Welcome to the first issue of Repeat Prescription – a regular e-newsletter
designed to bring agency and client relationships into the open,
comment on what’s happening in our ever-changing industry, and proffer advice
from a supplier/vendor perspective. Mine.

It seems to me that more and more of our time is spent in not actually doing but
in directing and helping others to do for us. With time and staff limited, and the
demands on us greater and greater, we need to make the relationships with our
suppliers and colleagues as effective as possible. I’m hoping that by showing you
some of our challenges and successes and mistakes, we can give you some
insights into your own supplier and client relationships. 

IN THIS ISSUE:

•  To merge or not to merge – the downsides and upsides of managing projects
    while you’re being amalgamated. 

•  Add “decimate” to your vocabulary 

•  Just a thought – can you apply some tips on poster production to 
   your activities?
 
“The chief obstacle to progress of the human race is the human race”
Don Marquis 1879 – 1937


To Merge or Not to Merge
It seems to me that another spate of mergers and acquisitions is currently
reaching its finale, with Merck Serono leading the way and, in hot pursuit,
Altana and Nycomed, UCB and Schwarz. It’s an interesting phenomenon that a
spate of mergers and acquisitions in the pharma industry is often followed by
similar activity in their communications agencies.

After the last round of mega-mergers, we saw Complete Medical Communications
bought by McCann; MAC bought by Quintiles; and Adis reorganised within the
Wolters Kluwer group.  And it’s not just MedEd /MedComms that is affected – 
MedTAP was bought by United Biosources, and M-Tag bought by IMS – many of
the major players in both pharmacoeconomics research and in medical
communications are no longer discrete entities. Or, I suspect, with the same
agendas.

Mergers in the pharmaceutical industry tend to leave their suppliers concerned
at best and panicky at worst. Although work within the pharma company is not
supposed to slow down after a merger changeover, it inevitably does, with many
of our contacts brushing off their CVs and reconsidering their pension plans,
rather than monitoring their project timelines. Depending upon the quality of
the communication within the two companies concerned, people can be
considering career moves before their supervisors officially announce the merger
process. And small wonder, with such examples of poor communication as people
receiving notice of their redundancies by email; others being informed by phone
that there is room for only two people at their particular level and that they’re
not one of them!

Mergers can be frustrating because of project delays, budget freezes, and often,
no leeway given on timelines. When companies merge, it’s a good time to reassess
all client/supplier relationships.

Reorganisation and regrouping in our industry sector is cyclical: it took just ten 
years for departments within GSK return to the way they were in the old Glaxo.
Is all this reorganisation really pertinent to the times, or just to the
people in charge?

Or is this the same situation described by Petronius Arbiter in 65 AD:

"We trained hard. But it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up
into teams we would be reorganised. I was to learn later in life that we tend to
meet any new situation by reorganizing; and a wonderful method it can be for
creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency, and
demoralisation." 

Okay, so what are the positive aspects of mergers?  If 75% of mergers fail to
meet their financial targets - are the other 25% so good that they make the risk
worthwhile? According to the Economist, merger mania has reached new
heights with $2 trillion worth of deals already announced this year. Much of this 
is in media and telecoms, indicating that the communication industry is a prime
target.

A merger can be a good opportunity to shake up personnel, trim dead wood and
impose a strict diet on overweight budgets. And, of course, to cut out
duplication  – and streamline processes. But does a merger manage to
achieve all these things in the face of territorial instincts and, often,
a bunker mentality?  

One client I admire very much told me that the current merger he was enduring
was a bit like trying to put together a car out of the front end of  a Volvo and 
the rear half of a Chrysler – all the relevant components were there, the theory
sounded fine but nothing quite fit.
 
So I’m wondering – if the trend is right, and these mid-size pharma mergers are
going to be followed by a series of agency mergers – does this mean that
the resistant ones will benefit from the short-term confusion? Here’s hoping so...

And in the meantime here’s some ways to ensure you’re the one with the most
chance of making good in merger and acquisition times:

• Check out the partnering company – which company (theirs or yours) is
  likely to be the dominant one? If it’s theirs, examine their pipeline,
  portfolio and company culture. What are the skills and knowledge you
  have that are suited to that company? Ensure your manager (and
  his/her manager) is aware of them 
• Collect success stories during the course of your job. (This is a good
  practice at any time.) Ensure you have them recorded not just as
  activities successfully performed (e.g. achieved x number of manuscripts
  published in a 6-month period) but as results (these articles were
  successfully used to increase market share in x country by x amount).
  Preferably, results that affect the company as a whole, rather than just
  your section of it.
• Re-examine your role and look at the skills you have. How might they be
  readily applied to jobs within the company outside your current
  department or therapy area?

With these preparations, if the time comes when you have to justify your
position, you can do it not from your own perspective but from your
employers, whatever the new structure may be.

"A positive attitude will not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough
people to make it worth the effort”
Herm Albright (1876 – 1944)


Word Wealth
Decimate – to destroy, injure or damage to an extreme. Comes from decimus,
Latin tenth … and formerly meant to kill every tenth soldier. Today used more
freely as indicating any kind of serious injury. As in: “The anti-infectives team 
was decimated after the merger, with only a handful of survivors remaining in 
the once-teeming department."

What's Underway at Rx 
The congress preparation cycle is well underway, and like most of our rivals, we 
are heavily into abstract and poster preparation at the moment. I like these 
projects because it is easy to see rapid results – and in some cases, the entire 
project is in and out the door in under a week. I believe our most rapid abstract 
writing, reviewing, approval and submission from start to finish was an afternoon 
– fortunately most of our clients give us somewhat longer to achieve this. Here’s 
a couple of the comments we’ve received on the latest batch:

Dear Andy and Neil, The poster arrived safely today and looks great. Thanks
again for a nice job, done very smoothly at short notice.  Much
appreciated. Best regards Merck Serono

Thank you for your diligent efforts with this poster. It looks great and it was a 
pleasure to work with you both. Novartis

And a few tips to help the process of poster production go more smoothly
with your supplier: 

• Provide your agency with more information than just the accepted
  abstract, right from the start. This way, they won’t go off track by
  using “filler” information to  pad out the data, that will take considerable
  revision by you to get right. If there is no time for your agency to
  produce an outline, a good briefing teleconference with you and a good
  agency team should suffice. 
• If things have changed since the abstract, do let them know. Particularly
  if the focus has changed or further analyses have been performed, which
  could affect the way a poster is written.
• Ask them to write the poster in a powerpoint slide template, so that you
  can see the poster drafts as close as possible to the final layout. This will
  help prevent your over-eager authors from adding too many
  words/figures/tables. 
• Aim for about 800 words per poster as a maximum, and at least 3 figures
  or tables to break up the text. This will enable people to read the poster
  at a comfortable distance, and so provide a better interaction between
  your presenter and the audience.

Your agency should automatically check out the poster dimension requirements 
specific to the congress – don’t make the mistake of getting a “one size fits all” 
job. These often look ridiculously out of place – and can annoy your neighbours if 
your dimensions overlap the area allocated.

“Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.” 
Henry David Thoreau (1817 – 1862)

“Success didn’t spoil me, I’ve always been insufferable.”                         
Fran Leibowitz (1950 – )

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