The pharma industry’s image problem is one it has yet to adequately address and it simply isn’st going away any time soon, it seems, until it does.

In a recent public opinion poll (11/02/05) by Harris Interactive the majority of the American public say they would like to see two industries (among 17 examined) more tightly regulated than they currently are oil companies (55%) and pharmaceuticals (51%).

Pharmaceutical companies were ranked 13th out of 17 for trustworthiness in the poll, behind banks (#3), airlines (#7), car makers (#10) and life insurance companies (#12), but still above health insurance companies (#14), tobacco companies (#16) and oil companies (#17).

As Sarah Wealleans, associate director of strategic services for Landor Associates, so aptly put it in a recent European Pharmaceutical Executive editorial, [Pharma] executives seem incredulous that people don’st see the world the way pharma companies do.

Wealleans quotes Steven Parrish, senior vice president of corporate affairs for tobacco giant Altria Group, who says the point is not to win an argument; your critics’s views are legitimate, irreversible realities, but rather to give the public something new to think about.

Right now, at least from these Harris poll results, the public is thinking about tighter regulation for the industry. Surely, that’s not what we want them thinking about.

Wealleans advocates revamped branding that creates tighter links between corporate brands and well-known and often well-liked product brands, as well as breakthrough actions and initiatives that paint the industry as more of a collaborator than a combatant.

She’s right. It’s time for actions to go with the words. For, as she relays from Parrish, Actions may not always speak louder than words, but words without actions will fall on deaf ears. And for no words, perhaps, is that truer than for defensive ones like so many of those we’sve heard of late in an attempt to fix the industry’s image.

It’s time to put some meaningful music with the words.

How much more reputation damage will be endured before someone is bold enough to break away? Wealleans challenges.

We second the sentiment.

It’s time to show that the industry is ready to walk its talk.