The future of brand launches

pharmafile | September 1, 2004 | Feature | |   

After a chat with a few trusty friends over a beer and my tarot cards at the ready, here are my predictions for the key trends and themes that will reoccur in the successful brands and brand launches of the future.

Higher expectations

A headline article in the New York Times in 2003 asked: 'Where are all the new drugs?'. Despite annual research investment doubling, introduction of new drugs has plummeted across the industry, from a high of 53 in 1996 to just 17 in 2002.

To survive, company executives have concluded one company is better than two and 38 major drug companies have merged since 1994, with more on the horizon. The pressure is on – with every new brand launch comes higher and higher expectations. The investment risk required to develop a profitable brand is huge and the compulsion to deliver blockbuster brands is reality for the bigger players.

"The pharma industry is in a state of flux which is forcing pharma companies to be much more intelligent with their marketing budgets, and significantly more focused in their approach to product launches," says Lisa Alderson, business development director of interactive marketing of CRM solutions company Cegedim.

"Fewer blockbusters coming through and the influx of generics means new products have potentially less value and companies therefore have less spend," she adds. "They can no longer afford a massive marketing attack; launches are much smaller and better targeted with more pre-launch activity."

Ensuring your brand is successful from day one can only be achieved when you have customer and patient insights gathered from pre-launch work on which to build your brand consistently. The confidence comes in doing the basics well – consumer brands normally fail when they ignore the warning signs from market research.

Pre-launch work

Launches of the past were exciting, satisfying and over in one hectic, adrenalin filled day – at least according to reminiscences. Often the launch day involved obtaining the licence and precision planning was needed to co-ordinate all aspects to come together at the glitzy launch conference. I remember sitting at an overseas sales conference when that all-important piece of paper didn't come through and, oh well, we had plenty of spare time to enjoy the venue!

Times have changed – it's no longer a brand launch day but essentially a launch year. The environment does not like surprises and so we have to manage the entry of our brand into the market – hence pre-launch is now mandatory not 'nice to have'.

This is now part and parcel of every launch, from the most innovative to the me-too brand. The Scottish Medicines Consortium (SMC) and the All Wales Medicines Strategy Group (AWMSG) want to review all brands launched and give their local approval for use.

NICE guidance is often needed for the more innovative and expensive brands and this is often a hurdle in the early days. Healthcare teams are hard at work pre-launch: clearing the route to launch by working with SHAs, PCOs and obtaining hospital formulary approvals.

Guidelines are the other factor in the marketplace: understanding the current ones and working to influence the development of new ones with the inclusion of your brand. This trend for a launch year will continue with all activities being planned to integrate and build over time and the brand only being made commercially available when the market place is ready to accept it, pay for it and prescribe it.

Branding on a global basis

Another key trend is global branding. The consumer marketplace has been working on a global basis for years with our favourite brands Coca-Cola and McDonalds being the consistent example of this. Of course global brands make sense – economies of scale and a consistent message to your global customer.

Global pharma brands have, however, yielded bland campaigns because they have tried to get one image to work worldwide.

Ben Davies, managing director of Pan Advertising was lucky enough to be involved with two major launches – Spiriva and Crestor – both of which were backed up by global strategies and campaigns.

He believes the key to developing a successful brand is having a global strategy but not a global ad campaign. This is definitely a case where tight global constraints will give way to key branding elements, remaining flexible at local level to produce campaigns that the customer identifies with.

David Davenport-Firth, executive creative director of the Shire Health Group, said: "These key branding elements such as colour, typography, illustrative and photographic style will be used in more advanced ways by the leading pharma brands to create a brand presence without breaching regulatory frameworks."

Brand construction

Wherever the brand is constructed – be that at a global, European or local level then the perspective of the patient will become more important. Who knows the impact of the disease and their needs from a drug therapy better than the patient? Understanding life from the perspective of the patient will enhance the emotional appeal of the brand.

Rob Benson, executive vice president of Healthworld Global Business Group, agrees. "Consumer and patient mobilisation is increasingly playing a commercially critical role in virtually all significant new brand launches, particularly at global and regional levels," he said.

Let's look to the consumer world to identify innovative ways to gain customer insights to make our all-important brand character differentiated and meaningful. We will get better at defining what our brands need to stand for and again consumer processes are required to do this effectively.

Shire Health's Davenport-Firth is currently collaborating with academics at the University of Brighton Postgraduate School of Medicine to explore the role of the visual medium in behavioural medicine.

"We're finding that behavioural observation and analysis methodologies are providing significant insights especially in chronic conditions where a medication has to be incorporated into lifestyle," he said.

Research and 'gut feel'

Market research is an increasingly important part of defining the strategy and campaign at launch. However, we have probably moved toward researching things to death at this point in time. The trend will move to a delicate balance of inspiring research and marketing acumen, which is definitely where we will get our real competitive edge from. Innovation comes from gaining key insights – that's good research but also developing the right solution, which is where intuition comes in. In the consumer world we have gurus such as Richard Branson who can turn there hand to any market and normally make it work – truly the art of marketing.

Changes in the marketing mix

For previous launches, high on the agenda was getting the reps motivated and equipped with great materials and the latest gismo. The ad was equally important: lots of double page spreads in every journal you could think of. Part of this was a desire to get your sparkling new brand in all the medical papers and the icing on the cake was getting coverage in The Times.

That was then, this is now, and the composition of the marketing mix needs to be built bottom-up, depending on the job you need to do. Takeda has just taken a radical approach to its marketing mix: having lost its primary and secondary care teams, it is moving forward with regional account directors. We have probably all been part of a small company taking on one of the big boys and will watch with bated breath to see what happens.

GP advertising page numbers have fallen from 18,231 to 11,477 in 2003 – a 23% decline – and in the first half of 2004 there has been a further decline of 26%.

'The pharma advertising market has been in decline for the last five years, driven by industry consolidation, less companies being in the market with fewer products having promotional budgets assigned to them," said Joy Clarke, director of agencies, RBI Healthcare.

There has been a shift from reliance on direct media such as advertising to the use of education and PR. More use will be made of e-commerce in the form of e-detailing and multimedia, with reps using tablet PCs. The question is, if and when, will paper become redundant? Things will change but the rate of change will probably not be as fast as we think.

Share of voice and noise will start to take a backseat to communicating with your customer in the right way at the right time. Rupert Whitehead, client services director at PBC, has already started to see these changes in the specialist care brands.

Healthworld's  Benson suggests that improved understanding of what a brand is, leads to an instinctive appreciation of the need to consider communication in a 360-degree sense and its use over time. "This in turn places an emphasis on the role and function of brand message over media," he said.

Direct to consumer advertising

Direct to consumer advertising has been on the agenda for some time, but the general consensus is that Europe will not move to a US-style situation with pharma brands being advertised on prime time TV.  

Rather, the trend will be towards more innovative ways of influencing patients than just full on advertising. There are plenty of examples where using patient groups, patient educators, the internet and innovative educational programmes have empowered the patient to demand earlier and better treatment  - arthritis is a good case in point.

According to Jacinta Collins, joint managing director of Cohn & Wolfe's healthcare team there is a need to inject an element of caution into the discussion as a DTC advertising/communication campaign is not the right strategy for all brands.

"The pharma industry has been on the receiving end of a lot of criticism for so-called disease mongering and therefore needs to tread the fine line between consumer facing programmes which shape consumer/patient attitudes but adhere to the numerous guidelines which frame the boundaries of appropriate DTC communication," she said.

Integration of communication

The industry is definitely going to get better at integrating communication. Put all of our communication plans on the table and I bet they look different, depending on which agency produced it and which product manager.

Having worked hard at defining our brands, everyone, including the field force need to communicate the brand's essence consistently at every interface with the customer. This means our agencies need to work together across the brand. The medical education agency might write it, but it all needs to come from the same stable to communicate the brand effectively and consistently.

The consumer world has got this one licked  - the consistency of brand over time and with every interaction is a wonder to behold. Think 'Vodaphone' and you will understand what I am getting at.

Cegedim's Lisa Alderson agrees that some smaller pharma companies have adopted this faster than their larger competitors.

"Agile mid-market pharma companies in particular are starting to actively take this approach to their product launches and marketing activities," she said. "Unless the larger players also start to work smarter and jettison their historic 'quantity over quality' attitude, the more agile mid-sized firms could seize the advantage in this regard and leap into the big league."

Use of consumer processes

Pharma marketing has grown up and rather than being a supplier of materials to the sales team, a lot of time and effort is being well invested in planning; using consumer processes to challenge our assumptions in a particular disease area, turning the problem on its head and gaining a new solution.

In the consumer world innovation is a given, so having the best product is not good enough – having the best promise is the thing they strive for. Every step of the way they add differentiation to their brand and ensure they communicate powerful, rational and emotional elements through all communications. To develop marketing excellence we have got to challenge the way we do things.

Cialis is a great example – who would have relished following Viagra to market? Not only has Cialis taken up the challenge but it is winning.

This is a great example of looking to the consumer world for clues. Had they not explored the Achilles heel of their competitor and really understood the needs of the end consumer, the patient, they would not have gained significant market share within a reasonably short period of time.

From the consumer brand perspective this is nothing new – the key to launching a brand is understanding the market place that you and your competitors are working in and where your brand and company strengths provide a competitive edge. The real skill comes in using these processes well to build brand value and strengthen it against competitive attack.

Ensuring behaviour change

The key to future launches will be to focus on the behaviour changes required in your target audience. Being clear about where you are taking them from and how you will take them there is the crux of astute communication.

Only when programmes are evaluated on this scale can the return on investment of particular activities be truly understood.

The 'virtuous circle' of strategy leading to behaviour change which in turn leads to an evolving strategy to change a new behaviour. The successful brands of the future will focus on the task in hand, only using the right tactics and message to drive the required behaviour change.

The pharma industry is slowly waking up to the knowledge that to effectively communicate and motivate prescribing they have to turn to more persuasive communication techniques than they have done traditionally.

Product launches were previously seen as an important opportunity to communicate as much information about a product as possible. Events were part of the medical education process and, as such, relied heavily (if not exclusively) on the communication of data to the customers.

Andrew Bruce from Visual Response said: "The next step is to fully comprehend what the appropriate level of investment should be in developing persuasive communication. It is somewhat ironic that large companies will invest massive amounts of money in learning how to develop the brand but still rely on conservative and traditional approaches to communication at the time of launch, especially when planning events."

Gaining, so-called 'persuasive insight' will be the next big step for product launches, as indeed could be more effective evaluation of communications and the agencies delivering them.

"From advertising to PR, techniques to actually measure attitudinal change, such as benchmarking, are no longer a 'nice to have' but an essential part of the communications strategy," says Rebecca Burton, account director at Cohn & Wolfe.

Shorter lifecycles

Brand launch expectations are increasing but, conversely, lifecycles are getting shorter. Once you have a successful brand on your hands the first sign of this is usually the emergence of a parallel import.

With European pricing this phenomena should change with time but while the rewards of affiliate success are so strong this is likely to be with us for some time to come.

Just when you have got the brand motoring, and all the issues under control, the threat of generics looms on the horizon. Innovative line extensions can help but even the best of them have not shown a 100% conversion rate.

As well as managing the brand and driving sales forward we need to manage the brand at a commercial level. This will become more important over time with fewer true blockbusters, extending the life of existing ones will become an art in itself.

Looking into my crystal ball these are my predictions for brand launches. But, of course, we control our own future and destiny, so if you don't like the sound of any of these, start a revolution and create your own trends of the future.