Lester Barnett
10/01/2004
With the myriad of challenges facing the U.S. pharmaceutical industry today—competition from generics, plans to import cheaper drugs from Canada, the U.S. government’s growing presence as a drug buyer—companies are gambling more heavily than ever on how their drugs are perceived by health care professionals, consumers and other stakeholders. In the past, outside advertising agencies were responsible for creating, developing and maintaining brands. But today, with the need to appeal to so many different audiences through so many different media, the most savvy drug companies have taken ownership of their brands.
I have witnessed a natural progression toward the advertising stratagem focusing on lifestyle decisions. When I first came into the business, doctors alone decided what pharmaceutical to use, so virtually every iota of marketing was directed at the physician. We focused on efficacy to advertise a drug. Following the thalidomide scare and the growth of the Food and Drug Administration in the 1960s, we expanded that to include a drug’s safety. Then we hit on convenience. With the rise of managed care, we added price to the mix.
Sell Sizzle, not Steak
Beginning in the 1970s, more influencers entered
the decision-making process. Doctors, physician assistants, managed-care
companies, consumers, corporate benefits managers and advocacy organizations all
became links in the buying chain. Consumer advertisers responded by becoming
humanistic and including more storytelling. We created a series for Brevicon, a
birth control drug, that portrayed the stark reality of teen pregnancy. It
featured black-and-white photos of a teenage mother in a hospital bed and a
teenage father awkwardly holding a child. That made a big impression.
Through these ads, we tapped into emotion, not just intellect, and I came to
realize that this was an important distinction. There is a difference between a
product and a brand: A product has a functional purpose; a brand comprises the
perceptions and symbols beyond the function. The positioning of a product is its
unique selling proposition. But a product also has a unique feeling proposition.
What causes people to perceive one drug differently from another? The unique
feeling proposition. My approach was to engineer a brand’s personality, and to
make people perceive a drug differently.
For example, a cancer drug that
patients had to take in conjunction with other drugs was portrayed as a loving,
care-giving, sensitive team player. Merck awarded my agency a drug called
Flexeril, a muscle relaxant with sales of about $8 million. We increased sales
to over $100 million by the time the patent expired by rebranding it as Fast
Flexeril.
Today, pharmaceutical companies face many new branding challenges.
Because it takes so long to bring new products to market, a company might have
only two years to recoup the $150 million needed to develop a drug. Companies
also try to plan to turn brand-name prescription pharmaceuticals into
over-the-counter drugs. This gives them a longer life in the
marketplace.
These companies must also find novel ways to market to doctors,
to solve the problems surrounding how doctors are compensated for prescribing
certain drugs. I was around when drug companies regularly flew doctors to lovely
destinations. Those days are over. Physician marketing today is much closer to
actual education, and that underscores the need to build brands. Additionally,
the federal government is now emerging as an influential drug buyer.
Pharmaceutical companies must work to manage that relationship the way they
manage their interaction with managed-care organizations.
All the while, drug
companies continue to search for the Holy Grail of branding: transferring the
power of a brand from one drug to another. For the first time, we are seeing
this happen. AstraZeneca advertised its heartburn drug Prilosec as “the purple
pill.” It went off-patent in 2001. Then the company introduced a new acid reflux
drug, Nexium, as the next purple pill. AstraZeneca was able to leverage the
brand equity of Prilosec and shift it to Nexium. That had never been done
before. Just imagine if AstraZeneca could bring the power of purple to arthritis
and other conditions.
 | Lester Barnett is a veteran of nearly 40 years in medical advertising, and is a member of the Medical Advertising Hall of Fame. |