New Way of Pharma Marketing 2021 & Beyond : Dare Not Miss It !!!

I am sure after reading this piece of writing you are bound to change your marketing plans & brand plans for the coming financial year, which many of you would have already submitted & many would be in the mid of it & of course those at the approving levels would be at levels of discussions. 

We all have been talking about the new normal & adaptation being the key to success. Going Phygital is the new mantra of success, but are we missing something very important? I would say definitely yes. Knowledgeable people say we must learn from history so , let me share with you all one such incident. Just 12 years back, android platform was launched on Sep 23, 2008 & then we all know how the mobile phone market changed & how our lives changed. Mobile phones from just being a talking device over the time became our extended un separable body part. Those who adapted to the market realizing the new change not only grabbed a good market share, rather toppled the undisputed market leaders, making them totally redundant. Same might be the case for pharmaceutical marketing too now. It’s the new normal, we all agree but going the same traditional way of digital won’t help too. The time of real creativity has come. The time has come where the real content which will be of interest to right customers will only matter. Almost all the companies are now running behind webinars, WhatsApp messages , email marketing and a few traditional way of so called digital marketing, but the real difference will be made by those who actually find the right way to do it , to the right customers. For over the counter products ( OTC) , probably the time has come for celebrity endorsement or real creative advertisements at the right channels, be it television ads or being more creative by putting ads in between the episodes of some famous Netflix or Amazon prime series or using google ads , you tube ads , radio or whichever the marketing team feels is having the reach to the right targeted audience. I must appreciate a few companies who have already initiated the same for their corporate advertisement, which is at least a step ahead of the rest. Amitabh Bachchan talking about quality of products matters to masses. Juhi Chawla creating health awareness matters. Panadol, Brufen, Otrivin putting their ads creatively in YouTube is an edge over the rest.

We all have grown up listening, that Pharma Marketing is different from consumer marketing, where data, findings, publications, conclusions , guideline recommendations & KOL endorsement only work. It has to be looking very very scientific with graphs & complicated charts, so that the targeted doctors find it of their relevance. But to all this, now we need to add creativity & simplicity too. How creatively the things can be presented in a compatible way to the customer , so that he/ she is able to value the right content & has the right emotional appeal too , which a customer finds worth opening, will be the key to success. Many companies have already initiated it long back & so are they fetching good results too, which is very much evident with their rising profitability & soaring share prices.

 A complicated scientific trial/ study results being presented in a short simple video can be the key. A creative agency or inhouse guys sharing a small video clips of some KOL about the changes or updates of guidelines can grab the attention of audience. Online classes from reputed university, soft copies of the scientific journals which is engaging the customers for an year or span of 6 months would be finding the right value & justify the ROIs too in the current scenario. A tool which can help them connect with their patients & their care givers well would be holding much value and take the upper seat than the traditional approach of so called customer engagement. If a certain group of doctors is created & a common hobby classes, fitness or way of living could be offered to them online would be a real value addition in the current scenario.

With physical conferences not coming around soon & even if they do may be it will appear after an year, by which consumer behavior would have already changed. So, our marketing plans can’t be just the same. The budgets of conferences and seminars should not be just parked in webinars blindly. We need to think from the point of view of a customer. A decent KOL would be in the priority list of all the major companies . If we say around 30 companies would be meeting him, which is in fact much more in reality. And all 30 companies would be having more or less the same strategy of inviting that doctor for a webinar, touching him by email marketing ,WhatsApp & that augmented by the calls from the medical representative, area managers , regional manager, zonal manager , national sales manager & at times even by the top most of the management . I think I have made the picture, a bit clear in your mind , the confused state of the doctor who is actually risking his life to serve humanity wearing PPE , who is leaving in the constant fear of not being a carrier to his family & thinks thousand times touching his own kid or grand kids . A close friend of mine a doctor, who has been staying away from her 4 year old kid , despite being in the same city & goes on & off the duty in the new normal speaks the best. Probably the quoted incident is to say what our doctors are actually going through & in which state of mind they are. So, knowing the customer & consumer is the key. If we know their condition, we can plan much better engagements for them & before we think of bombarding them with our messages, we ought to think about their mental state of mind too.

Post lockdown, many people have actually started avoiding the hospitals for common cold, fever, flu & even minor ailments. Self-medication is at upswing. So either the consumer is the decision maker or the retail pharmacists to whom he/ she is seeking advice before purchasing the medicine or supplement, decides or at least greatly influences the buying behavior of the customers. It’s the pharmacists standing over the counter, taking the call for which brand he / she should be buying. So the time has come to engage the pharmacists rightly along with direct to consumer advertisements using the right channel, of course being in the limits of the law of the land.

So playing it right at the right time is what’s going to decide the fate of the companies. Market is bound to change there will be a sea change soon. Decades back Visual aid was added in pharmaceutical marketing, the era of CMEs were the next , now this is going to be the era of creativity & simplicity touching the customers right using the right Digital platform. This is the time which will decide if the leaders can actually be the leaders or some new players with a vision & proper game plan will come & topple them like what happened in mobile industry. Top brands have an edge of the biggest brand recall but they often fall prey to their own weight as the companies put them to the cash cow category & don’t find it relevant to spend much on them assuming that it’s better to use the resources for new products , which leads to top brands getting eroded from the market , due to lack of attention by their own company & people. This is the era where big brands can go bigger, so the right game plan would be to have a better focus on them strengthening their base more.

In short I would say it’s the time where the real creative stuffs & the real relevant content will matter the most being delivered to the right customers , through the right channel. Companies needs to open the roads for creative advertisements with emotional appeal to customers for general OTC products. It’s the Right time for using right celebrities who appeal to the right targeted customer set , focus on mega brands would certainly fetch more results & not to forget don’t over bombard your doctors with your messages & tick mark webinar links. kindly treat them as humans, who has a family behind them, to whom they are emotionally attached , about whom they are worried every moment , still they are at the service of the humanity risking their lives abiding by the Hippocrates oath of serving the mankind.