Podcast: What are the most effective strategies for launching a new pharmaceutical therapy?

Hi, my name is Matthew Dickinson. I’m the Managing Director of Dice Medical Communications, and today I’m chatting with Sandra Laird, our Director of Market Access and Medical Education, and Rob Wilson, our Creative Director, all about what makes a successful launch campaign in pharma. Welcome both to this conversation. How are you?

Very good. Yeah. Yeah. Good.

Very good. Good. Starting with you, Sandra, when we talk about successful campaigns and launches, what are your immediate considerations when you think about what a launch campaign looks like?

I mean, I think the first thing I would say is there is no one size fits all. You can’t just take the launch plan off the shelf, dust it down, and reuse it. Fundamentally, it’s about making sure, as with any marketing campaign, you need to meet the needs of the audience. I think probably more important than anything else is making sure that you get your positioning right. And I think we can be very guilty of being so desperate not to niche ourselves, that we don’t position ourselves tightly enough for the right target audience and the right segment.

No, I agree. For me, it is so easy to forget that we’re actually trying to improve patient outcomes. So for me, any therapy area isn’t the same as another. So, absolutely. So it’s just to remind yourself that the bottom line is we are improving patient outcomes.

Yeah. And I think what we’re saying here is you have to think about every launch differently, but you can answer each brief successfully based on the experience of uncovering similar challenges, but in different areas, is the way I would articulate that.

Yeah. And the mix might be slightly different. Some, a lot of the elements may be similar, but you might need to dial up, you know, the market access angle on this brand, and you might need to focus on the patient campaign, for example. I think it’s very much a mix, isn’t it? And we talk about the promotional mix and the marketing mix, but we’re not always very good at just looking at what the right balance of each element is within the campaign, I think.

But it’s interesting you say, not every campaign off the shelf fits, but also you can learn from previous experiences what’s, what works, what doesn’t work, and perhaps manipulate those to get the best outcome.

Absolutely. I mean, there’s no such thing as new ideas there. You know, we, we, you would say that, but we can always look back and say, well, this particular initiative worked well in the past. What was it about that in that particular situation that was relevant? But usually there’s some adaptation needed. You can’t just, absolutely.

Post-pandemic, the return to in-person meetings we’ve seen is a huge part of what we do. When you talk about launch success, how important do you think a launch meeting is with regards to kind of, you know, launching a drug?

Well, we’ve run quite a few ourselves this year, haven’t we? So not only do we think it’s important, but clients think it’s important, and why do they think it’s important? Because I think it is harder and harder to get in front of clinicians face-to-face. But they welcome the opportunity to explore new products, not only with us, but with their peers. And I think there’s no replacement for that opportunity to discuss and debate and explore over a day or a day and a half. You know, clearly we always think about a mixed program so that we’re not just looking at didactic plenary sessions, but we give clinicians the opportunity to perhaps look at case studies, debate where a product might fit. So I think not only do we think they’re important, but clients think they’re important and clinicians love them.

I think it’s crucial. First time they’re gonna see the brand, you wanna start off on the right foot, not on the wrong foot. We’ve spoken about other campaigns that have failed for many reasons, but for me, you don’t get any second chances. That is your first chance and only chance to get the campaign off to a fast start and do all the hard work first.

And it allows you to iterate as well, doesn’t it? Because it allows you to understand, well, what resonated at that launch event? What were the topics that actually did have the biggest impact? Right. Okay, well, the next suite of work we need to think about is going to target exactly that perception, or it’s going to dial up that message, or it’s gonna overcome the objections we’re getting. So, you know, you could hear at an event, well, I’m not so sure about X, Y, Z reasons. Well, okay, that’s something we need to really overcome when we look at the first 12 months of the treatment’s launch. But not only that, the clinicians who have perhaps been involved in your trials or have been early adopters have the opportunity to share their knowledge with other clinicians who have not yet had an opportunity to prescribe. And I think that’s so valuable. You know, hands-on clinical experience and sharing that is really important.

Yeah, I’d agree with that. So when our clients come to us and say, well, we’ve got a new, new drug we’re launching, we need help. Talk to me a little bit about how we go about handling that piece of business. How would we, what are our steps that we would take in terms of, you know, how we go about helping them launch their therapy? What do we do? What are the steps we take?

Well, I mean, from my perspective, I would always go and start to dig into the data, try and understand what the need is, look at their clinical data, and where the product may fit. Look at their brand plan. So I guess what I’m saying is get yourself familiarised with the therapy area, with the brand that the client’s launching. Only then I think, do you feel in a position that when you have a discussion with a client, you are able to say, hmm, what about this? Or, have you thought about that? Rather than be on the receiving end of a brief, I think we always like to go in with the opportunity to say, oh, well, we’ve also thought about this, or you could perhaps do it in this way. And I think only if you’ve taken the time to understand their brand plan, to understand the market, to understand the therapy, are you in a position to really add, you know, value on top of what the client’s already asking you for. Yeah. And I think that’s really important.

Absolutely. And I think since Covid, there’s been a real appetite for getting in front of people. There are so many different styles of events you can do now. So it’s really important to establish from the beginning, what are your goals? How many people do you want to attend? Do you want a satellite symposium? Do you want one place? Do you want to do it online? As a webinar? There’s such a great choice and acceptable choice out there. I think it’s important that you have those discussions upfront.

And also thinking about how can you give anything you do legs? So rather than, you know, having one bite at the cherry, how do you use the assets that you generate at that face-to-face meeting to potentially run, say, another webinar, you know, whether that’s at breakfast or dinner time, or, you know, can you reuse some of the content at the satellite symposium? So can you keep the momentum going? And we must always remember that because we’ve seen it once, you know, you might have got 150, 200 people that you’re launching to, but that’s only a fraction of the population that you want to reach. So we mustn’t get tired of things before we’ve had an opportunity to reach your customers.

No, that’s good. So Rob, when I talk about, you know, creative campaigns that we’ve done, you know, done lots of them in the last few years, particularly with regards to launches, what, when you think about the, the brand itself, what are the kind of key things that you think you are always trying to strive to ensure you hit when you’re creating a new brand or a new logo, or a new identity, or a new look and feel, et cetera, et cetera? What are the key things that we try and always hit when we’re doing a new brand?

I think for me it’s simplicity. Don’t get in the way. Don’t over-complicate messages. Pick on a key message that you want to get across. Get the brand across in the right way. Yeah, for me, it’s so easy to get in the way. Keep things simple. Your minimum information to be digested, first of all. So, yeah. And then be absolutely relentless in your focus and your consistency. Yeah. You know, don’t change your messages every five minutes or even every 50 minutes, you know, really drive those key messages home and be absolutely relentless in that.

Well, every touch point on the omnichannel setting, you should be able to immediately go, that’s that brand, that’s that message. I’ve seen that again and again and again, to your point, and not get afraid of doing that. I think, you know, if you think lessons outside of healthcare, you think about great retail brands of the world, you know, it doesn’t, it takes you not even a millisecond to know where that is coming from and who, who’s speaking to you. So I think, go back to a conversation we’ve had recently about call to actions. You know, have a consistent call to action in your launch. What are we asking clinicians to do? And don’t be afraid of being quite direct with them and say, this is the thought. Consider this therapy or visit this platform or attend, you know, be really clear and, and at the end of an event, you know, be like, so, are there any questions? You know, what’s the feedback on this session? Is there anything we haven’t told you that you want to know? Just constantly asking for feedback loops, I think is really important.

And never end the conversation. Exactly. Keep it going, keep it going. It’s very easy when you attend an event, that’s it. Walk away. Yeah. Yeah. And that goes back to, Yeah, what should follow up? You know, when are you gonna see that, that nurse, that doctor, that pharmacist next, and what are you gonna be saying to them?

Sequential calling. It goes back to momentum, right? When you launch, you’ve got zero traction. You want to get that momentum going fast and keep it going. And the other thing is, you need to be in control of the narrative, I think, because if you’re not continuing with that conversation, then before you know it, clinicians have taken control of the messaging. And that’s definitely not what you want.

Yeah. I mean, I love momentum as a concept and as part of a launch campaign, you know, a launch campaign is anywhere from a year through to the whole life cycle of the drug. You’re still always continually building on a successful launch. So building momentum is everything. And also, I’d probably add in something that doesn’t get talked about enough is bringing the internal team on the journey. I think too often clients launch a therapy and it’s like, oh, marketing has launched a drug versus the whole company getting involved. And it might be a case that, yeah, it’s one team that have launched a therapy in this area, but right down to the IT folks and the finance team and the people on reception, you know, should feel part of a launch. You know, we’ve worked with clients in the past where, you know, we’ve highlighted the people that kind of helped with the launch. And, you know, I can remember one example that is wonderful. The janitor of one of our clients in the States came up with a name for the therapy. It was his name for the drug. And highlighting that and bringing the company closer together helped build this kind of team ethos internally.

Empowered the whole organisation. Correct. Yeah. And I think, you know, internal parts of internal launch campaigns are incredibly important. And I think it’s quite an easy win. It’s too often neglected. And I think people should, should really continually push for that. So, you know, when we are doing launch campaigns, we’re always thinking about, well, how can we make sure that everyone in the business is aligned with, with what we’re trying to achieve?

Well, it’s about a belief in celebrating success, isn’t it? It’s so easy to look at the next year and the next sales target. But, you know, looking back and saying, you know, look how far we’ve come and how well we’ve done, and, and actually then boiling it down to how many patients have we helped? You know, how many lives have we transformed? Um, as well as, you know, how many packs have we sold and how much cash have we made?

No, no, that’s true. It’s all part of the, No, no, just going back to internal campaigns. As a creative guy, I love internal campaigns. ‘Cause you can really, really take the restrictions off with regulations and really go for it.

Well, thank you both. To me, it’s a fascinating part of what we do and it really gets me excited to know that we’re launching therapies and we’re bringing them to market with our clients. Thank you very much for your time. One of the things we’ll do in the next podcast is talk a little bit about partnerships and how they can help drive further successes.

But Sandra, Rob, thank you for your time today.

Thank you.