“About two-thirds of drug launches don’t meet expectations. Improving that record requires pharmaceutical companies to recognize the world has changed and adjust their marketing accordingly.” This appeared in an article – “The secret of successful drug launches,” published by McKinsey & Company in March 2014. There isn’t any recent evidence, either, that this situation has improved now.
Even innovative drugs no longer guarantee a commercial success, as greater competition is building up there, as well. Today, the number of such drugs per indication has risen by 37 percent since 2006 making the task tougher, according to another article of McKinsey & Company, titled ‘Why innovative products aren’t enough for a successful pharma launch,’ brought out in August 2017.
Top marketers’ intimate involvement in these launches, backed by robust marketing strategies notwithstanding, large scale ‘brand failures’ or rather ‘branding failures,’ still remains unavoidable. Although, its telltale signs are more often visible immediately after launch, but may happen even several years after.
Pundits are just not scratching their heads, but doing extensive research to fathom why it happens. However, with changing times – the market dynamics and the research outcomes/inferences keep changing too. And that will be the focus of my today’s discussion in this article, while I explore various facets of the same.
Is pharma branding just a marketing exercise?
That pharma branding is not just a marketing exercise and its failure at any stage – from launch to even years after, I reckon, isn’t the sole responsibility of the pharma marketer. This is mainly because, doctors would ideally prefer to prescribe specific pharma brands and patients would feel confident to use those, because of successful construction of a positive brand bias. Which in turn creates a higher perceived efficacy and a low anticipated safety concern with the brand.
Although, it will be right to assume that good pharma marketers are solely responsible for the creation of this intangible brand asset, but the tangible intrinsic brand value should necessarily be ingrained into each dose of the same that patients consume, always.
Thus, tangible brand value creation, its maintenance, if not enhancement, span across many other functional domains of a drug company. Some of these include, unbiased reporting with expected disclosures of all clinical trial results, maintaining a robust and highly efficient supply chain network or high-quality manufacturing facilities, besides a few others. Evidences exist that irrational pricing could also result in a kind of brand failure. Considering these aspects in totality, creating a positive bias during a pharma brand-building process, is a collective responsibility, and not just of the marketers.
Why creating a positive brand bias is a collective responsibility?
There are ample examples to substantiate that creating a positive stakeholder bias during its brand-building process, is a collective responsibility. Let me illustrate this point by drawing a few examples of branded failures prompted by supply-chain network, disclosures on clinical development and of course perceived ‘irrational’ pricing that falls basically in the marketing domain. It is worth noting, similar incidents may also be related to the manufacturing process, even for top selling generic drugs.…continue reading…
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