Is Saving Children’s Lives Just Another Business Opportunity?

Pharmaceutical Manufacturing does several surveys and research studies over the course of the year to track pharmaceutical industry trends.

It is common market research practice to offer an incentive to survey respondents and for several years we followed the fairly uninspired practice of offering the chance to win one of three $50 gift cards, the chance to win an iPod or fairly conventional offers of this nature.

This year we decided that rather than standard survey incentives. we would donate money to a charitable cause in honor of survey respondents.

The Pharmaceutical Manufacturing team selected St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital as our charity of choice. We felt good about the idea of helping to support, in at least a small way, St. Jude’s important work of “Finding Cures. Saving Children.”

In addition, based on our knowledge and coverage of the industry, we know that St. Jude is doing some outstanding work.

In December 2009 we deployed our first research study in which we notified our audience that we would make a donation to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in honor of survey participants.

In fairly short order we were contacted by the Corporate Affiliates department of the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital (I did not even think to call them in advance). Great I thought! One less phone call I had to make to determine where to send the checks.

We would not make huge donations ($150 - $200 at a time which is our typical incentive budget per survey—$1500 – $2,500 over the course of the year), but I believe every bit helps when you are working toward something big and important.

Although I certainly did not expect to be given V.I.P treatment, I did expect that our donations would be politely received and perhaps we would even enjoy some level of feigned gratefulness.

I was informed that St. Jude was not interested in “our opportunity” and that the minimum donation for their corporate affiliate program was $250,000.

As a highly specialized information source, I don’t even believe that Pharmaceutical Manufacturing benefits much from offering any kind of incentive for the completion of our surveys. However, I view our research incentive budget as a small opportunity for us to do a little bit of good.

The St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital does outstanding and important work, but their “business,” their “brand,” is not interested in Pharmaceutical Manufacturing’s “opportunity.” I am O.K. with that. Non-profits have been hit hard by this recession just as businesses and individuals have. Plenty of organizations are seeking donations of any size.

Maybe this situation worked out for the best. CharityNavigator.org, a resource I find to be quite helpful, features some interesting information that points to the potential need for St. Jude to improve fund raising and administrative efficiencies. Click here if you are interested in reviewing CharityNavigator.org's ALSAC-St. Jude Children's Research Hospital profile.

The Pharmaceutical Manufacturing brand is not ours, it is yours. Without our loyal audience and advertising supporters, there would be no Pharmaceutical Manufacturing. In this spirit, please e-mail me at tbecker@putman.net or post a blog comment naming the organizations you would like us to support. We will maintain a list of organizations we donate to on our website PharmaManufacturing.com.

Because we made a promise to the respondents of our 2010 Career and Salary Satisfaction Survey that we would donate to the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, a donation of $150.00 has been sent.

Please understand, our donations will not be huge. But as Mother Teresa so beautifully said, “We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But the ocean would be less because of that missing drop.”

Harvard Business Review Names Top 100 CEOs

Very interesting. Harvard Business Review just released its list of the world's top 100 CEO's.

Click here to read more.

As a side note...of the world's 2,000 top performing companies, only 29 of those companies are led by women CEOs (1.5%). On the global political stage, the percentage of women heads of state is even smaller.

I have my theories on this. My theories are not laden with victim thinking or sentiments about how unfair the world is (I have never spent my energies engaging in that type of thought).

However, the lack of balance is concerning as I do believe men and women (as a generalization) tend to think differently. The business world and the world at large could use more of a balanced approach.

How to Fix Marketing in 2010: 6 Steps

An interesting piece. Some points you may agree with, other points you will not, but worthy of thought.


Now that it’s a new decade, it’s time to wean the marketing group away from their delusions of strategic grandeur. Here’s a simple, six-step program to ensure that your company’s marketing is successful and productive in 2010:

• STEP #1: Correctly define marketing. If your company’s marketers think that they’re doing something “strategic”, they’re wasting money. Marketing is a tactical function whose sole purpose is to provide qualified sales leads. In a productive marketing group, all activities serve that goal.

• STEP #2: Make marketing subservient. In most companies, there’s often a total disagreement about basic issues, like the intended market and the target customer. The only way to prevent stovepipes and infighting is to fold the marketing group into the sales group. Do it now.

Click here to read more.

The Brave New World of the Engaged Web : MarketingProfs

It goes without saying: The Web is very different from what it once was.

CNN and other "old media" stalwarts such as NBC, ABC, and the New York Times are no longer the top-ranked, most highly trafficked websites. Now, the darlings of Web 2.0 and beyond are Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Twitter.

It's clear that Web habits are changing fast. In terms of clicks per minute, the world's attention is dominated not by traditional content-based sites but by a set of radically different, interactive, community-based tools and services. Read More.

Marketing Communications Talent Needed Now More Than Ever

I recently finished reading “What Would Google Do?” by Jeff Jarvis (I really do not read ultra slowly and I did start reading this book a several weeks ago-other reading temporarily usurped this book’s place in the queue).

As I read this book. I had many “ah ha” moments. I do not believe Mr. Jarvis’ book contains all of the answers—it is a book designed to stimulate thought, not a Ouija board.

The seeds were planted for the changes we are now experiencing 15 years or so ago, but it has really been the last handful of years that the world of media has been turned on its head. Every type of media from television, newspapers, magazines, books, movies, music….the list goes on and on, has been forever changed.

B2B media has been far from immune. And an improving/recovered economy will not bring new life and prosperity to a forever changed and constantly changing landscape. Those merely waiting for the economy to recover so that we can return to “the way things were,” will be sorely disappointed.

However, in a media landscape that has radically changed, I find comfort in the reminder that as long as there is more than one supplier for a given product or service (in other words, as long as there is competition), marketing, marketing communications and advertising will exist. As long as competition or choice exists, product, service and solution providers will work to establish themselves as the products/solutions of choice.

In other words, as long as choice exists, marketers will strive to change the behavior of non-customers. And, changing behavior of non-customers or motivating continuation of desired behavior amongst existing customers has been the core goal of marketing and advertising for decades. If we are Coke, we want to change the behavior of Pepsi drinkers. If we are Thermo Scientific, we probably want to change, at least to a degree, the behavior of Bruker customers. If we are Emerson Process Management, we certainly want to change some of the behaviors of Rockwell customers.

So as marketing, marketing communications and advertising professionals, we can rest assured that there is an ongoing need for our craft. However, the question is, are we going to update our thinking, strategies and tactics to take advantage of and to survive in the new marketing and media landscape? This is the magic question in my mind.

My Experiment with Google AdSense

I am fascinated by all things Google. Google has reinvented the world as we know it in many ways and has made some extraordinarily smart moves. I am particularly fascinated by Google’s efforts to get to know us as individuals, to predict our needs and to predict what might interest us. Given that the majority of their revenues (just under $22 billion in 2008) are achieved by Google AdWords pay-per-click sales, their entire business model is based on predicting as accurately as possible which ads, which vendors and which information might interest us. Google continues to get smarter…to know us better while staying within the bounds of acceptable privacy practices.

I write three blogs—this blog as well as two blogs in which I address interests, opinions and thoughts outside the context of my professional life. I am now permitting Google ads to be served on all three blogs.

No, I do not envision getting rich via blogging. And no, I have no plans to quit my day job. Rather, I am interested in following the types of ads that are served. As traffic continues to grow on my blogs, I am interested to observe to what extent Google gets to know my audience. Quite possibly, Google will get to know my audiences more quickly than I do.

It will be a fun experiment and maybe within twelve months or so a check large enough to take my husband out to dinner might roll in from Mountain View, California.


This Wikipedia article offers a very good overview of how the Google AdSense program works.

Marketing Profs: The Three Most Popular Social Networks for Business (and Why You Should Use Them)

This article offers a very good basic overview of the three largest business social networks: LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.

I am active on all three networks; however, at this point I use Facebook for personal connections and my Twitter activity is far from regular. LinkedIn I find extroidinarily useful for a wide variety of professional networking, sourcing, idea and information sharing. I will be interested in hearing your thoughts on your use of the three networks.

MarketingProfs
The Three Most Popular Social Networks for Business (and Why You Should Use Them)