WHAT MAKES A BRAND SELL?

All my brand management years so far have been confounded with this   easy and straight forward question whose  answers often heard given with a twisted tongue. This is the question that every brand manager frequently asks and being asked by, but every one of us managed to escape unscathed every time with least prick of conscience.

All the theories which I thought would make me judicious in fact made me f***king judgmental. The nomenclatures that marketing gurus mixed and grilled together with what they called logic and made me gulp 3 times a day should have been a fine prophylactic against my marketing confusions but in hindsight, it became the risk factor.

In my quest for unearthing an impeccable marketer in me, I slept with some marketing panacea which are supposed to be the persistent variable to pharmaceutical marketing exactly like what ‘Gandhi dynasty’ to Indian politics. But slowly I realized the infidelity of these principles when I found all of them  work fine and truthful when it comes to others but I always got it wrong when I tried to force a Lipitor out of my brands. Some of those perpetual fundamentals were

1)     You got to   find the need of the customer to be successful. You often stumble up on something called 'need gap analysis' whose gap is a little narrower than the gap in the needle.

2)   You have to be the "firstest" with the "mostest". The term pioneering advantage is sexy reminiscent of Sharmila Tagore’s bikini.

3)   Convenience-is another term I learned and used according to my convenience. ‘Facilitating the customer convenience’ is a marketing sacrosanct whose tampering would get you what Socrates got fro Athenians).

4)    Reach of the organization and finally

5)      Field force effectiveness - .

The industry where I born and brought up often ‘kick the a**’ of these principles and regularly throw my commonsense and conventional wisdom in to municipal pit. People of my prototype, very naively, consider this as a rare aberration and tend to forget this conveniently. But I must realize aberrations cease to exist when it happens 8 out of 10.

FALLIBILITY OF NEED

In this part of the world where we, pharmaceutical marketers live, none of our customers ever felt the need for something unless we throw a cake with toppings to taste. For eg: every doctor was happy with simvastatin until atorvastatin come with its principle of total cholesterol control. No one wanted anything other than celecoxib until Merck launched its Refecoxib. When I started my career no one needed an antifungal medicine other than fluconazole. What happened in antifungal market after that is history.

My point is “people accept not when they need to, but when they are forced to”

PIONEERING PREPONDERANCE

Seeing the brands like Becosule, Fefole, Augmentin,Meronem perform, one would never  discount the fact that pioneering advantage exist. The life long battle of Batrim to outplay Septran would give the notion that an early bird really catches the worm a plenty.

All was well that far until I checked the history to see what Ranbaxy had done to Sarabhai chemicals who were pioneer in antibiotic market. The same happened with the entry of Lupin in the Anti-tubercular market. They easily topple Pfizer and Biologic E there. Brand like Gelusil entered 4 years after Digene and captured the whole anti-flatulant market.

Ultimately “it is not who march first but who march fast would lend the immunity’.

WHAT IF YOU DON’T INNOVATE?

 ‘Innovation’ is said to be associated with ‘success’ from the time of Boston tea party at Massachusetts. I've seen numerous innovative brands failed and termed as unneeded. Who in the world could think that Pfizer's inhaled ant diabetic would be a failure? But it did.

I always find ‘RENOVATION’ a safer bet than ‘INNOVATION’. Indian pharma industry more often renovates the existing ones than innovating something from the blue. This really catapults the industry in to heights last two decades.

“Renovation is a better bet than innovation”.

WHOSE CONVENIENCE?

Convenience is another term need clarification. Question is whose convenience are u talking about? If it is, customer's then Cipla's Multihaler would have ruled Indian asthma market but it is not. Finesteride by Merck (Proscar) could have been the most widely used by doctors as it avoid a painful surgical procedure (TURP) to treat BPH, but is rejected out by them. Killing a cash cow surgical procedure was not the doctor’s convenience.

“Rather than convenience, it is whose convenience that matters”.

Overcoming Omnipresence

My wisdom went Mecca when I found the way Botox(Botulinun toxin) marketed to facilitate the least reach by promoting it to a small set of doctors and even way before it being approved. That taught me not to find solace over my huge geographical coverage.

“It is not the reach but the reach to those who matters make the difference”

Can I do without sales force?

Finally; sale force effectiveness is said to be the most important factor which decides where the CEO of an organization should sit.... ‘in the  front-cover of Forbes’ or ‘in front of exit interview panel’. Cipla is the company which was audacious enough to withdraw all its sales force from the market once and still found its way to top of the charts. The immense customer value that this organization created and genuine care and exuberance it provided was more than enough for Cipla to survive without even the most indispensable factor of the pharma industry ie sales force.

"Its not the large sales force or managers that make an organization but it is the customer value it creates"

All those experiences thought me not to take anything for granted in pharmaceutical marketing. A percentage point more dedication and half a percentage point common sense would give you a better outcome than the fundamental principles would deliver. I hope the day will come we wouldn't search a place to hide if someone asks us "what makes your brand sell"....