urking behind all
the sound and
fury in the political realm, 2017 is
bringing new opportunities to marketers that have
nothing at all to do with orange
hair. A whole generation of technologies are growing to maturity
together – predictive targeting, virtual reality, behavioral science, interactive video, big data, and more
– all of which are transforming the
ways in which brands can communicate with their audiences. But of
course politics will matter too in
this Year One of the Trump administration, as the continuing debate
over drug pricing and the impact
of the new president’s policies on
the pharma industry remain very
much up in the air. So to find out
the pharma industry’s agenda for
2017, we at Med Ad News asked
folks inside the industry what we
thought were the key questions for
the year. Here’s what they told us.
MED AD NEWS: What’s up next for
marketing technologies in 2017?
What new tech tools in the brand
manager’s toolbox will make the
biggest impression? And what tech
tools are wearing thin? Why so?
Keith Betz,VP of client services,
B u tler / T ill : I think virtual reality
is a really promising technology.
As this technology is more widely
adopted with consumers (Google’s
Daydream View, Samsung’s Gear
VR, etc.) the application for pharmaceutical marketers becomes
more of a reality (no pun intended).
Taking a virtual “walk” through the
human body can be an amazingly
impactful experience for consumers and healthcare professionals
alike. Using the elements of sight,
sound and motion innate to VR
technology to engage patients with
their health provides a huge opportunity to make a long-term impact
that’s not easily forgotten. Imagine
patients using VR to understand
how a specific treatment is working
within the body or how their current condition impacts the body.
Healthcare professionals engaging
with VR content can open the door
for new CME opportunities, en-
riched patient conversations, mod-
ified doctor;rep discussions and
enhanced trade show;conference
interactions. We’re just scratching
the surface with VR and the future
looks bright for this technology and
its applications within the pharma-
ceutical marketing landscape.
Jay Carter, sen io r V P , dir ec t o r
ofbusinessdevelopm ent,Abelson-T a y l o r : CRM will shift as pharma
embraces the ability to promote to
people with only their Facebook
ID. There are lots of people who
don’t want their disease states
made public. We can engage them
using this important feature.
Ramon Chen, chief m arketing officer, Reltio: In 2017, more
pharma organizations will adopt
an integrated approach to data,
enabling marketing to work more
efficiently. Various business units
within an organization typically
access, use and manage their own
data sets to solve their own business challenges in marketing, sales,
and compliance. CIOs and CDOs
at leading pharmaceutical organizations have already implemented
technologies that enable a single,
complete and reliable pool of data
accessible by all employees. With
cloud data management platforms
dramatically lowering typical cost
and resource barriers to achieve
shared data nirvana, many more
will follow suit in 2017. These capabilities will shorten time to market
for new drugs and therapies and
support new commercial models in
the pharmaceutical industry.
Personalized medicine is a boon
for the industry and patients, and
it can also be a tremendous advantage for the pharmaceutical organizations that adopt this integrated
approach to data. New platforms
and data-driven applications can
make data across multiple sources
reliable, and distill all of the noise
down to the relevant insights and
recommended actions that are
unique to each patient. This will
lead to better efficacy, outcomes
and actual justifiable value delivered by each pharma company’s
product. Data-driven applications
will also enable companies to hy-per-personalize the delivery of their
drugs, and close the loop on their
outcomes. As drug statistics and
efficacy data becomes available and
transparency becomes commonplace, the channels of influence
and distribution will become more
data-driven, reducing the costs
previously associated with legacy
methods of sales and marketing.
Greg Chu, chief operating officer, InTask: By now, even the
most casual student of consumer behavior and decision-making
has heard of at least a handful of
behavioral economics concepts.
Thanks to the popularization of
the discipline through the works of
Daniel Kahneman, Daniel Ariely,
and Richard Thaler among others,
terms like “loss aversion,” “
temporal discounting,” and “bounded ra-
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continued on page 6
FEBRUARY2017MEDADNE WS• 15
016 turned out to be a dis-
appointing year in terms
of the amount of new drug
approvals, especially com-
pared to the totals from
preceding years. The U.S. Food and Drug
Administration approved for marketing
22 new molecular entities during last year,
the lowest amount since 2010 and down by
more than half of the 2015 totalof 45, which
represented a 19-year high.
One reason for the downswing is five new
drugs that had initially beenslated for marketing clearance during 2016 wound up gaining
U.S. regulatory clearance at the endof 2015.
Additionally, there was a decrease in medicines that were submitted for approval and
the FDA rejected or delayed more applications in 2016 thanduring the prior two years.
Some of those delayed products may gain
marketing clearance during 2017, including
some exciting and innovative new medicines
that are detailed in the pages that follow.
The industry vibe remains mostly positive
for R&D of new medicines, particularly in
the areas of oncology andgenetic diseases,
though many drug firms continue to struggle taking a new chemical entity from the lab
all the way through to marketing approval at
tremendously high costs, along with resistance from health insurers and politicians
regarding their lofty drug prices. President
Trump certainly has made it no secretthat he
will do his best to bring down medicine prices. Deloitte data shows that R&D returns on
investment at the top 12 pharma companies
dropped to 3. 7 percent in 2016 compared to
a record 10.1 percent during 2010.
According to a report issuedby the Per-sonalizedMedicine Coalition (PMC), in 2016
– for the third year in a row – personalized
medicines represented more than 20 percent
of the new molecular entities to gainthe green
light from the FDA. PMC President Edward
Abrahams noted that the trend reflects the
pharma industry’s dedication to investing in
personalized medicine despite the absence
of a business model that ensures success and
persistent barriers in public policy that slow
the transition from a one-size-fits-all world to
one that is based ondelivering the right medicine to the right patient at the right time.
Per the report, six personalized medicines
were cleared for marketing by FDA during
2016 and nearly one of every four drugs the
regulatory agency approved from 2014 to
2016 was a personalized medicine. In comparison, personalized medicines accounted
for 5 percent of NME approvals during 2005.
Data from the Tufts Center for the Study of
Drug Development indicate that personalized
medicines represent more than 40 percent of
all drugs in clinical development.
The 10 companies profiled in this article
were chosen based on various criteria such
as existing pipeline projects and their sales
and marketing potential, areas of therapeu-
tic concentration, M&A activity and its re-
search and development impact, and recent
drug approval productivity.
AbbVie is focusing on advancing its pipeline to drive long-term sus- tainable gro wth. One element of
AbbVie’s mission and focus is to develop a
consistent stream of innovative new medicines. To that end, the company intends to
launch 20 new products or indications by
2020 that elevate the standard of care and
address significant unmet needs. AbbVie ’s
R&D areas of focus include immunology,
oncology, neuroscience and virology.
Veliparibis viewed as one of best sale-gen-erating prospects in the industry pipeline. The
investigational oral poly (adenosine diphosphate [ADP]–ribose) polymerase (PARP)
inhibitor is being assessed in multiple tumor
types. PARP is a naturally occurring enzyme
in the body that repairs DNA damage in cells.
While this repair is a useful process to maintain the integrity of healthy cells, the same
process may additionally help repair DNA in
cancer cells, allowing them to survive.
Discovered and developed by AbbVie researchers, veliparib is being tested in combination with chemotherapy or radiation to
help determine whether it can prevent DNA
repair in cancer cells to possibly increase
the effectiveness of common DNA-dam-aging therapies, including chemotherapy
or radiation. The potential new chemical
entity is being evaluated in more than a
dozen cancers, including in Phase III trials
in advanced squamous and non-squamous
non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), ovarian cancer and breast cancer. The investigational medicine was granted orphan drug
designation in November by U.S. regulators
for treating advanced squamous NSCLC.
During 2016, Venclexto (venetoclax) was
regardedas one oftheindustry’s most promising pipeline products in terms of eventual
sales potential. In December 20016, the
European Commission granted conditional marketing authorization for Venclexto
monotherapy for treating chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) in the presence of 17p
deletion or TP53 mutation in adult patients
who are unsuitable for or have failed a
B-cell receptor pathway inhibitor; and for
the treatment of CLL in the absence of 17p
deletion or TP53 mutation in adult patients
who have failed chemoimmunotherapy and
a B-cell receptor pathway inhibitor.
The U.S. FDA granted accelerated ap-
proval of Venclexta in April 2016 for treat-
ing patients with CLL with 17p deletion
who have received at least one prior ther-
apy. The B-cell lymphoma 2 (Bcl-2) inhib-
itor has been projected to generate sales of
more than $2 billion in 2022. Venclexta is
being jointly developed by AbbVie and Ge-
nentech, a member of the Roche Group.
AbbVie filed a new drug application to the
U.S. FDA for its investigational, pan-genotypic, once-daily, ribavirin-free regimen of
glecaprevir (ABT-493)/pibrentasvir (ABT-
530) (G/P). The NDA was accepted with
priority-review designation, as announced
in early February 2017. The combo product
is being studied for treating chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV). In Phase III trials, eight
weeks of therapy with G/P achieved high
sustained virologic response (SVR) rates
across all major genotypes (GT 1-6) in patients without cirrhosis, which represents
the majority of HCV patients. AbbVie received U.S. FDA breakthrough therapy
designation for its investigational regimen
for treating patients who failed previous
therapy with DAAs in genotype 1. AbbVie
additionally filed its EU regulatory application and remains on track for submission
in Japan during first-quarter 2017. AbbVie
managers expect commercialization of the
next-generation combination during 2017.
AbbVie’s glecaprevir/pibrentasvir (G/P)
clinical development program was designed
to explore a quicker path to virologic cure
for all major HCV genotypes (GT1-6), with
the goal of addressing treatment areas of
continued unmet need. G/P is an investigational, pan-genotypic regimen being studied as a potential cure in 8 weeks for HCV
patients without cirrhosis and who are new
to treatment, who make up the majority of
HCV patients. AbbVie is additionally testing
G;P in patients with specific treatment challenges, including genotype 3, patients who
were not cured with previous DAA treatment, andthose with chronic kidney disease
(CKD), such as patients on dialysis.
G/P is an investigational, once-daily regimen that brings together two distinct antiviral agents in a fixed-dose combination
of glecaprevir (300mg), an NS3/4A protease inhibitor, and pibrentasvir (120mg), an
NS5A inhibitor. G/P is dosed once per day as
three oral tablets. Glecaprevir (GLE) was discovered during the continuing collaboration
between AbbVie and Enanta Pharmaceuticals for HCV protease inhibitors and regimens, including protease inhibitors.
Unlike many industry players, AbbVie has
not shied away from developing new medi-
cines to tackle the difficult research area of
neuroscience. In January 2017, Abbvie an-
nounced the beginning of two Phase II clin-
ical study programs to explore ABBV-8E12,
an investigational anti-tau antibody, in pa-
tients with early Alzheimer’s disease and
progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP). In
recognition of the lack of treatment options
available to patients with PSP, FDA grant-
ed fast track designation to ABBV-8E12.
The FDA and European Medicines Agency
(EMA) also granted orphan drug designa-
tions to the new drug candidate for PSP.
Licensed from C2N Diagnostics during
2015, the humanized antibody ABBV-8E12
is being evaluated to target the tau protein,
which is believed to stabilize intracellular
structures necessary for maintenance and
transport in neurons. Abnormal accumu-
lation of altered tau protein is a hallmark in
various neurodegenerative conditions, where
the development of tau pathology strongly
correlates with clinical disease progression.
AbbVie continues to expand its Imb-
ruvica program. The U. S. Food and Drug
Administration in January 2017 approved
the product to treat patients with marginal
zone lymphoma (MZL), an indolent form of
non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma (NHL). There are
no other approved treatments specifically in-
dicated for patients with MZL. This approval
marks the fifth unique type of bloodcancer
indication clearedfor Imbruvica.
The first-in-class, oral, once-daily therapy
top10pipelinesannualreport
Top 10 Pipelines
There was a signi;cant drop-o; in NME approvals by FDA
in 2016, but there were not enough new drug applications
with user fee goals to reach the lofty 2015 total.
2
By Andrew Humphreys • andrew.humphreys@medadnews.com
AbbVie
AbbVie
AstraZeneca
Biogen
Celgene
Johnson & Johnson
Kite Pharma
Novartis
Roche
Sanofi
Shire
TOP 10 PIPELINES
12 PMoganHeahcaeConeence|anuay112017|©2017
Near-Term Growth Assets are Significantly De-risked
2017KeyPpeneMestonesforNear-TermGrowthAssets
mbruvca Vencexta Next-GenHCVEagox Rova-T ABT-494 Rsankzumab
2L+MZLappova
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1LMCLPh3daa*
Poenanemdaan
ohenonHodgkns
ymphomas*
r/rCLLPh3daa ng*
1LDLBCLPh3sa
2L+FLPh3sa
Pan Genoypc
regmenappova
Endomeross
ng
3LSCLC
Ph2daa ng
NeuroendocrneTumos
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CrohnsDseasePh3sa
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PsAPh2bdaa
2017 2021 2018 2019 2020
NextGenHCV
mbruvca2L+MZL2L+cGvHD
Vencextar/rCLL
RovaT3LSCLC
Eagoxendometross
mbruvca1LDLBCL1LMCL2L+FL
Vencexta1LCLL
RsankzumabPs
ABT494RA
mbruvca3L+MM
Vencexta1LAML2L+MM
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RsankzumabPsA
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PotentialNear-Term Launches Across AbbVie’s Late-Stage, De-Risked Assets
*PannednemanayAppomaedaeaeadouaeevendven
agenda 2017
AGENDA 2017:
In this new and turbulent year, the capabilities of technology and the dreams
of marketers are beginning to look much the same.
15
inside
24
26
special feature
24•MEDADNEWSFEBRUARY2017
espite the general anxiety over the
impact of President Trump’s policies,
when it comes to pharmaceutical sales
forces, little of what he does will actu-
ally affect pharma sales-force strate-
gies. The trends that are continuing to play out are
declining rep access, the size of pharma sales forces,
and the struggle with the conceptof key account
management, as well as trying to figure out how reps
should be compensated.
As Robert Kelly, senior principal, Center of Excellence, QuintilesIMS points out, most of that company’s pharma clients in sales and marketing tend
to work in annual business cycles, so what pharma
companies were planning to do for 2017 was already
decided in October 2016. “They’re not going to by no
means influence their sales-force sizing and targeting strategies based on what president just won the
election,” Kelly says.
The issues administration policies might take
on – for example, drug pricing or mergers among
healthcare companies – will impact the marketing
side more than the sales side, according to Pratap
Khedkar, managing principal at ZS Associates.
Khedkarsaysonetrendthatwillcontinueis thatin-personsalesrepaccesswilldeclineand pharmawillusemoredigitalmeanstocontact
and communicate with doctors.
“One [factor driving that trend] is that the doctor
doesn’t want to see the reps anymore and is getting
more and more comfortable – especially the doctor
that comes from a younger generation – with digital
and nonpersonal means of getting information,”
Khedkar says. “I think that generational change is
irreversible.”
Last year, in fact, “the number of digital touches
to doctors finally exceeded the number of human
touches to doctors,” Khedkar told Med Ad News.
While it is true that physicians do not open up
every e-mail companies send to them, pharma is
reaching out more by e-mail and other digital means
rather than by rep visits.
“The fact that pharma is pumping out more touches without reps than touches with reps, that’s an
unprecedented milestone, because the rep touches
had been decliningby 3 or 4 percent per year, whereas these non-rep touches have been increasing about
36 percent a year,” Khedkar says. “In that sense, the
idea of the rep access not getting any better and the
slow decline will continue.”
According to Khedkar, another factor influencing this slowdown in rep access is the merger and
consolidation of healthcare provider systems.
“Typically, the IDN that has the more restrictive
policies ends up spreading those policies to the oth-
er entity,” he says. “So if one IDN was more rep-un-
friendly – in that none of the hospitals, reps are
allowed in, or in the private practices reps were not
allowed in, or if they were allowed in onlytwo days
a month, with appointments, or something like
that – then that sort of policy actually spreads more
easily after the merger. They’ll tend to have one set
of policies and it’s veryunlikely that they’d undo a
more restrictive regime that has been put into place
over the last few years.
“So that may be the reason why rep access slowly
gets worse. We have tracked it and we have seen an
unmistakable pattern over the last three years.”
Although he believes nothing the Trump administration will do would directly affect pharma sales-force strategies, the repeal of the Affordable Care Act
may “put the chill” on mergers between healthcare
entities, especially payers and providers, Khedkar
says. “So if this uncertainty puts the chill on merger
activity among the providers for awhile, that may
slow down this trend of declining access,” he says,
but “access will continue to be a challenge.”
Surprisingly, the overall size of the pharma sales
force has steadied and is even growing slightly. At the
peak in the mid-’90s, there were about 102,000 sales
reps. That number declined to 64,000, “and now it’s
been stable for the last three years,” Khedkar says,
In the beginning of 2016, industry observers
noted a small uptick, to about 66,000 or 67,000
reps. Khedkar says this modestgrowth is expected
to continue, as many more products are expected to
be approved, especially in oncology in the next two
to three years.
And despite the increase in the use of digital to
promote to physicians, when it comes to specialty
products such as oncology drugs, “the sales force is
still quite, quite important. Probably more so than in
the small molecule space,” Khedkar says.
Although pricing of these new specialty products
is a hot issue and will likely remain so, even if there
were restrictions on pricing of these products it
would be unlikely to affect the size of sales forces,
Khedkar says.
The reason is that there are fewer physicians prescribing specialty drugs – for example, there are only
about 10,000 oncologists in the United States.
“I end up, as an oncology marketer, sending the
sales force after all of them, and I probably don’t
need more than 100, 150 sales people,” Khedkar
says. “And it’s not a matter of profitability. ;Even; if
I launched at a price that was 20, 30 percent lower
than what I would have launched at before, that
actually doesn’t make a difference, because every
oncologist is quite valuable, and making sure thatmy
drug is available to the last possible patient, I will go
to every office. The factthat I have a100 versus 150 is
notgoing to make any difference to my bottom line.”
In other words, “swings in price don’t seem to
impact sales-force resourcing all that much” in
the large molecule drug market, Khedkar says. He
adds that pricing issues do have an effect on the
small-molecule drug market but the future pharmaceutical market is going to be dominated by
large-molecule drugs.
Kelly agrees that the concept of large primary care
sales forces is not the norm anymore, and that the
new products launching are specialty driven. “Even
some of the mature products in the market that are
still actively being promoted are largely being driven
by dedicated teams that are smaller in size, because
they have a focus on the specialist, such as rheuma-
tology or gastroenterology,” he says. “So what we’re
finding is that even the large pharma companies
have multiple sales forces of a smaller size that are
dedicated to focus on therapeutic areas rather than
the gigantic sales forces, with three reps to one terri-
tory and about 500 reps in each sleeve. Those days
seem to be behind us.”
Pharma companies also are coming to realize that
the traditional reach and frequency strategy is no
longer the right approach to determining the size of
asales force, Kelly told Med Ad News. “Some physi-
cians should be recognized as being more important
in a targeting strategy because of their open payer
access or perhaps their patient population having
the ability to pay for a higher copay, while other
physicians should be reprioritized in value because
of their restricted payer environment or their patient
population not being the right mix for the adoption
of the promoted brand,” he says.
There is much more data companies can use,
especially patient-level dataand data that shows
formulary restrictions, to determine rep strategies.
“Maybe your product is blocked on formulary, so if
the doctor is writing 1,000 prescriptions, it shouldn’t
really be treated like the doctor is writing 1,000
prescriptions if half of those prescriptions are no
longer accessible for your product,” Kelly says. “On
the flip side, if the patient in the office doesn’t have
the ability to pay for a higher co-pay, that’s a hurdle
you need to overcome. So you’re not going to send
the rep in there two times a month when the doctor
is notgoing to able to write as much as you’d like
them to write.”
Justbecausethemorebusiness-friendlyGOPhas themajorityongovernment,pharmawillnotbe abletoavoidconversationsondrugpricing.
“Even if you get classic Trump or the normal Republicans, the private sector will get an upper hand,”
Khedkar says. “And the private sector, which is dominated by very large companies like the seven big
insurers and PBMs, or 50-60 big provider networks,
they will always want to make sure they are paying
for value and they will put the pressure on pharma to
make sure that does happen.”
According to Kelly, the companies that empower
their sales representatives with data to have pharma-coeconomic conversations with their customers to
talk about outcomes relative to total cost of treatment rather than just the price of therapy will be the
more successful companies.
“Sales forces need to be armed with patient level
outcomes data and be given proper training to have
those types of conversations with their customers,”
Kelly told Med Ad News. “Patient level outcome data
make for richer conversations between the sales representatives and the healthcare professionals.”
Additionally, with a continued focus on drug
pricing, Kelly believes that there will be more
Salesforcespecialfeature
By Christiane Truelove • chris.truelove@medadnews.com
Interesting times for pharma sales reps
Trump’s policies may not have a directe;ect on pharma sales forces, but expectoverarching trends such as the
healthcare mergers thata;ect rep access, demand for value, and rep compensation to continue to play out.
D
Access and sales-force sizes
Focuson service andvalue
26•MEDADNE WSFEBRUARY2017
yan Abbate,
innovator and
founder of Pacific Communications, and
Mike Lazur, award-winning
creative director of Torre
Lazur, were honored as the
2017 inductees for the Medical Advertising Hall of Fame.
The black-tie event was held
on Feb. 9 at The Pierre Hotel
in New York City.
During his three-decade
career in pharma marketing
and advertising, Ryan Abbate
quickly earned a reputation
as avisionary and innovator.
He was a leader in the use of
DTC communications with
programs for Nicorette. Beginning with sales, and then
advertising management at
Merrell Dow, he became – at
29 years old – the youngest
department head in the Dow
Chemical organization. During
1990, he joined Allergan
Pharmaceuticals, where one
of Ryan’s responsibilities was
runninga small, in-house
agencygroup. When Allergen
decided to divest this operation, Ryan took itover, forming Pacific Communications
with just 18 employees. By the
time of his retirement in 2014,
he had built the agency into
the largest healthcare advertising agency on the West Coast,
with 250 employees, and one
of the fastest-growing and
most successful agencies in
the business.
Ryan was an early supporter of having all content,
regardless of medium, created by a single agency. He
knew that digital capabilities,
along with print and video
expertise, would be critical
to the ongoing success of
Pacific Communications. As a
result, Ryan championed full
integration of digital into the
agency’s offerings.
Ryan has also given back to
the industry through participation in its organizations.
A long-term member of
the Coalition of Healthcare
Communications – and the
onlyWest Coast representative on the Board of Directors – Ryan provided quiet
advocacy for the healthcare
communications industry in
New York, Washington, D.C.,
and the West Coast for more
than 15 years. He was also
a long-term member of the
Medical Marketing Association (MMA), the Medical
Advertising Action Committee (MAAC), and the Medical
Advertising Hall of Fame.
In the midst of creating an
agency business model never
before seen, in harnessing
individual ambitions to agency
objectives, Ryan mastered
the art of balance – no easy
feat while maintaining the
nurturing, supportive environment so seldom seen and so
often sacrificed in the frenetic
healthcare business.
“I’m trying to keep the focus
on the agency,” Ryan told Med
Ad News when asked about
his thoughts on being induct-
ed into the MAHF. “This is
well-deserved recognition for
Pacific Communications.”
Mike Lazur began his career
as an assistant art director
with a consumer agency, hon-
ing his skills on such brands as
the Triumph sports car, Brit-
ish Leyland’s Land Rover, and
Prince Matchabelli perfumes.
In 1976, he was hired to work
for a fledgling new healthcare
agency in New Jersey called
Thomas G. Ferguson Associ-
ates. During 1981, Clyde Davis
of Klemtner Advertising hired
Mike as senior art director to
work on brands from Pfizer,
Squibb, and USV. In 1983,
Mike received a call from Joe
Torre asking him to work for
his new agency. After helping
build the firm, in large part
with a string of new product
campaigns that garnered it
the title The Launch Agency,
he became a partner in the
renamed Torre Lazur Agency.
In 1996, Torre and Lazur part-
nered with McCann Erickson
to take the agency global, and
he became Chief Creative Of-
ficer for McCann’s worldwide
healthcare activities.
Mike attributes his personal
success and that of the agency
to constant creative innova-
tion, mentoring his creative
staffand always closely
guiding the creative people
and the agencies creative
process to do the best possible
work with the utmost in client
service. Torre Lazur’s creative
culture today is a reflection of
Mike’s easy-going manner, his
creative spirit, his mentoring
and managing abilities and his
absolute attention to clients’
needs. Mike never managed
with a heavy hand, but rather
guided and coaxed the best
from his subordinates.
Mike’s talent can be wit-
nessed through the many
awards thatline the shelves of
Torre Lazur. Because of that
talent, Mike was asked and
has served as Chairman of The
Global Awards for many years.
Under his leadership and
while carrying clout with the
title of Chief Creative Officer
Worldwide for Torre Lazur
McCann, The Global Awards
flourished, especially on the
international scene.
Mike has lectured numerous
times to industry creatives
and clients alike regarding
the importance of honesty
in creativity and strategy so
that the ultimate audience –
the practitioner – will learn,
understand, prescribe and use
the brand safely.
After 35 years in the industry, Mike has left an indelible
mark and alegacyof creative
and business success.
“I am thrilled to be inducted
into the Medical Advertising
Hall of Fame,” Mike told Med
Ad News. “For me to be placed
along side the many great men
and women who have helped
make this industry one of the
bestin the world, is an honor
indeed. Thank you MAHF, for
continuing to recognize the
industry and its people, who
might have otherwise been
forgotten.”
The MAHF was founded
during 1996 with a mission to
preserve the history and heri-
tage of the medical advertising
profession and honor those
who founded and built the in-
dustry through their induction
into a Hall of Fame.
Since its founding, the
mission of the organization
has been broadened to include
recognition of past excellent
creative work via its Heritage
Advertising Awards, and cre-
ation of educational resources
through a Young Executive’s
Program that holds multiple
educational seminars through-
outthe year. The organization
seeks support from the indus-
try for its efforts, with a focus
on the Annual Awards Dinner
held in February.
For more information about
the MAHF and its events,
please contact David Gideon,
executive director, at david@
davidgideon.net. medadnews
extrafeature
Medical Advertising Hall of Fame 2017
The MAHF Class of
2017: RyanAbbate
and Mike Lazur
R
By Med Ad News sta;
MikeLazur RyanAbbate
GROWING UP
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