Latest posts
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From Blockbuster to Precision: How Drug Launches Change
I’ve long held the notion, and am hardly original in it, that the accumulation of data to understand launch efficiency must at some point entail real changes to the shape of those launches. The halcyon blockbuster days of laying out a billion or more and splashing ads everywhere would ultimately meet up with the performance…
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Adversarial Mechanics and 2nd order consequences for Geo, optimization, pubs: a comparative history
Not my favorite kind of pub (McSorley’s, the Dead Rabbit, the Full Shilling) but my second favorite: publishers. I like the value exchange that underpins the historical model of digital publishing: you read my article, I put an ad in front of you, we both get what we want. That model’s been under increasing duress…
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Rare Disease Strategy: Where Value Really Lives in Hereditary Angioedema
Hereditary angioedema (HAE) represents an exceptionally rare condition affecting only thousands of American patients, yet paradoxically hosts one of the most competitive pharmaceutical markets in rare disease. The landscape includes three newly approved therapies from 2025, established injectable treatments, an oral prophylactic option, and an emerging pipeline featuring long-acting antibodies and gene-editing approaches. The Diagnosis…
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What is this jev thing, or, an extended argument on what constitutes a dumpling
Well here I am on the train to New York once again, tired in week three of the fall events season that’s seen me run up and down the accela corridor. That means I need to give my mind a break, so let’s write, teach, and illustrate some AI. In the past week or two…
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Some considerations on GEO, agentic search and evolving media mix from an endemic pharma brand perspective
Statistically I expect to lose most readers by the end of this paragraph. This is not a criticism of you the reader, nor of my writing talent or lack thereof, it's simply a function of the attenuated attention spans the present set of media interfaces encourage. What it does mean is I'd never recommend bottom…
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Heavy Traffic on a narrow road: Commercial strategy for rare disease marketing
An example of RWD analysis of the IgA Nephropathology field Thinking of endemic versus rare disease promotion, I'm reminded of Tolstoy's line "All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way," there are commonalities in the playbook for a disease 1 in 5 Americans have, or at least there was.…
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Après Cannes, Le Deluge
I finally finished my strategy write-up coming out of Cannes, an exercise in picking at a million threads. I find myself coming back to one of them repeatedly though, so I thought I'd share it here and see if anyone had answers. While the Palais was packed and everyone all smiles, I left feeling the…
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Surfing or drowning in the AI waves
As Purplelab's resident theoretician, I've been enjoying the saaspocalyspe discussion and questions of its degree, as a chance to dig into the literature. In matters of AI I've borrowed heavily from Henry Farrell, a Johns Hopkins theorist. His writing two years ago on the effect of LLMs was prescient, particularly of the applications for knowledge…
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Call my agent
I’ve had this Victor Hugo quote stuck in my head these past few days, “nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come.” It’s great writing of course, but It feels true here, in this nondescript Hilton reception bar area where I write this. Word is we’re going back to the Marriott next…
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AI and the Advertising Adoption Cycle
Leaving every conference this year, but especially the Cannes Lions in June, I was struck by how totally AI excitement has proliferated across the verticals PurpleLab works with (Life Sciences, Advertising, Payer Provider, and more). It’s been a trending topic the last five years of course, but the earlier waves of AI, like image focused…