Asked whether DTC ads on television should be retired, Read answered unequivocally – “No” – and noted the difficulty of educating patients when “so many warnings are required that [a drug ad] scares more people than it helps.”

Robert Bazell, NBC’s chief science and health correspondent – and Read’s interlocutor during a lunch session at the Cleveland Clinic’s annual Medical Innovation Summit – picked up on Read’s comments about excessive warnings on televised drug ads, noting Pfizer’s 2007 Celebrex ad that lasted over two minutes, almost all of which was spent on the recitation of warnings (Celebrex, along with its fellow NSAIDs, picked up a black box warning in 2005).

Responding to the question of why Pfizer decided to go ahead with Celebrex DTC ads, post black box warning, Read said “the trials that gave rise to [black box] labeling in Celebrex, the data, if one patient had gone the other way, there would have been a different statistical result.”

Asked by Bazell about the issue of trust: “What is your perception of the public’s perception of Pfizer and the rest of the industry?” Read said Big Pharma’s reputation could use some improvement. “We’re above Congress and tobacco, and slightly below physicians and hospitals…there is blame on [industry’s] part for that.” Read said increasing transparency in clinical trials and other areas could ameliorate industry’s reputation. “We don’t sell a pill, we sell data. If you believe the data, there must be transparency,” he said.

Read emphasized the importance of incremental innovation to society, the need to protect industry’s intellectual property, and called for an explicit risk/benefit profile for drug development. He called the U.S. tax rate “uncompetitive,” citing tax rates in Europe “as low as 15%.” Industry “can’t work with one hand tied behind our back,” said Read. “Elites have lost faith in innovation as a social benefit…it’s a cost only conversation.”

The pharma Fall conference season is in full swing, and today I am happy to be in New Jersey to attend Bob Ehrlich’s semi-annual DTC program with about 200 other pharma-focused colleagues over the next two days. This year’s theme is “DTC in the Era of Consumer Choice.”

On many levels, I was excited to hear what presenters had to say this afternoon. There was wide consensus from each speaker that consumers are in control of how they choose to consume media. Health-focused consumers, much like the general population, have an endless amount of media distractions and choices, making the job of marketers that much more challenging to capture their precious and limited attention. This harsh reality calls into question the value of traditional reach and frequency media buys, and places greater emphasis on engagement and impact.

Mike Bloxham of Ball State University gave a compelling review of media usage trends. His academic analysis pointed to the way “my media,” as defined by a consumer, has shifted from passive to active over the past few years, pointing to the rise of e-mail, increased use of DVRs, infiltration of mobile phones, and the pervasiveness of social networks.

Of all that was discussed this afternoon, I found Mike’s themes most actionable for pharma marketers, and thus bear repeating here in summary form:

1. People are talking about you and your brand.
2. You, the marketer, has “next to no control.” Best to embrace this fact and feed on it so you can learn over time and enhance relationships with consumers who want them with you and your brand.
3. Conventional push methods of advertising will have limited success. Wise marketers will consider what they would do without traditional advertising as a viable tactic.
4. The right to a sustained presence with consumers has to be earned. It is no longer about your brand or the condition it treats; it is about the individual and what matters to them.
5. Consumers know you have an agenda with your marketing efforts. Best to acknowledge it, and offer something more, of greater value, to keep them engaged.

Fans of Seth Godin will recognize the themes of Permission Marketing in what Mike said today. The advice is spot-on, and has key implications for how marketing needs to evolve in this new era of consumer choice.

We’ve heard this before, right? But wait!

According to an eMarketer report presented by Stu Klein of Lowe, over 50 percent of executives report having zero personal experience with a social network. Perhaps this is the route of the problem? It’s hard to drive innovation within a company if you aren’t aware of the options that your brand managers recommend.

So, if you fall into that category, too, then today is a great day to change that. Dive in and begin to learn what’s out there. You might look at www.ning.com or www.eons.com to help you begin to see new marketing avenues that can create true value for your brand.

While I’m not 100 percent positive, it looks like this might have been the first time FDA actually name-dropped a social networking service in a warning letter. Which poses the question: Is FDA watching YouTube, and what does this mean for pharma?

Ignite Health’s Fabio Gratton told me that this ramification could go one of two ways. Pharma could view it as the feds are now treating YouTube with the same degree of importance as television and other media outlets, thereby validating the online service. Or it could scare pharma away from posting videos on YouTube, because that could warrant a warning letter.

So where does FDA stand?

I sent an email to FDA spokesperson Felicia Stewart with one question: Are you guys watching YouTube for pharma ads?

She missed the deadline for the article, but lo and behold, this morning I got a nice, concise answer from the feds.

DDMAC has been and continues to monitor the many vehicles that companies use to promote their prescription drug products. Our monitoring includes magazine ads, TV ads, promotional exhibits at medical conferences, Internet, sales brochures, journal ads, and consumer mailers and brochures. Internet monitoring includes promotion done by or on behalf of drug companies such as companies’ own product Web sites and their placement of promotion on others Web sites. The action addressing promotion by the company on YouTube is one example. Another example is the action addressing Pfizer’s promotion on cnn.com for Viagra.

There you have it. FDA is watching YouTube, and boy, do I wish I was the guy or gal being paid to troll the Web all day looking for errant pharma ads or remixes of the Rozerem beaver singing the Tay Zonday classic “Chocolate Rain.”