March 15, 2005

The Pharmaceutical Sales Force – the Movie, the Conference

Side Effects - the movie about Pharma Sales RepsSo, I spent the past couple of days in Philadelphia giving a presentation on competitive intelligence sales force effectiveness applications to CBI's "Gaining Physician Access" conference - and, then on the flight home, no kidding, I read in USAToday how one of my fellow Wisconsin Badger alums is releasing a new film on the career track for pharma sales people that rung strikingly true to what I heard in Philly the past couple of days:

    Kathleen Slattery-Moschkau, a sales representative in the cell phone industry at the time, had a bachelor's degree in political science. The only science course she had ever taken in college was meteorology.

    "The irony is then all these years later I'm working for these major pharmaceutical companies telling your doctor how to prescribe drugs for you," says Slattery-Moschkau, a former employee of Bristol-Myers Squibb and Johnson & Johnson. "I did it for 10 years, and I'm almost embarrassed I stayed that long."

    An aspiring screenwriter since college, Slattery-Moschkau took notes about her many CandidCamera-type moments on the job. There were the "grinders," in which sales representatives would pair up and rehearse their identical, memorized pitches to doctors. There were the doctors' office staffs bored with yet another free pizza lunch from a drug sales rep. There were the internal conflicts between drug companies' marketing staffs and research scientists.

    "I just had this whole stack of these revelations," Slattery-Moschkau says. And they made great icebreakers. "When I would go to parties, and I would meet people I didn't know, people would be really curious about what I did."

    Slattery-Moschkau's notes led to Side Effects, an independent film that had its world premiere Saturday at the Cinequest Film festival in San Jose, Calif. The movie "is pretty eye-opening," says Jens Hussey, a Cinequest spokesman.

    The film, written and directed by Slattery-Moschkau, will have its Midwest premiere April 2 at the Wisconsin Film Festival in Madison. It will then be released in theaters in Madison, Milwaukee, Dallas, Lincoln, Neb., and possibly other cities, Slattery-Moschkau says.

    The timing of Side Effects, which was shot in 18 days last summer on a budget of $190,000, couldn't be better. Stories about the safety and marketing of prescription drugs grabbed headlines and led newscasts in recent months.

    "As we were wrapping shooting, I think, the Paxil story was breaking," says Slattery-Moschkau, referring to one of the antidepressants linked to suicides in young people. "Then, shortly afterward, the Vioxx story broke."

    Side Effects centers on the launch of an antidepressant called Vivexx. But don't expect an expose à la Michael Moore, who revealed in September, right around the time Merck pulled Vioxx off the market, that he's now taking on the pharmaceutical industry. There's no such drug as Vivexx, and there's no such drug company as Braden-Andrews, which markets it.

    Slattery-Moschkau's film is a satirical look at how prescription drugs are marketed, with romance and family relations added to the mix. "I'm not Michael Moore," she says. "I tried to provide some of the counter-arguments for people to be thinking about. We have to look at both sides of the story."

    For example, in one scene, Slattery-Moschkau's alter ego, Karly Hert — played by Katherine Heigl, who will appear in ABC's new TV series Grey's Anatomy— defends her profession to her boyfriend. "What about all the patients that are helped?" she asks.

    Slattery-Moschkau wonders whether patients also might have been hurt because their doctors depended on drug company sales representatives, a number of whom had been drama or music majors in college, for information. "Basically, you were hired if you were a star athlete or they liked the way you looked," she says. "They wanted to give doctors something that would be a nice break in their day."

    Spokesman Jeff Trewhitt says no one with the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, or PhRMA, a trade group for the prescription drug industry, has seen Side Effects. His response is based on a reporter's description of the film.

    "This really does sound like fiction, considering that all sales representatives undergo extensive technical training and are prepared to answer questions about new medicines and their characteristics," Trewhitt says. He says drug companies often hire nurses and pharmacists for their sales forces.

    Like Karly, Slattery-Moschkau says, she did not suddenly quit her job with a drug company.

    "Toward the end, it was this bottom-line financial thing," she says. " 'I've got a house payment. How can I do this job a little while longer and build up my savings?' "

    Slattery-Moschkau's — and Karly's — solution: Tell it like it is to the doctors. When a doctor asks Karly why he should prescribe her company's drug, she replies: "You're going to know exactly what your patients are getting with this drug. The good, the bad, the ugly."

    To Slattery-Moschkau's surprise, her sales soared. "It was like the more direct and more honest I was, the more they respected what I had to say."

Now, whether or not this is a career option for freshly minted med-school dropouts...? That remains to be seen.

- Arik

Posted by Arik Johnson at March 15, 2005 12:13 AM