Why the FDA Is to Blame for Drug Company Spam

(MoneyWatch)  Pfizer (PFE) and Merck (MRK) are so hobbled by the FDA's lack of guidance on digital marketing that they're sending spam emails for cholesterol drugs, according to blogger John Mack. By "spam," Mack doesn't mean opt-in email newsletters that users voluntarily sign up for. We're talking old-fashioned, random email list spam -- the lowest form of online life.

In some ways, this is the FDA's fault. The FDA doesn't have any rules for digital marketing, yet it continues to randomly discipline companies that try to use it. The FDA has taken more than a year to deliver long-promised rules for drug companies who want to promote drugs through web 2.0 means. So far, nothing has emerged from Silver Spring, Md.

Here's a snapshot of current pharmaceutical spending on online marketing (click to enlarge):


As you can see, over the next four years budgets will climb from about $1 billion to, er ... a little more than $1 billion. Compare that to the growth in social media spending alone across all advertisers.

While they wait for the FDA to act, drug companies are trapped in a netherworld that looks like the Internet circa 1997. They're afraid to utilize truly modern digital marketing techniques because the rules they're bound by -- which require a "fair balance" of medical claims and side effect information in each ad -- were written for the Mad Men era. An email can be lengthy, and thus cover your legal bases. Google ads, Facebook updates, and Twitter -- which don't have room for all the fair balance -- are more likely to run afoul the rules. That's the way many drug companies see it, anyway.

Thus, drug companies tend to advertise in only the most old-fashioned advertising venues. Hence spam.

Related:

• Novartis Shoulda Known the FDA Would Ban Its Facebook Widget
• The Activist FDA: Warnings to Drug Companies Up 50% From Bush Era
• FDA's Web 2.0 Hearing Recalls Its Unintentionally Hilarious Panel From 1996: "What Is the Internet?"
• Drugs on Twitter: Big Pharma Lobbies for New Rules in Social Media
• FDA to Hold Hearing on Social Media, Web 2.0; Long Overdue Guidance Could Be On Its Way