"Critical Path." "Desired State." "21st Century GMPs." "Process Analytical Technologies." Extremely important initiatives, extremely dull names---and hardly rousing battle cries for an industry or an Agency on the brink of major change. Not that one expects too many flourishes from a government bureaucracy, but FDA could really stand some more effective "branding" for its ambitious programs, and an overarching public relations strategy, and maybe even a comprehensive name that would unite and describe all these separate programs.Mark Senak expressed this so well in his blog, Eye on FDA, recently.I had always considered marketing to be far less "noble" than science, engineering, writing, art, music or journalism--- to be selling out, and perhaps even a bit dishonest. But as Paul Wang, a brilliant marketing professor at Northwestern University, showed in a recent lecture, when approached the right way, marketing is [almost] everything. We need to do it every day, whether to advance an idea, an invention, a career, ourselves. And at the core of effective marketing is empathy, rather than snake oil salesmanship.The best idea of its time won't go anywhere if it isn't communicated well, doesn't meet its audience's needs, and doesn't reach its target.If you randomly stopped pharmaceutical plant employees, Jay Leno style, in facility parking lots and asked them to identify "the Critical Path" or "the Desired State," how many of them could answer correctly? And how inspired do you feel about reaching "the desired state" [desired by whom?] or progressing along "the critical path?" I hope you do feel inspired, but more inspiring rallying cries would probably help.They'd also help the public care more---or even just care--- about the transformative work now going on within FDA and the industry, and they'd help the Agency at a time when it faces severe criticism from the public and politicians.-AMS
