How I became an eMarketing Pioneer

Name: Richard Meyer

Company: Online Strategic Solutions

Job Title: Principal


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I started my eMarketing career in healthcare as the first emarketing person hired by Eli Lilly for the US Affiliate. The first brand that I worked on was Prozac and Prozac weekly and we successfully launched the first online advertising campaign to support both those brands. As Lilly became more aware of the potential for the Internet we recruited the an interactive agency and several brands used online agencies to style and launch websites.

While at Lilly I also was launched Sarafem, a drug for the treatment of PMDD and was selected to the Cialis Brand team as emarketing lead. With Sarafem I was able to include a message board for patients as research had shown that women like to talk to each and relate stories related to PMDD. This was a huge breakthrough for a company like Lilly and a great success as in the first week of approval we had over 250 posts from patients who were thankful to have a voice about what they felt was a serious condition.

The Cialis launch was among the best business experience of my career. As we were a joint venture with another company everything we did had to go through two approval processes, one for Lilly and one for Icos. Cialis quickly became the number one site in conversion to Rx but we were also able to do a lot more. For example, I knew that most men surfed the Internet at work but very few have an office where they can surf the web in private. We therefore decided to take the message to our audience where they were online by creating a mini-site via FLASH that communicated all the key brand messages and product benefits. I also launched the Cialis 3-Point challenge in conjunction with March madness via Yahoo ! where visitors could play an online game while being exposed to brand messages. The results were extremely positive.

On the physician side I launched a series of 3-minute online video details on Medscape which were viewed by 95% of our target audience via a list match. Working on Cialis was hard work but it was rewarding. I worked with some very brilliant DTC marketing people as well.

Four years ago I moved out to California so that my wife could take a position with Amgen in Global Marketing. I worked for Medtronic Diabetes for two years but decided to leave as I tend to be passionate about Internet marketing and did not feel that Medtronic was willing to invest in online patient solutions to support the number one brand of insulin pumps while competitors were investing more dollars in online marketing solutions.

I currently have my own consulting company but it is my hope that someday I will be able to get back to work in pharma Internet marketing. My BLOG on DTC marketing and Internet marketing have over 500 daily readers and I also write a column for PM 360 magazine. I hope that I never stop learning and sharing what I learn because to me it's all about patients.

My hobbies include listening to jazz, collecting and drinking wine, cooking, classic movies and history. DTC marketing has a long way to go before they acknowledge empowered patients but being passionate about this industry makes it fun and rewarding. I Tweet quite a bit about pharma marketing, or lack thereof, and I am happy to talk with anyone anytime about the DTC industry and marketing on the Web.