Pharmaceutical Companies Are Burning Money While Patients Suffer

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_{*These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration.}

Pharmaceutical companies spent more than $7.6 billion on direct-to-consumer advertising in 2022. The top 10 pharmaceutical companiesalone spent $13.8 billion on advertising and promotion in 2023.

That's roughly 15% of their annual revenue going to marketing.

Meanwhile, patient advocacy functions inside these same companies receive less than 1% of that budget. On the high end, advocacy might see 1/15th of what marketing gets.

I see money being set on fire while the people who actually understand patients starve for resources.

Every dollar spent on commercials showing cancer patients skipping through parks is a dollar not spent partnering with patient advocacy organizations that already have the trust pharma desperately seeks. These ads don't inform patients. They isolate them.

I know because I lived it.

While working in healthcare, I was fighting through a neck injury that should have ended everything. The pain was relentless. Any increase in anxiety or frustration amplified it, which triggered depression, which fed more anxiety.

A vicious cycle.

Then I'd see these commercials. Happy patients without a care in the world. Brand teams spending millions on messages that showed they'd never spoken to an actual patient.

Everything was made FOR patients, not WITH patients.

That gap cost me my sanity at times. It costs every patient who sees their reality invalidated by marketing fantasies.

Pharma's reputation has been in the toilet for years. Only 33% of U.S. consumers trust pharmaceutical manufacturers.

No patient wants to be sold to by a company they don't trust.

Yet marketers keep pouring billions into direct advertising, trying to get patients to bring drug names to their doctors. They're using the same playbook their predecessors used because doing something different puts a target on their back.

But here's the reality: only 12% of American adults have proficient health literacy skills. Patients aren't seeking answers to complex medical problems while watching the nightly news.

The entire model is built on a fundamental miscalculation.

Trust plummeted 13 points in a single year. Yet a 10% increase in DTC advertising results in a 5.4% rise in product revenue.

The formula works for sales. It destroys trust.

Patients aren't seeking answers to complex medical problems while watching the nightly news. They're being manipulated by messages they lack the capacity to evaluate critically.

The entire model is built on exploiting that gap.

The most absurd part? Many pharmaceutical companies legally wall off their patient advocacy teams from their marketing departments.

Advocacy is supposed to stay "above brand." They can't talk about products directly, just help patients in the disease state. Meanwhile, marketing teams create patient-facing messages without input from the one function that actually understands patients.

Marketing goes unchecked. Patient truth gets ignored.

When I try to bring patient feedback to brand teams, they're not open to hearing it. The people who know patients best are blocked from the people creating messages for patients.

Most C-suite executives have no awareness of what patient advocacy does. They see it as an expense, not as strategic intelligence.

As I've heard it put: "If you've never been in advocacy, no amount of slides will introduce you to it. If you have been, no slides are necessary."

The C-suite has the power to tear down the wall between advocacy and marketing right now. They choose not to because they don't understand the function that connects them to patients.

Imagine redirecting even half of that $13.8 billion from DTC advertising to patient advocacy partnerships.

That's $6.9 billion that could fund patient navigation programs. Support groups led by people who've actually lived the disease. Educational resources created WITH patients, not marketed AT them.

Patient advocacy organizations already have what pharma is spending billions trying to buy: trust.

Studies show only 11% of patients would consider participating in industry-sponsored clinical trials. But 86% would participate if the sponsor were academic or advocacy-based.

That's a 75-percentage-point trust gap.

Pharma is pouring 15% of revenue into a channel that actively damages the one thing they need most. Meanwhile, the advocacy function that could bridge that gap gets scraps.

Seven of the top 10 pharmaceutical companies spent more on sales and marketing than on research and development.

More money convincing people to ask for drugs than creating better ones.

Pharma companies need to pause all DTC advertising and call an internal offsite.

Start with an apology. Recognize that you haven't done this right. Ask for forgiveness and another chance.

Then evaluate how your brand messages were developed and how effective they actually are. Gather insights directly from patients and patient advocacy organizations.

Let your advocacy function introduce the complex world of patient barriers, access challenges, and lived experiences.

Create a team constitution WITH the patient community. Define expectations for how you'll engage, including requirements that all campaigns pass through advocacy first, then patients themselves.

You must throw away every preconceived notion about what patients experience. You are not a patient. You don't understand what it's like being a patient.

Ask an actual patient. You'll be surprised how far off you are.

The FDA won't ban DTC advertising outright. Constitutional free speech protections prevent it. Real change must come from Congress, pushed by patient groups lobbying for a ban.

Until then, companies have a choice.

Keep burning 15% of revenue on ads that drive a 13-point trust collapse. Or reallocate even a fraction of that to advocacy partnerships that could rebuild what decades of marketing destroyed.

The math is simple. The trust gap is measurable. The solution exists inside your own company, starved of resources while marketing drowns in budget.

We can't keep doing the same things and expect different outcomes.

That's the definition of insanity.