M e d i c i n e A ve 2 US companies called on their US agencies to help them deliver promotional efforts internationally. At that time, it was customary for the US agencies to develop a core promotional kit, usually consisting of a core visual aid, a journal ad and possibly other supportive selling materials. The clients' internal production departments would then distribute these to local offices around the world. Use of these promotional materials was often not mandated by the pharmaceutical companies' US headquarters, and local marketing companies were free to either use the materials provided or develop their own, at their own expense. As budgets and local service capabilities in many markets were limited, only a handful of the larger overseas offices would opt for spending their own budgets to develop materials. Although by 1960 more and more US agencies were beginning to develop a better understanding of international markets, it was still far too early for either the agencies or their clients to be considering global campaigns. As the agencies became more knowledgable about cultural variations in the practice of medicine and the characteristics of patient populations, their international promotional efforts became different from those being done for the US market. There often was little coordination between domestic and international marketing departments within the same pharmaceutical company, and sometimes outright competition existed. There were several reasons for this. Pharmaceutical companies themselves were highly compartmentalized and not as integrated as they are today. Executive incentive packages were different, regulatory requirements were different, organizational philosophies—centralization vs decentralization—were different. But more important, much of the lack of 70
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