Showing posts with label Pfizer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Pfizer. Show all posts

Thursday, March 26, 2009

Promoting new therapy or new category by Pharma Company










Mankind has been witnessing newer and newer drugs, therapies, drug deliveries to enhance the lives of humans. With the increasing competition from generic drug manufacturers, the multi-nationals are trying to develop new categories of drug therapy for existing diseases. In the recent past Multi-nationals have been funding their R & D depts. to invent new therapies.


Some of the new treatment innovations listed below:

  • Oral insulin by Pfizer and Novo Nordisk
  • 1ml painkiller inject able by Triokaa
  • Drug eluting balloon to prevent restenosis by Eurocor

These companies have been facing lot of problems to promote new therapies, coz, the doctors are hesitant to prescribe fearing its effects. Sometimes doctors also recommend the old therapy along with the new one, so they don't have to worry about its failure.

Traditionally the Pharma cos have been conducting CMEs amongst the doctors to promote the new therapies usage. Surveys help to understand the side effects better. But, as yet no great innovation has taken place to promote these newer therapies. The brochures have replaced presentations and videos, but still those have not been impressive enough?

Thinking about in from my view, I personally think that from the time this new therapy gets USFDA and DCI approval a communications strategy should be implemented. This would be focusing on the problems faced by patients because of the existing therapy, survey reports indicating patients and doctors doubtful of this therapy, launching associations to promote the need of new therapy, tie-ups with NGOs fighting to help promote this disease, etc.


A communications consultancy can advice and create a communications plan accordingly.

Create associations with NGOs help a lot in creating awareness about the disease.


The case of Apple iPhone is one of the best one in the industry. The iPhone was completely promoted without advertising, before the product was launched and everyone wanted to be a user of iPhone.

The question will still haunt product & brand managers as to how to promote new product or therapy in the market. The sector is waiting for an innovation.

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

No new innovations by Indian Pharma companies?

Indian Pharma companies have experienced a lot of R & D developments in recent few years. The innovations have placed these Indian Pharma companies amongst the top elite Pharma companies in the international scenario. This industry according to Ficci reports is growing @ 26% which is more faster rate than the retail sector.

The Pharma sectors traditionally have been investing funds in R&D and Clinical Research Trials. But in the recent few years a lot of investment is put aside for International Acquisitions, Research in new molecules and Patents. Though these companies have been competing with international counterparts to reach the top position in terms of net value of the company, innovations at the bottom of the pyramid haven’t seen any light of the day. I mean the no improvement in the training of the MRs, the sales representatives and the Brand Managers. The sales reps still carry the same old visual aids and the research papers to pitch about the company product to the doctors. Actually to think about it, I feel the Medical Representatives are the most neglected lot in the Pharma companies, coz nobody feels they are driving the company’s sales.

By the statement What at the bottom of the pyramid? I mean to say the people who directly impact the growth of the company; the other people are indirectly connected to the growth of the company.

The Marketing & Sales departments haven’t seen any innovations in last 20 yrs. The MRs (Medical Representatives) still visit 10 docs and 5 retailers as per the set target, show them the same brochures and visual aids, the same pitch and lastly the research reports. The only new development that was seen, late in the year 1998 was KOL based PR stories in publications, but can we consider it an innovation?

On an average when a new product is assigned to a Brand/Product manager he is given a budget to market the product which is peanuts. In that budget the marketing manager has to

Conduct product training for all the MRs,
Brochure development providing a brief on the product,
Conduct Research on the product stating how superior the product is from its competitors,
Sponsor CMEs of KOLs which helps in spreading the word of mouth publicity on the product and
Prepare visual aids to be given out to the doctors when the MR visits the doctors.

The Brand Managers decisions are mostly based on RoI, leaving a very little scope for innovation. He has a target to achieve, and advertising is out of question because prescription drugs cannot advertise as per the ICMR (Indian Council of Medical research), so uses the age old techniques to push the product details to the doctors.

Now once this is done, the Sales Managers job is to drive the sales of the products so he sets targets for the MRs to meet doctors. The Sales manager thought process is simple meet doctors and more doctors, meet them often, also meet retailers and more retailers, this will drive the sales of the products. Actually the Sales Manager knows the doctors will listen to the MRs only once and the next time will skip the meetings, but he knows of only one thing that will drive the sales, he doesn’t try to innovate something new which will help his team to achieve the sales target.
Doctors are fed-up of the same old story of the drugs and medicines, watching the same old visual aids, pitches from MRs, etc; this often forces them to skip the meetings with MRs, which are then bound to be quite boring.
But the BIG question is, whether any Pharma companies are doing anything to improve this situation? If the Pharma companies are not able to innovate something new to help in marketing their products, sales of the drugs might be affected in the long run.

What the Pharma companies really need is some great innovation at the ground level where sales of the products are been driven, word of mouth publicity another big avenue yet to be tapped and recommendations of the drugs. The Pharma companies should hire some ad agency to ideate or pitch to NID to think of some innovation which will be the greatest innovation for the MRs.
The story appeared in Financial express was a review of a book named:
http://www.financialexpress.com/news/Select-segments-to-dominate/350276/ The Marketing Mavens by Noel Capon: The article talks about Pfizers innovations at the Sales level, this is what the book had to say…
Pfizer rigorously schools its field salespeople to ask questions and feed information back to the firm. Target expects all employees who travel—whether on business or pleasure—to write reports on trends in other parts of the world. This kind of information gathering can give your business an edge. It can pinpoint needs that customers don’t yet recognise—needs that by definition won’t show up in traditional data gathering. You should be striving to meet and exceed customer expectations not only by solving their current problems, but by anticipating future ones, and then proactively devising solutions in existing and emerging market segments.