Our evidence-based marketing approach provides us with a unique lens to observe and provide insights and commentary on industry news and common client experiences. Please note that any similarities of the events and insights provided here to your current brand situation are purely intentional and should not be considered coincidental. If you see yourself or your brand in any of the blog posts below, feel free to comment and tell us about your experiences.
As the Summer of 2023 enters full swing, the world has officially shaken off the remaining vestiges of the pandemic years. While we are all enjoying this return to normalcy, it’s critical that those of us who have the privilege and responsibility to craft policies for the workforce don’t forget some of the lessons we learned when life slowed down more than 3 years ago.
· Mental health matters.
· Personal and family time is important.
· Less in-office time and fewer meetings does not mean lower productivity.
Even though the world seems increasingly focused on improving mental health, research uncovers that full-time employees’ mental health has declined in recent years. U.S. employees regularly log longer hours and cite feeling that they are always on call.
When we’re conducting positioning work with Clients, we often hear a blanket statement that a pharmaceutical/ biotechnology brand cannot be successfully positioned based on its mechanism of action (MOA). It’s likely that repeated comments from physicians to the effect of, “I don’t care how your drug works. I only care that it works.”, have made this way of thinking near gospel among Industry executives. While it is true that not every brand can be positioned based on MOA, it is inaccurate to say that no brand can.
When examining marketing evidence, we have found that a brand can successfully position based on MOA if(and only if) the mechanism allows the brand to deliver a unique and clinically relevant benefit.
As pharmaceutical manufacturers increasingly focus their corporate commitment within a limited number of therapeutic areas and disease states, their marketers face greater complexity and new commercial challenges that may ultimately limit their success.
The marketers entrusted with launching the next treatment within a therapeutic franchise are frequently not given the latitude needed to develop the brand positioning and subsequent go-to-market strategies necessary to maximize their molecule. More often, considerations for the on-market brands, which are delivering today’s revenue, serve to limit the market opportunity for tomorrow’s product. This is a real-world example of what the late Harvard Business School professor, Clayton Christensen, called ‘the innovator’s dilemma.’
