Healthy Skepticism Library item: 16254

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

Publication type: news

Taylor D
Branding Q&A
MedAdNews 2009
http://medad.canon-experts.com/expert/dale-taylor/

Full text:

Q PhRMA has encouraged its members to focus on how they can better educate consumers about their brands and how their products address certain health conditions. Do you think that Rx brands will increase their marketing communcations spend at the point-of-care, where they actually reach patients, or will it be more of the same, selling Rx brands as if they were CPG brands (i.e., laundry detergent, etc.)?
The question contains two implications, neither of which I agree with. That ONLY spending at the “point-of-care”, i.e. in the doctor’s office, reaches patients and that spending money like CPG brands doesn’t. News to me! I thought you could effectively reach patients in lots of ways.

“Point-of-care” encompasses a lot of different of types of media both in the waiting and exam rooms – wallboards, in-office TV, patient tear sheets, magazine cover-wraps, electronic/interactive kiosks, exam table paper, and probably more. We polled 11 providers of point-of-care programs and found that four said business was up, four said that it was flat, and three reported declines. Our guess is that the overall category is flat.

The lack of growth is not surprising. DTC is down and part of the rationale for point-of-care promotion is to capitalize on the DTC program when the patient is in the office. Point-of-care programs, especially in-office TV and wallboards, look expensive from the client’s point of view and often require working with multiple vendors to get good coverage. And budgets for many media are flat to declining.

But there is growing evidence for the effectiveness of point-of-care promotion. An SDI Health and IMS Health study reported a 9% increase in new prescriptions in office with wall boards over a control group without boards. A 2009 Arbitron study reported a 25% aided recall of ads running on office TVs. A Wolters Kluwer Health study reported a 5.8-to-1 ROI for a program of patient brochure racks, and a consumer magazine cover-wrap program we did for one of our brands generated a 20-to-1 ROI.

Marketers of Rx products need to educate patients – not just because PhRMA says they should, but because it makes, and has always made, good business sense to do so, especially if you are the share leader. And the job of every marketer is to reach patients with accurate, memorable, distinctive messages, whether they are messages about a specific brand or about a disease, in the most efficient way they can.

For some categories, reaching patients at the “point-of-care” will make sense as part of a well-thought-out media plan. But reaching them by TV, radio, the Internet, social media, direct mail, billboards, and event sponsorship may make sense too. It all depends on how many patients there are, how they can be most effectively targeted, how attentive they are to various media, the nature of the disease, patient’s willingness to discuss it with their doctors, and many more factors.

Q Combination pill products for the management of chronic conditions are entering the market. What are the major differences between branding these types of medicines compared with single pill combinations?
Combination products, although they have been around for over 100 years, are now all the rage. And it is easy to see why. They offer the patient and the physician significant advantages in cost, convenience, and compliance. They are especially popular in categories such as HIV, asthma, diabetes, hypertension, and dyslipidemia where add-on drugs are often needed. We are aware of 10 separate products in late-stage development.

How you brand these products depends, to some extent, on the strategic intent of the combo brand. If the intent is “brand extension” and the goal is incremental improvement, often by the addition of a generic molecule, many marketers will create the brand imagery, and often the brand name, around the key proprietary brand that forms the combo. When the key brand has a high share and is a natural first choice, this is often the most logical approach and the simplest for the physician to embrace.

If the intent is “franchise development” and the new brand offers a significant therapeutic advantage, many marketers will create totally new brand imagery and brand names to reflect the magnitude of the therapeutic advance, often to focus messaging on significant improvements in efficacy.

And sometimes the intent is more about “franchise extension.” An example might be a combo of a statin and an anti-hypertensive, such as Caduet. There the big challenge is finding imagery and a name that bridge two different, but related diseases. We are aware of two other products (both for diabetes and dyslipidemia) under development.

But in general, with the exceptions of those combos that have a key proprietary brand whose branding needs to drive the branding of the combo product, the challenges facing the marketer or agency are the same for combo products as they are for single entities – finding a name and imagery that clearly, concisely, and distinctively reminds the physician of the brand’s unique and carefully crafted position within the array of other brands from which the physician can choose.

Q What are the biggest challenges facing agencies handling brands on behalf of pharmaceutical clients that either merge or become acquired? Is there fair warning to adjust to changes? Is it business as usual?
The biggest challenge is to survive the merger or acquisition and often it is just not possible. In the case of a merger, don’t try to predict the winner in the inevitable power struggle that follows. That will make it look like you are choosing sides. Whether it is a merger or an acquisition do try immediately to get in front of the new players as quickly as possible with a well-thought-out and thoroughly documented review of who you are, what you have done on the brand, and what real contribution you have made. Include a summary of why the history you bring on the brand and the market is valuable. Include examples of work you have done for brands that the new team might be familiar with. Often agencies get fired by the new team just because they have not made the effort to resell why they should keep the business. Make sure that the current client team, if any are still there, know that you are reaching out so they don’t feel like you are going behind their back.

Despite your best efforts, the chances of getting fired are still pretty high. Protect yourself in the future by broadening your client base and keep in mind that in the long run you’ll be on the winning side of these mergers about as often as you’ll be on the losing side. And stay in close touch with the folks leaving the newly merged or acquired company. If your work for them was good, you should be able to follow them to their next jobs.

Q John Mack asks, “The majority of respondents to my ‘Future of DTC Advertising’ survey expect DTC ad spending to decrease in 2009 compared to 2008, which saw an 18% decrease compared to 2007. What do you think and why? What brands or categories do you think will show an increase in DTC spend in 2009?
Somewhere we got the idea that aggregating the opinions of people who don’t know what the future holds can provide a clear picture of what the future holds. I am reluctant to add my opinion to the aggregation. There are too many variables and too many unknowns (numbers 1 and 2 on the list being the FDA and Congress) to give a meaningful answer and I don’t really know what difference it makes anyway except, maybe to Rupert Murdock. Except for media moguls we operate in a micro, not macro, world. I am, however, confident that many brands will be doing a lot more with a little less when they start making their DTC communications more targeted, more insightful, more creative, and less dull. Relentless pressure to improve ROI will make this inevitable.