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It
is no secret that the pharmaceutical industry has been moving
recently from a research-driven business model to one that
is driven more and more by the marketing of major branded
products. Compelled by the need to create blockbuster products,
or "megabrands",
and then defend their sales post-patent expiry, the industry
is increasingly using the power of branding to capture the
hearts and minds of both prescribers and patients.
Pills form emotional attraction
In direct-to-consumer (DTC) commercials
for Pfizer's Viagra
(sildenafil),
former presidential candidate Bob Dole refers to the erectile
dysfunction pill as his "little blue friend". In DTC advertising
for AstraZeneca's Losec/Prilosec (omeprazole), the
biggest-selling drug in the world in 2000, it was promoted
as the "purple pill" in DTC advertising. Pharmaceutical
companies are now using the pills they sell as marketing
tools. Tablets and capsules come in all shapes, sizes and
colours, each intended to differentiate the product, impart
a particular emotional "feel" to the drug and instil customer
loyalty. The importance of the pill's look in capturing
and keeping the loyalty of patients is such that AstraZeneca's
replacement for Prilosec, Nexium (esomeprazole),
is the same colour as Prilosec and is referred to as "the
new purple pill".
Particular colours tend to have
particular attributes: pink is perceived as calming, and
may be suitable for heart drugs or tranquillisers, while
bold colours such as red suggest rapid action and stimulation,
and may therefore be appropriate for a painkiller or antidepressant.
On the other hand, it is difficult to imagine a pill in
black, a colour associated with death and morbidity.
Of course, as well as the commercial
intention of engendering brand loyalty, giving drugs such
"brand personalities" has a practical purpose, especially
for the elderly, who may need to take many pills every day.
Visual differentiation can help them to tell which pill
is which. Colour can also be used to differentiate the dosage
of the drug. GlaxoSmithKline's Paxil (paroxetine),
for instance, comes in yellow, pink, purple and green, depending
on the dosage.
Integrated approach incorporates
web
But pharmaceutical branding goes
a long way beyond simple colour schemes. Drug marketers
try to develop an emotional attachment between the drug
and the patient using an integrated promotional approach.
The promotional package for Schering-Plough's allergy treatment
Claritin (loratadine), for instance, incorporates
a website that not only includes information about the Claritin
franchise, but also information on the causes of allergies,
how they are treated and even how to find a doctor. The
site also contains customisable features such as local pollen
forecasts, email pollen alerts and a personal allergy profile.
Combined, this is all intended to convince the consumer
that Claritin is not just a drug, but a brand that somehow
"understands" and empathises with the patient and can provide
a life-enhancing service.
Similar websites exist for Zyrtec
(a competitor of Claritin), Viagra, Xenical, Lipitor, Prozac,
and almost every major brand-name pharmaceutical. AstraZeneca's
www.purplepill.com,
which was used to provide information on and to promote
Losec/Prilosec, is now used for Nexium, showing that the
"purple pill" brand is even more important than the individual
products that use it. The internet has become a major channel
for reinforcing the brands associated with pharmaceuticals,
not just in the USA, where advertising to patients is permitted,
but also around the world, where advertising may not be
permitted but patients can access the same websites as their
US counterparts.
DTC creates top-heavy US market
The influence of pharmaceutical
branding has been felt particularly strongly in the USA,
where DTC advertising allows easy dissemination of product
messages among the general public. DTC is growing rapidly;
in 2000, according to IMS HEALTH, pharmaceutical companies
spent $2.5 billion on DTC promotion in the USA, up from
$1.8 billion in 1999. DTC advertising was first allowed
in the USA in 1997, and appears to have been very successful
at growing the sales of the major brands, which are the
focus of DTC spending. Those brands have grown significantly
faster than the market as a whole. As the following figure
indicates, the share of the market made up by the top ten
branded drugs in North America has risen from 14% in 1996
(before DTC advertising was approved by the FDA), to almost
18% in 2000. In the same time period, this proportion remained
virtually unchanged in the rest of the world.
Change in market
share of top ten products by region
1990-2000
Source: IMS HEALTH
World
Review
Towards a global brand
For such a global industry, the
pharmaceutical industry has been relatively late in moving
towards global branding strategies for its products. Until
recently, the widespread tendency was to give local operating
companies the responsibility for brand interpretation. This
made a lot of sense - a drug with a brand name meaning "sick"
in Greek would be unlikely to be successful in Greece. There
was also a lot of inter-country variation in the medical
culture and treatment of illness, and so brand values would
have to be different in different countries. This is changing,
however, with the globalisation of medical practice. Greater
numbers of physicians are attending large international
conferences and getting connected to the internet, resulting
in greater harmonisation of treatment practices throughout
the world. In addition, regulatory harmonisation has meant
that an increasing number of drugs are undergoing global
launches. Of course, none of this can stop a global brand
meaning "drop dead" in Cantonese, but global branding teams
do put in huge efforts to prevent such mishaps.
AstraZeneca has been at the forefront
of such initiatives, most notably in giving Nexium a single
global brand, in contrast to the myriad brand names given
to its predecessor, omeprazole (which included Prilosec,
Losec, Antra, Gastroloc, Mopral and Omepral). At the Morgan
Stanley Pan-European Healthcare Conference in September
2001, John Patterson, AstraZeneca's head of Product Strategy
& Licensing, defined a global brand as being "instantly
recognisable anywhere in the world, and delivering the same
essential single-minded message". Further, a global brand
should "reflect customers' universal needs and emotions",
and be "more than just a logo".
According to Patterson, AstraZeneca
intends to follow the same global approach for its rollout
of Crestor, Iressa, Exanta and all its other future "megabrands".
Drug brands now a recognised
part of shared culture
Patients have become familiar
with the concept that pharmaceuticals can exist as brands
in their own right. The rise of the "lifestyle drug" phenomenon,
with drugs such as Prozac,
Viagra and Xenical
that treat conditions
hitherto not considered as true "diseases", has opened the
minds of people to the idea of the pharmaceutical as a brand
just like any other consumer product. Of course, drugs are
not simple consumer products, but in a marketplace where
differentiation of a newly-launched innovative product from
the "me-too" launched just months later, the brand is the
key.
A telling tribute to the power
of pharmaceutical branding was made in a commercial break
during the televising of the 2001 Super Bowl, traditionally
the biggest night of the year for TV advertisers in the
USA. Bob Dole appeared, and seemed to be advertising Viagra
in the usual way, introducing a product that "changes lives
for the better". However, in a comic twist to the commercial,
he revealed that his "little blue friend" was in fact a
can of Pepsi. This was surely the first time that
a marketing company had used the public's awareness of a
prescription drug for such a sensitive medical condition
as a vehicle for promoting its own consumer brand. PepsiCo
was clearly using the fact that Viagra was an easily identifiable
and positive brand, and had become in fact a recognised
part of shared American culture.
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