Milestones 2004

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OUTREACH: PUBLIC & MEDIA

The big biotech story in January 2003 was Baby Eve — a UFO cult's alleged human reproductive cloning success. But by December, biotech headlines touted the upturn in FDA drug approvals and the industry's improved financial outlook. Such is the wide range of subject matter BIO's Communications Department handles.

In addition to responding to breaking news and emerging trends, BIO maintains a climate of public support for biotechnology and addresses public-policy issues on behalf of member companies. BIO's tools include media outreach, television messaging, opinion polling and focus groups, and publications.

BIO has not only become a key policy resource for domestic and global media outlets, but has also targeted Washington, D.C., opinion leaders with advertising and news story placement.

"Lawmakers' positive perception of our industry and its benefits adds much to our advocacy efforts on Capitol Hill," says Dan Eramian, BIO's vice president of communications. "Many of our communications efforts are aimed at enhancing and protecting that reputation. If we lose it, we will never get it back."

As part of its mission to help members grow their businesses, BIO also cultivates relationships with financial reporters, garnering 2003 coverage in Business Week, the Financial Times, Forbes, Fortune and the Wall Street Journal.

SPECIAL INITIATIVES

Stelios Papadopoulos (left), vice chairman of SG Cowen, and BIO President Carl B. Feldbaum used BIO TV during the BIO 2003 convention to do a series of interviews with local morning news shows.

BIO TV
BIO has a long record of success with print media, but in 2003 it stepped up outreach to broadcast journalists through BIO TV, a fully equipped, satellite-linked television and radio studio at the BIO 2003 Annual Convention.

BIO TV allowed television and radio networks to broadcast without the expense and logistical headaches of bringing their own equipment to the convention. As a result, networks such as CNN, Fox, Reuters, MSNBC and CNBC, as well as Japanese and European television networks, broadcast live over a five-day period from the convention. Millions of people around the world saw the convention's biotech news and speakers.

BIO is planning an expanded broadcast operation in San Francisco at BIO 2004.

Global Health Media Brunch
BIO welcomed journalists to the BIO 2003 convention with a media brunch covering biotechnology's potential to create new drugs, vaccines and crops for the developing world. The program featured scientists and executives from GlaxoSmithKline, Avant Immunotherapeutics, Monsanto and Dupont, as well as Florence Wambugu, a Kenyan geneticist and passionate advocate for biotechnology in Africa.

The event led to a 3,800-word feature in the Washington Post on agricultural biotechnology's potential for addressing health and economic needs in Africa.

BIO's new television ad, "Molecule," features Mike Henry of Millennium Pharmaceuticals and other Boston-area researchers.

'Molecule'
BIO launched its third 30-second television commercial, "Molecule," in 2003. The spot, which won a national Telly award for creativity, uses ball-and-stick molecular graphics to illustrate the links between real biotech health-care researchers and the patients whose illnesses they hope to cure. The tag line is "Biotechnology: A New Link to Hope."

Targeting national policymakers, the ad aired in the Washington, D.C., area from March through the close of the BIO 2003 convention in late June. A similar schedule is planned for 2004.

A BIO brochure and print advertisement describe how biotechnology is literally "everywhere you look."

Food and Agriculture
Agricultural applications of biotechnology remain controversial to some despite a long record of safety and environmental benefits. BIO continues to respond to concerns as they arise but is also pursuing a positive communications strategy that centers on agricultural biotechnology solutions to problems such as obesity, hunger and shortages of biologic medicines.

The initiative began at BIO 2003 with a media brunch on biotech's potential for addressing global health (see above) and continued with outreach to patient groups, media and Congress on the benefits of plant-made pharmaceuticals.

PUBLICATIONS

Biotechnology helps produce everything from corn flakes to cotton sheets to vitamin B₂. It's literally "everywhere you look," as a popular new BIO brochure points out. The brochure, published for the BIO 2003 convention, has been a hit with the public and the state and regional biotechnology associations that ordered copies by the thousand.

BIO also published a new edition of its award-winning Editors' and Reporters' Guide to Biotechnology in 2003, as well as the BIO News member newsletter, BIO Bulletin fax and e-mail updates, and a brochure highlighting the participation of U.S. political leaders in the BIO 2003 convention.

POLLING

Seventy percent of Washington-area opinion leaders view biotechnology favorably, according to opinion polling sponsored by BIO in 2003. Public support for the industry is comparable to that of doctors and hospitals and nearly double that of the pharmaceutical industry.