Marketing


Pharmaceutical Industry Question

Even though its growth rate has declined from the hot 18% of 2001 to 10% the pharaceutical industry still had a pretty darn good year in 2004:

in 2004 the U.S. pharmaceutical industry reached the quarter trillion dollar mark for the first time, with $251 billion in product sales

I suspect the industry would prefer the 18% growth rate but there are some pressures holding them back:

According to NDCHealth, four factors have contributed to the overall pharmaceutical market growth decline: generic erosion; safety issues and product withdrawals; increased consumer switching to over-the- counter (OTC) medications and a lack of new blockbuster drugs.

On the other hand market penetration for some drugs appears significant:

-Among all patients receiving a drug in 2004, 10% were on Pfizer’s Zithromax


Boycott Ending?

Maybe.
I’ve have successfully avoided any Clear Channel operated music venues for, well, since clear channel entered the concert promotion business and still enjoyed a lot of good music.
Now comes this possible good news:

Clear Channel Communications, the world’s largest radio broadcaster, will spin off its live-entertainment unit…

This, of course, wouldn’t have anything to do with:

Get ready to hear music to your ears: Concert ticket prices are about to come down.
Paul McCartney, Bruce Springsteen, the Rolling Stones and Coldplay are set to go on tour — but the real news for music fans is an expected drop of as much as 30 percent on some tickets, concert experts said.
Clear Channel Entertainment, the world’s largest concert promoter, is leading the way, cutting the prices for its lawn seats.
The show-biz giant is considering running a big ad campaign with the tag line “Music Sounds Better on Grass,” sources said.
No-frills seats at Clear Channel venues that used to go for as much as $40 will now cost $20. On top of that, Clear Channel is ditching the $4 facility fee it used to charge, all in an effort to lure back sticker-shocked music lovers.

Or, this:

Clear Channel thought its combination of assets would create a powerful, across-the-board platform for advertising sales on its billboards, at concert and sports venues and on its 1,200 radio stations.
Instead, the combination irked music fans, record labels and artists, who complained that Clear Channel used its might to punish artists who didn’t play by its rules and contributed to the sharp rise in ticket prices at venues it controls.

Final decision on the boycott to come after the spin-off happens and I’ve evaluated the new ownership structure.
Via Eschaton.


The Basics of Jeans Marketing

What’s the key to that spendy pair of jeans:

“Right now you could have a pair of jeans that cost $1,000, and people would buy them,” Lawrence Scott, the owner of Pittsburgh Jeans Company, said last week. What, Mr. Scott was asked, is the indispensable element in the making of a perfect pair of luxury jeans?
“Same as always,” he said. “It’s going to come down to how your behind looks when you pour yourself into them. No matter how good the wash or the detail or the label, if it doesn’t look good on a behind, it won’t sell.”

Well, I don’t plan on pouring my butt into my jeans anytime soon so I’ll be perfectly happy to get my next pair, like my last pair, on sale at a nearby mervyn’s: maybe $30. I’ll find something a little more useful to do with the savings…


Concerns About Flash Player Security

Have you all updated your Flash Player configuration to stop marketing folks and others from using it like cookies? Modulator reported on this back on April 1 and it was not an April fools joke!
Last Friday Internet Week wrote:

Macromedia’s Flash media player is raising concerns among privacy advocates for its little-known ability to store computer users’ personal information and assign a unique identifier to their machines.

Read the article. Fix your Flash settings!


Marketing Intrusion…

I have a few words for this guy:

Mookie Tanembaum, founder and chief executive of United Virtualities, says the company is trying to help consumers by preventing them from deleting cookies that help website operators deliver better services.
“The user is not proficient enough in technology to know if the cookie is good or bad, or how it works,” Tanembaum said.

Mookie, take a used hot poker and shove it where the sun don’t shine.
We can make our own decisions about which cookies or other server generated markers we want to keep on our systems! For a fee I might consider letting you keep a few more markers on my system but you damn well better ask first.
I’m rather perturbed that I now have to spend time learning how to configure Flash Player to kill off the stuff ol’ mookie is trying to spawn and then propogating that accross all the family systems.