Over the years, many individuals and companies have extolled the virtues of building brands in pharma, and have proposed different processes and approaches to building emotional benefits on top of functional benefits to create Brand Essences, Brand Wheels, Onions and Footprints.  Whilst historically these have been powerful tools in bringing pharma marketing to embrace ‘brand’, and are still essential in the overall thinking, it’s time for a debate about whether the traditional brand development process is dead.

The traditional model explored by most companies to date has sought to drive an emotional benefit from the functional attributes in context with goals of treatment.  Whichever model is used – and in truth they are all variations on a theme – they are founded in consumer marketing folklore where the end benefit is ‘how the end user feels’: the emotional benefit.  This appears outdated in our pharma future, which is focused on delivering value for each stakeholder, whether prescriber, patient, policymaker or payer.

Our past approach of looking at a brand as an augmented product no longer suffices in any health system where the drivers of choice are value based Health Outcomes in an environment of Sustainable Healthcare.

We have to accept that our world is directed by some key overarching principles: how does my drug help to meet unmet medical needs, how a drug better meets existing needs, expands access and enhances patient outcomes.

Concurrently, our traditional audience has also shifted away from the prescriber (especially the physician) towards the patient (normally in the form of the patient associations) and the payer. The demands here are not about ‘how I feel emotionally’, but instead about a value and economic justification of drug use for each of our stakeholders with a far greater emphasis on patient (Healthy Outcomes) and payer (Sustainable Healthcare).

That is not to say that Brand is to be regarded as a ‘dirty word’ in pharma.  On the contrary,  it has never been more important.

Ben Osborn, Commercial Portfolio Lead Europe, Oncology at Pfizer puts it aptly: “Unless we reach a point in time where decisions are purely made on clinical data in a robotic manner and such decisions rigorously enforced, then the psychological and emotional parts of the mind will continue to influence decisions. The smart marketers will realise that the brand needs to evolve and communicate clearly the value that the brand delivers to all stakeholders from payers and patients to prescribers.

“Brand development often starts too late in the drug development process and as such important insights and views from scientists and clinicians are often missed. Brand development should be planned from an early stage in the drug’s lifecycle and can appropriately be used to develop the clinical trial programme alongside very scientific and clinical data.”

The role of the brand is critical moving forward – but the way we view it, how we create it, and how we use and communicate it will be very different.  We must adapt our thinking to fit our industry, and not slavishly follow our marketing colleagues in fast moving consumer goods.

The Way We View Brand

A brand is a set of perceptions and images that represent a company, product or service. Whilst many people refer to a brand as a logo, tagline or audio jingle, it is actually much larger.  A brand is the essence or promise of what will be delivered or experienced.

Janis Clayton, VP and General Manager for UK & Ireland for Shire’s Human Genetic Therapies Business Unit, says that this point is often missed in pharma.

“Brand development often seems to focus too much on pantones, visual imagery and straplines rather than the long-term, sustainable vision of how the brand needs to develop with the needs/demands of a changing market.  There also appears to be little if any understanding of ‘brand equity’, with every new brand/product manager wanting to change the image as part of making their own personal mark.  A brand needs to reflect the quality, reliability and value of the product and a long-term, patent-life view needs to be taken.”

This promise of what will be delivered or experienced remains as true today as it did in the past – just, in pharma today, it is a completely different promise.

“Any marketer who has ever thought ‘the drug will sell itself’ is deluded and missing a major component of the human mind,” says Ben Osborn.  “Appealing to both the rational and emotional elements when marketing continues to be important in the pharma industry, but the degree to which each of these is considered and how they are communicated to the wide range of stakeholders has undoubtedly evolved in recent years, and will continue to do so.”

Thinking about our brand conveying some sort of purely high level emotional – some may even say ‘fluffy’ – benefit is no longer relevant.  Instead we must view it as the value it brings to the healthcare system.  It should convey the end benefits with a human, and hence more emotive, context relevant to the needs of our individual stakeholders.

Of course this human element can only be motivating, meaningful and differentiating if we truly understand the goals and needs of our stakeholders.  Trying to create a brand proposition that works everywhere and for everyone is as dead as the proverbial dodo.  There is no way today that any new brand can satisfy the needs of everyone (unless we have a drug that represents a real seed-change in treatment in an area of clear unmet medical need, e.g. a CURE for cancer) and as such we must view our brand in the way it will add value to a segment or segments, and not attempt to be ‘jack of all trades and master of none’ – so often the apparent goal of pharma marketers.

Paul Navarre, Vice-President Ophthalmology EAME at Allergan does see some merit in applying fmcg brand development processes in pharma, especially in being clear about the target.

“Pharma is very similar [to fmcg], but the environment is different, the constraints are different.  There is still a lot of conservatism, it is old-fashioned.  Compliance is the new excuse companies and marketers will take.  The confusion comes also from a lack of clarity on defining the target: patients versus physicians.”

Janis Clayton agrees: “The Pharma industry is often too insular and does not look outside to the approaches of other industries as often as it could.  I appreciate that in ‘ethical pharma’ we don’t advertise direct to patients and that we operate in a heavily regulated and restricted environment, but this seems even more reason to learn from all successful marketing campaigns, whatever the product/industry and learn how to apply what has worked well (and not to apply what hasn’t!).

“Much of this also requires a strong understanding of market segmentation which is also not a strength I have seen within the pharma industry, as you have to understand which target group you are aiming to appeal to with your particular brand.  Perhaps this is the bigger challenge.”

In the same way as Pot Noodle does not appeal to everyone who eats, but does ‘owns’ students (as my children at University will testify), our drug will not deliver value to every management situation but can be orientated to meet the distinct needs in certain particular ones.

And in the future that will be the defining moment for our BRAND.

A Future View of Creating a Brand

If we accept that brand is now much more about framing our drug in context with the desired end-benefits of treatment relevant to the individual stakeholder within the framework of Healthy Outcomes and Sustainable Healthcare, then how we create it must change commensurately.

No longer can it be about emotion, but it must be emotive.  No more fluffy promises and pictures of ‘happy patients’, but more about what it allows the healthcare system to do or achieve differently and the consequential value that this delivers, with a human context.  Of course, if stakeholders (our customers) do not see or experience value then they reserve the right to revert to lowest cost!

We must accept that payers are demanding more and more information on a drug’s safety and efficacy and more frequently require information on a drug’s cost-effectiveness compared to alternative treatments, whilst patients who are more health-literate need persuasive arguments to use effective medication and, increasingly, to pay for it.

All too often we hear the reaction to a basic target product profile setting out the efficacy, tolerability and safety, as David Digby, Director Global Marketing at Eisai states: “This profile is not exactly what we need for building a successful brand.  The evidence that has been developed doesn’t seem to address the needs of the segments that we should be trying to win based on the product’s potential and the commercially attractive unmet need in the market.

“This seems to be a result of the clinical trials having focused on standard clinical end-points, rather than those most pertinent to these target segments.  But I guess we will just have to work with what we have.”

A product that is designed to meet the needs of everybody ends up meeting nobody’s needs specifically, and the ‘efficacy-safety-tolerability’ approach to product development frequently results in a product with little scope for differentiation and in addition, it leads to less than ideal, generalist forecasts which may become obsolete shortly after launch.

I am not advocating an approach that focuses our brand on adding value to specific segments to the detriment of our labelling. Of course we must strive for the most appropriate label to meet our long term vision and commercial objective, but, as we all know, label does not equate to use. The label should be as wide as our trials and data allow. The brand should be focused on the segments where it adds most value.

Brand building must start during the product development phase – ideally in Phase 2b or 3 latest – and not when the product makes it to market. We must examine the multiple layers of our brand and ensure that the clinical development and registration trial data drive out the real value for each and all of our stakeholders.

It starts with our molecule but aims to build a pharmaceutical brand as soon as the likely TPP is created by designing Phase 3 clinical trials to deliver the endpoints to support messages that are differentiating and compelling in the patient segments you have identified as both attractive and suitable for your brand replacing product-led clinical development with market-facing brand development.

Another fundamental shift in our thinking and a marked difference from consumer marketing is that the brand in pharma should not be created by marketing, no matter how good their skills or the process advocated by their agencies and consultancies.  Brand creation for pharma must be the preserve of the cross-functional and multi-disciplinary team: only by embracing this approach can we genuinely address how our brand drives from the evidence base to how it helps stakeholders achieve something differently. And this and only this will define how successful our brand will be.

Our Onions and Wheels should be replaced by a brand process designed for pharma by pharma, and not one plagiarised from consumer marketing.

How We Use Brand and Communicate it

Having spent many valuable resources in developing brands, historically it all comes down to the campaign – do we like the pictures?

No!  As media has proliferated in the consumer world with the advent of multiple channels and delivery systems so our world in Pharma is changing.  No more huge sales forces, detail aids with graphs, tables and diagrams, and creative executions centred on smiling patients – but a multi-media, multi-platform approach.

As Ernst & Young set out in Pharma 3.0, the future is about how we embrace change and all that comes with it from vastly increased use of technology to disseminate information to multiple stakeholders; innovation in terms of how we engage with stakeholders; adapting to the challenges of working with payers and patients; and orientating all our communication around the critical drivers of Managing Patient Outcomes, Expanding Access and Meeting Unmet Medical Needs.

Those who hide behind regulations or absence of guidance from the regulatory bodies are in danger of ‘missing the boat’.  We must be prepared for the day when we will be communicating our brands to our customers via totally new devices and media that we must ensure are consistent with our brand.

Fit for the Future?

In my view is that the traditional brand development process is well and truly dead – but brands remain critical for pharma into the foreseeable future.

My manifesto for future pharma brand development is as follows:

• Our desire to communicate at an emotional level has been replaced by the need to communicate at an emotive one.
• Expressing emotional benefits has been superseded by the need to express benefits in a more human way.
• Brand is no longer about an augmented product, but about demonstrating value to each and every stakeholder in context with what our drug brands allow them to achieve differently.
• Brands are to be created by cross-functional teams not by marketing alone; they cannot focus on nebulous benefits at an individual clinician level.  They must embrace demonstrating (with an appropriate evidence base build-up during the development phases) how they deliver enhanced and measureable patient outcomes, access and meet unmet or unsatisfied medical needs to deliver against the agendas of our stakeholders, namely, Healthy Outcomes and Sustainable Healthcare.

About the author

Chris Marks is Partner and Brand Services Principal at the MSI Consultancy

In many markets – especially consumer markets – the corporate brand can add significant value and values to the portfolio of product brands and franchises.  Yet in pharma it plays little or no role, other than in communication with and to financial markets – when it comes to the brand that clinicians, payers and patients see, it is almost always about the product brand.  The corporate brand has little equity with these key audiences.

And yet the pharma market is one which is traditionally steeped in the values of heritage and trust.  Surely, as product differentials become ever smaller as competition increases, the corporate brand could be a powerful extra dimension to building competitive advantage.  Is this another area where our industry should sit up and take some learning from our fmcg colleagues?

In the last decade, corporate brands have become very strong drivers of financial value for corporations.  Corporate brands in themselves have become valuable assets on the company balance sheet, with market values very often much beyond book value.

Look at the value attributed to the corporate brand in the Interbrand ‘2011 Ranking of the Top 100 Brands’: at number one was Coca-Cola with a brand asset value of nearly $72bn; Google was fourth with a value of over $55bn; and Apple ranked eighth at almost $34bn.

Where are the big healthcare brands?  The only one in the Top 100 is Johnson and Johnson, ranked at no 85 with a value of £4bn – below the likes of Tiffany & Co, Adobe and Barclays.

Although the pharmaceutical industry has had some major product brand successes – think Prozac, Botox and Viagra – demonstrating the integration of strong product branding into everyday practice, what about the image of the companies themselves?

Does the corporate brand in pharmaceuticals have no value?  Obviously not – but it is not a vehicle that we, as an industry, have focused on in the past.  Is it time to change this thinking?

Brand Architecture

Before we start the debate about the role of the corporate brand in pharma, let’s start with an understanding of how brand architectures are used in other markets, particularly consumer markets.

Think of the brand architecture as its family tree or hierarchy.  It is how an organisation organises the various named entities within its portfolio, and how they relate to each other.  Ideally, the brand architecture is simple, with no more than two levels: corporate and sub-brands.  In fact, brand or sub-brand is the type of architecture most often used.  It takes a number of forms, each of which will include one or some of the following.

Corporate Brand

The Corporate brand is the brand bearing the company name.  It is always the highest in a brand hierarchy.  Examples are Sony, Apple, Nestlé, Colgate and L’Oreal.  It is the dominant, highest level brand in the hierarchy.

Master Brand

A master brand is the brand that covers ‘ranges’, and is a brand that can extend into more than one product category.  It sits in the space between the corporate brand (if it is used at all) and the sub-brand.  Examples include Listerine (a complete range of mouthwashes from Johnson & Johnson), McVities (the range of biscuits from United Biscuits) and Fairy (the range of cleaning products from Procter & Gamble); note that none of these overtly references the corporate brand.

Sub-brand

A sub-brand is a new brand that is combined with a corporate/master brand in the brand identity system.  The sub-brand can make the corporate brand more vital and relevant to a new consumer segment or within a new product category.  Examples are Nescafé (Coffee from Nestlé) and Total (Dental hygiene range from Colgate).

Product brand

A product brand is a product or service made distinctive by its positioning relative to the competition and by its own personality.  Brands represent the tangible and intangible benefits provided by a product which can be identified with the entire customer experience.  A brand includes all the assets critical to delivering and communicating that experience: the name, the design, the advertising, the product, the distribution channel, the reputation.

Endorsed Brand

An endorsed brand is the primary name the consumer is intended to use to refer to a product.  It is a brand that is endorsed by the parent or corporate brand in the brand identity system.  The parent brand is also identified with the product; however, the endorsed brand is given much greater visual weight than the parent brand.  In this situation, the corporate or parent brand lends credibility or assurance to the endorsed brand without overpowering it with its own associations.  Examples include Dasani, the water brand from Coca-Cola; and famously, immediately post the take-over, Skoda was endorsed by the new parent, VW.

The House of Brands

The pharma industry is at a decisive point of change, as competition increases and product brands’ patent lifecycles get ever shorter.  So I would argue that now is the time to revisit the relationship of our product brands with our longer-lasting corporate brands.

For years, pharma companies have followed the ‘house of brands’ strategy, focusing resources almost exclusively on building awareness and trust in product brands, often at the expense of the corporate brand. The result is that many consumers don’t even know the company that makes their daily prescriptions, as many corporations have discovered.

Yet pharmaceutical product brands don’t stay in the limelight for long.  The patent framework within which the industry functions begs the question: what will be around in 15 or 20 years’ time?  To find the answer, you could ask yourself which of the product brands from 20 years ago are still relevant today.  The one long term constant is the corporate entity behind the product (albeit that these have also evolved).  So, investment in and management of the corporate brand is essential.

Of course there are potential pitfalls in devoting more resources to developing corporate pharma brands.  What is the impact on the corporate brand if a product causes significant adverse events – if that product carried the corporate brand prominently, what would be the impact on other product brands in the company’s portfolio bearing the corporate brand – would they be damaged by more explicit association?  Think Vioxx.  (But it happens anyway – look at the MSD share price.)

If there was a production failure, what would be the impact on the corporate brand?  Think Cerezyme and Genzyme.

What if your products and services do not fit together under one brand promise, personality and position?  Think about the role of Novartis (branded pharmaceuticals) and its subsidiary Sandoz (primarily generics and biosimilars) – actually a good example of the use of the corporate brand in our industry.

The problem is that corporate branding is a long-term project, in an industry that sees product sales peak and peter out in less than a decade.  To build a corporate brand is time consuming. There’s what you say, then how consistently you say it and for how long.  You have to be a fantastic company for at least five to ten years before people believe it – and you can lose that reputation in 30 seconds.

Corporate branding is a serious undertaking which entails more skills and activities than just an updated glossy marketing facade with empty jargon.

The Advantages of a Strong Corporate Brand

I sense that these potential pitfalls have been the things which have held back the pharma industry from giving its corporate brands a stronger role.  Yet there are undoubted benefits from doing this, especially in an ever more rapidly changing marketplace.

A strong brand is no less or more than the face of the business strategy, hence portraying what the corporation aims at doing and what it wants to be known for in the market place.  Think of HSBC, which has successfully implemented a stringent corporate branding strategy.  They employ the same common expression throughout the globe with a simple advertising strategy based on the line ‘The world’s local bank’.  This creative platform enables the corporation to bridge between many cultural differences, and to portray many faces of the same strategy.

A strong corporate branding strategy can add significant value in terms of helping the entire corporation and the management team to implement the long-term vision, create unique positions in the marketplace of the company and its brands, and not the least unlock the leadership potential within the organisation.  Hence such a strategy can enable the corporation to further leverage on its tangible and non-tangible assets leading to Branding Excellence throughout the corporation.

It also creates simplicity, as it always will stand on top of the brand portfolio as the ultimate identifier of the corporation.  P&G has notoriously been known for a multi-brand strategy and yet again, the corporate brand P&G is still what encapsulates all activities by the company.

Depending on the business strategy (and the potential need for more than a one-brand architecture in the case of P&G which markets many different brands under their umbrella), a corporate brand can very often assist the corporation and the management to focus in on the core vision and values.  Once this overall platform has been established and implemented, it serves as a great stepping stone for revisiting any other brands in the corporation’s portfolio, to adopt a new approach and look at the various brand identities.

A strong corporate brand instils trust and loyalty – extremely important qualities in the pharmaceutical industry.  Such confidence can help propel a company through uncertain times.  However, keeping product brands at an arm’s length from the corporate brand (and the other products in its house) ensures a cushion should one product falter.

It is also about building and maintaining strong perceptions in the minds of customers.  This takes time to establish and many resources to keep.

Meeting New Commercial Needs

Our industry has recently experienced considerable M&A activity, downsizing, integration and diversification of portfolios.  In the coming years, with patent expiry and loss of exclusivity on a number of the blockbuster brands that drove revenue streams in previous decades, end users will demand more targeted therapies.

I believe this has led to a significant change in the role that brand can and does play within our space, whether it be strengthening the product brand proposition or bringing the corporate brand into play for the first time.  The role that brand plays at both a product and corporate level is rapidly changing to meet the needs of the newer commercial models.

It is up to those leading the pharmaceuticals companies to challenge the current brand model.  The focus can no longer be solely on promoting product brands through a ‘house of brands’ approach.  Rather, industry leaders should use brands – all brands (corporate, product, category) – in a smarter way.  And, in some cases, this may involve industry leaders changing their respective brand models altogether.

Some of them will be inclined to shy away from exploring alternative brand models due to the risk associated with linking the corporate name to the products.  But the proliferation and acceleration of traditional media, combined with the instantaneous consumer dialogue of digital/social media outlets, is making our world and our industry increasingly transparent.

As such, the separation between product and manufacturer can no longer be artificially maintained.  It is important for industry leaders to recognise this and understand that they can benefit from a more confident and assertive approach – one that elevates the role of the corporate brand and capitalises on the upside gains and loyalty that such an approach can create.

The life of the Enterprise

The founder of Sony, Akio Morita, once said: “I have always believed that the company name is the life of an enterprise. It carries responsibility and guarantees the quality of the product.”  The core value of a brand is derived from its ability to drive demand, loyalty, retention and purchasing power.  Therefore, a strong and well-balanced corporate brand orchestrated throughout the corporation by a passionate CEO and his team can lead to very successful and sustainable financial results.

In recognising corporate brand value as a strategic business and financial asset, leaders in pharma will be able to drive demand, loyalty, retention and purchasing power for their respective organisations – all of which will subsequently translate into the measurement of a balance sheet asset, earnings and shareholder value.

Let me finish by asking you some questions to enable you to assess the value of your current brands, and what role your corporate brand should play in the mix:

How can your corporate brand create value for your organisation and its shareholders?

Does your corporate brand promise match your long-term business strategy?

Has your commercial model changed significantly in the last three to five years?  Does your brand model properly align to any change in your commercial model?

Are you maximising the revenue potential of your product, portfolio, and corporate brands?

Are your people (employees) fully engaged with your corporate brand?  Do they live the brand?

How you answer these questions – not in words but in actions – will go a long way in determining whether we lead the inevitable evolution of our industry, or lag behind.  To avoid falling back, it seems inevitable that the corporate brand must play a bigger role in our industry.  Now is the time to be brave, show confidence and once again learn from fmcg.

The Author

Chris Marks is Partner and Brand Services Principal at The MSI Consultancy Ltd.

The changes that have occurred within Pharma in the recent past, such as:

• increasing challenges to demonstrate real, value added differentiation at a clinical level
• dramatic changes in what we need to provide to create value propositions for the payers
• the spread of information technology and social networking sites that have revolutionised patient involvement in therapeutic decisions

are likely to pale into insignificance in contrast to the current most important trend in marketing for the 21^st Century – involving customers in what they want, i.e. ‘co-creating with your customers’.

Not because everything has to or will be co-created in the future, but because tapping into the collective experiences, skills and ingenuity of hundreds of millions of customers around the world is a complete departure from the inward looking, producer-versus-customer innovation model so common to corporations worldwide.

Have you ever sat in on or observed a focus group where you have thought to yourself that the respondents are bored or trying to give answers that they think you want to hear? Not a criticism of respondents per se, but it highlights a real need to look at how we have historically have gone about brand, concept and message, creation and testing and represents a real challenge to how relevant are our current methods.

Traditionally, the process for brand development has been for the marketing team (at a global, regional or local level), the medical and sales teams, the advertising agency and the brand consultancy to be closeted in a darkened room in a workshop environment, striving to create the complete strategic brand, with a view to undertaking extensive market research to collaborate their thoughts.

We develop what we think customers want to hear, the value we think they want, to put together an offering and then, and only then, expose it to our customers in the hope that they will like what we offer them!

Is this approach as relevant as it was in the past?  The changing environment facing our market today would suggest that we must look further and act differently if we are going to create the compelling brand propositions we need to maximise the success of our products.

In the next decade brands must adapt or die. We need a more collaborative, adaptive and continuous approach to building and sustaining our brands – one that is based at a minimum on the core co-creation principle of doing things with people not at them.

What might be an appropriate definition of this co-creation phenomenon: “The principle of creating goods, services and experiences with the direct and active involvement of experienced and creative customers, tapping into their intellectual capital, giving them a direct say in the positioning, innovation and communication of brands, to produce more profitable products that customers want to buy”.

Although it is not appropriate within the Pharma industry that our customers (either patients or physicians) should be actively involved in R&D – they can play a vital role in the development of the brand, the messages and the creative execution.

Co-creation is founded on three key tenets:

1. Constant customer involvement throughout the entire marketing planning and brand communications process, i.e. maintaining a continuous dialogue with customers; harnessing their ideas and opinions to develop better communications and adapting to their changing needs and tastes in real-time.

2. A continuous process, with no end points as the communication is constantly building and evolving.

3. Creating communities and constantly communicating with them, online and offline.

The co-creation of value

The notion of marketing as a facilitator and ‘structurer’ of the mutual creation of value is gaining credence. The customer should always be a co-creator of value.

Together, the company and customer create value through customised, co-produced offerings. The co-creation of value is a desirable goal as it can assist firms in highlighting the customer’s point of view and in improving the front-end process of identifying customers’ needs and wants.

Looking at the world of consumer marketing, which is often the fore-runner of what will be adopted by the pharmaceuticals industry in time, there is significant agreement that the Top 5 Brand Development and Communication Trends can be summarised as follows:

Substituting the word “physician” when you read “consumer” helps to paint what the picture might look like for Pharma.

1. The Power of Word of Mouth

The majority of purchase decisions are influenced in some way by word of mouth recommendation making word of mouth marketing amongst the most powerful brand communications tool. But it’s also hard to manage; it is out of your control and in the hands, or rather the mouths of the consumer and most importantly you have to earn it. Your product/ communication/service delivery/experience needs to be valued or good otherwise word of mouth works equally effectively in a negative context.

Although we are being constantly bombarded by the premise that in the future everything we communicate to our customers will be through, via, in or at least some way involving social-networks, e-mail, SMS or some viral community, the first thing to remember is that studies are actually showing that the most influential word of mouth recommendation is offline.

In the UK Word of Mouth consultancy Keller Fay found 90% of brand based “word of mouth” occurs off-line, especially face-to-face. So whilst it’s tempting to think that viral and digital social media is the only way forward, we need to think more about WHAT will make consumers talk positively to their friends and within their communities on or off-line not the medium in which it is delivered.

The challenge for us in Pharma is to ask ‘what do we actually do to encourage word of mouth communication between Doctors’?  It is actually the sharing of great personal or patient experiences, and of course we have success stories in Detail Aids but we cannot rely on case studies written by us because that is all about us telling them. Imagine the power if Doctors could be encouraged to share their successes on a peer to peer basis?

2. The Power of Communities

The lesson here is that naturally occurring communities work best.  Brands will do better when they can add value to an existing community rather than companies spending large amounts of money trying to create one. The best place to look for communities is around consumer interests and passions occurring naturally on and off-line, but rarely around brands (with a few exceptions like car and motorbike brands).

Clearly, what pharmaceutical companies can do in social media is significantly restricted at present but the FDA has renewed interest in addressing Internet communications and has acknowledged the special nature of the Internet as a marketing tool and venue.  The Agency held a public hearing and solicited written comments from September 2009 to February 2010 and has made the issuance of a policy on social media a priority for 2010.  But until FDA issues formal guidelines or new regulations governing Internet communications, you should assume that the FDA will review any social media communications through existing FDA regulations but track warning and untitled letters to avoid the mistakes your peers make when they communicate through social media and pay attention:  the FDA’s Internet policy may emerge quickly over the next year or so.

There needs to be a catalyst for discussion; involvement is critical to creating brands worth talking about.

Whether it is Patient Associations or HCP Special Interest Groups – they exist but what do we do to earn their involvement?  It’s not about advocating loyalty (yet) but involvement, absolutely.

3. The Power of Involvement

Co-creation: is a great way to involve consumers in something they’re passionate about. Arguably Starbucks is one of the most successful brands in creating an on-line community through involvement. They claim to have 6 million fans and the magic of their involvement is in asking for product suggestions and improvements and then acting on them.

Rate and commentate: For consumers who don’t want to go to the effort of creating something, ‘rating’ comes a close second. Everyone loves to give feedback – rating and commentating systems are an easy way to invite involvement and sponsor sharing.

The Big Idea:  Think about the recent Microsoft advertising campaign of “I am a PC and Windows 7 was my idea”.

With these ads, Microsoft is telling users that they’ve listened to customers’ suggestions and used them in the design for Windows 7. As such, Windows 7 is the idea of the people – people like you and me.

Creating an ad campaign that speaks not only to the improvements, but tells us that they are a direct result of people’s feedback, is genius. The “My Idea” ads show regular, everyday people in regular, everyday settings taking credit for Windows 7 features. The guy in his bedroom talks about how he wished his PC could have snapping windows. The dad in his house wants all the computer equipment in his house to work together. These things are now features of Windows 7, and thus, their ideas. The idea is to show that normal people influenced the design of the product, which should make it exactly what people want.

4. The Power of Emotions

It’s never been more important to engage the emotions.

In reality consumers are not sitting around waiting to hear from you; they are being bombarded with around 35,000 messages a day, it’s stressful! With so much information and messaging around, we tend to sift out the messages we want to hear and gravitate to things that make us feel good.  So it’s important that messages are re-framed as understanding and recognising us as individuals and potentially gives them something to talk about, with your brand at the centre of the discussion.

5. The Power of Story Telling

However, none of these creative opportunities are possible unless we get the brand story straight. While the connections, channels and ways customers engage with brands have come full-circle; the principles of brand haven’t changed. Brands still need to stand for something, have a purpose, a passion and a point of view.

Brand disciplines are borne from within and need to be aligned to the brand value; otherwise everything else is, at best, creating awareness and at worst a waste of money, time and energy.

Applied to Pharmaceuticals

In this globally driven, regulatory-focused marketplace, more reliance than ever is being placed on the scientific integrity of a brand, leading the industry to ensure they communicate more credibly at every front.

From developing a unique nomenclature and lexicon to position the brand in clinical communications, to establishing visionary campaignability with long-term application, some companies are taking advantage of this shift in grounding professional value propositions by developing innovative ways of approaching branding. What could be more powerful than a Detail Aid and Message Cascade, even the Press Advertisement Campaign being one that is jointly created by HCPs and Patients and us?

A focus on core values is a primary requisite for the opportunity to create uniquely ownable and motivating language and visuals. These branding hallmarks are the most permanent public expressions of the brand’s character or personality – how it looks and feels, as well as its tone of voice. They are important contributors to overall brand equity that are inextricably linked to the brand for its lifetime. While they are certainly a significant component of advertising and promotion, they also live in venues where advertising and promotion do not; such as scientific conferences, on packaging and so on.

Into the future, if we are truly to build and sustain great brands with real value, in my opinion, and in no particular order, we must embrace:

• Tapping into the collective experiences, skills and ingenuity of our customers around the world to change from the inward looking, producer-versus-customer innovation model so common to corporations worldwide
• Requiring a more consensual and integrated approach based on co-creation with key stakeholders, less about telling people why they should want a brand and more understanding of how a brand fits as well as working within a flow of communication rather than trying to control the communication.
• Spend the time to understand how and why our brand fits for and adds value to all stakeholders in their language and fits with their values with a focus on what is important for them not just for us
• Involving our customers in determining how to position our brands
• Getting our customers to help with the creation of our messages and advertising to tell real, powerful stories that they want to hear
• Create a powerful word-of-mouth environment that encourages customers to openly exchange views and opinions (as allowed)
• Listening to our customers views on how to improve and enhance our brands and communication through the encouragement of feedback
• Doing it all repeatedly so that you are continuously adapting to their changing needs and aspirations

This is a long way from sitting in a room in the HQ building and then exploring YOUR ideas with potentially bored and over-researched customers – are you ready for the future of branding in the 21^st Century?

About the author

Chris Marks is Brand Services Principal

Originally published as “Co-creation: the future of marketing” in Pharmafocus, January 2011

Ask almost any pharmaceuticals marketer; or in fact marketers in any industry sector, where the future growth lays and the answer will be the BRIC countries; Brazil, Russia, India and China.

Of course we must continue to exploit the core opportunities that still exist in the established markets of the USA, Europe and Japan but with the traditional blockbuster-led market model largely broken, we need to look to new territories to continue the growth of the business, amongst other approaches.

The opportunities in BRIC are potentially huge. These four countries, combined, currently account for more than 40% of the world’s populations. Success will generate sustainable and optimal growth of both company assets and share prices.

Economically they will become increasingly significant. Goldman Sachs, who originally coined the acronym BRIC back in 2001, suggests that, by 2050 the combined economies of the BRIC bloc could eclipse the combined economies of the current richest countries of the world. China is now the second largest economy in the world.

The BRIC pharmaceutical markets are currently only valued at US$58.4 billion; significant, but collectively lower than the leading markets such as the USA and Japan.

Yet, according to Novartis, half of the world’s smokers and 75% of people with high blood pressure live in the emerging BRIC economies.  In the next decade, cancer rates are expected to climb 50% in emerging market countries and the incidence of obesity and diabetes is also predicted to rise substantially.

So the sheer potential of these emerging markets obviously makes them highly attractive.

As do the growth rates. In 2006 the emerging markets such as China, Russia, along with South Korea and Mexico grew by 81% compared to 5.7% for the US and the other nine biggest markets.  So much so that in 2008 GSK announced the development of a new division within the organisation solely responsible for sales to these emerging markets (http://www.forbes.com).

In the eyes of the pharmaceuticals marketer steeped in the history and techniques of pharmaceutical management applied in more Western cultures for decades, this bloc represents huge opportunities, with enormous populations without access to more sophisticated and clinically proven pharmaceuticals.

But there is potential danger in assuming that by putting the might of the Western pharmaceuticals industry behind it, we will be able to impose our mindset on markets and impose our medicines into those environments

Putting things in perspective

There are wide regional differences in expenditure levels within the individual BRIC markets; far more so than in developed countries where health systems have evolved to provide a more uniform level of coverage.

All four BRIC countries have a relatively wealthy urban population with a far greater spending power than their respective national average and this is where current sales of pharmaceuticals are concentrated. In the case of China and India, these urban populations have grown rapidly, and number in the hundreds of millions.

A key challenge for these countries is to extend this level of wealth to the rest of the population, in order that better levels of healthcare become affordable.

But this is evolution not revolution and change will be incremental. Short-term opportunities exist in meeting the health demands of the burgeoning middle classes, and future prospects are bright.

Our Challenge

As we seek to maximise the opportunities they present, we must challenge ourselves to think differently because these markets are different.

Pharma’s current model for the Brave New World appears to focus on accessing the affluent who can afford our products and treating them like ‘Old World’ consumers. But is this truly our future?

If we are to truly take full advantage we believe the only way to seize the opportunities is to re-evaluate how we engage with these different cultures, the “competition” and the infrastructure before we can even start the discussion about our products/brands?

What are some of the issues facing Pharma companies looking to break into these emerging markets?

Russia is a potentially vast market with a sizeable domestic generic industry, but local production of innovative drugs is negligible. In 2009, the Russian market for pharmaceuticals was estimated at around US$11.6 billion.  However, per capita spending was low; at US$82.   Although around 75% of the market is supplied by imports the market environment remains challenging for overseas companies.  Major problems reported include corruption, bureaucracy, and counterfeiting and poor data confidentiality.  Government officials and politicians often discriminate in favour of the domestic industry, and enforcement of existing rules is often weak.

India, with a population in excess of one billion people, there is a growing middle class with access to high quality healthcare. Conversely, in this geographically vast country plagued by natural disasters, the majority of the population is both rural and poor and Western style pharmaceuticals are not even a consideration for millions of people. India has an established domestic industry, responsible for around 8% of world pharmaceutical production. The larger domestic companies are striving to compete in the global market for both generics and original products. The market is dominated by low priced, domestically-produced generics and relatively low per capita expenditure on pharmaceuticals.

However it is not all doom and gloom.  In contrast, the pharmaceutical market in China looks set to grow even further in the short-term, with the establishment of an Essential Medicines System during the 2009-2011 period. The plan calls for an estimated 300-400 essential medicines to be made available at all public facilities, starting at the grassroots level. In 2009, the Chinese Government committed 850 billion Yuan (US$124 billion) to develop the country’s healthcare system over a three-year period. The plan is to create a solid platform for universal healthcare access for all by 2020. In China, pharmaceuticals are sold in hospitals and drugstores, and the healthcare reform plan will inevitably see access to pharmaceuticals increase, as it includes the construction of around 2,000 county level hospitals, so that each county will have at least one such facility, the construction of 29,000 township hospitals and upgrading of another 5,000.

But there is more to it than that

In order to satisfy our industry’s ambitions, simply focusing on the middle classes in urban communities and waiting for them to grow in sufficient numbers whilst looking to Governments to initiate the sort of healthcare system we would choose to work with, will neither meet our financial objectives nor fit within our timescales.

The Culture

For over 4000 years, medicine in China has been the preserve of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). It is a part of the culture and we should not expect nor demand that this culture changes instantly. For example, Jia Wei Xiao Yao Wan, a Chinese herbal remedy created 600 years ago for the treatment of depression is known colloquially as ‘the happy pill’. Sound familiar?

So to start taking advantage of the Brave New World, it is essential that we consider the culture.  Key questions you need to begin asking include:

1. What is the underlying medical culture in the country you are considering?
2. What are the prevalent conditions? Remember in many countries, there is sometimes a negative perception of Western medicines for Western diseases.
3. What alternatives to pharmaceuticals exist already? And for how long have they been entrenched in the culture?

For example – in India, whilst the use of toxic metals is perverse to our Western approach to medicine, Ayurvedic medicine has been practiced for over 3000 years and is still the most important form of medicine in the Indian subcontinent.

1. To what extent is there an acceptance of pharmaceuticals? And if so, amongst whom?
2. What is the belief set surrounding health and medicine in general?

Once we have considered the cultural differences, we need to consider the infrastructure of the market we are looking at including the geography, affordability, access to healthcare professionals etc

Also, whilst some emerging markets are clearly committed to improving logistical access, the significant challenge of simple affordability comes into play.  A single tablet of Prozac in China costs approximately 100 Yuan.  With up to 6% of the Chinese population estimated to suffer from depression the opportunities for marketing anti-depressants are could potentially be huge. However, in 2008, the average salary of employed Chinese urban citizens was 29,229 Yuan. Thus, a 30 day supply of medication would cost over 10% of the annual salary – so perhaps the opportunities are not quite as straightforward as they do on first sight.

So, reviewing what we know, what are the key challenges facing the pharmaceuticals industry in the emerging markets and how do we address them?

-         Supplying the right portfolio

Ensuring the right products are available to meet the needs of the specific disease priorities identified and supported by that country’s Government (local, regional and national) and that represent high growth opportunities. One obvious example here would be treatment of Hepatitis B Virus in China.

-         Getting the balance of distribution right

Making sure that the key, large cities, doctors and hospitals are not your only focus. The new growth opportunities lie in targeting those “second level” hospitals and making in-roads into the rural areas through community hospital promotion and such vehicles as China’s Essentials Medicines System. To access patients and consumers in these markets requires companies to understand and support coordinated efforts to create or strengthen developing health systems.

-         Getting the price right

Remember that most “patients” have easily accessed both culturally endorsed and cheaper alternatives (TCM, Ayurvedic etc) and have low disposable incomes. This puts pressure on us to think carefully about matching price with local demand, supported by the value proposition being right whilst being underpinned by the relationships with payers and Doctors in the key hospitals in the major cities.

-         Access to healthcare professionals/prescriptions

Quality service and excellent healthcare professionals are available in all of these emerging markets, however the challenge is getting patients to be able to present to them (need to explain why this is a problem – geography/culture/cost?)

Once we have overcome the cultural barriers, the infrastructure needs to be considered not just following our traditional market access model but incorporating the next tier for taking advantage of the Brave New World:

1. Recognise and work with the challenge of access to treatment
2. Work with Government where possible to drive provision of medicines that demonstrably add value in the areas of prime interest to the country
3. Price according to the economic realities of the environment. Maybe, in time, the “Big Mac Index” might just become the “Statin Index”!

Conclusions

It would be a mistake to under-estimate the importance for the pharmaceutical industry of developing and scaling up innovative business models that are suited to emerging markets.

There appear to be three elements that meet the needs of lower income consumers in emerging markets:

Be culturally adept and aware

Establish a culture amongst the populous at large where Western pharmaceuticals are acceptable, embraced and supported. This will not occur overnight. Do not ignore the local competition and remember they are not just other pharmaceuticals companies.  They are the local alternatives established over thousands of years. Companies need to ensure that their products/services meet customer needs. Pharmaceutical companies expanding into emerging markets must critically examine their product offerings and portfolios for individual markets.

Take a new approach to understanding affordability

Engage and work with the Government authorities to build the appropriate access that recognises local cost models and environments. It is highly likely that product life cycles in BRIC and other emerging markets may be significantly longer but with a lower peak that we are used to and this should be borne in mind. The Doctors are qualified.  The challenge is getting people to access them and be able and willing to pay for the right drugs. Cost-cutting, volume-based business models, customer aggregation and other financing mechanisms will all help to improve affordability. Companies will have to implement innovative pricing schemes for emerging markets, without negatively impacting our Western markets.

Seek new means of achieving market penetration

Focus on the key cities and the urban conurbations with highest disposable income only as a start point. The great opportunity lies in the population at large but where the barriers of history are most likely to be evident. Beyond greater affordability, expanding access to low-income populations depends on improved distribution. Upfront investment by companies, Governments and non-Governmental agencies involved in the healthcare sector is vital. And, partnerships, between varieties of players who can help develop and deliver solutions, will be a key determinant of success.

Then, and only then, our traditional model of Doctor writes prescription, Patient gets pharmaceutical product might just work!

The Authors

Chris Marks is Brand Services Principal and Michael Craig is Senior Consultant at The MSI Consultancy.

Originally published in Pharmafocus, March 2010

Chris Marks says it’s time to adopt a fresh and innovative approach to communicating the brand.

For many years, the pharmaceutical industry has engaged with the concept of turning good products into great brands, developing strong core propositions which provide insight into the value that the brand can add to the customer. Unfortunately, too often that process is followed by resorting to the ‘same-old, same-old’ elements of the marketing mix in the ‘same-old, same-old’ way when it comes to implementation.

Why is it that we have managed to devote so much effort – successfully – into understanding the concept of brand, and yet we continue in many cases to fail to match that effort in the implementation phase?

It’s time for pharma marketers to bring the best of 21st century thinking into this part of the process, embracing new thinking, along with best practice from fmcg and other sectors. We need a fresh and innovative approach to brand communications, specifically tailored to the regulated pharmaceuticals market.

Through robust processes, many pharma companies have recognised the essential components of the brand – and thus the way it adds value. We know that Brand Positioning, Brand Personality and the Core Proposition all align to communicate the value – both functional and emotional – that our brand delivers against the understandings and insights we have into the goals, attitudes, behaviours and drivers of our customers.

If those components of the brand are combined well, the customer will be consistently provided with a succinct summary of what is different and compelling about the brand; moreover, the benefits provided by the brand will be clearly relevant to that customer and to real patient situations, both functionally and emotionally.

We seem to have adopted this modern thinking without too much trouble. No longer do we simply talk about the incremental functional benefit of one product being x% safer or more effective compared to another. We have realised that although the benefit may be statistically significant, it may also be of no interest or relevance to the customer.

We as an industry have become adept at getting the messages – both rational and emotional – in line with the prescriber’s own drivers, and we know that this is perhaps the single most effective way of amplifying how compelling the core proposition is.

Where does it all go wrong?

So far, so good. But after significant investment in time and resources to build the brand, and the compelling messages that communicate the benefits and value, the challenge becomes one of how we can implement the brand – and unfortunately that is where things start to fall apart.

There is frequently a mismatch between the insight and understanding gained in building the brand and the messages, and what comes next – the implementation. Too often at this stage, pharma marketers take the ’safe’ route of doing more of the same. This can be for a number of reasons (including laziness), but most often it is a question of playing safe and taking the route of apparently lowest risk: ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’.

I have to tell you at this stage that this strategy is in fact riddled with danger and risk.

At first glance, the traditional use of the marketing mix appears to be the least risky. That is simply wrong. It is in fact extremely hazardous, because low-risk can mean low initiative, and tends to excludes new thinking – and it is new thinking which is often the thing which allows a brand to break out from simply plodding along.

What do I mean by ‘plodding along’? The same-old things: Symposia, Journal Ads, Detail Aids, Speaker Programmes, CME, Publications, Patient Education Programmes, Advisory Boards and of course the Sales Team.

Maybe it’s because too many pharma marketers don’t know what works and what doesn’t, or perhaps don’t understand newer elements of the marketing mix. This would stem partly from a lack of understanding of how customers make their prescribing/purchasing decisions – in other words insight is important, as ever.

Is there an argument for adopting the ‘same-old’ in any situation? Only when the market is not changing is there an excuse at all for such a ’same-old’ approach – and there is not one part of the healthcare world where the market is standing still. So there is no argument for the ‘same-old’.

Pharma marketers shouldn’t approach this thinking that there has to be a very strong reason to change how they implement brand communications; rather, that there has to be a very strong reason not to change.

Thinking and Acting Differently

If the landscape if different, then the thinking has to be different, and you don’t have to look very far to see just how much that landscape has changed.

Let’s take a couple of examples: CME is no longer a part of the marketing mix, as it has moved to being a heavily scrutinised medical affairs budget item. Sales teams and traditional detailing are becoming less and less effective, and more and more physicians are either forced to or choose to deny access to sales representatives – as all the while the costs of maintaining a sales team rises.

So let’s apply our crystal ball to some of those elements of the marketing mix to see how we might introduce a fresh approach and innovative thinking.

The Sales Team
A recent Insead review suggested that the future of the marketing mix for pharmaceuticals would see decreasing use of the sales representative, print media and conferences, whilst the shift will be towards websites, call centres and eDetailing (to say nothing of the explosion in social media).

Although sales team detailing will for sure make up a big part of the mix over the next few years, it makes sense to look at alternatives that can take up the slack or off-set the risks.

Clearly, with the increasing rise in the power of the payer and policymakers, more and more of our marketing mix must be devoted to genuine account management – embracing these hitherto ‘devils incarnate’ as genuine customers with whom we must work proactively and in partnership.

That means diverting sales team resource into smaller numbers of national, regional and local health-economy account managers, with the support and infrastructure to deliver value for the customer and for the company – something that in the fmcg sector, the grocery industry embraced many years ago.

This is the future in pharmaceuticals and the sooner that it is acknowledged, the sooner we will look to develop a marketing mix tailored to account support.

Education Programmes and eLearning
Technology will have a huge impact on communications with physicians. Education and detailing will be the preserve of the internet, with or without sales rep support. It is likely that even then we will see a move away from the electronic detail to more learning resources for physicians, such as Key Opinion Leader educational programmes.

Today’s newly qualified physicians are growing up in a multi-media learning environment, and smart providers will deliver entertaining, easy-to-access learning that doctors can dip into at their leisure.

Each major disease area will have an online community of stakeholders (HCPs, carers, providers, patients) who will drive decision making in that therapy area. It is only a matter of time before the doctors, nurses, patients and payers discuss developments and how to get better outcomes in a therapy area online.

Detail Aids
As we have already seen, sales stories will be based on patient benefit rather than product features – that has to be at the core of the brand.

Mobile technology (SMS, podcasts via iPods and so on) will become the essential and effective channel for communicating with the busy physician. The evolution of smaller, more portable, interconnected plug-and-play devices is inexorable, potentially bringing substantial savings to the marketing budget.

There is one indisputable fact here: ROI for physician and patient (aka consumer) marketing is getting worse, whereas ROI for technology-enabled marketing is getting better.

The days of the glossy detail aid may be numbered; in the future, our physicians are more likely to learn about our brands through downloads in the comfort of their living room than through the sales representative going through data page-by-page. And the content will change far more frequently as well.

Increasingly decisions will be made not just about the data package and study results, but about the complete value-added package, the solution that a brand and company provides. As product differentials reduce and competition increases in a value-driven environment, our industry will be challenged to provide more education, support, and lifestyle assistance to a wider audience to ensure patients benefit fully from its product. The most cost-effective way to do this is via digital channels, where services are scalable and easily updated.

Journals will probably become downloads; print media may be a thing of the past for communication to physicians. We may be able to apply the moving image and voice-overs to Direct to Physician communication.

Patient Information Programmes
Amidst a crisis in national health care, patients say health (and related product) websites are as vital to their well-being as physical interactions with healthcare providers.

According to a recent study, individuals who use technology to gain an education into their conditions and potential solutions fall into two broad groups: the 80% who are highly engaged patients and take active roles in health management; and the 20% who lack the confidence to play an active role in their own health.

Meanwhile, consumers engage with healthcare social media for both rational and emotional reasons. The study found that the latter are primary, as many healthcare social media users want reassurance, support, and a sense of intimacy from people who are going through a similar experience.

Though also important, rational needs are secondary, as social media users are searching for ‘foundational information’ about their specific conditions and symptoms, information about drugs and supplements, and the latest health news.

More than branded or corporate destinations, third party health-related sites were cited as most important destinations for both social and editorial content. Furthermore, many people report mixed feelings about how pharmaceutical companies should participate in websites and social media, but most are open to some level of participation, as long as it is transparently disclosed.

Most consumers do feel that endorsements by government and non-profit organisations, such as the patient associations, the regulatory authorities and third-party watchdog groups, add credibility to social content.

If I am making a decision about my life, whether it’s a treatment for my medical condition or what new homes are available, I am more likely to search Google than consult with my doctor or estate agent. If I want more information, my next port of call are my LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter contacts.

Advisory Boards
Thought leadership in pharmaceuticals will be created online, through blogs and social networks – and whatever may come next. Twitter is a KOL-cascade. In pharma it will not be long before thought leaders put forward their views, and their followers retweet them, and their followers retweet them and so on.

For more involved discussions we can expect comment on blogs or discussions in social networks. Medicine is a global field and advances in it are discussed at a global level.

Symposia and Publications
Already most of the major international symposia and publications are engaging with digital technology to provide the information, presentations, papers, abstracts etc via electronic downloads, and some have even gone so far as to encourage blogs and online forums to disseminate information. This can only continue, accelerated by a need to reduce travel costs and environmental impacts. It is difficult to envisage pharma marketers inviting customers to attend major international congresses lasting for more than a couple of years. The future will see international medical meetings occurring remotely and digitally.

What does all this mean for pharmaceutical brand teams?

While many in the finance, retail and most notably music and media industries have adapted their marketing mix to the challenges of the new millennium, pharma is still playing safe, plodding along doing the same-old implementation plans using the same-old mix elements.

I have illustrated some potential changes to the way in which the mix will need to be implemented, and the challenge for brand teams is to::

1. Stop looking only at individual affiliate-based programmes – work with colleagues around the world to determine communication platforms, messages, and how you want to deliver them. It is a global market now.

2. Empower interaction with your customers (physicians, payers, policy makers and patients) – and provide information, programmes and complete solutions that include your brands. But make sure that they are delivered via the most appropriate and convenient channel, with a feedback loop built-in.

3. Challenge the legal and regulatory blockages – work out how you are going to handle things such as adverse events, overcome the issue of what is non-promotion if you are asked or if physicians discuss data not included in your label.

4. Engage the new era – the vast majority of your future marketing investment is going to be spent in ways that you have never considered before. But remember, your customers are already there, and for far more than online surveys. Be prepared to listen to your customers, respond in a timely way, to be completely transparent and recognise that our marketing is becoming more about one-to-one communication than a one-size-fits-all.

5. Spend as much time in the future engaging with payers and policy makers and developing programmes and tools specifically tailored to their needs as you did with physicians in the past – they will control the destiny of your brands.

6. Remember that a brand is something the customer has a relationship with, and uses because they want to; they will determine the value that your brand adds based on the sum of all the characteristics, tangible and intangible, that makes your product differentiated or unique in their minds.

The Author

Chris Marks is Brand Services Principal at The MSI Consultancy.

Originally published in Pharmafocus, May 2010

Pan-European marketing, particularly within the pharmaceutical industry, is a complex discipline, strongly influenced by many factors including the expansion of the EU eastwards and the emergence of new markets further afield.  A one-size-fits-all approach to marketing won’t achieve effective results in every market, as we need to be aware and deal with very different cultures which exist in this environment.  Those marketers who regard Europe as one homogenous European whole are surely heading for disaster.. Read More…

Imagine that you were to acquire the Coca-Cola brand – the logo, the trademarks and the bottle shape – but none of the plant, equipment or property.  How much might you have to pay for this icon?

The answer, according to Interbrand in their 2008 “Best Global Brands” report, is an incredible $66.6 billion.  And if you continue down the list of these top 100 brands, names such as Microsoft, Google, Nokia, Apple and Nescafé will appear, each of which has a brand value of over $10 billion. Read More…

To have a car on the road once it’s more than 3 years old requires an MOT – an annual test of the cars function and suitability ensuring it meets the safety and environmental standards required.

Within the marketing environment, a Brand MOT provides an opportunity to check the vital components of our brand are in working order and suitable for the channels we use to communicate with payers and physicians.  However, we often overlook the need to check our brand is still fit for purpose annually.

A car can fail the MOT for the simplest of reasons which undermine its ability to do the job safely as can our brand.  Subject your brand to its MOT and you can objectively assess its suitability to the changing healthcare market and competitive challenges.

We must recognise the first signs of our brand not being fit for purpose, however, these signs might not be immediately obvious.  If issues are uncovered early, addressing them will stop them developing into major problems.

Conducting a brand MOT enables you to challenge yourself on the critical questions:

Does my brand still add value to the target customer?
Is that value the value I intended?

Taking an objective look at your brand, and answering these questions honestly, potential weaknesses or problems will become obvious, so you can tackle them before they start damaging your competitive position.

Steering

Any brand MOT must start with a review of your “steering” – the brand vision. Is it still relevant? Does it need to evolve?  Is it going in the right direction?

Strong brands have a clear vision of what they want to be and where they’re going.  Your vision is the internal expression of the qualitative and quantitative brand goals and aspirations.
It’s no good just having an internal focus. In our highly competitive world we must ‘shape’ our markets to maximise brand values.  Our aspirations must be realistic and relevant to our customers and insightful as to what is happening in their world.

The question is not only ‘what do we want to be?’, but more ‘what can we be?’  That means reviewing a number of inputs, including corporate expectations, customer needs, competitor brand visions and the drivers of prescribing choice.

Lights

Do your lights work giving you insight into the customer needs?

Can you see ahead with insight and understand how your brand and the messages trigger and exploit the drivers of prescribing and purchasing?

During your brand MOT, you need to confirm what different behaviours exist or are developing in the market, and what underpins those behaviours (intangibles such as beliefs and attitudes, motivations and constraints).  The MOT will guide the use of creative and robust research techniques to develop a greater understanding and insights into the point-of-view about the world that defines the brand’s opportunity.

Fuel System

Is your brand fuelled by the right ingredients to power it in the minds of your customers?

Too often, we measure the value we are offering in terms of the products functional benefit.  Perceived value for money, functional and emotional benefit all combine to produce the Brand Value Equation (BVE).  The brand MOT needs to ensure that all three are fuelling competitive advantage.

We need to ask, does our BVE allow us to fuel customer behaviour in the way we intend and connect with our customer’s desired value, functional and emotional benefits?

Exhaust System

Do the messages that come out of our brand deliver what we require?

Many activities in the marketing mix are part of the ‘traditional’ approach to communicating the brand values to our customers. Often, insufficient thought is given to whether the activity or its execution adds to the brand value or even undermines it in some way.

Part of the brand MOT must be a review of all communication activities ensuring they all work synergistically to build brand value.

Windscreen

Can your brand see clearly?

It’s not just about making sure your communication reflects your brand positioning and core values; to be really effective it must hit those prescribing triggers and drivers only you can see.  The MOT needs to involve everyone responsible for brand communications to ensure they have the insight into the prescribing drivers and that their activity is directed to satisfy them.

Vehicle Identification Number

Is your brand unique and identifiable?

A brand must appeal to a discrete group of customers.  Different segments will have different needs against which your brand must align.  They will also have different perceptions of your brand.

Your brand must be seen as unique or at least significantly differentiated in the minds of customers.

A strong insight into customer thinking is key to assessing the suitability of the brand and ensuring its benefits and value are meaningful, sustainable, credible, differentiating, and motivating!

Tyres and Wheels

The tyres and wheels are like brand positioning – they drive the brand and keep it on track.

Brand positioning is the marriage between four things: the balance of the target customer’s feelings; the competitive set; the distinctiveness and benefit of the brand; and what you say about it to the target customer.

The MOT should review this against the five crucial tests of meaningfulness, credibility, differentiation, sustainability and motivation.  If it meets these criteria, it will result in the target customer knowing, believing, acting upon and feeling the distinctive benefits of your brand versus the competition.

Vehicle Structure

Is the brand robust?

Every company has limited resources to put into the marketing mix.  A thorough assessment of the brand’s requirements will ensure that these resources are spent effectively.  A brand MOT is about ensuring you get the maximum ROI.

Conducting a brand MOT needs objectivity, time and insight.  But it will always give a return on the investment, because the brand’s structure is an asset that no company can afford to neglect.  Is your MOT overdue?

The Author

Chris Marks is Client Services Director at The MSI Consultancy.

Originally published in Pharmafocus, February 2009

Whatever product or brand is chosen for the purposes of this article, somewhere high on the list of its key features will be “Improves quality of life” or a similar phrase.

Comparing pharmaceutical marketing to fast-moving consumer goods (fmcg), the relative simplicity of the communication messages employed in what is such a sophisticated marketing environment often seems surprising. A few years ago, anyone looking at pharmaceutical sales aids, journal advertisements, mailers or leave-pieces would have been assured of finding, emboldened, those immortal words of “Effective, Safe and Well Tolerated”. That is not to say that these essential, entry-ticket items can be left out of a communication cascade, but it is what they actually mean, i.e. the benefits of these features, the functional and the emotional that can make a difference in markets where differentiation is increasingly hard to find.

Therefore marketers across the industry turned their attention to “Quality of Life” as at least this ought to tell the prescriber of a key benefit for them and their patient. However, as is often the case, everyone now claims their brand “Improves quality of life”. Unfortunately for us marketers, it seems this term has joined the list alongside efficacy, safety profile and tolerability – overused and now pretty meaningless. Coupled with the visualisation of quality of life into the ubiquitous “Smiling patient”, the advertising is pretty meaningless as well.

So how do we ensure our brand is not lumped in with all of the other bland marketing promising improved QoL without demonstrating what this actually means?

When either conducting or observing market research interviews with physician, nurse and patient it is essential to carefully note the reaction to the phrase “Improved Quality of Life”. At first glance, most respondents will instinctively remark that this is a positive attribute. However they often then go on to suggest that in reality this phrase is meaningless and unless it is put into context, then it will continue to be of little relevance to them. In these market research situations, almost all have said that, particularly, regarding the visual of a “happy patient” it is neither compelling nor motivating. Indeed many will go so far as to suggest that these clichéd images and phrases are a real demotivator as they reveal little or no understanding by the marketer as to the condition, or what the healthcare professional or patient being targeted needs.

We therefore need to think through why this might be the case. So often the QoL phrase is just a written claim that we do not actually bring to life for any of our customers or consumers and so we fail to really demonstrate that we understand what quality of life is condition by condition.

Quality of Life to a person with diabetes is a very different thing to Quality of Life to a patient with COPD that in turn is very different to quality of life when talking about dementia. Yet we expect the recipient of the message to do the hard work of interpreting this.

The real challenge to us as marketers is to look beyond the term and really drive out what Quality of Life really is for the condition or severity that one is interested in.

We therefore need to look at a check list of considerations that are addressed to help to turn Quality of Life into something that can help us to meet the challenges and needs of our customers and differentiate our brand from its competitors or generics

1. The treatment goals for the physician

2. The level of interest that the physician may have in the condition itself

a. And any other HCP involved

3. The impact that the condition has on the physician

a. Personally

b. Financially – the impact that the impaired QoL may have on his budget

4. The impact that the condition has on the patient

a. Functionally – what they are capable of performing

b. Emotionally – how it makes them feel

c. Psychologically – how it impacts on their self-confidence, self-esteem etc

5. The impact the condition has on any carer

a. Functionally

b. Emotionally

c. Financially

6. The actual language – pertinent to the disease – not “one size fits all”

However, we must also, remember that in the cost conscious environment in which we operate today, “Quality of Life” is not just some nebulous marketing claim that helps to make a physician feel good about what he or she is actually doing. It is a claim with a financial reward for a GP. Just look at the QOF criteria which awards surgeries achievement points for:

* managing some of the most common chronic diseases e.g. asthma, diabetes
* how well the practice is organised
* how patients view their experience at the surgery
* the amount of extra services offered such as child health and maternity services.

And then there are QALYs or Quality Adjusted Life Years which are widely used in health economics and medical decision-making to assess the extent of the benefits gained from intervention in terms of health-related quality of life and survival. QALYs are a measure with significant repercussions on physicians and patients which brings a whole new dimension to Quality of Life – metrics and measurement.

Obviously the portrayal of health in QALYs is far from ideal, since, for example, the definition of perfect health is highly subjective and it has been argued that some health states are worse than death. It is no use pretending that QALYs are anything but a crude measurement, but the use of QALYs in resource allocation decisions does mean that choices between patient groups competing for medical care are made explicit. QALYs have been criticised because there is an implication that some patients will be refused or not offered treatment for the sake of other patients and, yet such choices have been made and are being made all the time. However big the financial pot, choices still have to be made.

So now “Quality of Life” is much more than a happy, smiling patient. It is hard cash and physicians tend to be very, very motivated by cash that they receive for hitting targets or the budgets that they receive for treatments. It is up to us as marketers, to get our presentation and marketing of Quality of Life beyond the obvious. We must look beyond a catch-all phrase, look at the real functional and financial benefits for physicians and the emotional benefits for physicians and patients and then Quality of Life might actually mean something and present real opportunities for competitive differentiation.

The Author

Chris Marks is a Director of The MSI Consultancy Ltd

Article originally published in Pharmaceutical Marketing, June 2007

One of the great truisms in life is that it is better to prevent than it is to treat. This is true for both our own approach to our health and also true for our customers in the way that they view many conditions. So when it comes to marketing brands why, once we have spent significant time and effort developing them do we often ignore the signs that all is not well?

In recent years the pharmaceutical industry has embraced the whole concept of “brands”. But increasingly, the need is not just for brands, but for healthy brands. Simply put, we need to remember why we have embraced brands – they add value. So it is essential that the brand remains fit and healthy in order to continue to add value to the business and ensure they continue to add value to out target customer.

As marketers, we spend many millions of euros/pounds/dollars in the development of our products, and then significant sums in developing our products into brands. But, how often do we take the time to ask whether our brand is still in a fit state for the purpose intended? In our experience, not often.

As an industry, we spend a fortune ensuring that our clinical trials programme is able to contribute towards continually updating our product claims in order to give us competitive advantage at a functional level. But, do we take a similar marketing approach to ensuring that our brand is still differentiated, still delivering the messages that we intended in the first place and still conveying the values and emotional benefits that we wanted to establish in the minds of our customers? Indeed are these still relevant, compelling, motivating and meaningful?

I have always been struck by the willingness of the pharmaceutical industry to change the direction a brand is taking as evidenced by the frequency with which brand messages and campaigns are changed. However, this is often not to because it is necessary for the brand, but because either the product manager or advertising agency has changed. The introduction of new marketing personnel or agency staff cannot be the driver of change if we are trying to build sustainable brands, at least not if we are going to be genuine guardians of our own brands! It is essential we remember that this is what we, the marketers are; guardians – responsible for looking after the brand for the short time that it is in our charge.

The brands we look after are assets that need to be nurtured to grow to their full potential. – and we need to be conscious of the fact that it takes many years to build healthy brands and only minutes to harm or even destroy them.

But before you lull yourself into the belief that what has been suggested is clearly not appropriate to your brands; let us remember a few basic themes that commonly occur, which at least raise the need for us to consider reviewing the health of our brand.

There are the obvious candidates for internal circumstances, when keeping a regular barometer on the health of the brand is critical:

* When the brand is crucial to the overall performance of the company
* When management have a viewpoint that greater performance is possible

In the first case, the need to ensure that the brand is continually meeting customer needs and is seen as differentiated from its competitors is of paramount importance. Regular business intelligence gathering where the brand’s attributes can be checked against a robust list of criteria is the cornerstone of diagnosing potential problems, even before they occur.

Secondly, we must establish a clear understanding of where potential growth can come from. For instance, do we really understand the drivers of prescribing that fuel growth and do the current positioning and messages really trigger or exploit these drivers? Unless we can demonstrate that we do and we are, then senior management will be perfectly entitled to their views. The worst thing that can happen is that they are right and the brand has the opportunity to grow, but we haven’t recognised and acted on it.

And so to the external circumstances:

* When you think you are doing everything correctly but something is not right
* When the market is changing

Let us examine the first, a common enough situation where actually nothing is apparently wrong. Growth need not be poor or below expectations and all the obvious marketing bases may well be covered, but something just doesn’t feel right. How do you know something doesn’t feel right? As experienced marketers, we should have a feel for our brand. It is often the minority responses in a qualitative market research debrief, an outlier view at a Dr meeting or even an unusual response from a member of the sales force, that can be the trigger that makes us recognise we need to find out more. In essence, you need to act early. Failure to act or even ignoring what is being said, by even a small minority of the target customer group, can often signal that something is not well.

But, without question, the most critical time for a brand health check is when something has changed or is about to change in a market. The environment has changed or is about to – be that political, economic, social or technological; A new competitor is about to launch or has launched; an existing competitor is taking share from you or even more fundamentally, Drs needs have moved on.

So what is a brand health check?

In the simplest terms, a brand health check is a tool designed to provide a simple and cost-effective way of assessing and improving the effectiveness of brands by clarifying purpose and assessing importance, identifying what is working and what is not and checking the links between the brand and the business objectives. It is NOT a laborious process of market research, albeit it should include market research.

The challenge is to remain objective and to make sure the research captures all aspects of the brand and all audiences who come into contact with the brand.

What is crucial, and the first stage must be to gather the evidence about how the brand is performing. This will involve both desk and more formal, but small-scale, qualitative market research amongst internal and external audiences.

The key aims are to find out:

* What audiences think about your brand and why
* What do audiences associate with your brand
* How well your communications are getting the right message across
* What influences audiences to behave the way they do
* What are the barriers (if any) preventing people from using your brand
* What is your offer and what are the product benefits
* Is the brand consistent across all communication channels
* Has anything changed, and to what extent, that affects our brand

We then need to think this through internally:

1. What did we establish as the vision for the brand? Is what we are doing with current materials, messages, campaign, tone of voice and resourcing loyal to the vision?
2. What has changed in the market since we last carried out a brand health check? Is what we have tried to say still pertinent to the needs of our customers? Have our customers changed? Have their needs changed?
3. Do we need to improve or change anything? If we do then, where do we believe we need to improve? On what aspects? In which areas?
4. Is what we intended to be communicated internally being delivered? Are we being consistent and are we addressing the key drivers of brand performance? Across the various departments and hierarchies involved in delivering the messages to the target customers?

Concurrently, look at the marketing challenge externally …

1. What are the levels of awareness of our brand? Do customers understand what our brand offers and does the brand communicate in a way that demonstrates to the target customer the understanding of the needs of that customer?
2. Is the brand still relevant? Does it provide significant differentiation over competitors and what are these in the minds and words of the target customers? Does it address the prioritised needs of target customers? How does the company capabilities required compare with identified competitor companies?
3. Are the messages being delivered motivating, compelling and differentiated? Are the messages consistent such that the brand has a clear identity for the target customers that is consistent with what is intended by the brand positioning and the brand vision?
4. Does the brand command respect or trust amongst target customers?
5. In what ways does the brand add value to the customer and how does this value come across?

This evaluation of the health of the brand will allow a common view to be established of how the brand is performing. We can then identify the key issues that must be put right NOW and the answers that are needed from a more long-term point-of-view (as may be addressed by changing structures, undertaking clinical studies etc).

Fundamentally, it allows the brand guardian the ability to check back against everything that went into the creation of the brand and to evaluate how, why, where and what has changed and think through why? The Brand Vision, The Brand Value Equation, The Brand Positioning Statement and the Core Proposition should still be intact.

Case Study

If there ever was a company that invented and then dominated a product category and a market, it was Xerox. Plain paper xerography transformed document duplication and eradicated competing categories. They not only invented the category, they innovated in the channel by perfecting one of the best personal selling skills training programs ever. (Their internal training was so good that they built a separate business around it.)

Also, their research centre developed the idea of windows-type software that they gladly showed to Steve Jobs. So, they were clearly smart people who developed great products and concepts, and they knew how to manage.

While Xerox is far from dead, the one-time hot glamour stock has dropped in value on a significant scale. The business press reports that while the category pie is getting smaller, competitors continue to slice into Xerox’s wedge.

Why? The problem seems to be rooted in their failure to maintain their once powerhouse brand position to look to the future, and anticipate the evolution of technology, as the convenience of true replication file transfers with software like Adobe Acrobat begin to shrink the need for paper copies. Without question, their advertising slogan “The Document Company” got to the point, but are they too late in releasing their grasp on their original technology to anticipate the next generation of customer needs?

So, what can we learn from Xerox that can apply to Pharma? Any business must have a set of critical issues, and a philosophy of brand management that answers these questions:

* Who is the customer?
* What market are we in?
* Is our brand still relevant?
* What will the future look like?

Perhaps Xerox, awash with its success, forgot to keep asking these questions of itself in a way that would have kept them in the forefront in meeting their customers’ needs.

Of course markets change and our customers change, in terms of structure, culture and needs. To remain relevant to customers the functional and emotional benefits of the brand need to be refreshed to meet these changes. But this does not mean “throwing the baby out with the bath-water”.

Orange has remained consistent in the drive to communicate that “The future is bright” despite having had four different brand owners since launch. Why? Because, this is the essence of its vision. But from the days of communicating the functional benefits of its services to today’s Dolphins, Racoons, Canaries and Panthers the ‘Orange’ brand has remained acutely aware of the changing needs of customers and the way to communicate effectively through a regular brand health check.

Great brands adapt and refresh to the changes around them within the confines of the defined brand vision to keep them modern and relevant and to prevent them from becoming marginalised. Poor products change based on the whims and perceptions of individuals seeking to leave their mark on the product.

Maybe that is why great brands have a regular brand health check built into their brand plan. Do yours?

The Author

Chris Marks is Managing Consultant at The MSI Consultancy.

Article originally published in Pharma Exec Europe, April 2007