SUMMARY

While most major direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising campaigns in the medical device and pharmaceutical industries are created and managed by outside agencies, outsourcing a DTC marketing campaign can be expensive. When budgets are lean-as they are in today's marketplace-marketers need to look at how much can be done with in-house resources. But with fewer people being asked to do more than ever, how does a company handle bringing more of the work in-house?

Carrie Nelson, Manager New Hope Parkinson Program, and Laura Virden, Market Development Manager, of Medtronic shared the story of their two-year journey tackling this problem at the recent "Direct to Consumer Strategies for Medical Devices" conference organized by the Center for Business Intelligence.

The article includes the following sections:

• Medtronic's New Hope DTC Program
• Capture-Cultivate-Close-Support
• Questions to Ask Before Beginning
• Manage Resources and Delegate
• Keys to Success