Modern Pharming - Gatekeepers and sheep
In the Rx marketing process, healthcare professionals have long been viewed as the biggest kids in the room, the holders of the power. Our first need was to have them on board, understanding and agreeing with our key messages, weighing up the facts and writing scripts like mad. Get the gate open - step back and watch the newly medicated sheep trot through. Understand the HCP, connect with their emotions and functional requirements and bang, product launched, sales incoming, off we go.
In these less bullish days (fewer new products, more chronic care, empowered patients), a new challenge has knocked on our door. Driving depth of use, and not just breadth, is an urgent requirement. It’s no longer enough to get a prescription written. We need to ensure that the sufferers have some part to play - complying, understanding, loyalty, enjoyment.
But as we shift towards end user strategy, we cannot lose sight of the HCP role. We need to acknowledge that instead of guarding the gate, the professional is becoming part of the medicine experience for the end user. This new dynamic means different ways of insight delving, tactical delivery etc.
We would be daft not to review how other industries have made this transition, especially other industries with gatekeepers as part of their brand journey. There isn’t a direct equivalent for the healthcare professional in industries such as automotive/computer/banking, but a lot of our challenges have been faced by these groups. In other words, these professionals are rarely or never responsible for public safety, but they also contribute to the brand experience for that most important player - the end user.
BMW invests hugely in understanding its end user. Only then does it understand its store environment, and then its independent sales advisors. In reconciling these insights, the showroom scene becomes a piece of the brand experience set up to gain loyalty from the customer.
I was lucky enough to sit next to a biggie at First Direct at dinner recently. With this service offer, their telephonists are the main touch point for consumers, their position is of unusually high responsibility within the brand journey. The satisfaction and loyalty of First Direct customers in general suggests that other companies could do well to infuse their call centre staff with new levels of responsiveness.
These two examples, and countless others, are strongly relevant to the healthcare model. They can help us learn how to respond to this turning environment, as we stand besides an open gate and really get to know those sheep.
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MJ said (April 21st, 2008 at 2:44pm)
How do you mean that the showroom for BMW becomes part of the brand experience?
Tim Scorer said (April 29th, 2008 at 5:42pm)
If your brand is lucky enough to have a place that your customers visit whether that be to buy or just as part of the expereience , it doesn’t make sense for this not to be included in part of the opportunity to communicate to them. It works both ways - the Apple store across from our offices is a great example, walk in and it’s an extension to the product experience - innovative, accessible and very much part of the ‘Apple’ way. On the other hand make that test using Terminal 5 and you receive a different one and conclude differently about British Airways as a customer centered brand.