The Future of Medical Representatives and Pharma Marketing in the Post Covid World - 2021 and beyond

2020 has been a crazy, turbulent year for all including the pharmaceutical industry. The year had started with promising prospects, and it was one of those rare times, when the high targets looked doable. Then came the rogue virus. It’s hit was sudden and decisive, with lockdowns, fear and precautions. Our medical representatives were not able to meet their key audience in the stakeholder community – doctors. MR visits to hospitals and clinics were completely curtailed. Late 2020, the industry took the risk and started moving ahead with field visits, there was resistance from the Doctors side. Eventual result was that field forces meetings with doctors has come down to a fraction of what it used to be pre-Covid.

As we enter 2021, the scenario seems slightly more positive, including due to the recent vaccines’ developments. However, MR’s are still not able to meet with the doctors freely, there are still no physical meetings, CMEs, conferences, networking evenings and so the interaction continues to be limited.

We all know how important these meetings were in building relationships, brands and sales. Over the medium to long term, how do we continue the old connect and brand recall? Can one rely only on digital, where you invest in a great digital platform and move to having the field team connecting with the doctors over the cloud. Is aggressive Social Media activity and online advertising the key?

My experience, says, we need to think out of the box – step up your act and offerings.

You will have to make your marketing efforts Multi-channel; Curate medical initiatives and showcase the latest advances / techniques in Science (read American / European / International Associations and KOL's ) which excites our audience, potential customers and pulls them to you and in turn to your products.

Science along with the latest technology is going to be the key ingredients to some great offline and online interactions and you have your icing on the cake. If you want the cherry, then go for Hybrid, as that is going to be the key to successful events in the near future. As pharma starts using AI for development of drugs, smart-wearables to collect data, etc., the marketing and promotion also need to evolve, more so in the post-COVID world.

The interesting and surprising part here is that there is a huge resistance to this change in marketing tactics from several traditional pharma companies who don’t want to adapt and evolve, and have decided to stay on in their comfort zones.

Over the last decade, innovative digital business models emerged in a lot of sectors and helped companies reduce marketing costs significantly. However, pharma, by and large, remained an exception in opening up to the digital mediums. The marketing approaches are still confined to traditional ways of doing business and physician marketing is nowhere close to consumer marketing that grew leaps and bounds after companies in the space switched to digital methods and made these an essential tool to reach out to their target audiences.

I see extensive use of digital technologies going forward for marketing purposes as it is now an essential tool to reach out to the target audiences. The outbreak has certainly given a fair taste to pharma brands about how important digital tools are. Having gained from the experiences from the current situation, pharma brands will now be far more receptive to digital means. The others, smarter and nimble companies in the sector are changing with the fast changing times, and they are adapting though at differing speeds depending on flexibility of the management and processes, and whether they have the thinking two steps ahead attitude or not.

Herein is a huge opportunity for organizations who don’t have too many foot soldiers on the ground – read field force/ medical representatives to use these new age initiatives cleverly and match the big daddies in the industry. At the same time, it’s a huge opportunity for the big pharma companies to think out of the box and use their vast and deep pockets along with an army of foot soldiers to ensure they widen the lead with the competitors.

In 2021 things will change for sure – people will open up to meetings and travel, especially health care workers, as they would be amongst the first to be vaccinated. The thirst for meeting old friends, attend physical meetings and conferences will come back, practically with a vengeance. MRs will be able to trickle back, and the pace will really pick up post June, 2021. Having said that, the advantages of the convenience of ‘Virtual’ will not go away as everyone has got used to saving time and money online. For all companies, it will make sense not to foolishly ignore this medium, which will be done only at their own cost. The Virtual world will continue to yield good ROI for companies as it will enable a larger reach in the same old budgets.

To conclude, for a pharma company looking to reinvent its commercial model, the launch of new products, there is a golden opportunity to try out new techniques and gauge their impact before rolling these out more widely. Given the uncertainties triggered by the pandemic and the radical changes in physicians’ preferences and behaviors, replicating successful launch strategies from the past is no longer a safe option.

Our work with Pharma companies indicates that leaders designing a new strategy should consider paying close attention to six success factors: Become a provider of the latest in Science, rapidly personalized content, analytics-enabled engagement, innovative patient channels and services, nimble frontline operations, and closed-loop execution.

For each new product launch, best-practice companies compile a set of marketing and medical modules to cover the full spectrum of HCP needs and then ask reps to use their insight into individual physicians to select the modules that best meet their needs.

**************************************************************************Samir is the Managing Director of MCI India, the Indian arm of a leading global engagement and marketing agency - MCI Group, that creates human centric events across mediums. His focus is on Health Care for the past two decades and he has worked extensively with top doctors and pharmas' in India and across the Globe. Since the COVID pandemic, he has helped SUN, MSD, Janssen, Zuellig Pharma, Boehringer Ingelheim, Novartis, Dr Reddy's, Torrent and several other pharmaceutical companies in India and across the globe reconnecting with doctors by curating scientific events with the help of American associations like ASCO, AUA, ACP and AAOS. Please do not hesitate to reach out to him if you want to explore similar events and strategies for your Organization.