Summary of Day 2 here in Barcelona

As we entered Day 2, we began with another live session, which was a lively and invigorating panel session chaired by Ed Rowland.

Ed was joined by Jennifer Cooper, Alexis Roberts-McIntosh, Slava Leykind and Alex Parker to discuss trends currently impacting our industry and what they think is going to happen.

Jennifer discussed the evolving pharmacy landscape, and said that someone who can “crack the code” and make pharmacy a personalised experience will be ultimately successful.

Alexis described the world we are currently operating in as VUCA – Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous.

Wellness is a major trend, going beyond the pill to look at early adoption which is a massive opportunity for the industry, alongside the increasing focus on using smartphones for purchasing.

Slava talked about the massive consolidation at the top of the “manufacturing tree”, likening the P&G transaction of Merck KGaA CH business to the Bayer acquisition of Merck – a transaction with no apparent synergies.

Alex reviewed the opportunity this consolidation creates for smaller brands – these are good brands that perhaps have been previous underplayed / overlooked.

It is imperative that marketers think how they can help the pharmacist to understand their brand, but also not be overwhelmed by multiple brands and owners trying to get noticed.

Trade promotion needs to be considered, explored and become a much bigger focus for us all.

Jennifer looked at the self-fulfilling prophecy of the smaller brand – if a smaller brand had the focus and investment, or attention, given to “mega brands”, then they too could grow. As an industry we are conservative – we focus on our megabrands as we are used to them, we know them and don’t like change.

We can either keep selling the same substances, or look out of the system to find natural, adjacent products. Jennifer sees probiotics and microbiomes as a major opportunity for us all.

Alexis explored the “big themes” of today’s marketplace – safety is key, and as we look to some of the growth Asian markets, the role of the pharmacist, the doctor and the guru and how everything needs to be evidence-based within that population is key.

Harmonisation is still a journey in emerging markets, but there is still a huge amount of potential in these markets.

This panel was followed by Dirk Bichels of DMV, who explored the potential of the mass market. He looked at different types of shops in Germany and the role these play within the mass market – in particular he took a detailed look at the “discounter”, stores such as Aldi and Lidl, and the retailers’ use of social media and especially bloggers and vloggers, “the new superstars” to create a buzz and get attention for their brands.

Consumer spending on wellness is up to 20%, our next speaker Rob Lewis informed us, with the total spending on the health, wellbeing and fitness at GB￡209bn.

Rob presented his views on Disruptive Innovation in Consumer Healthcare, citing examples such as Dollar Shave Clip as a new format that all marketers are trying to emulate.

 With your phone harvesting data about your health without you even needing to have a wearable, there are increasing opportunities and arenas within which marketers can play.

 Rob gave us an incredibly astute definition of disruptive innovation, which gave the audience a very good perspective on what it actually is. Disruptive innovation is not a result, but is your attitude to innovation.

 There are 2 attitudes – incumbent businesses play not to lose their position and this affects their attitude to innovate. Whereas, disruptive businesses have nothing to lose and are playing to win!

 Rob explored opportunities available to marketers to disrupt – with the consumer investment in health which has come from brands such as Fitbit and Under Armour, there is a wealth of opportunity within the pharmacy to upsell from a simple product purchase to a much more valuable purchase.

 The pharmacy of the future could be much more interactive, so marketers need to evolve in order to compete with giants outside of the industry such as Google and Amazon.

 Rob showed us the example of cue, a kickstarter project which has raised GB￡7.5mn and is now working with a player to focus on infectious diseases.

 Cue is one example of a device which could totally revolutionise healthcare.

 We concluded Rob’s session by asking, who will own the new future of consumer healthcare – we need to keep innovating to try and claim our stake!

 Rob was followed on stage by Recordati’s Mauro Carbone, who shared his viewpoint on Connecting the Dots to be Successful in OTC.

 Mauro shared the challenges he has faced in building an OTC business model within an Rx company. Recordati is now starting to globalise, going from an Italian business and leveraging bolt-on acquisitions to continue with their fast-paced growth.

 Mauro explored the role of influencers and how Recordati assessed the level of influence from doctor, pharmacist and consumer to see which drives the purchase. Having found that the doctor influence was so high, he explained how doctor detailing was exploited in their strategy, and found that this strategy increases consumer trust and benefits the brand reputation amongst pharmacists.

 He also looked at how to engage the consumer through leveraging storytelling styles, using a tailor made approach customised to the consumer’s level of attention.

 The use of consumer segmentation and profiling is key and must be integrated into your strategy in order to decide your best route to success.

 DSM’s Araksya Topchyan then took to the stage to look at the relevance of VMS innovation to the OTC world. With frightening figures showing that where there were 422mn adults living with diabetes in 2014, this is already beyond 500mn and on the rise. As many of us have identified over the past two days, as an industry we need to act.

 Araksya took the audience through different conditions and incidences for which we can offer vitamin treatments, including Stress and Burnout.

 Our last but most definitely not least speaker to present was Google’s Head of Industry Heath, David Blair. He opened by taking us through three major trends which are impacting everything we do: chip, cloud computing and AI / machine learning.

 We need to focus on the smartphone as the main device – nearly all traffic is going via a mobile device.

 Today we practically live online, which has a massive impact on the health industry.

 Google normally has added the “voice” or assistant to its homepage – voice is going to become the next key driver and could have implications for our marketing.

 We are moving from Point of Care, where we expect the consumer will take time to wait for appointments, visit the doctor and then the pharmacist, and are moving to a space where we can have care anywhere.

 Marketers need to remember the person at the other end, to use data to be smarter, faster and more efficient to be discoverable across all screens, to remove friction.

 You can no longer control your brand from a channel perspective – people can find you anywhere and everywhere!

 Instead of having to conduct consumer surveys, behavioural data has opened up the opportunity to understand real behaviour in real time.

 In 2017 there were 160bn searches for healthcare globally via google – with 2 bn alone just for the allergy category! Almost two thirds of these searches were conducted via a mobile device.

 There is also an increase for searches for “best”… “best non-drowsy allergy medicine”, “best cold & flu medicine” and so forth….

Last year we also saw a 60x increase in searches for “near me”… this highlights the shift towards immediacy.

 Websites which take longer than 3 seconds to load on a mobile device typically lose 50% of users. So marketers also need to ensure they are digitally savvy in order to ensure they engage the consumer!

 Consumers take note of marketing according to relevance to them, relevance to the topic and if it makes them laugh. We as marketers need to pay more attention to this!

 As consumers have an ever-decreasing attention span, we need to move away from passive to active advertising.

 David concluded that we need to test, learn and improve!

 As I drew the conference to a close, I revisited my assertion that we marketers need to adopt PACE to succeed.

 One of our delegates, PGT’s Richard Learwood, reminded me last night that in OTC Newsflash on 6th April, I wrote of the possibility that P&G could acquire Merck’s CH business: “So with the proviso that I may live to regret these words, I don't believe that P&G will do this deal or any of the other deals that are currently awaiting activation.”

 Which is why today I was presented with a cake iced with these very words – I literally did have to eat my words!!!

 Finally, I took the chance to announce that our 2019 Conference, the 30th in this European series, will be held in Vienna 2-4 April 2019. Save the date to join us again for a very special anniversary event!