A publication is always engaged with its audience…but more at some seasons than others. This has been one of the intense times. We’ve been deeply engaged in finding out what our readers do and what they think.
We’re just wrapping up our 2011 Product Managers’ Survey. We’ll be spending the next month analyzing the results, and in our August issue, we should be able to paint a detailed portrait of who pharma brand managers are and what they think is important. Our special thanks to all of those who stayed the course and completed the comprehensive questionnaire, three of whom will receive an iPad or a Kindle in appreciation. (And while we’re on the subject of reader input and PM360 largesse, particular congratulations to the West Coast brand manager, who wishes to remain anonymous, who receives an Apple iPad 2 for participating in our most recent Ad Test.)
At the same time, we’re taking the pulse of the industry in a different way. The final submissions to our Trailblazer Awards program are coming in. Scores of nomi- nations have detailed the best of the best in new marketing initiatives and the top marketers in more than a dozen therapeutic categories. It’s like making a map of pharma’s rising stars. We’re looking forward to sharing these results with you, too. Save Friday evening, Sept. 9, on your calendars, and remember to join us for the
Trailblazers Awards Gala
The gala will be held at New York’s Mandarin Oriental hotel, overlooking Central Park.
Finally, we added a bit of a crowdsourcing experiment. To assemble “The 36 Deadly Habits of Dysfunctional Creative Programs,” in this month’s The Greatest Creators supplement (a tribute to agency creative talent), we asked a couple of hundred of our closest friends to send us just a sentence or two describing the misbehaviors that kill creativity. We received dozens of good—and by “good,” we mean “appalling”— suggestions. We noticed, however, that there was a hidden message about the creative process: they described extremes—too much rigidity, too few standards, pushing too hard, not pushing enough—that make it clear that moderation and variety are the real secrets of the creative process. We’ve taken the pulse, and it says that the heartbeat is strong, and that regular movement between freedom and rigor is the functional habit of highly creative people.
