BOSTON - The Medical Marketing Association is shooting for a 70/30 membership ratio that will be dominated by pharmaceutical, diagnostics, medical device and biologics companies. Its secondary audience of healthcare marketing agencies will not be aggressively recruited anymore, according to Kerry Parker, MMA's executive director. The 35-year-old organization, known for its annual "In Awe" industry awards, now reaches 50% to 60% of its core target audience and attracts 750 to 1,000 marketing entries from agencies and companies from worldwide. This year, to recognize more client-side marketers, MMA will issue a medical "Marketer of the Year" award as well as a "Medical Device Marketer", "Pharmaceutical Marketer of the Year" and "Diagnostic Marketer of the Year" at its national conference in Seattle in June.
Its regional conference "Medical Marketing in the Knowledge Age" held here on Jan. 22 reflects its focus on the client-side of the industry with seminars on pricing and competition, e-commerce and global branding.
"Our conferences are dealing more with client-based marketing issues so that our target audience can get more out of them," said Parker. The Boston conference featured speakers from Hewlett Packard Medical Products [HWP], Chiron Diagnostics [CHIR] (Norwood, Mass.),Genzyme Corp. [GENZ] (Cambridge, Mass.) and Lotus Development Corp. [LOTS].
Conference Highlights
Global Image Makers - When Hewlett Packard (HP) decided last November to support its medical products division with a $1 million international campaign (media costs not included), the key to making the colossal effort fly was research, according to Shirley Horn, worldwide marcom manager of HP's medical products group.
At pre-launch, analysis of customer research results found that HP seemed to be a "reluctant leader" in medical products, it had limited knowledge of HP's product breadth in cardiovascular and critical care and questioned HP's commitment to medical products. The HP in Healthcare campaign had the tagline "Helping you make a difference" was tested in North America, Asia and Europe. The campaign visuals and copy emphasized to its target of administrators and clinicians that "they can have a life too if they partner with HP." The campaign is running in national and international business magazines like Business Week and Fortune, as well as peer review journals that target healthcare executives.
The reception has been largely positive but in Europe one of the ads that featured a basket wasn't received well because it was associated with poverty there. In Hong Kong, consumers didn't get the connection of some of the "slice of life" photography, said Horn. (HP, Shirley Horn, 508/659-3692)
Drug Discovery Zone -The pressure to develop new drugs faster and cheaper is forcing pharmaceutical companies to pursue new ways to accelerate the process through technology. Its two flagship product offerings - Mapping Array and Directed Array - can shorten the drug discovery process from six years to two, according to ArQule's President and CEO Eric B. Gordon.
Dr. Joseph Hogan, chairman of the board and chief scientific officer of ArQule, Inc.(Medford, Mass.), a chemistry company that specializes in lead optimization and generation technologies, led an interactive discussion on how pharmaceutical, biotechnology and agrochemical companies are using technology-based lead generators and collaboration to expedite the new drug discovery process.
ArQule has landed 23 product discovery collaborations with seven major healthcare companies like Abbott Laboratories [ABT] and American Home Products that exceeded $375 million in 1997. (ArQule Inc., 617/395-4100)