The shift of the pharmaceutical industry from one based on blockbuster drugs to one based on smaller, niche medicines is affecting not just companies’ R&D strategies, but also how companies are marketing their drugs. We spoke to Rebecca Robins, the global marketing director at InterbrandHealth , an international branding agency, about how branding and marketing in the pharmaceutical industry is changing. She has helped brand several big drug blockbusters, including Bristol-Myers’ Plavix, the world’s second largest drug by sales. One of the main differences that she sees today is that companies “are coming to us earlier in their pipeline” with drugs in their mid-stage development rather than waiting until the late stages as they did 10 years ago. Now facing markets more crowded with competitors, the companies are beginning to shape a brand for its experimental medicine with Phase II data in hand, much earlier than if they waited until they had late-stage study results. This gives companies “critical extra years to shape and condition the market,” said Robins. Another shift she sees is that pharmaceutical clients are thinking “more holistically, much as they are in every other industry.” Rather than focus on marketing purely function and safety of their products, drug makers are recognizing that consumers have an emotional reaction to medication brands. “Essentially a brand is something that resides in a consumer’s or an end user’s mind,” said Robins. “Within that dynamic, you need to be clear, distinct and differentiated in how you shape that brand.” For instance, in branding AstraZeneca’s heartburn Nexium, which was a follow-on to

another product, Prilosec, “the critical thing here was the strategy of ‘next generation,’ ” said Robins. That strategy included the very name of the drug, which sounds like “next”, and which was subsequently reinforced in later marketing. They also tied in the domain name of the website, thepurplepill.com, to the product. Another aspect of marketing that wasn’t attended to much in the past was the naming of clinical trials and how the product was referred to scientific presentations. Companies used to develop a generic name for a drug first, then a clinical trial name a few months later. And, they wouldn’t necessary use the same name to refer to the same product in scientific presentations. “What they missed out on was this huge opportunity endemic to consumer goods — clarity of proposition of what your brand stands for and why, and consistency,” said Robins. Now, companies are careful when they come up with names for clinical trials and to refer to the investigational product by a consistent name earlier in development Robins also believes that the “role of the corporate brand has yet to be tapped.” Traditionally drug makers have been reluctant to tie their company brand with the product brand because drugs are are high-risk and can be pulled from the market for safety and other issues. But Robins the “really savvy and smart companies” will develop their corporate brand more by using company blogs and social media outlets like Twitter. Image: PR Newswire

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The Changing Landscape of Pharmaceutical Marketing