If your pharmaceutical brand has been on the market for a couple of years and is under-performing, the notion of re-positioning might seem tempting as a means to reinvigorate sales. But the truth is, without compelling new data or an additional indication, it is extremely difficult (read…near impossible) to successfully re-position your brand in a meaningful way to your customers.
Brand perceptions are formed relatively quickly and become ingrained with product experience and interaction with your previous marketing and sales efforts.
Instead of thinking about re-positioning, think about re-focusing your brand story. Often times, brand messaging starts out diffuse at launch and then becomes further diluted over time as attempts to keep the sales story “fresh” actually result in a fragmented approach to communication.
What if you surveyed your entire team today and asked each of them to respond with the key take-home message for your brand. How confident are you they would all submit the same response? How confident are you they would be correct?
The key to re-invigorating your brand story lies in taking an objective look at the potential points of communication focus that exist currently. Now, the most important word in this sentence is “objective.” Our experience has been that brand teams and agencies are too close to the messages to do this without outside support.
We do a lot of Communication Platform work at ROF and most of it is for on-market brands in need of a tighter story. There is a disciplined process that must be applied here because message development should be a strategic exercise…not a creative one. The creative comes later once the platform is optimized and the agency initiates concepts and executional tactics.
So, before you invest a significant amount of your budget and time in re-positioning your brand, try re-focusing your current brand story.
