Weeks after a FiercePharma webinar told drug reps to make the lab worker their first sales point and not the patient’s doctor (to avoid a delay in “therapy adoption”), the three-day Fierce Pharma Engage conference in San Diego unveiled more aggressive, stealth sales tactics.
At the well-funded meet-and-greet with 700 well-turned-out attendees, 150 speakers, and 56 corporate sponsors, we learned that:
1. AI will take over interactions with doctors (HCPs)
Whether online or in-person office calls, HCPs (nee doctors) are not fans of pharma marketing, some refusing to see reps altogether and many ignoring the cascade of drug messaging targeting them. According to conference sessions, doctors become especially miffed with inaccurate and dumbed-down messaging like “intro to our drug” info when they have already met with a rep, or PCP-appropriate info when the HCP is a specialist. Hello?
That is why Merck developed a new “agentic” AI app in partnership with Google Cloud that allows drugmakers to know exactly where in the sales “journey” (industry loves the word “journey”) their targeted HCP is. The AI app will signal drug sellers to stop when enough information has been advanced and they risk becoming pesky annoyances.
2. Selling disease fears works
As everyone on TV or the internet knows, selling drugs through fanning disease fears and “symptom mongering” is a basic, successful pharma marketing technique. (“You might feel fine but be suffering from …”) A session at the conference called “Shaping New Markets, One Rare Condition at a Time” confirmed the stealth and established selling spin.
“In rare disease, marketers aren’t just promoting treatments, they’re creating entire new markets, redefining education, and rewriting the playbook for engagement,” admitted the conference writeup. “The session explores how pharma leaders are shaping awareness before launch and driving access in conditions that have long gone untreated. Hear how collaboration between marketing, medical, and patient advocacy can transform awareness into action in even the rarest spaces,” said the session description. Recently, a bill was introduced in the Maryland legislature to force “disease awareness,” unbranded ad campaigns and “patient” groups to disclose the pharma funding behind their communications.
3. Influencers will take over pharma marketing
At present, over 3.8 million health care “influencers” populate TikTok alone, many possibly present at the glamorous April conference. As drugmakers bypass traditional medical gatekeepers with telehealth and direct channels and systems (more than 900 CVS and 500 Walgreens stores have closed), it is no surprise that pharma is shifting its marketing from traditional DTC to direct-to-patient, “DTP,” according to the conference. In a similar trend, reporters have also gone “direct” with podcasts and newsletters, increasing revenue by bypassing checks and balances. Get ready for more “my psoriasis,” “my fibromyalgia,” and “it-happened-to-me” stories that sell product through cyber-identification, and for celebrity salespeople with health stories like Naomi Watts, Serena Williams, Sarah Jessica Parker, Octavia Spencer, and Sofia Vergara.
Takeaways
Some were surprised that GLP-1 agonists, featured at the January Fierce Pharma/Fierce Biotech-hosted J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference in San Francisco, did not constitute a separate session at the April Fierce Pharma Engage conference. Have the blockbusters reached their profit potential, or has their sales “journey” been diverted by the entrance of new manufacturers or safety signals?
Also surprising this year was the expression of a new industry worry: misinformation. While those in the health field worry about pharma misinformation from its outsized financial leverage in Congress, NIH, CDC, news and social media, medical schools and hospitals, and “patient groups,” pharma also worries about “misinformation.” Hopefully prescribing information is not considered “misinformation.”
Martha Rosenberg is an investigative reporter whose work has appeared in the British Medical Journal (BMJ), Consumer Reports, Public Citizen, the Center for Health Journalism at USC Annenberg, the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University, and other outlets. She studied at Rush Medical School and writes on health care, food, medicine, and public policy.
Rosenberg’s reporting has been cited by Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, Mayo Clinic Proceedings, Public Library of Science Biology, ScienceDirect, the Journal of Pain & Palliative Care Pharmacotherapy, the Journal of Trauma & Dissociation, Britannica, National Geographic, Hastings Law Journal, and Wikipedia. She is the author of several books, including Multidisciplinary Management of Chronic Pain: A Practical Guide for Clinicians, Born With a Junk Food Deficiency, Big Food, Big Pharma, Big Lies, and Food, Clothes, Men, Gas and Other Problems. She publishes on Substack, OpEdNews, and her Amazon author page.
