Amgen getting ready to launch osteoporosis drug with unbranded site

About the Author

Richard Meyer is a passionate Internet DTC marketer with over 15 years of progressive experience in consumer marketing who`s worked on top pharmaceutical brands like Cialis, Prozac and Sarafem, as well as two years with Medtronic Diabetes. He is currently consulting for his own company, Online Strategic Solutions, and writes a DTC column for PM 360 magazine and blogs for Eye for Pharma in addition to his own blog, World of DTC Marketing.

Be afraid..be very afraid ! Amgen is getting ready to launch their osteoporosis drug later this year and they have already started some premliminary marketing with an unbranded site knowmybones.com. The FDA did their best to handcuff Amgen’s new drug but if they are marketing savvy it could be a winner but their unbranded sites shows that they have a lot of work to do.

An unbranded site is the perfect place to bring people together to talk about the risks, treatments and issues around treating osteoporosis but for some reason Amgen didn’t integrate that into their unbranded site. A great addition to this would have been a Facebook page to bring women together and at some time they are going to need to address the issues that have come up surrounding vaccines.

My father broke his hip in the last years of his life and taking care of him via an extended care residence was not pleasant. I was in the process of trying to launch Cialis at the time and often he would call me on my cell phone to complain about this or that. Anyone who has gone through this experience can probably relate and I believe it’s a real issue for caregivers.

70% of people were somewhat/extremely surprised to be diagnosed with

Osteoporosis? Lot’s of patient education opps…

Now back to knowmybones.com; here are some things I would have done:

1. Share your experiences: A forum (message board) where both caregivers and patients can share their experiences in dealing with osteoporosis and bone fractures. Especially useful would have been a place for people to upload videos of their experiences.

2. Injection safety: People are talking about it because of Gardasil and I believe that if you’re going to be transparent than you need to talk about the safety & differentiate biologic agents from vaccines. Separate yourself from big pharma which is a good thing to do now by telling people about biotech’s.

3. Widget: Ad a widget on osteoporosis news to any website and create a Wikki for people to connect with each other.

4. The cost of osteoporosis: I would again ask people to guess the cost to healthcare and to them potentially if someone in their family had to be hospitalized because of a hip fracture. The costs could surely raise some eyebrows at a time when dollars are hard to come by.

5. Take the message to your audience: Get ready to take the message to the audience where they are ONLINE including sites like Web MD. This is where people are going for health information.

6. Recruit brand advocates: Once the drug is on the market ask people if they would be willing to write/BLOG about their experiences with the product and hopefully show positive outcomes.

7. Reach out to influencers: There are a lot of BLOGS out their on women’s health. Why not fly them into Thousand Oaks to talk to some medial people and learn both about the company and the product.

Finally “Ask the osteoporosis expert via Twitter” Allow people to ask real questions from a real health professional via Twitter or live chat without sales pressure.

Amgen is on their way but it’s going to be an uphill climb but that has never scared the people in California before and competitors should be nervous.