Drugmakers use events, meetings for promo

Meetings and events continue to be an effective way to get doctors'attention, according to Scott-Levin's US Total Promotion Report Generator System Physician Meeting & Event Audit. Doctors are more likely to accept invitations to events associated with a pharmaceutical company; while physicians said yes to only 40% of invitations not associated with a manufacturer last year, they accepted 49% of those associated with a drug firm.

However, who makes the invitation matters. The audit found that pharmaceutical sales representatives extended 65% of all invitations, but physicians accepted only about half (47%) of these. Doctors were more likely to say yes when a third-party organization made the invitation on behalf of the manufacturer. In such situations, physicians accepted 59% of the time.

Wave of creativity in invitations