As 2012 approaches, the fervor builds. The coming of the apocalypse. The end of time. A spiritually-charged restart button. I’ve seen the buzz. The movie, books, websites, and t-shirts. 2012 is a pivotal year for many reasons: political, social, and economic. And within the chaos, lies our industry. It’s our time, Pharma. You can ride (or continue to ride) one of the destructive horses I will describe in the coming weeks or blaze your own trail.
When you are faced with the challenges we must tackle, the dire comparisons are inevitable. Damnation and apocalyptic scenarios are just tongue-and-cheek, right? Not necessarily. Ask your weary 30-something friend, Joe/Jane Product Manager, how they are sleeping these days. He or she will probably tell you of recurring nightmares about warthog-man beasts with ripped shirts, bulging muscles, fiery breath and bloodshot eyes chasing him/her to the edge of the proverbial cliff. He could describe the moment before he awakes each night, right before the beast reaches to push him off the ledge. Looking back terrified, he tells you he pleads desperately for the beast to stop. Yet, the only thing he can manage to scream are the three letters written across the beast’s torn, bloodied shirt.
R.O.I.!!!!!!!
The following morning, Joe/Jane returns to the office with sales on the brain. He calls his District Manager in Ohio: “DM, go after that other segment we never said we would, and do it with the same number of reps and with our current messages. Oh, also, try and pull all the scripts away from the top, second and third-tier drugs ahead of us in this class.”
And just as the DM is about to hang up the phone, confused and angered by the product manager’s request, Joe/Jane says:
“Oh, and DM. Find a way we can take some market share from Starbucks.”
This brings me to my First Horseman of the Pharmaceutical aPRODUCTlypse:
The Conqueror. The Seller Dweller. The Rep Misleader. The Door-to-Door beater.
The urge to conquer all is human and business nature. We want to be everything for everyone. Consumer products, too. Coke wants to be a drink that unites the world. Apple , Google , and Microsoft want to be your operating system, your gaming system, your phone, your media source, your search engine, your life caster. GE wants to power fighter jets or make Clark Griswold’s Christmas lightshow a reality.
Although extremely successful, even the above mega-brands, despite their efforts, cannot conquer all. I know many marketing managers in Pharma understand you do not give an SSRI to a child with ADHD and expect his test scores to improve. But it has become more and more apparent that the need to meet sales goals causes pharmaceutical companies to look outside the lines and damage their brands when if they examined their market earlier and more deeply, they would never have to resort to unethical or misleading sales and educational practices.
Your drug has a place. If you are 5th to the market, you may be late to the party, but the party isn’t over. Don’t be a party crasher. Don’t enter and immediately flip on your AC/DC record, grabbing everyone to join you in a desperate head banging fit. The partygoers were enjoying a long mellow run of Yanni’s greatest hits. It’s not your place. Bring a variety of your music to “feel out” the crowd, work you way into the conversation, interact, stop by the spiked punch and karaoke machine and make some noise in due time.
Although cliché, the overused party analogy does convey how pivotal it is for pre-launch education, launch promotions, and post-launch marketing and medical education to guide your brand with consistency. Your patient advocates will begin spreading your scientific message early. Your key opinion leaders will enhance these messages with case experience. And this consistency will breed value.
There are so many tactical ways to approach each of these important phases in your product’s cycle. I won’t give those trade secrets away here.
But please remember, the next time Alexander the Great Product Manager sits down at your brand strategy meeting, tell him to put down the Quintuple Venti Shot Lightly Flipped and Heavily Whipped Starbucks cup, have a ice water, and stop stretching your brand thin.
Next post in the Pharm Horsemen blog series coming soon.
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