Live Before You Write

Advertising people live in a circle of mirrors. Most creative people have an encyclopaedic knowledge of great ads of the past. They go through award annuals, creative magazines, advertising books that worship great work and of course now-a-days creative people spend a lot of time on websites with huge ad database. But it creates its own cage of conformity.

There is no doubt that a great deal can be learned from the greats. Case histories of all types are telling. But it’s sometimes hard going forward while you are staring constantly in the rear view mirror. You don’t find “originality” by looking at what has been done before. Standing on the shoulders of giants is well and good, but it may give you a false perspective and an inflated sense of your own starting point.

Advertising is always better when you try to mix things up. But you have to have some raw material of your own before you can create something “original”.

A true creative person wants to be a know-it-all. He wants to know about all kind of things: Greek mythology, Indian history, Astronomy, Carl Jung’s Theory of Psychoanalysis, Six Sigma tools, Hedge Funds, 4G telecom applications, gardening, sudoku, and so on. He never knows when these ideas might come together to form a new idea. It may happen now or many years down the road. Knowledge is the stuff from which new ideas are made. Nonetheless, knowledge alone won’t make a person creative.

Different ways of seeing things are equally important resource in advertising where we all feel like we have seen everything before. Our personal experiences make us look at thing in a strange way and it shows in our work. A person who has just had their heart broken sees the world differently to someone who never has and will express themselves differently. Just as a person who has been addicted to drugs sees the world differently to someone who has not. They just do. They are changed by their experience. So how do you make sure that you also gather rich experience about life and put it to a good use?

You must stop living in a shell. Look for new experiences. Real ones, preferably. If possible, don’t go straight from school to college to advertising. Explore our country first. Go on a world tour. Study different cultures. Learn a new language. Play a new sport. Everything we experience feeds us. Our friends and environment around us provide us with experiences which affect our personal ways of seeing things. Because our personal experiences are usually truths of some sort it’s hard to fake that. And the best work always seems to be based on some kind of truth.

Tarsem Singh, the well-known film director and the man behind Pepsi TV Commercial - We will rock you, Nakshatra Diamonds TV Commercial with Aishwariya Rai & many more, once said, “You don’t pay me for the film I shoot or the awards I’ve won. You pay me for every book I’ve read. My childhood. Every walk I’ve taken, every movie I’ve seen.”

Remember, you have to live before you write.

Seven Golden Rules of Healthcare Advertising

Call it a sign that the sector has come of age – it’s gotten a makeover and a new name. FMHGs, Fast Moving Health Goods, are here to stay. There is an array of brands (besides OTC medicines) highlighting health benefits that are setting cash registers ringing. Now we have health drinks, health foods, personal health monitoring devices, beauty products & skin clinics, fitness products & gyms, low calorie sweeteners, weight-loss products/services, herbal products, anti-smoking pills, etc; and not to forget public service or awareness campaigns. Marketers simply cannot ignore the health platform to push their brands. The challenge is how to reach out to health conscious consumers who have slowly but steadily started believing that “prevention is better than cure”.

Here are the golden rules for healthcare advertising:

1. Positive Behaviour Change
Campaigns for preventive behaviour are more effective if they emphasize positive behaviour change rather than the negative consequences of current behaviour. Arousing fear is rarely successful as a campaign strategy. For example, anti-smoking campaigns can focus on the benefits of quitting smoking, rather than health hazards due to smoking. There are more chances of men saying no to smoking for the sake of his kids and family, rather than the fear of possible lung cancer.

2. Strike the right cord
Address the existing knowledge and beliefs of target audiences that are impeding adoption of desired behaviours. Myth-buster campaign works well provided it gives interesting information and most importantly, the benefits of using the information in the right way. A successful example is “AIDS chunase nahin phelhta” campaign.

3. What’s in it for them?
Communicate incentives or benefits for adopting desired behaviours that are build on the existing motives, needs, and values of target audiences. Every consumer needs a reason to shift their preference. If the reason to shift is not backed by strong incentive plan the consumer is most likely expected to either stay with his chosen behaviour or shift to some other choice with better incentive structure.

4. The power of NOW!
Focus target audience’s attention on immediate, high-probability consequences of healthy behaviour. The best way to get your target audience’s attention is to lure them into enjoying the benefits of your product, now. At the risk of being a typical sales message let’s take an FMCG example that says, “Buy 1 get 1 free. Offer open only till 31st March”. This makes the potential consumer act now and reap rewards the product has to offer. So if your health message shows the goodness of benefit that the consumer may gain now rather than tell him that he/she may suffer from some illness later, you have a good chance of making your message heard.

5. Simplicity wins
Set fairly modest, attainable goals in terms of behaviour change. If you nag the consumer with too much to do, they will not do anything. Make it easier for them to act. If your communication medium has a feedback form or a helpline, make sure the consumer doesn’t have to spend too much time contacting you. They are the laziest lot you know. A very good example is the help-centric blood checkup pathologies; at a ring of their phones they rush to patients’ house to take blood tests. Now how easier can life get?

6. Media is your best friend
Use multiple media (television, radio, print, and so on). Combine mass media with community, small group, and individual activities, supported by an existing communication structure. Use the news media not only to add credibility, but also as a means of increasing the visibility. Reach each or any media you think is closer to the consumer; go beyond the conventional approach. Because if you shoot through an incorrect target hole of your gun, you will miss the shot.

7. Be there for the consumer
If you throw the bait, keep the bucket beside you to hold the fish. Here your bait is the consumer and bucket is direct service delivery components. E.g. toll-free numbers for information, SMS services, websites, blogs, social networking websites, etc. Coordinate these components so that immediate follow-through can take place if behaviour changes begin to occur. This will give consumer the confidence in the brand she is dealing with.

Remember, customers are like a babies, feed them well and they will smile, feed them more they will run away, feed them less they will never come back. Keep them happy and let the happiness spread over you!

Doctor Relationship Management: Realizing value in Doctor relationships

The road to profitability for pharmaceutical companies has changed. Never before has the industry faced so many challenges at once. Harder-to-find blockbuster brands, pricing pressures, competition from me-too drugs are all threatening industry profitability. In addition, Doctors have less time to spend with the sales force. These issues require more resources from companies just to maintain status quo. But in a tight, competitive market, companies must work smarter with the same level of resources. As a result, pharmaceutical companies are realizing they can no longer afford to be only product focused. They must now focus on Doctor Relationship Management (DRM).

Influencing the Prescribing network
Pharmaceutical marketing and sales strategy has been dominated for decades by the sales force. Sales force detailing has been the traditional mainstay of pharma companies. However, doctors, bombarded with information from multiple sources, are giving less time to sales reps and it is increasingly difficult to influence prescribing with promotional messages. Detailing time has decreased. And sales reps are trying to compete in increasingly saturated market.

Moreover, prescribing decision-making has become more complex. Prescribers are becoming increasingly influential and are demanding more relevant and personalised health information. Companies are having to interact with new and more complex target groups - the challenge now to create an improved and differentiated doctor experience.

In this light, two strategies are emerging:

Doing more with less – Becoming more productive with the same number of sales reps. Reps should be supported by technology and complemented by new channels. Future channel management strategy faces two significant challenges: how to coordinate tailored messages for different doctor segment across a number of channels and how to build organizational flexibility to sustain quality doctor dialogue and faster response times. However, while new channels provide alternative ways to get the promotional message across, these channels will be most effective as a complement to the sales force supporting rather than replacing it.

Differentiating through doctor experience – Putting more emphasis on sustainable doctor relationship through better, personalized doctor interaction.


Doctor intelligence
From passive data to actionable knowledge
Critical decisions concerning strategy and resource allocation must be based on a detailed and accurate understanding of Doctors and overall market. The quality of those decisions separates the leaders from the followers in today’s marketplace.

In order to achieve true Doctor intelligence, organizations need to understand the data they collect. Pharmaceutical companies face many data challenges:
* An overload of data is collected
* Data is collected without strategy
* Data collected or purchased from other resources is poorly integrated
* Data is not shared by sales reps or throughout the enterprise

The challenge companies face is to clean, prioritize and integrate data as well as to operationalize insights from analysis and segmentation models. Companies need to move beyond traditional static segmentation to understand why prescribing decisions are made.
However, poor data quality has prevented companies from driving action based on doctor data.

Pharma companies need to integrate market and doctor profiles into daily marketing and sales practice. The ability to segment doctors in order to focus sales efforts and tailor doctor interactions is at the very heart of DRM. Segmentation models of the future will be based on attitudes, values and needs and will describe, or even predict, doctor behaviour at a micro-segment level. Pharma companies need to analyze the data in order to know and understand the behaviour of Doctors, such as what and why they prescribe, what are they professional and personal interests.

Whatever the level of a company’s data capability – whether it uses sales/value-based data or bases its segmentation on behavioural or attitudinal data – the key lies in operationalizing data. To achieve this, it must drive doctor data through a three-stage process, from data to information to actionable knowledge. First, companies must collect descriptive data (clean, meaningful, external, and internal). Second, they must use analytics to produce dynamic information (establishing links between data sources and creating segmentation-based insights). Development of data mining tools and capabilities will be increasingly important. Third, companies need to design segment strategies and actions based on predictive knowledge. Ultimately, the key to competitive advantage through analytics lies with building organizational buy-in to the use of data. This will maximize the chance of success.

Doctor intelligence can be used to execute more successful marketing, sales and service strategies. This enables Pharma companies to maximize profitability, improve marketing campaign effectiveness, and optimize multi-channel interactions with Doctors, resulting in higher revenues and a competitive advantage.


Benefits of DRM

It is clear that DRM will become more important than ever. But what exactly does that mean for pharma companies / pharma managers?

Doctor segmentation analysis
It is more than simple query and reporting capabilities, more than knowing that let’s say Dr. Kulkarni is an orthopedic specialist, in Mumbai who has been in practice for 12 years and is associated with Jaslok Hospital. Doctor intelligence stems from integrating a broad range of analytical techniques, descriptive and predictive, across all channels, to reveal that Dr. Kulkarni is sports medicine specialist. He regularly attends a certain medical conference, visited your booth at the last conference, has been contacted by direct mail three times in the last quarter, and responded to the third campaign by requesting a sample kit and package of rebate coupons, of which 10 have been redeemed.

Create more successful marketing campaigns
How can you consistently reach each of your Doctors with a specialized message – and do it better and faster? You can transform multi-channel Doctor data into a single comprehensive Doctor view and create marketing campaigns that are faster, smarter and more profitable than ever before. As a result, you can shorten the marketing cycle times by having a better-planned campaign. You get your message out to Doctors faster than competition. You reduce your marketing costs by having a truly targeted campaign. And you increase your organization’s bottom-line by sharing best practices of each campaign throughout the enterprise.

Choose the right channel to reach each Doctor
You might spend a great deal of resources to create the right message for Doctors, but if your Doctors don’t receive the message, your resources have been wasted. Field sales, the Web, direct mail, commercial advertising – these are so many ways to reach people, how do you select the right one? Doctors are bombarded with information from multiple sources and are giving less time to sales reps, making it increasingly difficult to influence their prescribing with promotional messages. So, how do you get your message through?

DRM helps you do just that – and do more with less. By helping segment your doctors and determine what channel they prefer, DRM enables you to create fast, integrated marketing messages to multiple Doctor segments and increase Doctor satisfaction by tailoring the right channel to your Doctor’s preferences. As a result, you can determining which top Doctors prefer in-person detailing, which ones would rather receive web site information and which once would prefer direct mails based on their need for maximum flexibility.

Improve Doctor relationships & increase profits
By integrating multi-channel Doctor information, you can predict Doctor behaviour across all channels and segments, ultimately targeting the right Doctor at the right time with the right message. DRM helps you understand who your Doctors are and what their needs are, at increasing level of detail. You can allocate your marketing and sales resources according to different Doctor segments. You can tailor messages to specific audiences. For example, sales force can focus on most profitable Doctors, e-channels can be used for specific Doctors and direct mailing can be used for certain Doctors. Knowing this level of detail and tailoring your sales and marketing activities to it helps your organization better manage a greater number of interactions more successfully, quickly and more profitably.

By helping you formulate a focused Doctor strategy, targeting your best prospects, communicating efficiently with those prospects and learning from each Doctor interaction, DRM enables your organization to implement smarter Doctor strategies, maximize Doctor profitability and create a competitive differentiation for your organization.

In a nutshell
Pharmaceutical companies are having to do more with less. In this environment, DRM has become widely regarded as a critical enabler for sustainable growth. DRM not only increase the efficiency of their sales and marketing efforts, but also enhance their Doctors’ experience and loyalty. The industry has to pour money into new channels and technologies in an effort to better understand its doctors and build stronger relationships with them. This will improve efficiency of marketing and sales spend and enhance doctor experience and loyalty. DRM is not just about improving basic operations. It’s about leveraging information to extract new value from Doctor relationships, to give the company a sustainable competitive advantage.