Big and medium pharmaceutical companies, faced with stiff competition and wanting to have a larger chunk of the market share, are now aggressively resorting to event management to boost their sales and bottomline. According to industry sources, in the last two years, more companies have had event managements and the figure in the last two years has tripled. For pharmaceutical companies event management has become a tool to market their products while for the event management companies, it is making hay when the sun shines.

According to a representative of an event management company based in Chennai, pharmaceutical companies are now using event management more effectively to move towards their aim of increased sales and bottomline. "Advertisements by pharmaceutical companies are banned in India except for corporate ads. Corporate ads don't click quite often. Products of the company are the major advertisement tool, and this they are doing by conducting event management for doctors, trade and so on," the representative added. She further claimed that the request to her company for conducting event management has doubled in the last two years compared to the previous years.

Event managements range from health camps to conducting seminars to inviting doctors for a function to organizing contests for doctors and trade. Many progressive companies are using these tools to propagate their brands. Ranbaxy, Dr. Reddy's Laboratories, Wockhardt, Glaxo, Novartis, Aventis, Knoll (Abotts), Zydus Cadila etc are using Event Management extensively to garner sales. Diabetic detection camp, hypertensive clinic, oral dental care, choleresterol detection camp, anaemia detection camp are the few examples which generated lot of sales for the products. The success of Lasix of Aventis in earlier days was due to hypertensive detection camp. This detection camp helps company to generate additional patients for their product provided it is organized in a more systematic manner.

With doctors being the main link in the chain, companies have started organizing additional activities besides symposium. Some of these are Stress Camp for doctors, Family get together of doctors, Valentine Day, Birthday, Marriage Anniversary, Mother-in-law's day, Doctor's Day etc. Sponsoring doctors to symposium, organizing seminar in a group, calling film stars and musicians to entertain doctors are a few other activities. At recent APICON conference at Varanasi, many leading actors and actresses came alongwith a musical party to entertain the doctors. It has never happened in past.

Application of social marketing is rapidly gaining place. Hepatitis-B market exploded with application of social marketing helping companies like Wockhardt, Serum Institute of India, Shantha Biotech, Pfizer to improve sales in vaccine segment.

Pharmaceutical industry sources claim that event management would be the next best tool pharmaceutical companies will use to propagate their product brands besides promoting the image of the companies. "We see more and more such event management taking place in the coming months too. Event management has really worked for the companies, and I am sure they will not waste any time to really overlook the event management tool to market themselves," claimed an industry veteran.

No accurate figures of expenditures incurred by the companies are available for this activity. However, some estimates indicate that the total expenditure is in the region of Rs.100-150 crore annually. "Going by the trend , companies are sure to allocate more budget to event management. The expenditure is linked proportionally to the sales garnered. I think the figure should go up in the coming years what with competition and increased product range eating into the market share of the companies," claimed a representative of an event management company based in Chennai.