Grabbing the Gorilla: Making adverts sell
pharmafile | March 3, 2009 | Feature | Medical Communications, Sales and Marketing | advertising, branding
Awareness, persuasion and emotional appeal are all important factors in effective advertising.
The key is to draw attention to the brand and say something new and relevant about it. But the only real measure of effectiveness is whether more products are sold.
Research has shown that the best print and online ads can be up to seven times more effective in encouraging GPs to prescribe a brand than weak ones.
An engaging creative with strong brand impact gives you the opportunity to communicate your message and make it stick. Yet over a third of all ads fail to communicate on strategy at all.
Pharma marketers are increasingly realising the importance of evaluating and optimising their print advertising, online ads and e-details, to drive their brands forward and ultimately sell more products.
When evaluating an advertisement it is useful to think about the following points:
- Will the target doctors notice and remember the ad?
- Will it communicate the desired message?
- Will it motivate physicians to prescribe (and hence increase sales)?
Will doctors remember the ad?
Creativity is the most important element in successful advertising. It has the power to get the ad noticed, and leaves behind positive memories that help build brand equity and therefore sell products.
It is not possible to define or measure creativity, but we can measure the reaction to it. The proportion of people who stop and take notice of an ad, for example, is a key measure of interest and engagement. Is the ad original and intriguing, or dull and ordinary?
But grabbing attention alone is not enough: the creativity needs to also draw attention to the brand. Lack of brand distinction is the most common problem found when evaluating ads.
Strong integration of the brand can be achieved by incorporating the brand name into the creative, or via cues such as colour. In long-running campaigns it can be achieved through continuity of style and consistent themes.
On average, brand impact for pharma print advertising is 22% weaker than for fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) ads. This is because consumer brand campaigns tend to have a greater degree of consistency and an increased use of brand cues.
The award-winning campaign for Xenical, a prescription weight-loss drug, used a consistent approach to visually convey the danger of fat and quickly developed this as a brand cue, generating a higher-than-average branding score.
Creativity which creates an impact, with the brand central to the idea, will not only boost short-term sales but will be the key to long-term sales effectiveness, which will provide most of the return on investment. This impact can be predicted by conducting research before the advertising budget is spent.
Will it communicate the desired message?
An engaging creative with a strong brand impact gives you the opportunity to communicate your strategic message – and make it stick. As with brand distinction, a successful message will be highlighted by creativity.
Messages buried in boring copy will probably never be read; those jumping out of a visual and a headline cannot be missed. Paving a clear route through an advert can ensure readers connect with the message as well as the brand.
Advertising targeted at physicians is still predominantly rational in nature, compared with consumer-targeted advertising, with its blend of both rational and emotional messages.
Pharma companies tend to focus on communicating the rational benefits of a drug – such as mode of action, efficacy, safety, tolerability and convenience – at the expense of the other drivers.
But the idea that rational benefits play a bigger role for pharmaceutical brands is a common misconception. There are six key perceived benefits behind loyalty: rational, emotional, price, innovation, difference and popularity; and these are consistent across both FMCG and pharma brands. Studies show that rational benefit is no higher within a pharmaceutical context.
So it seems that like consumers, physicians make decisions for emotional reasons, not just rational ones.
Interestingly, it is popularity – particularly top-of-mind presence – that assumes the biggest role for pharmaceutical brands. Pharma ads that convey the motivation behind brand loyalty and prescription behaviour will provoke stronger emotions and generate greater involvement, in turn creating stronger brand appeal and increasing sales.
Will it motivate doctors to prescribe?
The most sales-effective ads are those combining persuasion with brand impact. In addition, they should say something new, or say it in a new way, if they can.
Messages provoking a short-term sales boost are generally those that are new, relevant and credible to the target doctors. Measuring the responses to the various messages being communicated helps to predict the effect on immediate sales.
CASE STUDY: OLMETEC
One pharmaceutical brand that benefited from a review of its print advertising is Olmetec, a hypertension treatment.
Brand health/equity research carried out early in 2007 showed Olmetec was in a strong position to move forward given the right marketing and sales support.
It identified key tasks for the brand, and showed the importance of emotional appeal to brand loyalty in this therapy area. This was actually found to be the most important factor in brand loyalty for angiotensin II receptor blockers (ARBs) even more so than for pharma brands as a whole.
Millward Brown Healthcare tested the existing advertising. While found to be communicating key messages at good levels, it lacked impact and emotional appeal. As a result, Daiichi Sankyo UK looked to develop a new campaign.
The subsequent advertising, developed by Brand(x) and tested both qualitatively and quantitatively, proved to be a much more emotive campaign.
The new ad was particularly likely to make GPs stop and look, and nearly four in five GPs found the ad interesting as opposed to just under one in two for the previous ad.
The new ad was much more engaging – it was seen as original, intriguing, direct and stylish, while the previous ad was considered ordinary, plain and below average overall. The new ad also elicited positive emotions for the brand.
Spontaneous take-out of key messages was at good levels and much more about Olmetec taking charge and being powerful/strong.
Overall appeal levels, branding and motivation to prescribe were also all higher for the new ad. GPs route through the ad helped to provide pointers for further development. Not surprisingly, most people were drawn into the ad initially by the gorilla in the woman's hand.
In line with the new campaign, Daiichi Sankyo UK has seen an increased number of prescribers generated for the brand and continued sales growth in a slowing market it is clear that the advertising is making a strong contribution to driving the brand forward.
Kevin Gledhill is account director at Millward Brown Healthcare and Jeff Hart is business intelligence manager at Daiichi Sankyo UK. Contact Kevin.gledhill@uk.millwardbrown.com or visit www.millwardbrown.com
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