A Gift for Pharma Marketers

Ellen Hoenig Carlson pulled off a Christmas miracle!

Ellen is a pharma and healthcare marketing leader, fellow blogger, and founding partner of AdvanceMarketWorx consultancy. (She was also featured in a past post celebrating the pharma women of Twitter.)

Her vision was to pull together a collection of blog-style articles from industry thought leaders that address the question:

On which 2 -3 key areas of learning should Pharma marketers focus in 2010?

She wanted to pull them all together in an ebook, and she only had a few weeks to do it!

But here it is - an ebook collection of advice - called Best Learning Strategies For Pharma and Healthcare Marketers in 2010.

I was honored that Ellen invited me to participate, and truly hope the advice in this collection is one that pharma and healthcare marketers will find valuable. Ellen points out six major themes that emerged from the piece:

1) e-Patients are at the center and critical to learning and design.
2) Authenticity isn’t a ‘nice to do’, but a ‘must have.'
3) Don’t’ get distracted by ‘bells and whistles’—remember the basics and keep your brand core strong.
4) The marketing cycle of life is going through unprecedented change requiring all marketers and communications people to unlearn much—the movement from paid marketing to earned marketing requires a different mindset and skills.
5) New marketing requires new ROI thinking…the ROI of connection, authenticity and compassion.
6) Effective marketing and engagement will require new kinds of leadership skills.

She also pointed out to me that the three agency contributors (myself included) focused not on social media, but on more of a "back-to-the-basics" approach to (digital) marketing. I found that extremely interesting given all the recent discussion around social media. Perhaps, while there is a lot of discussion around social media within (social media) venues such as Twitter, blogs, forums, etc. ... the reality that pharma marketers face every day is much more broad.

Anyway, I won't go into my contribution here, but invite you to read the entire eBook. And perhaps we can all set some New Year's resolutions for new learning in the new year.

Happy, happy holidays to you and yours!