Health

In the heart of Sydney's Ryde Valley - Australia's drug industry alley - fifty marketing managers and PR advisers from major drug companies, including Pfizer, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Novartis and GlaxoSmithKline, pondered the industry's poor public standing.

The drug industry representatives – used to hustling everything from drugs for guys struggling with their love life to cancer cures – were seriously depressed. "I am appalled by our reputation," Group Vice-President Far East Region for Schering Plough, Rod Unsworth, told a panel of industry heavy-hitters discussing "reputation management" at the third Australian Pharma Marketing Congress.

Unsworth, who describes himself as a "passionate" supporter of the industry, bluntly told the mid-May gathering that the drug industry in Australia was way behind even the tobacco industry in its efforts to rebuild its political stocks.

Unsworth warned the panel of the potentially fatal consequences of the Australian industry's defensive posture. "If we say we are going to just look after the opinion leaders and we don't give a damn about the public, we are dead. And if we let the debate be about price, we are dead," he said.

In a series of announcements in the aftermath of the tsunami that swept that swept through East Asia and parts of Africa on December 26, 2004, Pfizer committed itself to contribute a total of $20 million in cash and $60 million worth of medicines. Pfizer's staff chipped in a further $2 million.

On its U.S. website, Pfizer listed its tsunami response as an example of its commitment to corporate social responsibility.

However, at a recent drug industry marketing conference in Sydney, Pfizer Australia's Manager of Government Affairs, David Miles, said that the company would have been better off being less generous. "We would be better off giving five million and shutting up," Miles said, only a little jokingly. "As soon as you get into big numbers people think you can double or triple it."