Healthy Skepticism Library item: 19740

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

Industry thought leaders critical to marketing success
eyeforpharma.com 2004 Sep 22
http://social.eyeforpharma.com/uncategorised/industry-thought-leaders-critical-marketing-success

Full text:

Pharmaceutical Thought Leaders: Brand Strategies and Product Positioning reveals that pharmaceutical companies are relying on MSLs to ensure thought leader relationships are hitting milestones and executing critical tasks. According to Elio Evangelista, lead analyst on the study for Cutting Edge Information, one of the most critical thought leader activities is publication planning in preparation for an upcoming launch. But companies in the study also incorporate thought leaders in concept testing, competitive analysis, market needs assessment and positioning studies.

Companies involving thought leaders in more critical and strategically-focused activities realize greater benefits from the strong relationships they create, Evangelista said.

The survey, based on interviews with key stakeholders at more than 15 pharmaceutical and biotech companies, including AstraZeneca, Aventis, GlaxoSmithKline, Eli Lilly and Pfizer, finds that the earlier thought leaders get involved in key research and marketing activities, the better.

Pharmaceutical companies should begin screening key opinion leader candidates as early as between Phase I and Phase II, Evangelista said.

And the trend among survey participants is toward earlier involvement of thought leaders. In a comparable survey in 2002, Cutting Edge Information found 49% of companies kicked off thought leader activities in Phase II, but only 25% did so during pre-clinical development. In the 2004 survey, however, 31% of companies report beginning thought leader activities during the discovery stage, 13% in pre-clinical and 13% in Phase I.

Early opinion leader involvement is especially important for novel treatments that face higher market acceptance hurdles, Evangelista said. The most important early stage activities incorporate screening thought leader candidates and training them on product benefits, he said.

According to Evangelista, the pharma industry is recognizing the significant impact thought leaders have on sales uptake and top companies have responded by increasing investments in thought leader relations. Both budgets and staffing increase for thought leader management programs as products approach launch, he said.

In 1999, according to the Drug Information Journal, more than half of 58 pharma companies surveyed had implemented structured MSL programs, but today companies are hiring more MSLs than ever. Current survey data indicates companies staff an average of 46 MSLs in their thought leader management functions.

Because pharmaceutical companies recognize the high impact thought leader relations programs have on pre-launch and post-launch marketing, they have increased staffing resources over the last decade to manage more thought leaders in more therapeutic areas, Evangelista said.

According to the study, large pharmaceutical companies’s thought leader budgets averaged $38 million, or 31.5% of total marketing expenditures for new products, and industry-wide spending for thought leader activities accounts for 24% of the new product commercialization budgets.

On average, companies in the survey spend $6.31 million between discovery and Phase II on thought leader management and $8.34 million during Phase IIIa. (However, one company skews the Phase IIIa spending and without it, the rest average just $2.01 million in spending during Phase IIIa.)

Thought leader investments exceed $10 million, on average, at the launch phase and average post-launch spending is $12.85 million, although only one company exceeds $5 million in post-launch spending.

Thought leaders are being employed in a variety of ways in product marketing and different thought leader segments are being relied on for feedback from a range of activities that include testing marketing concepts, conducting positioning studies, testing initial product profiles and advising on product trademarks.

Thought leaders, Evangelista said, also can provide vital information on the changing healthcare landscape that can influence successful pricing strategies and promote physician awareness of a company’s drugs.

Thought leaders are most valuable to companies when they buy into the product and advocate its benefits freely and openly, he said.

From the results of the study, Cutting Edge Information has synthesized the following key thought leader management principles for success:

Employ liaisons to develop mutual benefits and communicate research-based opportunities to thought leaders;

Identify and recruit opinion leader candidates early in the development cycle;

Allocate significant resource investments to thought leader management to positively impact marketing return on investment;

Engage local thought leaders more to leverage their spheres of influence; and

Develop strong, independent strategies for each thought leader segment.

The bottom line opinion leaders play an increasingly critical role in product marketing. From early-stage strategic marketing to post-launch campaigns, thought leader feedback both shapes and fine-tunes product promotion, as well as ensures returns on key marketing pushes, Evangelista said.