Are You Building a Horoscope Brand Plan?

May 20, 2012

If Monopolies Aren’t Good for the Telephone Company, Why Would They Be Good for Your Brand?

Filed under: Marketing Effectiveness,Patient Marketing,Professional Marketing,What We Think — amanning @ 9:55 pm

More and more lately, we’re seeing pharmaceutical and biotechnology clients turn to a single agency or agency network conglomerate for their marketing and advertising services. Whether at the Brand or corporate level, these decisions are often made based on promises of reduced cost and increased quality. These mythological benefits stem from the belief that more dedicated agency teams will provide greater knowledge and continuity resulting in a better work product. You, in turn, will be able to demand lower costs due to the increased leverage your company has with the agency once they are getting more of your money.

Needless to say, for our clients who have traveled this road, these promises never materialize. In fact, the resulting “creative monopoly” often leads to some unanticipated drawbacks. The primary one is that the Client now has neither the carrot (i.e., ability to reward more business) nor the stick (i.e., ability to sever the relationship or to competitively bid out the next project).

But should these drawbacks really be unanticipated? In almost every other area of business, it goes without saying that these types of closed systems, or monopolies, actually lead to increased costs and decreased quality.

In our everyday lives, we demand choice – in our airlines, our phone companies and our utilities. And these choices give us the power to affect price, services and quality, simply because we have the option to walk away from a given service provider.

You wouldn’t settle for only having only one choice of provider for your HBO or Discovery channel, so why should your company settle for only one option when it comes to marketing your Brand?

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May 14, 2012

The Role of Dose Titration in Medication Adherence

Filed under: Marketing Effectiveness,Professional Marketing,What We Think — kyork @ 9:22 am

There is an aspect of non-adherence that is often overlooked, but critical to treatment success. It’s dose titration, and the truth is, in many categories, doctors aren’t that good at it. We recently completed a patient market research study for a brand launched in 2006 in which 60% of the patients who had discontinued for suboptimal results had not been titrated to the maximum dose prior to discontinuation. Seriously?

Well it turns out that when we did collaborative research on the MD side, we confirmed this finding and determined that, despite the product being on the market for a number of years, it was a result of lack of awareness of the actual dosing used in the clinical trials. Physicians had believed for years that the starting dose was the optimal dose. In fact, less than 50% of the brand’s prescribers who participated in the research were aware that the vast majority of patients in the trials were treated with the higher dose.

Efforts to rectify the situation have resulted in increased use of the higher dose over time—from 16% of total brand sales last year to 21% this year with the most significant gains among frequent prescribers.
Pharma is often quick to blame patient behavior as the root cause for the extensive non-adherence that plagues our industry. But there are often other contributing factors that need to be considered. Convincing one physician to titrate the majority of patients on a given brand versus persuading a single patient to be more adherent provides deeper, more lasting returns.

Before you invest significant dollars in a program designed to improve adherence with your brand make sure you know what is driving discontinuation in the first place. What you find might not just impact what you say, but who you need to say it to.

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May 7, 2012

Are You Building a Horoscope Brand Plan?

Filed under: Marketing Effectiveness,What We Think — dreinhardt @ 1:53 pm

The allure of horoscopes is that they appear to speak specifically and uniquely to the reader’s circumstances, but in actuality, they include a deft blend of generalities and platitudes that allow them to apply to almost everyone.

Today’s brand managers, in the throws of brand plan development, need to have their guard up to ensure they don’t inadvertently build a ‘horoscope brand plan’ – one that to those closest to the brand plan appears to be full of specifics, yet under careful examination could apply to any brand.

A couple of tell tale signs to look out for:

Lack of specificity in brand communication platform – allows inclusion of almost any tactical investment that seemingly aligns to an overly broad positioning
Ability to play Competitive Mad Libs® – looking at your strategic map and corresponding positioning, you can clearly substitute your brand name with your competitors and it still works
Inclusion of strategic platitudes – classics are ‘differentiate from competition,’ ‘drive patient acquisition,’ or ‘focus on retaining existing patients’
Financial and strategic land grab among agency partners – lack of validated channel mix to objectively guide investments often leads to a battle for budget and mindshare among your key agency partners

But, does it really matter?

As evidence-based marketing experts, we consistently see the seeds for sub-optimal execution sown in the brand planning and development process. In addition, the lack of specificity associated with ‘horoscope brand planning’ prevents the Brand Team from distributing accountability to functional partners as well as external strategic partners.

So, do you want to learn more about our clients who have ditched the Magic 8 Ball and gone on to develop focused, differentiated, and highly accountable brand plans? Give me call.

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