PM Society AGM 2009

Chairman's Report

In my first report as Chairman of the PM Society I'd like to reflect on the progress the PM Society has made over the past year thanks to the excellent work of our committee led by a highly proactive executive group consisting of:

• The new Vice Chairmen -  Rachel Farrow and Matt Coleman;
• The PM Society Treasurer - Chris Doyle;
• Ivor Eisenstadt;
• Steve MacKenzie-Lawrie;
• Sandy Royden;
• Neil Smith;
• And the PM Society Secretary, the heart of our organisation – Vivien Bennett.

The support for our key activities (especially PriMe) has been boosted this year by the arrival of Jackie Brown who has already had a very positive impact.

The PM Society is a not-for-profit organisation run by a committee of volunteers. We were founded 33 years ago and now have a membership of over 220 companies.  Membership continues to increase steadily as more people realise what we can offer to them – both for their organisations and as individuals.

However, we are always looking to improve our offering to our membership and this year undertook an extensive planning exercise to ensure the Society stays on the ball. Some of the key outputs from this planning are:

• A clear vision for the PM Society – 'Bringing people together to promote excellence in pharmaceutical marketing practice through: training and development; recognition and promotion of best practice; plus provision of a range of educational, networking and teambuilding activities'.
• Streamlined Identity - It became apparent that we needed to have a better identity so that members and potential members could see the range of offerings we have.  The early work on this has already delivered:
  • A rebranding of the Society with a clear identity across all of our activities;
  • A new strapline which is a real 'it does what it says on the tin' statement – Promoting Pharmaceutical Marketing Excellence. This was tested with the membership, together with a number of other options and performed 'excellently' across all of our parameters;
  • A re-vamped website which communicates our activities more clearly and is much easier to navigate around;
  • A redesign for our newsletter which has a really fresh feel.
• We are looking to enhance our member benefits and an example of this is the introduction of an exclusive 'Member Offers' section on the website

There are many other outputs from the planning process that we intend to roll out over the next year or so – please keep your eyes peeled for updates on the website as well as in our e-mails and newsletters.

For the rest of my report I'd like to give you an overview of our main activities which I'll break down according to our sub-committee organisational structure.

1. Awards
The PM Society Advertising Awards is our annual celebration and recognition of creative excellence. On January 30th this year the Society's 22nd annual advertising awards played to another full house of pharmaceutical industry executives and agencies who celebrated in style the best of advertising and promotion for 2008.  This flagship event once again set the standard for awards events in our industry and the Society is justifiably proud of its position in delivering the most popular event of the year.  Special thanks to the awards sub-committee led by Neil Smith ably assisted by Vivien Bennett.

2. PriMe
PriMe has gone from strength to strength over the last 12 months with the introduction of additional modules to support the needs of our membership.

We have continued to successfully deliver our core modules on the principles of marketing and re-vamped our specialist modules – these offer in-depth training in specific skills pivotal to the marketing role, such as market research, finance, forecasting and the changing NHS.

For the more experienced marketer we have introduced new modules with a more strategic level focus on areas including profit management, maximising global and local brands plus providing guidance and training on taking a more European focus to marketing management.

To compliment these marketing skills, we have also developed three leadership modules specifically designed for more senior marketers whose focus is moving towards leadership and away from purely functional considerations.

Now there's a great portfolio of training offered by PriMe to really help develop Members' skills and contribute positively to their Personal Development Plans. This has been a great achievement by the PriMe subcommittee and our partners red kite consulting, I'd like to thank them all for their work this year and especially Steve MacKenzie-Lawrie for his commitment and significant contribution.

3. Briefing Meetings
2008 was another successful year for the Briefings sub-committee, with Rachel Farrow in her first year heading up this team.

We took on new members from the Committee as well as a new initiative of introducing associate members (one from Huntsworth Health and one from Innovex Medical Communications) as part of a new initiative to provide more support to the organisation of our meetings.  

We held 3 evening briefings through 2008;

• Managing patient relationships – Patient Compliance at Parexel
• Managing patient relationships – Practical Patient Initiatives at SAS
• Optimising the e-channel at Pfizer
  • This event had 4 speakers, 2 from pharma and 2 from agency and covered real examples of digital media solutions. There was a great turnout of 82 which was the highest for over 2 years.

We also conducted a short survey of meeting delegates to poll opinion on topics for 2009 which led to the theme of 'Smarter Marketing' which started at SAS UK on 30 March.


4. Annual Events
Once again the Annual Events team, under Ivor's leadership, ran a highly successful programme that was informative, educational and in line with the Society aim of Promoting Pharmaceutical Marketing Excellence.
 

• In 2008 the Society, together with the PMCPA, ran two ABPI Code of Practice workshops attracting over 200 delegates. And only last week we ran a further meeting for another 70 delegates. These provided Society members with a valuable opportunity to get to grips with the Code and work effectively with it and hopefully find it less restrictive than previously.
• In May the inaugural PM Society Annual Lecture was well attended and the Chairman of NICE, Professor Sir Michael Rawlins, focused on the global challenges in providing healthcare services and the role that NICE fulfils in ensuring equitable healthcare in a rapidly changing world. The success of this evening has meant that it is now planned to be an annual occasion for the Society.
• In November we ran our annual half day conference entitled 'NHS Joint Working Initiatives – how to achieve win-win'. The excellent faculty brought together experts from both industry and the NHS to take a detailed look at joint working. They demonstrated the development and roll-out of successful joint working initiatives, as well and highlighting the issues and pitfalls involved.

5. Social and networking
Matt Coleman heads the 'social' part of the committee and under his leadership the PM Society Sailing Regatta is rapidly establishing itself as one of the major calendar dates of the year. Now five years in, the event has grown from 9 yachts to this year's field of 28 yachts; more than 250 'sailors' pitted their wits against the Solent and each other in yet another wonderful day out on the water! The coveted PM Society Cup went to 3Rock – who showed great teamwork and pulled out a convincing lead from the start.

Our golfing section continues to do well with over 100 golfers supporting our events – including the prestigious St George's event and Christmas meal in early December.  Many thanks to Barry Hunt for his continued work on the Golf Society.



At the start of my report I mentioned that all our activities are organised by an excellent committee, I'd like to take this opportunity to thank them all for their continued hard work and commitment to the PM Society. They all give their time freely as volunteers and that allows us to give you, the PM Society membership the high quality meetings and events that offer you the greatest possible value for money and that are free from any commercial bias – I believe this is fundamental to what the PM Society is all about.

Our industry is certainly facing challenging times over the coming year with numerous key patent expiries; re-structuring and refocusing of many companies; a return to a merger/acquisition phase; a global recession and changing pressure in what our healthcare professional customers want from us. In the face of all this it is vital that we as marketers work even smarter target our communications to our individual customers and make our budgets achieve more – the PM Society is an essential partner to our members in its role of Promoting Pharmaceutical Marketing Excellence.

Looking forward we have a very busy calendar of events that are designed to help our members excel in the face of these challenges. These events are detailed on the website, I hope you will continue to support these events and do please feed back to the committee if there are any improvements you feel we can make or other activities we should be undertaking to support you.

Financial report

PM Society members can click here to log in and view the Society's financial report for the last year.