Emotional Connection – Earned Not Given

Launch brands often overtly seek to dictate an emotional connection with physicians without fully understanding the time and requirements necessary to obtain it. Most commonly, brands start by developing a brand positioning that includes an emotional benefit based more on what the marketers desire for their brand vs. what the physicians and patients want or need from a therapy. The process culminates in a creative execution with photos, imagery, and copy that attempt to elicit this emotion at launch.

This approach is akin to me trying to convince you, the reader of this blog post, that you should trust us with your strategic/positioning business over other people you’ve worked with for years through the images on our website and a couple of blog posts. After reading this post, you have confidence we’ll do a better job, right?

This is, of course, absurd. If we believed this was possible with our customers, we would be naïve, at best. We have to work hard, produce tangible results, and deliver those results consistently for our customers to earn your business, your confidence, and your trust. It takes time, and simply writing down or even communicating a desired emotional benefit via copy or creative isn’t going to accelerate the earning of that emotion.
With every pharmaceutical brand launch team (and some on-market brands) focused on establishing an emotional connection between their product and their target physicians, it will be critical to keep in mind these 3 truths.

1. It starts with a functional benefit – Emotional connections with physicians are developed by promising and consistently delivering on a relevant and impactful functional benefit for the physician, the patient, and/or the practice.
2. It takes time to make a meaningful connection – The last Harris Poll on the subject showed that pharmaceutical brands that “owned” an emotional connection with physicians were on the market at least five years.
3. It’s up to the customer – Any emotional connection will ultimately be granted to your brand by your customers. Communicating in an overly emotional manner or trying to force a rapid connection with your product runs the risk of engendering skepticism, cynicism or even negativity toward your messaging, your representatives, and your brand.

So when you’re positioning your brand, keep in mind that you need to give physicians a practical functional benefit that’s compelling enough to drive prescribing when you initially enter the market. During this process, you CAN and SHOULD explore the potential emotional benefits that may arise if the brand delivers on the promise. As physicians gain experience with your brand, you should monitor for this emotional connection and adjust as needed to ensure you remain on track.

After reading this, do you trust me now? Of course you don’t. But if you’d like to reach out, I’m more than happy to begin earning your trust.