Because of the long holiday weekend looming here in the U.S., I anticipate that today will be pretty slow. Therefore, it’s a good time to record something personal and not offend my readers who may be looking for a “Mack Attack” such as the one I launched yesterday against Allergan, which I labeled an “unethical marketer and the the drug industry poster boy for off-label promotion” ( see here ). I guess most people started their vacations yesterday, because I didn’t get any response to that attack

Tobi Elkin, writer at eMarketer, recently posted about his conversation with Bruce Grant, the SVP at Digitas about where Pharma marketers are and how they can adapt and use the social media space to understand and communicate with their customers. Grant points out that while both online, advertising and social media marketing are two different mechanisms for communicating with the consumers. Social media can, however, provide a platform for consumers to find the answers they need in the cloud of marketing that Pharma presents.

Allergan — the company that markets Botox legally for wrinkles and illegally for other things — agreed to pay $600 million in fines, including $375 million to the government as part of a Botox “misbranding” charge. Allergan admitted that its marketing of Botox from 2000 to 2005 led to intended use in treating headache, pain, muscle stiffness and juvenile cerebral palsy. Read the media stories and press releases here

Feedback from clients is the best gift a vendor can get.

Soon after I posted a blog entry and tweeted about cholesterol-lowering drugs (see here ), I “coincidentally” received the following e-mail message (click for an enlarged, readable view): I do not remember opting in to receive email from Insyst Media — the company that sent me this email. But, who knows, it may be one of those “third-party partners” of a website where I signed up to learn more about cholesterol

Recently in the Dallas Morning News , tell the story of how Jenny Scott became a blogger during her daughter’s struggle with leukemia. In 2004, she began to share the story of her baby’s cancer treatments and the struggles the family was facing

ePharma Summit 2010 took place this past February in Philadelphia. If you were unable to make it, we will now be presenting a weekly video series featuring all of the sessions from our event

In January, I pointed out that drug companies that place product videos on YouTube leave themselves open to association with other videos that poke fun at them, or worse, encourage consumers to join class action lawsuits against the company. The case that I pointed out was the YAZ Birth Control Channel (see ” The Trouble with YouTube: YAZ Case Study “).

Recently, the news media and Congress focused our attention on the recall of contaminated over-the-counter (OTC) children’s medication manufactured by McNeil Consumer, a division of Johnson & Johnson (see ” Despite Its Social Media Expertise, J&J Fails to Use It Effectively to Communicate to Consumers “). But there’s an even more dangerous problem than contamination relating to OTC medication for children: incorrect dosing

At Mashable , they share that between April 2009 and May 2010, the fastest growing segments of individuals joining social media are older adults. In that time span, participation of individuals between 55-64 grew 88%, while individual older than 65 grew at a rate of 100%. While it’s primarily the younger population using social media, their numbers only grew 13%.