Healthy Skepticism Library item: 2300

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: Journal Article

Roner L
Moving beyond DTC
eyeforpharma Briefing 2005 Aug 17; (151):
http://www.eyeforpharma.com/index.asp?nli=o&g-p&nld=8/17/2005&news=47333

Keywords:

Full text:

For marketers, the pharmaceutical industry faces tumultuous times, according to David Stern, Vice President of Marketing Metabolic Endrocrinology at Serono. And to fully understand how to maximize return on their marketing investments, he stresses, they must first understand the market dynamics of their environment.

In addition to strong merger and acquisition activity, Stern told attendees at eyeforpharma’s Marketing ROI Congress USA 2005 in Philadelphia, the industry is also under attack for high prices and not delivering value to its customers. But despite these challenges, he says, it is a “fun and challenging time” for pharma marketers.

Losing credibility with DTC?
In 1997, Stern says, statistics showed the industry was ranked among the best in serving its customers. But by 2004, pharma had slipped 35%, leaving it ranked below even the tobacco industry. The reversal of fortune, Stern suggests, correlates with the rise of DTC advertising.

Critics that argue pharma pricing is too high, he says, find ammunition in the ads to support their contentions that the industry is spending too much money if it can afford Superbowl spots costing millions of dollars. And despite nearly $30 billion spent on R&D, they continue to hammer the $4 billion spent on DTC advertising, he says.

But public and political pressure is not the only force affecting DTC spending, according to Stern. Like most other industries, pharma is facing declining effectiveness of television advertising as TiVo and other related technologies allow consumers to simply skip traditional advertising spots.

But while other industries turn to product placement strategies, Stern says, direct to patient strategies and greater use of web technology will be where the pharma industry will see the greatest return on its future marketing investment.

While traditional DTC advertising drove many doctors in the late 90s to write prescriptions on their patients’ insistence, physicians no longer feel that same pressure to prescribe today, Stern says. And it is, at least in part, because pharma advertising does not do enough to educate patients, he says.

The lack of educational value in DTC advertising, he argues, has led to “ubiquitous brands” with little understanding by patients of what the products even treat.

“We have to look at how we do our advertising and see if we get an ROI and whether patients understand what our product is or if they’re just getting some brand awareness,” says Stern. “I think that’s where we have the challenge and we have the responsibility to service our customers a little bit better.”

And ROI on DTC advertising is declining. According to one survey cited by Stern, the number of patients asking for prescriptions based on the ads is remaining fairly constant, while spending on DTC ads is increasing.

Compliance and persistency
One significant missed opportunity for both patients and the industry is around compliance and persistency, Stern says. Getting patients on a drug should be the most challenging hurdle, he says, but companies could significantly improve their marketing ROI if they could do a better job at keeping patients on their drugs, he says.

The vast majority of physicians surveyed feel there is no benefit, however, of DTC advertising on increasing patient compliance, Stern says.

According to a recent Harris Interactive poll, Stern says, one third of Americans don’t take their prescriptions the way they are prescribed, usually because they simply forget. In the statin market alone, he reports, the industry is losing more than $3 billion in revenues each year because patients do not stay on the drug they have already been prescribed.

“One of the other things I think that is very important is that we lose sight of the fact that although we’re spending a lot on DTC advertising, we’re spending a lot more on the cost of the sales force and all of the other things we do to educate,” he says. “We can’t just look at ROI for the sexy stuff – we’ve also got to look at and be able to see ROI for core marketing programs.”

Although the number of doctors has remained fairly static, Stern says, the number of reps has more than doubled in the past 10 years. Only 20% of reps are getting in to see doctors with their marketing messages, while fewer still (8%) and their message, he says, are remembered by the doctor.

“As marketers, we have to make sure the message we deliver is a good one that has been tested and that the physician will understand,” Stern says. “And we have to give them a patient segment out drug works in along with data to support it.”

Fifty-eight percent (58%) of physicians believe pharma reps do not provide useful industry information and 38% say they have consciously decided to make less time for reps, Stern reports. And although 62% say the want to receive well-balanced information, only 6% say they get that from their rep.

“If we can improve our messaging and the way reps are selling our product, we’ll be able to increase the number of physicians that will listen to us and increase our ROI,” says Stern. “And 57% said they will make more time if a rep delivers a value added service such as patient education material.

“So, the reason it’s important to understand the marketplace is if we don’t know what is happening out there with consumers, physicians and our competitors, we can’t be successful,” he adds.

Maximizing ROI
One of Sterns ad agencies tells him a that “a product sits on a shelf and a brand lives in your mind.” But as a society, he says, we have more loyalty to our favorite toothpaste or laundry detergent brand than we do to a product that is probably saving our lives.

“Most people won’t go into the pharmacy and reach for the 99 cent bogus brand toothpaste,” Stern says. “But people will go into the pharmacy and ask for a generic drug. Clearly, we haven’t done a good job of branding our products so that we can get loyalty from the users.”

As marketers, Stern says, we have break out of the norm and do something different and unexpected that gets people’s attention. And, he stresses, we must “date” our customers by making ourselves a trusted source that they’ll come back to for more information and to establish a relationship and trust before they are ready to be sold to.

Stern also outlined an e-marketing strategy Serono is using that allows it to drive brand claims at the physician level with a non-branded program. By using a patient education web site to build relationships with doctors, the company has found a more focused way to deliver value that doctors say has allowed them to improve their service to their patients.

And although the site provides a broad range of information on metabolic and endocrinology-related issues, it also offers a prime venue to introduce physicians and patients to its pediatric growth hormone products. Serono believes unbranded tools offering that level of value can assist reps in gaining access and ensure that their messages are heard.

“We’re in a world that is ever changing,” Stern says. “It’s not about bricks and mortar marketing or how many reps you can throw against a doctor – not today. As an industry we have to look at ourselves and say do we really need four reps selling the same product to the same doctor when he has so many other issues.

“As technology moves forward, we have to ask ourselves how we can use it bring value to our customers,” he adds. “We are able to measure these programs and see a significant ROI in them.”