Hopefully some of the medical people here will have some insight on this. Apparently (I don’t know about it first hand) drug company salesmen travel from doctor’s office to doctor’s office trying to convince doctors to prescribe their products. The reps often give out nicknacks to the doctors labeled with the name of the medication and the company. Sometimes it is a simple ballpoint pen, sometimes more creative items, like this image that is still in Google’s image cache but links to a dead web page.
My question is is there a specific term I should use to look for them (other than “pharmaceutical drug rep collectibles”) or collector’s pages I could visit? I’m wanting to find images of one specific item that I’ve seen before, given out maybe 15 or 20 years ago, that was a meteorite crushing someone. Possibly for something like a prescription migrane medication.
Definitely swag. This term is not just for pharmaceuticals. It’s used for movies and music as well. A friend of mine made a lot of money in the 80s and 90s with his movie swag business. The college radio station where I worked got lots of music swag in the 80s which is where I first heard the term. We’d get things like nerf balls and key chains and candy with the band’s name on it.
One type of promo gift that stands out in my memory was sent out in the mail by the makers of Sinequan (doxepin), an antidepressant. My father, a family doc received several tiny potted plants from the company. One of them, a miniature palm (Chamaedorea elegans) lived for at least a dozen years and got to be several feet tall.
When I worked for a psychiatrist, we used to get all sorts of stuff. Pens by the dozens (if the cheapo stick kind) or just one at a time for nice metallic ones. Also calculators, those insulated drink cups, rulers, little mascot figurines, clip on book reading lights, little pen shaped flash lights, on and on. Basically anything that they could stamp their drug name on and that had a chance that maybe it would end up lying around on the doctor’s desk or his secretary’s or whatever.
I tell you, though, the drug rep who got greeted most happily and always got a chance to actually talk to the doc, was the guy that came bearing goodie boxes from a nice bakery. He was no dummy.
Believe me, a pen advertising Viagra had to be solid, heavy, and feel good in the hand. We had two from vendors at conventions–one with a tapered tip and one with a flared tip, a nice nod to circumcised and non-circumcised.
Too late to the party again… but FWIW, back in the days when I worked pretty closely with the (UK) reps, these (the literature) were called “Leave Pieces”. If you google Pharmaceutical Leave Pieces you get the right hits, but these days apparently called Leave Behind Literature. You never know - it might be useful info at some point in the future.
My understanding is that the pharma reps learned what preference the doctors at a given clinic have; this doctor prefers Italian food, ideally from that restauarant, this other doctor likes Indian food, etc. They don’t do this any longer but when they did, I spoke with the office manager at one clinic in January. She told me that her calendar was booked with pharma rep visits as far ahead as September.
The practice at the time was for the pharma rep to first meet with the doctors at the clinic over lunch and once that was done, the rest of the clinic staff was welcome to eat.
And, again, don’t know if it’s still the case, but the pharma reps, both men and women, were supposedly really good-looking. Some were formerly college athletes.
Early on in the career, I used to shoot endless industrial videos. There was no downside:
Bankers hours for the most part.
Got to see amazing things most people do NOT ever get to see. Like how Nestlé Toll House Morsels are made.
Great pay per hour.
Clients not nearly as insane as commercial shoot clients !!
I mention all of this because for one year, maybe two, pharma was my largest client.Schering-Plough, for one. I shot a lot of the material used by those Sales Reps who walked into those doctors’ offices in the year or two leading up to the launch of things like Prilosec™.
There was no end to the marketing/ swag materials I’d see on shoots. Some inane, some VERY very cool and somewhat pricey per unit.Of course, the billions with a bee to be made with a successful launch meant that that swag stuff was just a nothing line item ( and a tax write-off )
I saw many. Never got any. Such is the life when you are on the crew…
Oh, absolutely. My doc was a skinny fit guy who looked like a health fanatic, but man did he have a sweet tooth. The thing was, his wife was a brittle diabetic and home was a total no sweets desert.
Some years ago I stumbled on some cable channel that ran the How It’s Made series. Lots and lots of those sorts of vids. Notso hotso on the explanation, but plenty of mesmerizing synchronized machinery in action.
Much more calming and reassuring about human nature than watching e.g. Game of Thrones. Or the other major fantasy news channel that starts with an F.
