Healthy Skepticism Library item: 17152

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: Electronic Source

Acknowledge how Americans' trust has been lost and take the first steps to earn it back.
World of DTC Marketing 2010 Feb 9
http://www.worldofdtcmarketing.com/files/daeef4b02464aee5ffa293feffaf1917-976.html

Full text:

“For years, Wall Street CEOs have thrown away customer trust like so much worthless trash”. This quote could easily be applied to the pharma and medical device industries. It’s always been about getting new customers while current customers languish in a world of misinformation and hiding behind data. Can pharma & medical device companies regain trust? Yes but they need some new marketing linchpins to break out of current thinking.
Pharma, by its inactions, continues to believe that Americans’ trust has been lost and take the first steps to earn it back. There are so many examples of really bad trust issues that it’s no wonder Americans don’t trust the pharma industry. While litigation around Seroquel continues to over 26,000 lawsuits AZ decided to do a Seroquel DTC TV ad. While mergers and new business models force massive layoffs CEO’s get ten’s of millions of dollars in compensation. (if you think that consumers don’t care about that than you are clueless).

If there is one key change of consumer behavior in the last decade to take notice of it’s that consumers don’t trust big business or government. It’s one of the reasons for the increased use of social media. People want to be heard and want to reach out to people who share their frustrations.

Can pharma regain trust? Sure, here are some suggestions:

1. CEO’s of companies that have laid off people should take compensation in the form of $1.00 to show that they are committed to turning the company around and that they are not driven by short term increases in stock value but, rather, long-term growth based on a changing business model. How do you think consumers feel when they read that a drug company CEO earned $16 million while their co-pay went up forcing them to cut back on medications ?

2. Allow customers to sign up for updates on drugs via the product website: It’s time to get serious about CRM but for a CRM program to be successful it has to have value for customers not marketers. Drug companies need to let customers & patients know what is happening with the drugs they are taking in real time. This means that you don’t issue comments like “we’re studying the data”. It means that you give patients real examples of what the current data says and let them confer with their HCP’s to determine if they are willing to take your product.

3. It’s about patients: Every pharma and medical device company CEO should hold small town hall meeting with every employee and simply state that “when we make decisions, it should be like our customers and patients are with us in the room”. In order to ensure that this is enforced it should then be an imperative at all management levels of the organization.

4. Strengthen the patient HCP relationship: Too many people are self medicating or skipping appointments with their doctors. The industry needs to strengthen the patients HCP relationship by deploying tools and information that HCP’s can use to get patients talking to them again.

5. Share your experts: Thought leaders have a lot to offer consumers and you should be sponsoring “chats” with thought leaders to get information out there. There isn’t a patient in the US who wouldn’t like to time to speak with an expert on a health issue that concerns them.

6. Consumer/Patient thought leaders: Why not have some influential patients/consumers come to your facility and talk to key business people to share their insights and experiences. Put a human voice in touch with business people.

7. Understand that trust has to earned with every action and throughout time. It’s not going to happen overnight. It takes time and someone within the organization to stand up and say “this is not the right thing to do, we need to rethink this”.

Trust is now the foundations of any businesses relationship with it’s customers. Pharma has a long way to go but they can get there one action at a time.

When trust is earned your customers become your best marketing ambassadors