Main Subject - Business

All the major players are leaping into Second Life while I’m still muddling through my first. Can virtual reality be that much better than real life?

Second

According to USFDA, a combination product is one composed of any combination of a drug and device; biological product and device; drug and biological product

Life is a three-year-old virtual community with 1.39 million members created by Linden Lab. This “virtual universe” or “metaverse” is like the popular video

; or drug, device, and biological product and fixed dose combination would include two or more combinations of drug.

Examples of combination products may in

game “Sims” where participants create their own reality and populate it with “avatars” to represent themselves in either a realistic or surrealistic ways. Ac

lude drug-coated devices, drugs packaged with delivery devices in medical kits, and drugs and devices packaged separately but intended to be used together.

ording to Steve Hamm in Business Week, IBM’s head honcho Sam Palmisano has two avatars – business and sporty.

Evidently this digital world is being discover

here is enormous increase in the number of combination products entering the market in the recent years. Combination products have proven advantages but fixe

d by cutting edge firms eager to demonstrate their commitment to innovation. They intend to use it as test bed for ideas and as platform for marketing and re

d dose combinations are still in the process of convincing regulatory authority on their advantages over the single ingredient formulations.

Combination pro

ruiting. And in the short ruin the race is on between IBM, SUN, Dell, Nissan, Toyota or CNET for publicity and first-mover bragging rights.

A range of agenc

ucts have become life saving products for the pharmaceutical companies who doesn’t have many innovative molecules in their product pipeline and have been inc

es and marketing services firms are either leading or jumping on the bandwagon depending on whom you believe. Steve Rubel announced Edelman’s multi-part entr

easingly used in the product life cycle management. Even the companies having product patents are trying to extend their product life cycle through the combi

, which includes a contest for the best Second Life business plan, on his blog; MicroPersuasion.

Bartle Bogle Hegarty, the British-import creative shop, cla

nation products and maximize the revenues. But the companies involved in this practice are overlooking that they are burdening the patients both economically

ms to be first ad agency on SL by creating a virtual office with virtual hottie receptionists on an island sim. According to a press release they intend to “

and physically. They need to rightly judge the benefits of the combination products and they have to even look at the risks involved when combining the produ

nvolve these digital advocates in new business problems” whatever that means. Meanwhile Anomaly argues that their island called “Tenjin” has been operating o

ts. Some of the combination products were well accepted by physicians while others suffered. Companies involved in development of combination products are fi

SL for 7-8 months. Without much hype Leo Burnett set up the “Ideas Hub” and others are sure to follow.

In October, after Sun Microsystems claimed to be the

ding difficulty in defining their combination products and facing various challenges from selecting a combination to marketing it.

Following aspects would a

“first Fortune 500 company” to hold a virtual press conference on SL with 60 attendees logged into the site and connected by conference call, Dell followed

dd to the challenges in developing combination products:

Which markets to tap where the combination products can do fairly well?
Which combination prod

uit by announcing its intention to build Dell Island as a platform to sell virtual PCs using virtual currency and the new high-end XPS line in real green bac

cts are meaningful and rational?
Which therapeutic categories to select?
Which Combinations can address unmet needs of the patients?
Do combin

s.

All this leaves me scratching my real bald head.

I understand that marketing in the digital world is bedeviling major brands. I get the fact that agenci

tions increase the patient compliance?
What would be the developing cost?
How to tackle the risks encountered during combination product developmen

s can’t or haven’t really followed their audiences with the speed or agility that marketers need. And I know why agency brands are rushing to embrace the “la

t?

As combination products don't fit into the traditional categories of drugs, medical devices, or biological products, the USFDA is in the process of devel

est and greatest place you can find to spend marketing dollars”, as Eric Friedman put it in his Marketing.fm blog.

What I don’t get is:

1. Why all of a sud

ping new procedures for reviewing their safety, efficacy and quality.

Professional from academic institutions, pharmaceutical industries, health care indust

en did this particular virtual world get the nod?

2. Is this the flavor of the week or are these pioneer brands staking out prime real estate in a world I’l

y and representatives from various regulatory agencies are working out to design the regulatory requirements for manufacture and sale of combination products

eventually need to care about?

3. Who really believes that simulated reality and this particular flavor of simulated reality will emerge as the venue and t

.

As there is an increasing trend of the combination products companies manufacturing such products should be able to tackle the problems involved in the de

e social network of choice for either consumers or business?

4. Who can allocate scare marketing resources to bet on a new and self-perpetuating budget line

elopment. They need to be wiser in analyzing the market trends and the regulatory requirements.

Companies that provide selfless information through particip

item?

5. Is this, as Jeff Lanctot of AvenueA/Razorfish wondered “a show case, a bit of an indulgence or a way to promote yourself to marketers?”

Stay Tuned

tion in industry events and feedback to regulatory authorities would be able to face the challenges and will be successful in developing combination products

HTTP = HTML link (for blogs, profiles,phorums):
<a href="http://www.mainsubjects.org.ua/article/26070/mainsubjects-Second-Life.html">Second Life</a>

BB link (for phorums):
[url=http://www.mainsubjects.org.ua/article/26070/mainsubjects-Second-Life.html]Second Life[/url]

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