The 3-question interview - Mike Young talks branding in Pharma

Branding has taken over the world, whether we are always aware of it or not. Many companies spend a lot of money to make sure that their brand subconsciously becomes a part of our lives. The pharmaceutical industry, though late to the game, is no different.


Mike Young, previous owner of Young & Day, current Chairman of Brand(x) Communication and a leading voice of branding in pharma tells us what branding is and why it has become so important.

What is branding?

"A brand is a name that stands for something in a customer’s mind. This "something" gets into the customer’s mind as a result of associations made every time there is an encounter with the company product, service or whatever it may be. These associations may be rational, emotional or sensory.

For example, the rational associations with Caterpillar may be around heavy construction equipment; the emotional  associations may be with toughness and ruggedness, and the sensory associations may be yellow and black.

Branding is the process of managing encounters so that the associations produced result in a desirable identity for the brand. To achieve this, marketing professionals must first create a blueprint for the brand and then manage the encounters accordingly."

How does pharmaceutical branding differ from consumer branding?

"The principles that govern pharmaceutical branding are identical to those that govern consumer branding. The differences are in the customers.

The key to success in branding is customer insight. Historically, the pharmaceutical industry has had excellent understanding of its products but less than optimal understanding of its customers’ needs. It is only when the features and benefits of a product are brought together with the needs of customers that you have a brand.

Today, the customer environment is more complex than it once was and at the very least, if marketers are to build successful brands, they must have a deep understanding of the needs of payers, health care professionals and patients. Despite this, payers are frequently regarded as hurdles rather than customers and patient needs are often not that well understood.

Unlike the consumer industry, the pharmaceutical industry still has some way to go before it can truly claim to be customer-orientated."

How do you avoid me-too branding?

"Today, in every product category including pharmaceuticals, innovation is quickly copied. In other words, product difference is no longer sustainable. We live in a world of me-toos and to compete the only options are to enter price wars or build strong brands.

If the difference isn’t in the product, it can only exist in the customer’s mind. It lies in what the customer thinks and feels about the product, it resides in the brand. This is why it can be said that whoever understands the customer best wins!

You cannot avoid me-too products but you can avoid me-too brands by making your customers' encounters with your brand more relevant and more engaging than those of your competitors.

This means being perceived as meeting both their rational and emotional needs better. The importance of the latter should never be underestimated. Neurological research has shown that whilst we gather information to help make decisions we feel our way as we actually make them. Indeed, people with impaired emotional centres in the brain often cannot make decisions and endlessly request more information!

In pharmaceuticals, as in any other category, when all other things are equal, the most emotionally attractive brand will succeed so ignore emotion at your peril."


Mike Young
Chairman, Brand(x) Communications Ltd
www.brandxcoms.com


Please note that shortly after this interview, it was announced that Brand(x) Communications,  will be undergoing a rebranding to become known as ICC Lowe London.

A series of 3-question interviews

As part of this blog I have decided to run interviews on different topics that touch on pharma marketing, agency life and agency/client relationships. Each interview will consist of only 3 questions, so they will be short and to the point.


I was lucky enough that Mike Young, Chairman of Brand(x) Communications, agreed to give the first interview. This interview focusses on branding in the pharmaceutical arena and will follow shortly...so watch this space.

A gift by any other name?

When I just started by career in medical writing, I had to write and advertorial for a very simple little product. No complicated data, no strange side effects, but it was for the treatment of one of the symptoms of a very complicated disorder. 


I have never been fond of the advertorials that look like pages out of a clinical paper and luckily the client did not want one of those. So we had to hook the reader with something interesting and then go on to provide the information on the product. My approach was to show something complicated, relate this to the disease and then show the solution (the product) as the simple decision. 


Sudoku was all the rage then, the newspapers had just started printing them and I did my morning Metro Sudoku on the train to Mortlake every morning. So I thought, why not put in a really complicated Sudoku puzzle, that would give it some stopping power, make it retainable and relate nicely to the complicated disorder. 


I don't know why we checked if this was allowed according to the code, but we did, the verdict...it's a gift, not allowed. We could only use it if we inserted all the numbers.


With the new ABPI code banning gifts we immediately think: no more gifts with mailings and no more handouts at stands. But how does the new code apply to those nice little cardboard engineering mailers that turn into calendars and pen holders and such?


I am afraid that according to the supplementary information to Clause 18.1 any promotional mailing which can be used for practical purposes would be in breach.


"Many items given as promotional aids in the past are no longer acceptable. These include coffee mugs, stationery, computer accessories such as memory sticks, diaries, calendars and the like." ABPI code of practice, 2011.

So even if the promotional aid is folded in paper, it is still a promotional aid and covered under this clause. Sorry direct mail companies, pharma business may be low from now on.

My final rule

4. Consider the user


The person most forgotten in the writing of detail aids is the rep. If the rep does not take the detail aid out of their bag it won't reach any audience.


So make it user-friendly. Give the rep a story they can believe in and make sure that each page flows easily to the next. When I write a detail aid, I actually sit and imagine detailing to whoever the audience is, because if I cannot tell the story using my detail aid then there it is not fit for purpose.

My third golden rule

3. Consider the audience


Writing a detail aid is not "one-size-fits-all". You need to adapt your writing to the specific audience, whether specialists, GPs, nurses, pharmacists or payers. Each requires different tone, language, content and focus. 


Have you heard the expression "teach your grandmother to suck eggs"? (Now for the purposes of this blog I tried to find out the origins, but it turns out that nobody is quite sure, if anyone out there knows, please let me know) It means, of course, to give advice on a subject to someone who knows more about it than you. This relates to the specialist, unless it is a completely new type of product, they probably know quite a lot already, so stick to what is new and interesting...no history.


The GP is a Jack-of-all-trades, they have to know something about everything, but they don't have the time to be up-to-date with everything. Especially the things they don't have to deal with often. So you need to give them a little background and don't get super technical.


Nurses spend a lot of time with patients, especially those with chronic conditions, they are the ones who often have to explain the treatments, put in the IVs, give the injections and hold the patients' hands. This means that it is important to relate the data to the patient and how it will impact their lives. 


So fit your writing to the audience.

My second golden rule

Symmetry is a funny thing, research has shown that the more symmetrical a person's face the more physically attractive we find them and this is subconscious on our part. 


How does this relate to a detail aid you ask? I may be crazy, but I feel that the more symmetrical you can keep a detail aid spread, the more visually pleasing it will be and as a consequence, more effective.


2. Be balanced


I just cannot focus when I look at an unbalanced detail aid i.e. where one page of the spread has significantly more information than the other or where the data is presented very differently. My brain itches, I feel like my eyes pick out all the inconsistencies. Now this may be because I write these things for a living, but I believe my background just makes me more aware of the fact that I am doing it. I think that the intended audience just becomes subconsciously uncomfortable with what they are seeing. 


So if you want your audience to find the piece visually appealing and focus on the message...be balanced.

My golden rules for the detail aid

Detail aids are the "bread-and-butter" of pharmaceutical marketing. Despite what many think, the creation of a good detail aid is much more about art than science. The basic information contained within may be scientific, but to translate this into a tool that is focussed, engaging, effective and useful is certainly tricky.


In writing a detail aid you have to know what you are talking about in terms of the science, but you also have to understand effective communication. I have several golden rules of effective communication that I never break (unless I am given no choice and I cannot change said person's mind through some very compelling communication of my own). 


In my first series of blogs I will  discuss these rules and how they apply to the detail aid. So here goes...


1. Be focussed


The  previous owner of Young & Day, current chairman of Brand(x) and general branding pioneer, Mike Young, likes to say: "To win something, you need to sacrifice something.". This generally means that just because you have a lot to say doesn't mean everyone wants to hear your life story, so just tell them what you want them to remember. In terms of a detail aid it means that you should stay focussed on one thing: What does the client want to achieve with this detail aid? and try to accomplish this in the simplest possible way.


You don't have much time to sell an idea in a sales call, so when you get down to implementation, every page should stay focussed on one message only. This message should be immediately apparent and if you can convey it visually, all the better. Now I know that this is a strange thing for a writer to say, but the fact remains, that if you can link information to a visual cue it is more memorable. People also respond better to information conveyed in an uncluttered way, so the page should have as much white space (empty space) as possible.


I generally try to keep to a heading, subhead, visual, bullet point and maybe a closing line (the "so what" of the page, if you will). If you cannot say what you need to in a maximum of 2 bullets underneath the visual, then you are trying to convey more than one idea on that page.


So keep it simple, write as little as possible and think visually...be focussed.