Emotional Intelligence : Leveraging the ‘feeling’

Putting Emotion in Pharma

As Matt Giegerich, President of Quantum Group highlights, “Unless you understand how the patient feels about a category, and then show how your product can respond to that feeling, the execution is jargon.”

Giegerich statement is particularly relevant, when multiple products are reaching patent expiry and are facing competition from generics. At the same time, more ‘me-too’ product are entering the market, and Rx to OTC switches are getting frequent, putting the purchasing power in consumers’ hands.

While the market undergoes such upheavals, it is disconcerting to brands being promoted on purely functional benefits, with little regard for the emotional connect that could be created with the audience.

And in such a scenario, what happens when a competition ‘one-ups’ your functional offering, or if that functional offering no longer offers greater differentiation than the rest of the market?

AstraZeneca’s highly successful, moving campaign of their oncology brand Arimidex, a hormonal replacement therapy for reducing breast cancer recurrence, is a good example. The integrated advertising campaign aimed at overcoming the HRT-generated fear by negative press, and the reluctance of breast cancer survivors for even hearing about another treatment and achieved it remarkably. The company, instead of pursuing a ‘hard- sell’ strategy, followed an unbranded educational campaign that generated a great deal of goodwill.

Research suggests that cancer patients rely heavily on survivors for information and support. Arimidex implemented a strategy that used real-life breast cancer survivors to talk to other survivors.

Moving Hearts as well as Minds

In a healthcare world where both healthcare professionals (HCPs) and patients are often overwhelmed with information and data, the role a brand plays will become all the more important in ensuring success.

Successful healthcare brands are built from a foundation of both rational emotional benefits. This confluence of the heart and the mind gives a brand the ability to communicate its functional attributes and create a lasting, positive image in the minds of those prescribing it.

This is the power of a brand – the capability to provoke resonance. And that happened when a doctor connects with what the brand is saying, and responds by prescribing it instead of a competitor.

Shaking Things Up – The Right Amount of Fear

AstraZeneca repositioned heartburn from a trivial condition, to one that can have serious consequences. Changing the name of the condition from heartburn to Acid Reflux Disease or GERD (Gastro Esophageal Reflux Disease) was a smart repositioning tactic. For example, a TV ad for Nexium warned consumers that “Over time, that acid can shred your esophagus.”2

Quite a fearful image. But it helped viewers remember the brand. Because it alarmed them and presented the condition as something to be concerned about.

Emotional branding goes beyond loyalty and almost creates an “I-am-with- -no-matter- what” mentality.

Reverse Psychology

For some pharmaceutical products, beyond relieving physical symptoms or discomfort, the product benefit is also to nullify some social emotions.

For example, consumers desire a medication for psoriasis because it relieves itch and pain. However, it also delivers a stronger emotional benefit by alleviating powerful feelings of shame or rejection, which most patients feel when they are in social situations. The product’s ability to alleviate this

strong emotional pain is an equal, if not stronger, purchase driver than its ability to alleviate physical discomfort.

The One who Cares

While cough and cold medications are largely marketed on functional benefits – efficacy, speed, long-lasting – one very strong emotional need remained unaddressed. Parents of sick children feel tremendous anxiety, which is triggered by a number of perceived uncertainties.

“How sick is my child? Will she get worse? Can I go to work tomorrow?”

Armed with this insight, the brand pursued new creative development to implicitly promise anxiety relief, and align this emotional reward with the brand. Understanding the unmet emotional needs enabled breakthrough marketing innovation for this brand.

Good positioning often promises an emotional benefit, without stating it directly.

For example, several years ago, Merck achieved an ideal positioning strategy for Fosamax (Alendronate) with the statement “Fosamax helps you regain your independence.” By focusing on the underlying emotional issues surrounding osteoporosis and the constant threat of fracture faced by

women with low bone density, the essence of the indication was well-captured. In response, sales of Fosamax increased dramatically. In contrast, the statement “Fosamax increases bone density,” while true, lacks the emotional impact of a positioning statement that focuses on regaining

independence.

To Summarize

One may argue that it will take a while for pharmaceutical brands to leverage the same kind of returns that FMCG’s have from communicating emotional values in building loyalty. But it is an area that should definitely not be neglected.

Product attributes and pricing do play a significant part in influencing customers to choose a particular brand. But an ongoing advertising campaign that touches consumers emotionally will enable top-of-the mind recall and help build long term brand loyalty. Additionally, all of the brand’s

communication, including press advertising, public relations (PR), online and direct marketing should focus on the emotional values; this will help deliver a consistent message.

In addition to delivering functional benefits, it is only when a product stimulates an emotional dialogue with the consumer and confers value to its customers, will it sustain loyalty in the long term.

References

1.https://buildingpharmabrands.com/tag/branding/

2.http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2011/01/create-disease-market-drug.html

3.https://www.scribd.com/doc/103330533/Vicks-Vaporub-Case

4. http://www.mmm-online.com/features/10-steps-to-product-positioning/article/24881/

Doctor Segmentation: Reaching out through a different lens

Indian Pharmaceutical market is genericized. The doctors are progressively cluttered with multiple brands belonging to the same molecule class. Managing brands in this scenario has become increasingly difficult for pharmaceutical brand managers, since doctor engagement and brand loyalty amidst dense competition is tough. Each level in the multilayer stakeholder network of the pharmaceutical companies in India is armed with their individual strategies to combat this competitive scenario. Most practiced strategy is customer segmentation basis doctor specialty and their prescription behavior.

While in the quest to win over competition, this strategy of customer segmentation has met success, it’s time to ponder! Each customer is different with different needs and interests. Their expectation from pharmaceutical branding also differs according to their interests. Hence branding with customized engagement route becomes imperative forming customer communities is a popularly employed tool to engage customers effectively. Communities could be formed basis customer’s attitude, psychographs, needs in relation to the brand/category. This would eventually help pharma bigwigs to formulate focussed marketing strategies, fixate on the inputs to engage the doctors effectively, extricate relevant consumer insight to assure endurance.

KNOWLEDGE SEEKERS

COMMUNITY CHARACTERISTICS

• Knowledge seekers are generally interested in company supported educational programs.
• They are seldom interested in representative talks or samples.

Inflection Points

• Liaise with the community by inviting the knowledge seekers to educational programs.
• Appeal doctor’s interest by directing them to gauge practices adopted globally.

RELATIONSHIP SEEKERS

Community Characteristics

• The community believes in engaging with the on-ground team with the objective of gaining and imparting information.
• They typically value medication samples, pharmaceutical representative’s interactions and education.

Inflection Points

• We can influence the community with a multi-faceted sales and marketing message.
• They can be provided with samples readily available, invite doctors to speaker events.
• They would welcome in-clinic reminder items pertinent to the demographics of their practice.

INDEPENDENTS 

Community Characteristics

• Independents typically don’t value rep interactions.
• They try to rely on independent evidence based medicine material. 

Inflection Points

• Relationship could be built by facilitating speaker programs, peer-reviewed journals or educational camps for their patients.
• Attempt could be made to make doctors aware of all new clinical trials and details, to become a resource representative and not a sales representative.

TRANSACTIONALS

Community Characteristics

• They are cost conscious and receptive to patient preference.
• Patient education interests them more.
• They are slow to adopt new medications.

Inflection Points

• Product differentiation with respect to cost, ease of administration, formulary availability, patient education materials, efficacy and safety needs to be established.
• On-ground team may expound on the advantages of using brand in concern over the competition.

THOUGHT STIMULATORS

The current approaches of customer segmentation for branding have been helping the pharma companies to generate business. However, in order to stand out in doctor’s chamber, forming doctor communities to understand value graphics could be an alternative approach. Understanding the customer value graphics gives an advantage to pose as knowledge representative, as against sales representative. Such an understanding can help the pharma bigwigs to be armed with relevant information tools that each customer type is keen to seek. This makes each interaction more engaging and would eventually help to earn brand currency with the doctors.