The Effectiveness of Branding

“A good starting point is understanding that a customer's relationship with a brand starts with his or her world view, not with the brand's”
-Lisa Kindig, Hall & Partners Health Group

The Panel:

Marc Sirockman has 20-plus years of experience in the pharmaceutical/biotech industries. As Director, Sirockman implemented and trained sales reps on new access: prescribing behavior, and competitive product differentiation. Currently, as General Manager, Sirockman leads the efforts to solve brand challenges and build brand equity at the point of care, domestically and globally, through innovative patient education tools.

Lisa Kindig serves as Global Head of Hall & Partners Health Group, overseeing business strategy and innovation for the Professional Health, New Drug Development/Payor Access, and Consumer Health practices. The firm delivers research-driven insights through seamless quantitative, qualitative, digital and ethnographic methodologies in mature and growth markets around the world.

Camille DeSantis and Maria Casini are Co-Presidents and Managing Partners of Guard Dog Brand Development, LLC (GDBD), a novel and award-winning brand development company specializing in creating and fiercely protecting corporate, product and science identities in the pharmaceutical/life sciences industries.

Jay Bigelow is president of MicroMass Communications, Inc. Under his leadership, the Cary, NC-based company has become a nationally ranked full-service agency of record, demonstrated double-digit financial growth; vastly expanded its services; and built a roster of blue chip clients that includes Novartis, GlaxoSmithKline, Merck, Shire, Bayer, Auxilium and Akrimax. For more information, visit www.micromass.com.

NGP. As communications evolve, what new technologies can companies use to enhance branding?
Marc Sirockman. In a world of information overload, industry and healthcare providers (HCPs), and patients and consumers are looking to simplify access, increase relevance and ‘brand’ the customer experience, through several marketing, product and educational channels. The most crucial step in the branding process is the counseling discussion between the HCP and patient. Social networking tools (such as MySpace, Facebook, Gather, LinkedIn), blogs and podcasts, distributed content and video sharing are effective technologies that leverage, extend and build the ‘branding’ experience generated in the initial HCP to patient discussion, where fundamental trust is established.

Lisa Kindig. To me, enhancing customers’ relationships with brands is more of a communications issue (how to best use new technologies), than a technology issue (what new technologies).

It’s tempting to think that all the rules about building brands must be re-written. But while new technology has kindled some changes in behavior – quick and easy opportunities for people to share, explore, find, create and transact – human nature fundamentally has remained the same. Passionate people always have personalized their brand experiences, evangelizing for the brands they love and protesting against those they despise. Thus, meaningful online and mobile experiences require the same qualities of trust, purpose and rules of conduct that influential offline experiences require. New technology simply has democratized and multiplied people’s ability to act.

Hall & Partners believes people participate digitally in two key ways: micro actions – ever-present but emotionally unsatisfying transactions; and focal actions – meaningful, purposeful actions springing from new connections based on shared values. Many brands solicit consumer participation through micro actions that require a few clicks, a bit of data entry, a moment or two. However, on issues with real personal relevance, people want the opportunity to engage in progressively deeper ways. To appeal to them, brands must create more layered opportunities for dialogue and relationship, and all new technologies offer interesting opportunities for doing this.

Camille DeSantis and Maria Casini. The pace and number of potential choices in communications channels and technologies have clearly changed. This has created a multitude of novel options for a brand identity to be applied, which is what branding is. Stakeholders (e.g. analysts, investors, key opinion leaders, physicians, patients, advocacy groups and media) are willing to receive data from whichever ‘channel’ they select and use it to make decisions. New delivery forms create new ways for stakeholders to interact not only with each other, but also with the providers of the content. As we know, these forms include online publications, subscriber newsletters, blogs, podcasts, YouTube, Google alerts, RSS feeds, Facebook, Twitter, TrackerUR, just to name a few. As much as there have been changes in communications channels, it is important to remember that the principles of effective brand development have not changed, and that not every form is appropriate for every brand.

NGP. What research techniques are used to understand the branding needs of the clients?
CD/MC. Market research with all key stakeholder audiences of a brand is critical to ensure resonance. It determines unmet needs and unspoken motivations that drive brand-building behaviors. Interactive and iterative methods of market research, whether conducted in person or online, provide rapid, cost-effective and projectable results. It is essential to utilize techniques that delve deeper into the psychological and unique motivational underpinnings of key stakeholder groups and these insights are critical to creating a truly relevant brand experience regardless of which communications channel is employed.

MS. In addition to standard research techniques, web analytics, online data collection and behavior tracking methods should be used to monitor, to periodically validate the ‘brand’ perception by the customer, and to modify messaging while reconnecting to the core mission of brand enhancement.

LK. Unfortunately, there is no magic bullet ‘technique’. A good starting point is the understanding that a customer’s relationship with a brand starts with his or her world view, not with the brand’s. Another important consideration is that people generally don’t give active thought to what they are doing, why they are doing it, how they feel about it, and why they feel that way. When asked directly, most people earnestly will seek to conjure a rationale for their choices or project their expected behaviors, but true drivers of thought and action often are complex and unconscious.

Therefore, in-context research approaches offer some of the more effective ways to understand what a brand can offer its intended audience. These can include such activities as mapping centers of online influence, observing and interacting in online community dialogues, following people through their daily routines, interviewing close family members and friends, assembling related groups of people to discuss relevant issues, gathering individuals’ guided self-reporting through diaries, photos, and video – and often, engaging in these inquiries over time with multiple points of contact. In-context research reveals the inconsistencies between what people say, think and do, and particularly is effective in yielding insights into unmet needs that participants themselves cannot easily articulate, linking those needs back to strategic brand opportunities.

NGP. Branding firms are facing demands to respond to ever-increasing channels and more active customers. What tools can they use to help meet these requirements? 
CD/MC. Stakeholders of a brand are more mobile than ever before – which has made it both more challenging to connect with them and in some ways easier. Yet the two biggest challenges to address are these: first, is the brand identity strong enough to resonate; and second, have we established a clear set of guidelines and standards to effectively and seamlessly implement that brand identity across relevant communications channels? Market research will inform the process to ensure the communication channels selected are the ones that will most effectively engage the key stakeholders of the brand. Once we have addressed these challenges, then we can ensure we are not managing a brand’s identity in an ad hoc fashion – i.e. selecting the ‘fad’ technology du jour – rather, we are developing a brand from a strong, singular strategic platform.

MS. Industry should focus on delivering a ‘branded’ experience to the customer, HCP, patient, and all entities connected to the ‘patient-centric’ model. The branded experience needs to encompass consistency, personalization and streamline the steps for managing the patient in the health-care continuum. It must integrate the point of care experience to the online and mobile arenas, to deliver the right information at the right time, in the right medium.

The point of care experience is the critical first step in the interaction between the patient and the HCP. The HCP uses health education teaching tools to improve consistency, efficiency and create a platform where patients can ask questions, within the context of their health management. These teaching tools weave key brand strategy messaging, with visually engaging illustrations, appropriate content and interactive components. This type of point of care patient education involves and engages the HCP with the patient, and allows the patient to experience many of the adult learning principles that extend to behavior modification resulting in increased patient compliance. In addition, these interactive teaching tools incorporate patient take-home recall resources that seamlessly lead the patient, family members and caregivers to recommended internet and mobile sites, where the patient can continue the journey within the health-care continuum.

NGP. How do you see the future of branding developing in the next few years?
LK. In pharma, I think we may see a shift from DTC to higher-impact patient education and adherence programs. Raising awareness among prospective patients has intuitive appeal, but retaining compliant patients who persist with therapy over time is essential to brand longevity. Digital media has proven particularly vulnerable as a platform for DTC, yet simultaneously is very well suited for ongoing, participatory dialogues with established patients.

For professional and payor communications, I suspect we will see an increase in value-based brand-building, such as P&G/Sanofi-Aventis’ recent move to reimburse the insurer Health Alliance for the costs of treating fractures suffered by osteoporosis patients taking Actonel. Similarly, Merck may link Cigna’s cost for diabetes drugs to how successfully type 2 patients control their blood sugar. Merck will give Cigna bigger discounts if more patients adhere to therapy. Adherence helps Cigna, because people who take their pills will have fewer complications of the disease, and Merck, because it will sell more of its products. To circle back to trends in consumer-focused communications, the assumption is that Cigna will engage in more aggressive patient adherence programs to urge people to take their medicine at the right times and in the proper doses.

MS. The powerful forces of Web 2.0 technologies, online social networks, digital content and the shift from online ‘con-sumers’ to ‘pro-sumers’ will promote a marketplace driven by conversations, personalization, digital information and relevant customer solutions. Industry should evaluate the strategic shift from push to pull marketing and leverage every opportunity to build brand equity at the point of care, to the point of adherence and through the point of compliance. This can be accomplished with strong, effective patient education solutions, resulting in ‘BRAND’ becoming synonymous with ‘valuing customer experience’.

CD/MC. There is a conflict that exists today that directly results in the devaluation of brands. Brand directors think in silos and their stakeholders think in terms of one brand image. The stakeholders expect all interactions with a brand to be consistent and cohesive and relevant to them – providing them with information and value that justifies their time, effort and money. The ad hoc utilization of multi-channel branding – or selecting from silos – promotes brand image fragmentation. When a brand’s image fragments, stakeholders are left to define the brand themselves, often devaluing it or losing trust in it, neither of which is desirable. So we see a future where brand directors would take a ‘channel neutral’ position and focus instead on the development of a consistent, cohesive and relevant brand identity strategy first, and then, informed by market research insights with key stakeholders, have a better understanding of where those constituencies ‘live’ in order to make the best strategic decisions on which communications channels to use for the brand.