Ride the Hype Cycle

The Client outpouring regarding last week’s blog post – Conjunction(s) Are the Death Knell of Pharmaceutical Brand Positioning was swift and immediate. No less than a half a dozen Clients called me inquiring, not so subtlety I may add, whether the genesis for the blog post was their brand. My answer? It was and it wasn’t.

As listed in the masthead of the EVIDENCE bLOG, “similarities of the events and insights provided here to your current brand situation are purely intentional.” Think of it as the anti-Law and Order disclaimer. Over the course of fielding these calls, I came up with four likely, although not mutually exclusive, culprits for unfocused positioning efforts.

1. Misguidedly Seeking Differentiation – obviously if you string enough attributes and/or benefits together with conjunctions, you’ll arrive at something for which your brand is the “first and only.” Although, it may provide comfort from the fact that it’s exclusively yours, it also may not resonate with your audience.
2. Divorcing Positioning Development from Messaging – positioning is where you want to go and messaging is the path to help you get there. Testing only where you want to go, not only leads to testing flights of fancy and unsupported inspirational statements, but also leads to shoehorning un-validated messages into the positioning statement.
3. Letting the Customer Be the Marketer – letting your customers design and develop your brand story is tantamount to admitting that your product isn’t innovative. It also indicates that you believe the potential promise of your brand falls within current, conventional thinking, as customers, specifically physicians, are bound by their current thinking and perceptions.
4. Avoiding the Proverbial Gunshot – a “don’t shoot the messenger” mentality is often at play with positioning development. Most biotechnology and pharmaceutical marketers are reticent to communicate to their organization and to customers that their product isn’t for everyone. The reality is revealed later, after launch, when the market has voted through lack of prescriptions.

I usually end with, “let me know your thoughts”, but our blog audience isn’t that shy.

You don’t post. You just pick up the phone. And, you know where to find me.

After five years of intensive focus on pharmaceutical brand positioning, I stepped away from the discipline in 2006 to start Return on Focus. With the clarity of a five-year sabbatical and a renewed focus on increasing the level of evidence behind communication platform development (positioning + message hierarchy), I’ve found the primary culprit to poor positioning . . .
the conjunction!

If you can’t immediately recall the School House Rock Song, Conjunction Junction, conjunctions are connector words like AND and OR, and they’re used for “hookin’ up words and phrases and clauses,” thus allowing the ability to combine two or more thoughts or ideas in a sentence. So you see the problem with conjunctions and positioning, right?

If positioning is supposed to be a single-minded concept or perceptual unit, it shouldn’t have any conjunctions at all! Exhibit A is the oft used positioning statement catch-all – Product X is the best balance of efficacy, safety, AND tolerability.

My definition of positioning after being away from the space for a little while remains the same – Positioning is the art of sacrifice. Pull out your positioning statement, count the number of conjunctions, and then give me a call for a strong dose of sacrificial thinking!