11/18 18:30 FEATURE-Patient is king in pharmaceutical marketing
By Hester Abrams
LONDON, Nov 19 (Reuters) - A revolution is sweeping the marketing of
pharmaceuticals, feeding a growing popular appetite for information about
health and making the patient king. While governments seek to offload the costs
of healthcare onto individuals, ageing populations want to know more and more
about looking after themselves, marketers say.
The two trends are merging in a corporate race for medicines to enhance the
quality of life and make people feel happier.
Amid increasing promotion of all kinds of medicines outside the hospital and the
surgery, pharmaceutical companies have joined the battle for brands and the
huge profits they can generate, communications experts told Reuters.
"Ten years from now this will be hugely consumer-driven," said John George,
an executive vice-president at healthcare communications specialist Grey
Healthcare in London.
"Every decade there's something new in the pharmaceutical business. It was
biotech, now it's consumer products," he said.
"The Lillys <LLY.N> and the SmithKlines <SB.L><SBH.N> -- companies
that were traditionally research-driven -- will be as well-known as Fairy Liquid
and McVities biscuits to the consumer."
PROMOTING PILLS STRAIGHT TO THE CONSUMER
The prospect of highly regulated prescription and over-the-counter products
being marketed like canned food seems inevitable to London advertising
executives, who say U.S. trends are being mirrored worldwide.
"There have been concerns about drugs being sold like baked beans," said Leo
Burnett Life Sciences creative director David Ireland-Smith. "But how can you
compare a heart pill that keeps your grandmother ticking with brands you'd
serve her for tea?"
The public's hunger for information on health is at the heart of this year's
projected $1 billion explosion in U.S. television advertising of prescription drugs
directly to consumers, experts say.
Many see the trend lapping at the shores of other markets too.
Promoting named prescription drugs to consumers is banned on TV in Britain
and some other European Union countries, where drug promotion is kept for
health professionals.
"It's a wave that's probably crossing the Atlantic right now. It'll be in Britain
first, then France," says Matt Giegerich, president of the largest U.S. consumer
healthcare agency, WPP Group Plc's <WPP.L> Quantum Group, based in
New Jersey. "There are no borders on the Internet."
COMPANIES EYE TELEVISION AND THE INTERNET
Some 18 million Americans have sought health and medical information on-line,
a survey by Cyber Dialogue Inc showed last month. The sector is covered by
some 15,000 Web sites, some of which are starting to offer instant interactive
advice.
"We have an opportunity now to change the way that medicine is practised and
it comes down to a power shift," former U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett
Koop said at an Internet healthcare conference in October.
"Now that the Internet can inform the patient, that patient is empowered to
work with the physician in order to make decisions that they together can do."
U.S. experience suggests mass consumer contacts encourage earlier diagnosis
and even disease prevention.
"Take toenail fungus. There was no treatment for it and now it's an enormous
category," Giegerich said.
"People have seen TV ads for (Johnson & Johnson's <JNJ.N>) Sporanox
(itraconazole) and are going into their doctors saying 'I've got ugly toenails. It's
been bothering me for a long time and I hear it's treatable'."
Giegerich cited forecasts that TV ads in the United States for prescription drug
advertising, which erupted last year after a relaxation of Food and Drug
Administration rules, will account for $1 billion to $1.3 billion of U.S.
advertising money by the end of 1998.
The fastest growing area of all U.S. advertising -- direct consumer drug
advertising on TV -- outstrips all sectors bar automotive in size. But it accounts
for only half total spending.
Tried-and-tested areas like public relations and direct marketing to physicians
and health services account for another $1 billion.
"Competition even between ethical prescription products is intense," says Harry
Davies at Leo Burnett Life Brands.
"There may be relatively small but nonetheless vital differences for both doctor
and patient. So it's important to establish a brand to distinguish between those
products and express superiority."
THE CUSTOMER IS ALWAYS RIGHT
Cut-throat battles to extend pharmaceutical products' lives beyond patent
expiry periods and to secure new markets for all drugs categories have made
companies more aware that meeting consumer demand is the key to growth,
experts say.
"People are recognising that healthcare means much more than the absence of
disease," said Quantum's Giegerich. "As the population ages, the prospects of
dying become much more prominent and the maintenance of wellness becomes
critical."
Researchers are even beginning to think like marketers, following Pfizer Inc's
<PFE.N> success with its Viagra anti-impotence pill, which sold $400 million in
the first quarter after its launch in April.
"Viagra crystallised some things I'd been thinking about," Fortune magazine
quoted Pfizer chief executive William Steere as saying. "It struck me that a
quality-of-life drug for ageing would be a real winner. Look at the volume in
cosmetics, which are nostrums that don't really do anything."
Pharmaceutical companies are redoubling efforts to take advantage of the
market for lifestyle treatments that Viagra has opened up.
But they stress that renewed popular interest in cures for wrinkles, baldness,
obesity, depression and memory loss will not divert efforts from other major
disease areas.
"The development of so-called lifestyle therapies will prove to be a lucrative
business for the pharmaceutical industry, as consumer demand for such
products will only increase as quality of life expectations continue to rise in
future," market analysts Reuters Business Insight said in a recent report. |
