MSL Conversations

November 10th, 2010Comments (0)

PR & Other Drugs by Mike Huckman

(Jamie Reidy, “Hard Sell” author at the
“Love & Other Drugs” premiere.)

“Jamie! On your left. Jamie, over here! On your right.”

Jamie is the infamous (in pharma circles) Jamie Reidy. And he says he felt like “the belle of the ball” when he walked the red carpet among the paparazzi at the LA premiere of “Love & Other Drugs,” the movie that’s loosely based on his industry-rattling memoir “Hard Sell. The Evolution of a Viagra Salesman.”

I got to know Jamie more than five years ago, when I interviewed him on CNBC shortly after his groundbreaking tell-all book came out. He later played a prominent role in an investigative piece I did on pharma sales for the now defunct CNBC primetime show “Business Nation.” And outside of work we became frenemies. (He went to Notre Dame, I went to USC. And we’re both fanatics.)

Click here to read the entire post on Mike Huckman’s PRescription blog.

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November 9th, 2010Comments (1)

The CEO Roundtable: Season of Opportunity or Season of Turmoil? (Part 2 of 2) by Matt Gardner

Today, our MSL Conversations Blog features the final part of Matt Gardner’s CEO Roundtable in which he chats with Rachel King, CEO of GlycoMimetics, Martin Babler, CEO of Talima Therapeutics and Omar Haffar, CEO of Presidio Pharmaceuticals about current industry trends. Find Part 1 here.

Gardner: The overall atmosphere has been tough. Recalls, FDA rejections, reform, finance, policy uncertainty. Do you see our industry actively leading the charge in economic recovery?

Rachel: I think biotech will be a modest contributor to economic growth overall in the short term. Longer term, I think the industry will be a major factor in growth and innovation.

Omar: I don’t see our industry playing a leading role in the economic recovery. The biotech industry over the past 30 years has been somewhat peripheral from a direct impact perspective on the macroeconomic picture. Our industry is immediately and severely impacted by economic downturns, even transient ones, while the slope for a sustained recovery is usually shallow and long. This is due in part to the time and capital requirements needed to transition to a revenue generating organization, which also makes the prospect of being acquired as the main value driver.

Report from Women’s Forum for the Economy and Society by Renee Wilson

One of the consistent themes that ran throughout the conference is how women have a unique way of approaching business and approaching challenges. It’s just different to how men do. No one is saying it’s better or worse – it’s just different. And in developing countries, it’s vastly different. There are stories of men earning the equivalent of $3 and spending it all at the bar on beer, where when a woman earns $3 she buys a net to prevent her children from being bit by a mosquito and dying of malaria. That’s only one example I realize but it does appear to be a pattern of behavior in some of the developing world, which is why many companies are partnering with NGOs and finding creative ways to help women find financial independence.

Read more of Renee Wilson’s reports from the annual Women’s Forum on her Renee In Real-Time Blog.

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November 8th, 2010Comments (1)

The CEO Roundtable: Season of Opportunity or Season of Turmoil? (Part 1 of 2) by Matt Gardner

Recently, I sat down to talk current events and industry trends with three leading biotech CEOs. In this discussion are Rachel King, CEO of GlycoMimetics, Martin Babler, CEO of Talima Therapeutics, and Omar Haffar, CEO of Presidio Pharmaceuticals.

Gardner: How have capital markets affected your plans for 2010 and 2011?

Rachel: The downturn in the capital markets certainly affects the ability of all biotech companies to raise money. It has made all VCs more conservative as they work to raise or preserve their own funds, not to mention as they invest. It has thus limited the number of VCs willing to invest in companies at our stage. This also increases the importance of some of the strategic investors, and it is good to see more of those funds taking active roles as investors.

Video: Mobile Marketer Interviews Webster Lewin by MSLGROUP Americas Community Blogger

Mobile Marketer Magazine caught up with MSLGROUP’s Webster Lewin this week at ad:tech to chat about the success that MSLGROUP client maurices has had with mobile marketing programs. Lewin, senior vice president and director of digital innovation and strategy at MSLGROUP, explains how the fashion retailer used mobile programming to drive engagement with consumers and boost sales. (Click here to get a copy of Webster’s mobile social media predictions for 2011.)

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MSL Conversations