Some 430 delegates flew into Vienna in
early October from all corners of the
globe for the 87th PTMG conference.
After a bustling welcome reception on the
Wednesday evening followed by various
parties around the city an emphatic
breakfast gong drew the last few sleepy
heads into day one of a packed agenda.
In her welcome address our chairman
Sophie Bodet noted the record number of
delegates and that registration had closed
early. She also commented on both the
new look LL&P and PTMG website and
thanked Vanessa Parker, Sean Brosnan
and James Thomas for their efforts. It is
no surprise that PTMG continues to go
from strength to strength, for those of us
in the pharma industry and those who
work for pharma clients the presentations
are the most relevant and the networking
the most fruitful of any conference
offering.
The now traditional Founder's Lecture,
created to honour and celebrate our
founder Derek Rossitter who was in
attendance, was presented by Christina
Scobie from Merck who provided an elo-
quent introduction to the conference and
its theme of challenges to a global brand.
She outlined the great difficulties that we
all face from the clutter of class 5 to the
40-50% attrition rate during clearance as
well as the ongoing regulatory hurdle. She
concluded that whatever we do, it is the
safety of our patients that is paramount.
Derek Rossiter gave a very touching and
amusing response congratulating Christina
both on her speech and for fielding some
tricky questions. He reminisced of his time
during Second World War when he found
himself thinking it would be better to
work together to agree rather than to
fight it out. The fact it took until 1968 for
the first meeting to be held in London
with 7 people present caused Derek to
describe himself as "a gigantic great fraud"
which I am sure no one would agree with.
From this rousing beginning we were
launched straight into the complex but
riveting topic of Local Language as a
Barrier to a Global Brand courtesy of
Andreas Popper from Naexas Compass
Group. Andreas' impressive grasp of
multiple languages places him in the
privileged position of understanding not
only a language itself but also how
languages work and in particular those
with foreign alphabets that require the
filing of transliterations. We are now all
more familiar with the concept of pictorial
meanings and syllabaries as opposed to
plain old letters and words! So many
companies create transliterations on a
country by country basis without
exploring whether there could be a
regional possibility. This particularly
applies to Asia where although a pictorial
mark may be pronounced differently in
different countries, it could still be
understood from the images in various
countries.
Frances Drummond of Norton Rose
Australia & Catherine Boudot of Biofarma
provided the audience with an overview of
the various updates to the plain packaging
situation that have arisen since the last
PTMG meeting highlighting Australia's
blazing trail in relation to tobacco
legislation. Many countries have been
keenly observing progress in Australia so
we can't view this as a one country only
phenomenon. Frances also scared a lot of
brand owners when she used various
mock up scenarios of how our OTC
packaging might look if the Therapeutic
Goods Administration (TGA) labelling and
packaging proposals go ahead, including
the generic name taking greater
prominence than brand or even that the
company logo may not be allowed to
appear on packaging. Catherine offered us
an overview of the direction that is being
taken in the EU and US. One particular
concern is that packaging is part of the
Marketing Authorisation and is therefore
submitted in the dossier. If packaging
changes and becomes non compliant, the
MA could therefore be suspended. In the
US recommendations arising from various
consultations included discouraging the
use of logos, bars, stripes, symbols and
also to "avoid or minimise the use of
corporate trade dress". PhRMA are
apparently exploring a potential claim that
recommendations may breach first
amendment right to freedom of speech.
We were all encouraged to engage with
the ongoing government consultations in
Australia whilst we have the opportunity
and to work as an industry to assist in
lobbying efforts.
After a refresh and a chat during the
coffee break and more of the hotel's
unique savoury lollipops with bows, Joelle
Sanit-Hugot of Sanofi gave us an expert
tour of the new guidelines that were
issued in June 2013 by the EMA Name
Review Group (NRG) whose role is to
review proposed pharmaceutical trade
names prior to approval by the CHMP.
Two of the major changes included 7
PTMG Autumn Conference Report
Vienna 2nd 4th October 2013 - Barriers to a global brand
Sarah Jeffery, GSK & Vanessa Parker, PTMG
Christina Scobie & Derek Rossitter
Andreas Popper
Frances Drummond
Catherine Boudot
Joelle Sanit-Hugot