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Getting schooled at closerlook
I’m often asked why I never went back to get my MBA. We have two of the best b-schools in the world right here in Chicago. My answer is simple – closerlook is my grad school. Everyday I have the...
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Pharma’s Tahrir Square
Our work has taught us many lessons, but probably none as important as the impact of relationship marketing on a pharmaceutical company’s organization and culture. Taking Baby Steps Relationship...
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Start Me Up
Until just a few years ago, conventional wisdom held that the pharmaceutical industry would continue its trend towards consolidation. The investment premise was that healthcare reform and pricing...
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How to Turn “Lots of Data” into “Big Data” for Pharma
Pharmaceutical firms, like most large sophisticated marketing organizations, spend a lot of money in promotion and branding. Individual brands will use multiple sales and marketing channels to reach...
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Transforming Physician Insight Into Actionable Pharma Strategies
As marketing as evolved from mass advertising and promotion to a more sophisticated interactive approach, marketers have many new choices. But in this new environment, marketing decisions must be based...
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Stepping into Your Customers’ Shoes
Physicians are justifiably skeptical when a drug rep walks in the door. The relationship is purely transactional. The rep wants the doc to commit to writing more of whatever the rep is selling. The...
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Deeper Relationships in Pharma: The “Give To Get” Side of Marketing, Part II
Recently I wrote about the idea of “Give To Get” marketing, the premise that you need to give value to your prospective customers before you ask them for their business. To further reinforce this...
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Pharma Brand Managers, Are You Fungible?
In pharma, the focus is always on market share, market share, market share. Managers are measured by growth and their ability to counter new competitive entrants and offset contracting pressures by...
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Don’t Be Kodak
Kodak recently announced that they expect to come out of bankruptcy this year. Founded by George Eastman in 1888, Kodak became a cherished household brand name, and the “Kodak Moment” entered the...
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Empathy: Why Good Physicians Will Always Matter
In the comments section of a recent blog post, a reader commented: The idea of using a computer to aid in making a diagnosis is not new. When hand held PDAs came out in the 90′s, I was one of the first...
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The Nature of Superpowers
I recently spent two hours in a conference room with some really smart people and three accomplished musicians from a young, innovative Chicago-based chamber orchestra called Fifth House Ensemble. We...
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Three Steps To Restoring Relationships in Pharma after a “Pinch”
At closerlook, we think a lot about relationships. We think about those that we have with our pharma clients, those that our clients have with their customers and especially those that we have with...
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Pharma Banner Ads vs. Brand Websites – Where Should You Invest Your Marketing...
A recent study by the online research company comScore offered fresh data on the impact of various forms of digital marketing. What we’re beginning to see is a very interesting and dramatic comparison...
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Creating Pharma(x)
Mention change in the pharma industry today and you’ll get raised eyebrows along with a sarcastic alliterative remark suggesting you must be Sherlock Holmes… No, the question is not whether change is...
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Closed Loop(s) Marketing – It’s More Than Pharma Sales Rep Tablets
As I re-read a recent Gartner report on Closed Loop Marketing (CLM) in pharma, it struck me that while Gartner was very focused on the shortcomings of current tablet-based sales applications for...
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Achieving Escape Velocity from Pharma Corporate Inertia
After a few recent client meetings I’ve begun to reflect not just about the challenges facing pharma, but the nature of those challenges. More specifically, I wonder if they reflect normal cyclical ups...
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Is pharma doubling down on TV? Really?
The data is out on consumer ad spending in 2013. It wasn’t a surprise that TV and magazine ad spending was down significantly while digital spend was up. If you own a TV network, you can’t ignore the...
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Publi-com: the whole was less than the sum of its parts
The dissolution of the Publicis/Omnicom merger (or was it the Omnicom/Publicis merger?) provides a helpful cautionary tale for all of us. The moral of the story is not that you should decide your CFO...
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Traits of a Healthy Marketing Agency
As closerlook passed 100+ employees last year, I began to reflect on what makes (and keeps) an agency healthy. Although there are many qualities that one might attribute to a healthy agency, I’ve...
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Expectations on the Rise for Digital Marketing in Pharma
I’ve begun to observe among our clients a distinct shift in expectations for the role of digital marketing. Even though pharma marketing budgets continue to invest in the traditional channels of...
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