In the first phase, we evaluated the client’s marketing practices, assessing how prescribers and patients perceive the client’s medicines compared with those of its competitors. Once we understood the existing barriers to brand adoption, we recommended a new approach designed to dramatically improve brand perception and increase sales.
We tested the approach in a pilot study in three countries. When that proved successful, the client decided to roll out the new approach gradually in other regional offices.
Each product has its own brand team in each country, but up to this point, there had been limited coordination among team members—even in the same country. In fact, some had never even talked to each other. We helped bring them together so that the teams could draw on different market perspectives to develop more effective brand plans.
Each step of the way, we challenged and tested the brand teams’ thinking by asking strategic questions:
- Which patients should we focus on?
- What message will best communicate the advantages of our medicines to prescribers and patients?
- How will we reach the many others who influence pharmaceutical decisions?
Then, with the client, we created a training program that showed marketing and sales personnel in 25 countries across Europe—800 people in all—how to use a series of questions and data analysis to create effective marketing plans. With this tool, the client could independently expand our approach to all of its brand teams.