Within the vast advertising community, it’s often difficult to convey what we do as an ad agency.  Heck, my father still doesn’t really understand what I do. Our agency doesn’t create funny beer ads, or promote a cool sports line.  We don’t hype banks or help sell food.  And while our clients are in the pharmaceutical industry, we don’t work on approved drugs.  What we do, I think, is far more challenging.

We work 24/7 to develop compelling ad campaigns that recruit the general public into medical research studies.  We must convince people that the future of medicine depends on their participation in a clinical trial with an “investigational medication” that has not been approved by a country’s drug review agency (i.e. the FDA). If that’s wasn’t hard enough, we must be compelling within a legal and regulatory box that most agency-types would find ridiculously-limiting to the creative process.  In pharmaceutical communications world, patient recruitment advertising is not the “coolest” of creative spaces.

So we were humbled and honored last month when we won two prestigious awards at the international Rx Club Show.

Check it out here:  http://www.therxclub.com/rx_current.php

Established to honor worldwide pharmaceutical product advertising and promotion, The Rx Club Show is judged in various categories by a panel of industry experts and is based solely on creativity.

You’ll see that most all of the winners are for campaigns promoting approved medications – that’s generally where the big agencies (and the big budgets) hang-out. By our count, we were the only agency to win based on work in the patient recruitment advertising niche.  Pretty cool for us.  Even better for the patient recruitment industry.

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Posted by Administrator on December 17th, 2009 :: Filed under Advertising, Clinical Trials
Tags :: Advertising, Honors, Patient Recruitment

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Two big developments in the pharmaceutical world of social media.  Here we are today with the first qd blog entry, while at the same time the FDA is holding a hearing on the use of the internet and social media in the promotion of approved medical products.

http://www.fda.gov/AboutFDA/CentersOffices/CDER/ucm184250.htm

Since we live in the “pre-approval” medical products space of patient recruitment for clinical trials, we’re all hoping for some guidance that can help us as well.  We’ve heard from focus groups that the public wants quick, easy-to-find information about medical research studies.  The challenge, of course, is how to do that within the confines of IRB approval, where all content targeting potential patients must be approved well in advance.

Study websites are on the rise with sponsors, and are fairly easy to create within the confines of the IRB.  But the instant gratification of social media makes everyone in the clinical trial industry nervous. And yet, social media is not only the new marketing frontier, it provides the constant stream of information that society has come to expect, and arguably, deserves.

If the interest in open communication about clinical research is truly sincere, don’t we owe the public the information they want in a timely manner?  And if the results are stronger participation in clinical research, and thus more effective drugs brought to market more quickly, don’t we all win?

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Posted by Administrator on November 12th, 2009 :: Filed under Clinical Trials, Social Media
Tags :: Patient Recruitment, Social Media

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