There are a few themes we have been discussing in the pharmaceutical industry for a long time. The transformation of our businesses for a digital world. The need to put the patient at the centre of everything we do. The fact that our customers, health care professionals, are no longer interested in the same old ‘push’ messaging and need a completely different relationship with us.
At this year’s eyefopharma Barcelona, after 15 years of ‘talk’ I felt we had reached a ‘tipping point’ – things are really happening, we have measurable results, we have stopped talking and started taking ACTION. There is a good deal of work still to do, but at last it has finally begun in earnest.
With the much-cited 2014 ‘tipping point’ of over 50% of HCPs now ‘digital natives’ (PMLive/LBi) perhaps it was bound to happen. But it was very encouraging to hear people who are making change happen across our industry, for the benefit of those taking medicine and living with health conditions.
Indicative of this was the fact that eyeforpharma (@eyeforpharma) invited both healthcare professionals and patients to the conference, and they were invited to ask the first questions in each session – a nice touch.
Three themes stood out for me that I’ll use delegate quotes to illustrate:
“From product-based marketing to developing customer loyalty through great experiences”
This was by Tim Sherwell of AstraZeneca, who has been rolling out a multichannel customer engagement approach using different channel mixes in different situations. The AZ formula is resonant of the new model implemented by corporate software providers in the 1980s and 1990s, finally making its way to pharma:
Product + Service + Experience = Customer Loyalty
GP Julian Spinks (@JulianSpinks) and Consultant Endocrinologist Partha Kar (@parthaskar) made it clear that in a doctor’s busy day, information and education need to be concise and available on their terms as and when needed.
Ashfield Health worked with them to understand ‘a day in the life of a GP’ and ‘a week in the life of a specialist’ and it became clear that traditional educational formats no longer serve physicians. They blog, tweet, Google and game for professional development.
Julian described a 45 minute compulsory ‘safeguarding’ elearning module he had had to complete on a Sunday as he could never fit it into his working day (50 patients, 7am to 7pm). Julian described himself ‘as a bit of a dinosaur’ but on Day 3 of the event I had an audience show of hands ‘Who Tweets?’ – less than 15% of eyeforpharma delegates. Julian tweets regularly. Our customers are leading the way.
If we are going to engage our customers, we have to ‘stop standing on the edge of the Grand Canyon and yelling’ said Craig Fiebig from IMS. The importance of delivering great content and letting customers utilise it on their own terms was a recurring theme.
Lundbeck have developed an elearning platform to help embed good content marketing skills across the organisation. Lanre Ibitoye gave a number of practical ways they have achieved this focused on McKinsey’s three ‘c’s of customer satisfaction: Consistency, Consistency, Consistency.
Lundbeck develop content that is easy to share across many channels and they work with customers to predict future content needs, rather than just asking customers ‘what do you want?’ – then they learn and iterate over time. They also have both a ‘localisation’ and a ‘globalisation’ process so that ideas working well in one market can easily be rolled out. Lundbeck’s focus on measurement was impressive – spend 30% on content, 20% on promotion and 50% on measurement – this is how you learn and improve.
Peter de Jong of Elsevier presented some interesting customer research on content usage. Google is now ubiquitous at 100% usage, and interestingly, ‘manufacturer’s websites’ are used by 90% of physicians. He also observed that 61% of content consumption is on personal, not work devices, echoing our busy doctors who told us most of their CME has to be in their own time.
“It is important to figure out where the sales rep fits in the multichannel business model”
This was said by Pablo Ouro Villaravitz from UCB and it was music to my ears. For too long we have been asking ‘how can these other channels support the rep’ where in fact the field force is just one of many channels. As I showed in my introduction to Day 3, customers now spend less than 5% of their information seeking time in ‘face to face’ interactions but an audience poll in the room showed the majority are still spending 90% of their budget on F2F. Why is this?
Cegedim’s study showed a 55% increase in eMeetings and 23% decrease in F2F meetings with customers, but still only 3.3% of overall sales and marketing budget being spent on digital.
Len Starnes (@LenStarnes) discussed the future of congresses for the now ‘digital native’ HCPs. The recent ESC event had 300,000 unique visits to its website – more than 4 times the ‘real-life’ membership of the ESC. ‘Virtual’ has already exceeded ‘physical’ in spite of the congresses own reticence to engage – many will not yet make content available online for fear of impacting attendance, although some are looking at ‘virtual booths’ to complement physical exhibits.
This reminds me of the reluctance of major media owners in the 1990s, as the newspapers struggled with ‘free news available everywhere’. Only the astute players who recognised the importance of high-value content and the conversation and engagement it can generate, survived the digital revolution. It is inevitable for medical congresses too, and ASCO has embraced this for years and leads the way with Twitter feeds, blogs and online content.
There are immediate opportunities for pharma here, with ‘overnight congress reporting’ and ‘symposia summary videos’ being delivered or sponsored by some companies. As rules on sponsoring doctors to attend events tighten, companies are bringing the content to their customers.
UCB described three business models: ‘Multichannel’ (by which I think they meant ‘digital’), ‘Hybrid’ and ‘Empowered F2F’. Clearly the cost for the last is the highest so they save this for the most high-value customers but believe they are having a significant impact on market share with all models.
AstraZeneca created brand archetypes (e.g. ‘Launch’, ‘Star’, ‘Fortress’) and built the channel mix around these based on customer needs and potential profitability. Like Lundbeck, AZ ruthlessly measured and learned along the way, with one pilot in Russia demonstrating a 17% increase in sales with their multichannel approach and in Italy generating 18,000 customer interactions in just 6 weeks at modest cost.
An interesting comment from Rosa Maria Lopez of Boehringer Ingelheim, who is new to the pharma industry and said ‘before I came to BI I had never heard the phrase ‘multichannel marketing’ – I just called it ‘marketing’’. Quite.
“It used to be a marketing tool to say ‘we care about patients’, but now it is becoming a reality”
This was one of the patient guests at eyeforpharma. All the patients expressed how important it is to have dialogue with industry and that we need to collaborate more. This was very refreshing and many speakers reflected this new optimism for a better partnership.
Anne Beal (@acbeal), Sanofi’s new Patient Engagement Head gave an inspirational overview of their strategy, admitting that that ‘We don’t know all we need to know but we are determined to learn’.
In Sanofi there is a drive from simple Patient focus to patient engagement and ultimately patient empowerment, said Anne, and her Centre of Excellence is a catalyst but everyone in the organisation needs to be doing this.
The Sanofi core values are about Transparency, Partnership (not ‘to’ patients, ‘with’ them), Continuous Learning and Development and Focus on Outcomes & Impact.
Anne’s goal, similar to that expressed by Tim White head of Customer Engagement at Lundbeck, is to be ‘redundant’ because this way of working is embedded across the organisation.
The Patient Vision for Sanofi is ‘People take control and improve their healthcare outcomes to positively impact their health and lives’. Note that they refer to ‘people’ and not ‘patients’ – this was also a theme, and reminded me of my eyeforpharma presentation 2011 looking forward to 2016 and saying by then the thinking will be ‘the Patient is dead, long live the Person’. A reality already?
Bayer’s Jesus del Valle heads up Bayers Grants4Apps program that sponsors start-ups with innovative healthcare ideas. His panel discussion led to @thomas_thinks reflecting on the fact that ‘Pharma says ‘patient’, start-ups say ‘people’. That’s why person-centred innovation won’t come from pharma’.
Sanofi’s action plan consists of embedding people centricity in the Culture and Community, offering real Outcome-based Solutions, and learning in order to get real Input and Understanding.
A blueprint for the industry, maybe? This and a panel debate about ‘disruptive innovation’ stimulated a hot Twitter debate about how patient solutions should be funded when companies are focused on the lifecycle of individual brands. Should there be a collaborative approach organised by health providers/patient organisations with companies working together or co-sponsoring?
There was a Patient Engagement track at the conference as well as the Multichannel, Sales and Value tracks but the observations here are from the Multichannel track and it was refreshing that even here the patient/person was at the centre.
Gilles Pluntz from Ferring summed up why: ‘In countries where we have high patient engagement, sales grow, and where we don’t, they don’t’.
Not surprising, really.
Get in touch at www.kangahealth.com or follow @kangahealth
Congleton Town Councillor for the Women's Equality Party. CEO of Kanga Health Ltd - practical digital transformation of healthcare.
Bytesize Pharma 
Another great summary from Kay, cutting through to the key insights that will shape the future 🙂