Rebranding – in it for the long haul
pharmafile | October 16, 2003 | Feature | Medical Communications | branding, life cycle
In February, the Government announced plans for a new Hib (Haemophilus influenzae type b) vaccine booster, but with the MMR debate still making headlines has the Government underestimated the damage a broken relationship can cause?
Since the MMR controversy, the public has been increasingly cautious in trusting the Government, its agencies and pharmaceutical manufacturers about the merits of health products and the promotion of certain therapeutic needs. This lack of confidence shown in what is the country's major public health provider surely signals a serious problem, and highlights the need for effective long-term communication.
And therein lies the rub. Product popularity and uptake is becoming less about the intrinsic formulation and effectiveness of that item, and more about the relationship the end user has with it and its producer.
Brand consultant Alec Rattray, Marketing Director at Landor brand consultancy, explains: "Branding has become a bigger issue in just about every industry, and particularly in the pharmaceutical industry. It is becoming much more central to the development process, and not just something that happens at the end."
He continues: "The brand is trying to provide a much longer-term bridge with consumers. It is much more about communicating the benefits, much more about communicating how the customer, the end user, feels as opposed to merely denoting the maker's mark or the product formulation."
Silver lining
But this needn't be bad news for the industry. Understanding this approach is the key to successfully stretching the investment tied up with a brand already on the market and transferring that precious brand capital to new formulations, follow-on or next-generation products – or introducing the product to a new therapy area.
Tom Blackett, Deputy Chairman of brand consultancy Interbrand, explains that, viewed like this, rebranding "means expanding the offer of the brand – not necessarily changing the basic principles the brand stands for." For this to be possible, the brand name must create impressions with the customer, which will then lead to expectations of how other products bearing the same name will perform. He adds: "Hence, Nurofen can move from being a headache product and become a product generally useful for pain relief muscular, abdominal, etc. Its basic promise is f'ast and effective relief from pain', and through expanding its applications it broadens the reach and appeal of the brand."
Tom traces such rebranding back to the moment when companies discovered that they had trusty and valuable properties in their brand names. He says: "For the company owning the brand the risk is relatively low – these are low-cost products both in terms of manufacturing and price to consumers." He believes that line extensions, new formulations and follow-on products are all examples of re-branding, but new names are not. "Because the name is central to the brand and without the connection with the name there is nothing to transfer to the new product." He adds that rebranding can only be successful "if the original brand is successful and respected."
Thus, the technique of rebranding existing products – or revitalising the relationship an end user has with such a brand – is an invaluable tool for all pharmaceutical marketers, and one that no manufacturer can afford not to use. In this way, rebranding becomes a sophisticated method of using the relationship consumers now expect to have with their commodities, and allows manufacturers to get value for money on the R&D pound. And in a market where generic formulations take up an increasingly large market share, exploiting a relationship that goes deeper than simply understanding the properties of a drug is vital.
Ownership issues
In business environments pharmaceutical and biotech companies are fully prepared to acknowledge they are in the business of creating markets for their products. Alec Rattray says that the fundamental base for branding and rebranding, however, is for manufacturers to accept that the brand is something "owned by the end user, not by the manufacturer" so that in this way a brand is based on the long-term needs that a customer has, rather than the characteristics a particular formulation seems to have to its producers. He says that among his clients there is "a genuine recognition that these are products that live in peoples homes, that live in peoples medicine cabinets, in their handbags."
According to Alec, this acceptance of the consumer/product bond gives manufacturers 'wiggle room' to migrate the brand to other areas. Effective rebranding therefore stretches an initial investment by using the trust and belief a consumer already has in a product – making it a far more financially savvy activity than starting from scratch. And let's not forget that consumers are also living longer too – making the cultivation of a long-term relationship of trust and belief increasingly worthwhile.
But Tom Blackett argues that rebranding doesn't happen much in the pharmaceutical industry "because there are still regulations regarding the extent to which you can stretch a name that is specifically associated with a particular product (classically aspirin) with other products." That said, he believes it is "appropriate to rebrand when the original product or service has peaked and/or run out of energy," but cautions that "rebranding is only a good idea when there are genuinely beneficial improvements over the original brand and can achieve nothing unless consumers see there is an improvement in action, choice or value."
Timing is everything
Michael Levy, a director of branding at design consultancy Corporate Edge, believes that timely rebranding is necessary because changes in the market can easily leave a brand behind: "Rapid change in many markets and in lifestyles makes it more likely that brands will get left behind if they don't review how their values and offers line up with their changing environment."
He cites the example of Dettol – in the 1970s its characteristic smell went from being associated with a clean house to signifying an unsavoury baby/pet mishap. Repositioning the product as an antiseptic for medicinal uses and expanding into new associated products (Dettox, Showerfresh) before it went in to decline was the correct action.
He believes rebranding is "nearly always a better way of accessing new revenue streams than launching a new brand" but that it must be done before there is a problem such as years of decline or before the competitors catch up with a trailblazing product. He also adds that the continuing return on investment is not just making the most of intangible assets such as branding, but also of the physical commitments such as factory lines.
Parental ties
The fact that consumers emotionally identify so readily with products these days means that corporations must be aware of the bigger picture, as nothing gets past media scrutiny today. Stories like Samuel Waksal, co-founder and former CEO of ImClone Systems, being caught up in inappropriate accounting scandals does nothing for the reputation of the drug maker, or its part-owner Bristol-Myers Squibb, and detracts from positive performance reports on its cancer drug Erbitux.
Fortunately, Alec Rattray sees positive moves afoot: "Specifically, the change in recent years has been for pharmaceutical companies to be much more aware of the reputation at a corporate level as opposed to at a product level, to change the emphasis of their marketing less around promoting specific branded products and more around trying to build a stronger corporate relationship."
In this way, then, product and therapy rebranding is now inextricably bound to corporate branding perhaps Pfizer should bear this in mind as it discusses with federal prosecutors allegations that it illegally promoted its epilepsy drug Neurontin for uses not approved by the US Government.
Tom Blackett concurs with the importance of image for parent companies. "In the pharmaceutical industry, companies are constantly re-inventing themselves. Thirty years ago Glaxo was a company famous for respiratory products and antibiotics; today it is into CNS, cardiovascular and metabolic products and has merged with SmithKline Beecham (which makes Lucozade). It is having to re-brand itself. If it does not, then customers will not know what it is about."
Perhaps this is why he sees rebranding as a long-term investment, adding that any brand development must be "done in a planned and managed and sensible way its not about short-term solutions." Accordingly, companies must be prepared to monitor and track how all their brands are performing at all times. Corporate Edges Michael Levvy agrees: "For long established brands it can take many years before the old associations are replaced by the new."
Crisis management
So can rebranding work for any brand in any situation? Alec Rattray doesn't think so. "I wouldn't say you can keep every brand alive under any circumstances, but I would say that we would always advise clients to start by building on what they have, as opposed to starting from scratch." Michael Levy also believes it is better to rebrand to achieve a perception of excellence, rather than to continue with a brand regarded as simply average, because you are then working from a position of strength.
For example, he does not believe that the nature of rebranding works in a crisis situation – bad news perhaps for Lipobay manufacturer Bayer. Alec Rattray argues that "you cannot brand your way out of a crisis branding is a strategic issue not a tactical issue. It's something that has to be long-term, not just a quick paint job."
He returns to his point about corporate reputation." A company needs to think long and hard about what it should be producing, what works and what doesn't work." Tom Blackett is in agreement; he says simply: "Re-branding rarely succeeds in a crisis situation," holding up Lever's problems rebuilding market share for Persil, following its withdrawal from the market after its rival found evidence that its new formula did not work.
Far easier, then, to leverage the positive relationships consumers experience and capitalise on that well before things turn sour.
One interesting example is the sale of Wyeth's contraceptive Today Sponge to Allendale Pharmaceuticals, a small New Jersey start-up that made the product available in Canada after an eight-year market absence. Wyeth stopped producing the sponge when the FDA told it to upgrade its factory plant in 1995, as it decided the financial investment necessary didn't make sense.
When the product was no longer available rumours circulated that it had been withdrawn from the market for safety reasons, and its use of the spermicide nonoxynol-9, associated in one study of African sex workers with a 50% higher rate of HIV, also brought adverse comments.
However, in an unpredictable media windfall, the contraceptive was the product of choice for character Elaine in a 1995 episode of the US sitcom Seinfeld. Consequently, its popularity rose exponentially and any perceived safety issues were quickly overcome by consumers, making Allendale rich – and probably leaving Wyeth kicking itself.
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