The study, published by the , reports that companies profit steadily from marketing large numbers of new drugs – mostly minor variations on existing medications – with little to no health benefit for consumers.

Joel Lexchin

“Put simply, a massive amount of money is spent on marketing – far more than R&D,” says study co-author Dr. Joel Lexchin, a physician and professor in 91ŃÇɫ’s Faculty of Health. “Most of the R&D is directed at developing drugs that can generate revenue for the drug companies, rather than at finding significantly better drugs for unmet medical needs.”

The study points out that a brief spike in the number of drugs with new active ingredients (called “new molecular entities, or NME’s) in the mid-1990s created an innovation scare giving drug companies more leverage to pump out large numbers of spinoff drugs. “In fact, the spike was followed by a decline, and then a levelling off to the usual pattern. The number of NME’s being approved and marketed has not declined significantly, nor is the approval process for new drugs as difficult as the pharmaceutical companies make it out to be,” says Lexchin.

Since the mid-1990s, independent reviews have concluded that about 85-90 per cent of all new drugs provide few or no clinical advantages for patients. The small, steady increase in clinically superior drugs contrasts with the FDA granting priority review status to 44 per cent of all NMEs from 2000 to 2010.

The study’s lead author, Donald Light, a professor at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, says obvious conclusions can be drawn from this timing.

“Interestingly, this increase in the percentage of drugs with a priority designation coincides with companies beginning to fund the FDA’s approval process in 1992,” Lexchin says. “The low bars of being better than placebo, using surrogate end points instead of hard clinical outcomes, or being non-inferior to a comparator, allows approval of medicines that may even be either less effective and/or less safe than existing ones.”

While big pharma cries foul about the "patent cliff" – profits lost from major drugs like Lipitor going off patents – Lexchin and Light believe their patent-protected minor variations provide a solid cushion of profit.

Lexchin says the real innovation crisis is a conflict between commercial viability and consumer need.

“The drugs we need are not being researched and brought to market, largely because it’s more efficient and hence more profitable to simply create spinoff cures,” he says.

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91ŃÇɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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Director of executive programs at the Schulich Executive Education Centre, Middleton has been praised as one of Canada’s most respected and influential thought-leaders in the field of marketing communications.

"I was totally surprised and delighted with the news of this award – especially as it means joining such luminaries as John Cassaday, Sunni Boot, Claude Lessard and Frank Palmer," said Middleton. "Hopefully, this signals not only my personal efforts, but the efforts of all those engaged in progressing the discipline of marketing."

Alan Middleton

Middleton's career spans the client side, including international oil and gas sector, agencies, such as J. Walter Thompson in England, Canada and Japan, and academia. He is co-author of Advertising Works II and Ikonica – A Fieldguide to Canada’s Brandscape, and he has authored better-practices reports for the ACA on payment-by-results, client-agency relationships and marketing dashboards.

"Alan Middleton personifies the exceptional qualities that constitute the ACA Gold Medal Award. At every level of endeavor, he has served the marketing communications industry with passion, commitment and distinction," said Ron Lund, president and CEO of the ACA. "As an educator, Alan has mentored a generation of successful Canadian marketers and advertising practitioners. As an author, he has been hugely influential in elevating our practice of effective advertising. And as a marketing authority, he has long been the media’s go-to source of expert commentary."

Middleton sits on the board of ABC Life Literacy Canada, is an Honorary Trustee of the Royal Ontario Museum, co-founder of the annual CASSIES Awards and an inductee into the Canadian Marketing Hall of Legends.

First presented in 1941, the ACA Gold Medal Award will be presented at this year's Marketing Awards gala June 8 at The Carlu in Toronto.

About the ACA Gold Medal Award

• It is open to all individuals in activities that have an impact on marketing communications in Canada (client marketers, agencies, media, researchers, academics, associations, etc.)
• Awarded for a single achievement, or for accomplishments over time
• Awarded to a candidate whose contribution represents a measurable, distinctive advancement in the practice of marketing communications in Canada

Since its inception, the ACA Gold Medal Award has been presented to a distinguished vanguard of industry leaders and visionaries. A full list of past honorees is posted on the 's website.

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91ŃÇɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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[One of them is] Marketing Maven: Authors, small business owners and President Barack Obama can attest to "The Oprah Effect". The term was coined to describe how sales of everything, from pyjamas to the classic novel Anna Karenina, skyrocket after her endorsement. Winfrey’s imprimatur is credited both with helping to sell 30 million books since the launch of her in 1996 and electing the first black president.Conversely, she was sued by the cattle ranchers because they claimed that her comments about never eating another burger during a segment about mad cow disease lost them $11 million in business.

“There’s never been a product placement or a PR phenomenon like Oprah before and we may not see her kind again,” said , professor of marketing at the Schulich School of Business.

“But the most remarkable part of her legacy is not the economic impact, which everyone knows; it’s the fact that she’s managed to maintain the public trust and have a widespread image of integrity. Considering the amount of product placement on her show, she didn’t ever give the impression that she was a sellout. She managed her image extremely well.”

. . .

With Winfrey only committed to appearing in about 70 hours of programming on [her new network] OWN in 2011, it remains to seen if a behind-the-scenes-role will be the best use of her expertise and energy.

Kozinets remembers Winfrey from his stint at Chicago’s Kellogg School of Management, where she taught a Dynamics of Leadership course with beau Stedman Graham in the late ’90s.

“It was a very popular class,” he recalled. “She brought in Henry Kissinger, Coretta Scott King and Jeff Bezos as guests. But she got tired of it, because she didn’t want to do her own grading and the dean insisted she grade her own papers.”

Posted by Elizabeth Monier-Williams, research communications officer, with files courtesy of YFile – 91ŃÇɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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While Internet technology and social media such as Twitter and Facebook allow businesses to manage contacts and nurture important professional relationships, it’s the initial “handshake” that makes a lasting impression with retailers and consumers.

. . .

In fact, in-person interactions are the “single most powerful marketing medium,” says , marketing professor and executive director of 91ŃÇɫ’s Schulich Executive Education Centre (SEEC). “Research in the business-to-business world suggests the No. 1 reason for selection of a supplier is the personality of the sales team or seller. This is above the technical specs, marketing form, anything else,” Middleton says.

Deliver on your promises, or risk tarnishing a business relationship built on trust. Enter your new contacts into a customer relationship management system, such as Salesforce, suggests Middleton, and follow up with e-newsletters, blogs, updates or even webinars.

Posted by Elizabeth Monier-Williams, research communications officer, with files courtesy of YFile– 91ŃÇɫ’s daily e-bulletin

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"It's a brilliant piece of up-to-date marketing," Marketing expert Alan Middleton said.

Middleton is with the Schulich School of Business and told 680News the company created a buzz online long before the old spice guy's chiselled chest appeared on TV.

"They Twittered, they Youtubed, they used all the contemporary connections to get the story out there."

Middleton doubts the Old Spice guy will ever start to stink.

"If they keep being cheekier in the underground networks - in the Youtubes and the Facebooks - then they can keep it going for a while," Middleton thinks.

Middleton told 680News the brand really didn't have anything to lose.

"They're not all of a sudden making Tide a figure of fun. They're doing it with a brand that wasn't going very far," he explained.

Sales are up 107 per cent and the Old Spice YouTube commercials have been viewed more than 58-million times.

The complete article's available on . You can also watch the original Mustafa ad for Old Spice.

Posted by Elizabeth Monier-Williams, research communications officer

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Drug prices in Canada can be unregulated for years, a period during which companies may overprice the drugs and market them, says Lexchin, a professor in the School of Health Policy & Management in 91ŃÇɫ’s and an emergency physician at the in Toronto.

Left: Dr. Joel Lexchin.

His commentary, “”, appears in the journal Open Medicine. It is based on new research which examined how many drugs in Canada are marketed before they are patented, whose prices are therefore not controlled by the federal Patented Medicine Prices Review Board. He also looked at the time period between marketing and patenting, and any excess revenue generated before those drug prices were regulated.

In total, 42 drugs were marketed between 2000 and 2008 before being patented, and complete data was available for 33 of those.

“Some of these drugs were potentially being marketed for weeks before they came under the jurisdiction of the review board and had their prices controlled, but some of them may have been marketed for years,” says Lexchin. “Only three of the 33 drugs were found to be overpriced, but the fact that one of the 33 drugs may have been marketed without price controls for more than seven years is troublesome.”

When drugs are finally patented, their prices are reviewed and if a drug is deemed to be overpriced, the review board can order a company to repay any excess revenue to the federal government. The problem is that if companies overprice their drugs, the drugs may not be added to provincial formularies such as the Ontario Drug Benefit Formulary. In Ontario, the government covers most drugs listed on the formulary for people who are eligible, so if a drug is not on the list, the cost will not be covered.

In addition, although excess revenue from the drugs is eventually recovered, it is paid to the federal government, not the provincial governments which fund drugs through their drug benefit schemes, or to private insurers or people who are paying the cost out-of-pocket, says Lexchin.

The best remedy for various problems caused by using patent status to regulate prices is simply to treat all drugs on the market equally and regulate all prices, he concludes.

More about Joel Lexchin

Dr. Joel Lexchin received his doctor of medicine from the University of Toronto in 1977 and for the past 22 years has been an emergency physician at the University Health Network. He is currently a professor in the School of Health Policy & Management at 91ŃÇÉ« and an associate professor in the Department of Family & Community Medicine at the University of Toronto.

From 1992 to 1994 he was a member of the Ontario Drug Quality & Therapeutics Committee and he was the chair of the Drugs & Pharmacotherapy Committee of the Ontario Medical Association from 1997-1999. He has been a consultant for the province of Ontario, various arms of the Canadian federal government, the World Health Organization, the government of New Zealand and the Australian National Prescribing Service.

He is the author or co-author of more than 90 peer-reviewed articles on topics such as physician prescribing behaviour, pharmaceutical patent issues, the drug approval process and prescription drug promotion. He is a co-author of and author of Drug Therapy for Emergency Physicians.

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91ŃÇɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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“You’re appealing to a certain adolescent group who’ve got fairly innocent notions of romance,” explains the specialist in soul music and Grammy award winner for best album notes. “These 12- and 13-year-olds...it’s a huge part of the bonding aspect, this innocent crush.”

As his popularity has ballooned, the singer has cultivated that crush. Plenty of celebrities have discovered the Internet, and its power to let them tell strangers what they had for breakfast. But in this case, the payoff is more tangible. Bieber fanatics have proved eager to help market him, fuelling his sales as well as his celebrity.

It likely takes him a matter of minutes to copy a message such as this one sent by fan @GillianLovesJBx to his Twitter home page – “@justinbieber Do u respond to a simple I Love You? :)” – and then reply, for all the world to see, “I love u 2...i love all u ladies :).”

. . .

Those millions of young fans are attracted by the same characteristics as other teen heartthrobs, says Bowman, citing such boy band predecessors as the Backstreet Boys and ’N Sync. “That’s following in a trend that started about 10, 15 years ago, where you have white groups packaging R&B but in a very safe, homogenized way.”

Rob Bowman is an associate professor in the Department of Music. The rest of the article is .

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He stood stone still at the first tee of Augusta National, drew his club back in a wide arc and then promptly ripped the ball 75 yards left of the fairway. Yet there were no obscenities. There was no look of disgust or throwing of equipment. There was nothing, frankly, resembling Tiger Woods.

Yesterday, in his first news conference since revelations of his affairs surfaced last fall, Woods preached humility and contrition, and promised he was working hard to reinvent himself: not just at home, but on the course as well.

Woods is trying to win over audiences following a sex scandal that has destroyed his public image. And that means curbing the fiery outbursts is essential, says Alan Middleton, a marketing professor at 91ŃÇɫ’s Schulich School of Business. “He’s got to come across as a contrite, normal human being,” he said.

Other articles about Woods in which Middleton is cited are available and .

Posted by Elizabeth Monier-Williams, research communications officer, with files courtesy of YFile – 91ŃÇɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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McDonald's is giving away free coffee, while Tim Hortons' Roll Up The Rim To Win campaign is in full throttle. Which company is winning the coffee war? What does it bring to the bottom line? And, which brand tastes better?

The on BNN's Web site.

Robert Latham, associate professor of Political Science and director of 91ŃÇɫ’s Centre for International & Security Studies, and Qasim Farah, a 91ŃÇÉ« graduate student in the Faculty of Environmental Studies, spoke about the possible recruiting of young Canadian Somalis by Al Shahab, an organization that has been added to the government’s list of terrorist organizations, on CBC Radio’s “” March 10. The audio clip is available on .

Barbo Ciakudia, an international studies student at Glendon College and an organizer of 91ŃÇÉ«'s How Much Do You Know About the D. R. Congo? conference, was interviewed on Metro Morning about the relationship between coltan, a metallic ore used to manufacture electronics, such as cell phones and computers, and the Congo's decades-long conflict. Both the interview and the conference took place on March 11. The segment runs over seven minutes and is available on CBC's "" Web site.

Posted by Elizabeth Monier-Williams, research communications officer, with files courtesy of YFile – 91ŃÇɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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