‘Pharma exceptionalism does exist and is a significant barrier to effective marketing’

It’s been almost four years since I moved from the consumer space to focusing on health. Working with brands that are life-changing for patients and their families has cured some of my ‘marketer’s remorse’; there are only so many fizzy drinks and cars you feel good about selling. Less positively, I’ve been surprised by what I call ‘pharma exceptionalism’; the belief that the science of modern marketing somehow doesn’t apply to pharma.

This isn’t a whinge: sectors like finance and automotive were and are relatively slow on the uptake. It’s not a universal truth: some clients are ambitious and catching up fast. However, pharma exceptionalism does exist and is a significant barrier to effective marketing.

To counter exceptionalism when I see it, here are some of the marketing truths I fight for.

Commercial teams often focus on the product: its mechanism of action; trial results; how it is more efficacious than competitor products. This is unsurprising when drugs take years, sometimes decades, to bring to market.

However, a significant factor in the success of any brand is not the product itself; it is breaking down the barriers to adoption and (assuming access) these barriers are often related to the realities of busy healthcare professionals (HCPs) and the complex lives of their patients.

Of course, great marketing talks about the product, but it’s finding the emotional and the logical resonance in customers’ lives that unlocks success.

In How Brands Grow,1 Byron Sharp is clear: brands grow by being available – mentally available to buyers (often light buyers rather than loyal users) and physically available through distribution.

These rules apply to pharma. For distribution, medicine approvals and access are essential. For mental availability, brands must consistently communicate their value. This means repeatedly reaching the maximum addressable audience, in ways that cut through over time. Few pharma brands do this well.

Companies operate in silos, people do not.

Brand experience is the sum of the messages and connection points of a brand. Whenever an HCP or patient sees a message from, or interacts with, ‘PharmaCo’ and its products, this contributes to their combined experience and opinion of the master brand (the organisation) and the product brand (the drug).

Something regularly talked about, and only occasionally acted on, is the disconnect across teams responsible for creating brand experience. This disconnect means that the experience is weakened in the minds of the audience, a critical fail. Collaboration must be improved, between commercial and medical, plus corporate comms, IT and regs. The right agency partnership models will also support this integration.

True differentiation in pharma is difficult. Unless a brand is genuinely novel and makes a very significant difference to patient outcomes, it may not attract attention or change HCP prescribing behaviour, which is often deeply ingrained.

Building a distinctive brand is a more effective way to cut through and connect with HCPs. Pharma marketers have two brilliant tools at their disposal to create this distinctiveness: great creativity and customer experience (CX).

It’s known that great creativity drives brand growth; mountains of data from the consumer world (read Hurman’s The Case for Creativity2) prove it. Unfortunately, too often, this data is not well understood or is dismissed.

The positive impact of CX is also clear. Research shows that great CX is the second most important factor (after product features) in prescribing decisions3, and a recent Kantar study4 (one of many) shows that CX – driven by product and service interactions as well as word of mouth – accounts for 75% of brand growth.
Combining great creativity with great CX, to create distinctive and mentally available brands, is what delivers commercially.