Launching a new brand is a massively exciting time for a pharmaceutical company. Each step closer to launch cranks up the excitement level – from the announcement of pivotal trial results through the market research that helps translate a clinical proposition into a commercial one and the first glimpse of the final campaign visuals to the energy and buzz of the sales conference – until the day the reps finally get out to see the customers, the ads break in the medical press, and you have that agonising but thrilling wait for the first sales and prescribing data to come in. If it is a genuinely innovative brand, or you get some positive mass media coverage, the excitement is even greater.
Mark Spedding 
21 Oct, 2008
From Launch to Infinity
But what happens when the launch is all over? Does the excitement all fade away and leave you with little more than a headache and a vague feeling of regret?
It certainly should not. The brand launch is exciting, but to make things work, the next steps are the truly important ones. This is when the hard work really starts.
The hard work is about making sure the brand maximises its money-making potential in the relatively short time it can be marketed with patent protection. Do not underestimate how hard this can be. Some analysts feel that many brands, even big sellers, don’t start to break even (measuring sales against the costs of both R&D and marketing) until they have been on the market for five or six years. That situation leaves a company with just four or five years to make a profit – the four or five years when interest in the brand might be expected to be tailing off amongst customers.
Market research can and should play a big part in supporting the brand through these years. This is self-evident. What is less clear is that the research done through these years can be as stimulating, creative and valuable as the work done leading up to launch. There are 6 key research needs to maximise the health of the brand post launch and through its life:
The first vital thing that needs to be done, is to take stock of the post-launch situation. This does not just mean having standard measurements (Awareness and Usage Tracking, Detail Follow-Up) in place, though those are obviously important. Somewhere between 6 and 18 months after launch, it is vital to get a detailed, in-depth view on how the market has responded to the launch. Doctors are surprisingly astute in their reactions to product launches. From their perspective, a weaker launch is – typically - one that leaves them confused. This is why it is so crucial to check things out at this stage, because confusion gets into customers’ minds quickly, and once in there, is very difficult to dislodge.
Many
brands launch with a lot of razzle-dazzle and noise, but can lose key elements
in the midst of this. In the first few months, and quite understandably, representatives
will focus on basic product features, especially if the drug is the first of
its type. This sometimes results in a lack of clarity about fundamental issues.
It is particularly common for customers to be confused about the patients the
drug is to be used in, either because the representatives have not been sufficiently
focused on this, or because the role of the product has not been communicated
in a way which makes sense to doctors. Sometimes, companies may think the role
is obvious and doctors will work it out for themselves, but failure here can
require a relaunch to get the brand back on track.
Thus, an early Brand ‘Healthcheck’ is absolutely vital in the
initial months to see if any issues like this are affecting the brand. Identified
early enough, there is a good chance of addressing the problem, but the longer
they go unchecked, the harder they are to sort out.
As the diagram suggests, regular brand healthchecks are a good idea throughout
the brand lifecycle – as the years pass, the brand’s communication
may be fine, but other changes to the market, notably competitor launches,
can throw things into disarray.
A much less dramatic but still important reason for doing research of this kind is that it helps to ensure that ongoing research activities are relevant, focused and productive. These activities are shown in the three circles in our diagram, and, as the diagram suggests, they often overlap and interlink.
Market tracking is
a crucial and sometimes overlooked element of post-launch research. At the
very least there is a need to monitor awareness and usage. But beyond this
there is much more that can be done. The brand ‘healthcheck’ may
well have given some important clues as to the more emotional, or less tangible,
attributes, values and emotions associated with the brand. Tracking the development
of the brand and the market around it requires monitoring of these ‘softer’ and
more emotional dimensions. Internet technology, through the use of interactive
visual questioning techniques, means that these can now be monitored in a quantitative
manner. Tracking in this way has a very powerful endpoint: it can provide very
clear guidance on when the tone and values embedded in communications need
to change, and in what ways. There is an old cliché that the campaign
changes when the brand manager changes. In practice it is far more productive
to change it when the market suggests that change is needed. The ability of
online methods, to ‘quantify the qualitative’, means that the time
for change can be identified more accurately than in the past.
Parallel to market tracking there is a need for campaign evaluation. This is particularly important for companies in which local markets have relatively limited input into launch strategy and materials, with these being controlled by the global or regional division. When it comes to implementation, these companies have more autonomy – in which case, smart thinking about campaign evaluation can give a real competitive advantage.
For
many companies, the detail follow-up (DFU) is the foundation for campaign evaluation.
It might even be the only evaluation conducted. There is a lot to be said for
the ‘traditional’ DFU, in which customers are interviewed, usually
by telephone, a few days after the representative has called on them. These
studies can be conducted very quickly, given sufficient call data and a concise
questionnaire. Here the parameters explored – recall of the detail taking
place, recall of the detail content, and the likely impact of the detail on
prescribing – are recognised as standard measures across most of the
industry.
DFUs also have their limitations. A basic DFU is quite a crude measurement tool. Addressing this crudity tends to involve more open-ended questions, looking at softer measures, and this cranks up interview time and project costs. More fundamentally, however, DFUs can often produce false positives – the results paint a glowing picture of how the market seems to view the product that is at odds with a flat sales graph.
There are a number of options for dealing with this. Some can involve asking different questions or asking the same questions in a different way, qualitative DFU or conducting observational research from field visits with representatives. Alternatively, achieving more valuable results from DFU work may require review of what we are trying to assess.
One consequence of all of these aspects of post-launch research may be the need to change the campaign, and in particular to research new materials. This can happen at any point: the issues faced here are, in many ways, very similar to those when developing a launch campaign.
A specific area of research need which can arise at any point in the brand’s
life cycle is the line extension launch. Sometimes, these may not particularly
be significant, but in certain circumstances, they can be profoundly important
for the brand. There are numerous instances where line extensions offering
easier to use formats prove to be the turning point in a brand’s fortunes
or provide a new lease of life.
In these circumstances, much of the carefully planned research programme that precedes a brand launch needs to be revisited. Customer needs, positioning, and materials will all need to be evaluated. Beyond this there are new issues to consider. In particular there is a need to develop parallel strategies that will avoid the brand cannibalising itself? What impact will the launch of a new formulation have on the overall brand identity? What are the sales force going to have to do differently?
Finally, the brand may be nearing the end of its patent-protected life. It may be a very profitable cash cow by this stage, but it cannot be relied upon to sell itself. The brand needs a market maintenance and exit strategy to ensure sales remain optimal. Various issues may need to be addressed here. How to make best use of a “branded” pivotal trial? How to maximise a small promotional budget? How best to communicate with customers through detailing, through meetings, or other means? How to continue to keep the campaign fresh – not just in terms of materials, but representative motivation? How to identify the customers who will be most loyal? Is there a need for an “account management” strategy for key hospitals, and what form should it take? And, finally, as the loss of patent protection draws ever closer, is there a need to consider a pricing policy that will minimise the impact of generic competition.
It is clear that launched brands need quality research, rich in ideas and
new thinking. What is also important to note is that the research can be as
interesting, innovative and stimulating as anything that goes on before launch.
We will be demonstrating just how and why this is the case in a series of features
over the coming months.
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