Marketing of professionals

So doctors don't like to see pharma firms spending money on marketing. Too bad.

In my experience, besides a line or two in the phone directories, doctors usually don't market themselves.

Unless of course they do vanity work. And I suspect that of all the medical fields, those practitioners are the ones least respected by the other fields. They oughtta be working gratis on deformed children instead of mounting Revision 3 of Pamela Anderson's boobs.

So, frankly, just what do physicians as a group know about marketing?

I do know that I've received free meds before. This makes the doctor look like a good guy. But where did he get them from? Uh-huh, by those pharma companies' marketing organizations.

Some years back lawyers weren't allowed to advertise either. When this was being discussed I was in grade school, and to my unsophisticated brain it seemed unfair if they couldn't advertise - what could be wrong with that?

Plenty. Strangely enough, if you promote something, you'll get more of it. And now we have ambulance chasers on the back of phone books, on TV ads, running full page ads in newspapers, you name it.

And look at what has happened to our legal system.

So tell me again who it is who shouldn't be spending money on marketing.