10 Sep Big Pharma’s Marketing Tactics“Big Pharma” is the name the business press uses for the gigantic pharmaceutical industry. Most of us are familiar with Big Business and Big Government. Now Big Pharma continues to be in the news and has been for several years regarding its marketing, advertising, pricing, and sales tactics. The pharmaceutical industry has been under attack by consumers and patient groups for well over a decade now. But, in 2015 and 2016, two companies, Valeant Pharmaceuticals International and Turing Pharmaceuticals, became headliners in an issue that has touched many families and has energized a national debate about the drug industry and especially drug pricing.

Big Pharma’s Marketing Tactics“Big Pharma” is the name the business press uses for the gigantic pharmaceutical industry. Most of us are familiar with Big Business and Big Government. Now Big Pharma continues to be in the news and has been for several years regarding its marketing, advertising, pricing, and sales tactics. The pharmaceutical industry has been under attack by consumers and patient groups for well over a decade now. But, in 2015 and 2016, two companies, Valeant Pharmaceuticals International and Turing Pharmaceuticals, became headliners in an issue that has touched many families and has energized a national debate about the drug industry and especially drug pricing.

Valeant would buy patents for unique, lifesaving drugs, raise their prices steeply and watch the profits roll in. While raising prices is a common industry practice, it all boils down to the degree. Valeant was doubling and tripling its prices of new drugs, while other companies used smaller price hikes imposed over a number of years. Valeant got into trouble because it didn’t follow the industry practice called the rule of three. If you are raising prices, do it quietly, modestly and over time.e immediate response was outrage by the public and some members of Congress. In 2015, drug companies jacked up the prices on their brand-name products an average of 16.2 percent.

In 2015, Turing Pharmaceuticals and its 32-year-old founder and CEO Martin Shkreli, bought a drug named Daraprim and quickly raised its price more than 5,000 percent. Shkreli, a former hedge fund manager, quickly drew the wrath of consumers and has since been called the “bad boy” of Big Pharma. Shkreli’s tactics became a talking point during the 2016 presidential elections, and Bernie Sanders even refused to take his $2,700 campaign donation and turned it over to a health clinic. Mr. Shkreli is now the subject of congressional hearings into skyrocketing drug prices. The Valeant and Turing cases are just part of the recent backdrop in the continuing controversial pharmaceutical industry.

As Time magazine has stated, it’s hard to empathize with the drug industry these days because of the high coslets in paying for our latest prescription or some t of our prescriptions. We either just emptied our walconsumers just returned on a Greyhound bus from Canada, where we bought our prescriptions for less. Consistently negative public perceptions of the pharmaceutical industry add to its problems. Big Pharma has ranked negatively in the eyes of the public for well over a decade, and the positive views of the industry dropped from 40 percent in 2014 to 35 percent in 2015.

Big Pharma has been aware that it faces challenges to its marketing, pricing, and sales tactics. One gets the impression that the industry does not try to repair its negative image as much as it calls upon its huge army of lobbyists in Washington, DC to protect its interests. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Big Pharma had just over 1,000 lobbyists at work in 2016 and has spent about $24 million annually in lobbying expenses over the past several years. Though the public values the drugs the industry makes available for sale, increasingly, the multibillion dollar industry’s social responsibilities and business ethics are being questioned.

The Pharmaceutical Industry

The pharmaceutical industry is one of the healthiest and wealthiest in America. However, astronomical drug prices recently have continued to result in push back against the industry. For example, of 12 cancer drugs released in 2012, 11 of them cost more than $100,000. More and more drugs are being offered at this level of pricing, and the more they get away with it the more it becomes a standard that emboldens the companies to push the envelope on pricing. Anger is percolating about this level of pricing.

The top pharmaceutical companies, according to Fortune’s 2015 sales data, include the familiar names, with the most profitable at the top of the list:

1. Johnson & Johnson

2. Pfizer

3. Merck

4. Gilead Sciences

5. Amgen

6. Abb Vie

7. Eli Lilly

8. Bristol-Meyers Squibb

9. Biogen

10. Celgene

Among this group, only Johnson & Johnson (J&J) was ranked among Fortune’s “most admired companies in the world in 2016.” And, in spite of its relatively high