Leveraging your promotional message to maximize your return on investment – a case for non-journal media

Christopher H. McNamara
Executive Vice President, Sales and Marketing
Medi-Promotions Inc.

It is widely accepted that journal advertising is an effective means of promoting a brand. The Association of Medical Publications has extensive proof of this on their website. As effective as journal advertising may be, the chances that a specific pharmaceutical ad will be seen by any one reader are about 30 to 40%1 for any given journal issue. In addition, the primary care physician receives an average stack of 30 journals1 every month, making the competitive “noise level” for the doctor’s attention fairly high. (1PERQ/HCI Research, June 2006)

Experienced advertisers will prioritize media that reach the doctor’s exam room/office as a starting point for many reasons. The greatest of these criteria are significantly lower noise levels, the ability to target individual doctors, much greater frequency of ad message delivery and closer proximity to the prescribing decision.

Media with a strong presence in the physician’s exam room/office include prescription pads, wall charts, prescribing reference publications, patient record forms and appointment reminder cards. All of these media can deliver an ad message. Some deliver a complete ad message and others deliver reminder advertising, such as the product logo. Newly appointed product managers and media planners may be either unaware or not have the time to educate themselves on these media. Without this knowledge, they follow the approach that typically includes journal advertising, thought leader speaker programs, presence at appropriate medical conferences, and increasingly, some form of DTC advertising.

The challenge is to find the right media mix that includes non-traditional vehicles to maintain a steady and consistent flow of brand and ad messages. Starting with a base of non-traditional media, prior to adding journals, will result in increases in efficiency and provide better “top of mind awareness” in targeted physician audiences.

This chart compares the net cost per exposure of Medi-Scripts with 10 Primary Care journals combined. Medi-Scripts generates 665% more exposures than the top 10 journals combined, at a cost that is 44% less.

For 25 years, Medi-Promotions has been a leading provider of products and services that address the needs of healthcare providers, while offering pharmaceutical marketers a substantial return on investment at the point of prescription media.

Medi-Scripts, with its audited circulation of more than 190,000 high prescribing physicians across 16 specialties, has developed long-term partnerships with key pharmaceutical marketers who know, first and foremost, that Medi-Scripts ensures an ad message will be seen. Medi-Scripts provides the ability to target their most important physicians and provide those physicians with their most valued medical tool, their prescription pad.

According to the AMA, doctors spend 92% of their time with patients, where their Medi-Scripts pad is generating multiple ad exposures per day by simply writing prescriptions, as part of their normal daily routine. Journals are locked out of this environment.

Research conducted by ACNielsen HCI shows that the key benefits to utilizing Point-of-Purchase vehicles such as prescription pads and patient record forms are:

• The vehicles reach the physician at the prescribing moment. A sales rep will not be in the exam room during the patient visit, but a prescription pad will.
• Your brand message reaches physicians at a time when they are not “expecting” to be exposed to advertising as they would through a journal or a sales rep.
• In-between advertising helps keep brand recognition at a heightened level when the sales rep is not in the forefront.

We can’t predict when prescribers will see a journal ad, but one thing we can be certain of is that they are using their prescription pads everyday.

Non-Journal advertising, and prescription pad advertising in particular, can be very effective in raising ad recognition, product recall and correct message awareness. From November 1989 to November 2004, PERQ/HCI conducted 84 POSTEST studies on the Medi-Scripts prescription pad service using a Test (Medi-Scripts subscribers) vs. Control (Medi-Scripts® non-receivers) methodology. The percent increase in Test vs. Control samples was:

Ad Recognition ↑ 33%
Product Recall ↑ 45%
Message Awareness ↑ 36%

Further, Wolters Kluwer (formerly NDC Health) has conducted over twenty ROI analyses on the Medi-Scripts service which have provided an average return of 18:1 on investment. This performance is a direct result of a primary care physician receiving 400 exposures/year (at a minimum 5% share of voice) to an individual sponsor’s ad.

Medi-Promotions personalized products and services are PhRMA code compliant and consistently deliver targeted request only advertising. Medi-Promotions has developed a dynamic, state-of-the-art physician database. Your messages will be delivered to the exam rooms of your selected physicians on a daily basis throughout the year.

Christopher H. McNamara is Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of Medi-Promotions Inc. He is responsible for directing the day-to-day business activities for Media, sales and the marketing budgeting process. Prior to joining Medi-Promotions, Chris held positions in account management, marketing, sales and sales management in a career spanning 25 years. He can be reached at chris.mcnamara@medipromotions.com or 800-283-0140.