Many studies show roughly around two-thirds of pharma launches fail. You’ve likely witnessed one or two. There are many reasons for these fizzled launches, after all, the pharma industry is facing numerous changes including changing expectations about medicines and the increasing involvement of the end user in their healthcare as an example.
Gone are the days where scientists spend years in a laboratory looking through microscopes, eventually go to clinical trial and with great fanfare release their new miracle drug and charge top dollar to recoup their losses.
You may remember one of the poster children of failed pharma launches, 2011’s Makenna. K-V Pharmaceuticals introduced its drug to prevent premature birth. Unfortunately, they did it seemingly without current market knowledge that they were introducing a therapy that was already in use and at a fraction of the price. Since their $1500/dose therapy couldn’t compete with $10 and $20 versions that were just as effective, they ended up filing for bankruptcy.
Luckily, in today’s world, there is so much information available that smart marketers only need to recognize how to harness it for their needs and they won’t make such mistakes.
Yet, there are still regular pharma launch failures. You’ve probably seen the pharma press’s top 10 lists of winners and losers. Like favored actors at Oscar time, the winning and losing lists of pharma launches usually have the same names on them. Among the frequent launch failures are Sanofi, Astra Zeneca and Lilly. On the winning lists are Roche/Genentech, Novo Nordisk, Amgen, Novartis and Johnson and Johnson.
What Differentiates the Losers from The Winners?
Successful product launches share the following six elements.
1. A Successful Pre-Launch
Starting early and enlisting customer support in the pre-launch cycle is necessary to have a successful launch in today’s competitive marketplace. You might remember the Gleevec launch from Novartis. Gleevec introduced a breakthrough cancer drug targeting chronic myeloid leukemia (CML.)
This was one of the early examples of patient engagement, and it leveraged the power of the internet – way back in 2001. The drug was so effective in clinical trials that a patient championed a letter writing campaign to the FDA to fast track approval.
Since then, numerous other drugs have had great success building anticipation pre-launch. This is an important part of a successful launch strategy and often needs to start earlier than you may think. It’s easy to be so focused on research and manufacturing that you don’t pay sufficient attention to the end users and marketing until it’s too late. Don’t let that happen.
2. Product Differentiation
A second element of a successful launch is good product differentiation – but what to differentiate on has changed – now it must include outcome and value. Most teams are still focused mostly on safety and efficacy. These are important but not the only factors anymore. You need your customers to know they are not only safe and highly effective but easy for them in all the ways that matter to them. For example, a strong beyond the pill strategy that differentiates on value added services save time and create strong health outcomes. Another example would be Xarelto, who focused on the fact that you could use it for almost any anticoagulant indication making it a no brainer for the doctor to prescribe.
How does your product stand out from the others?
3. Update Your Messaging Approach
It is amazing how many teams are still living in the old- style launch plans and creating lengthy and numerous messages when customers are already bombarded with millions of competing messages for numerous brands. Brand communication teams will do well to focus on the core messages that mean something to the customers and convey it in a way that is most relevant for each customer to them personally.
Xarelto found 3 words worked well across many customer segments – ‘convenient oral dosing’, ‘demonstrated safety profile’ etc. It’s simple and effective. How can you refine your message and prioritize?
4. Customer Focus
Pharma are still largely focused on physicians – despite all the patient centric verbiage. But think about the new digital customer journey. Customers are engaging with the brand as much as 70% before they have any interaction with the company via traditional and new media.
What does this mean to you? It means you need strong strategic planning of all your customers and their ecosystem and influencers. It is critical to examine this in detail in your strategic planning. Today’s ecosystem offers you tracking and sharing data that shows you ways your potential (and current) customers interact with a brand. For example, AI analytics can pull these out by combining social network theory and AI. These days they are not the KOLS of old. Sure, they are there and have some influence but they do not have the breadth of influencer that some other online influencers do.
Are you identifying the right influencers for success?
5. Anticipate Opponent Actions
Many successful teams including Novo Nordisk, ensure that they plan a counter launch against competitors who may threaten them in the future. This is very strategic and sensible and something every team should be doing. These should not only examine competitors but also legal, regulatory and payer challenges as well.
You may remember Provenge, Dendreon’s new prostate cancer drug, when the FDA asked for additional testing, that not only delayed the drug’s release but also concerned potential customers. By the time it was approved, there were other, cheaper treatments available that physicians felt more comfortable prescribing.
6. Test Your Plan
In the old days, marketers used to test with business war games. These were of course based on teams playing the competitor’s actions. Now we can simulate this far more accurately with AI analytics and real data. With AI, we can model different payer and pricing strategies, value propositions and identify risks and opportunities. This way, you have important insight into where you might run into problems with your launch before they occur.
As the pharma market continues to explore new paradigms – value pricing and new payer relationships and smaller, more frequent launches for example, it makes sense to use all the tools available. Why would you rely on outdated methods?
At Eularis, we work with pharma marketers on harnessing the power of AI to help them achieve more profitable launches so they end up on the winning list.
For more information on utilizing AI effectively within your launch plan, contact the author at Eularis https://www.eularis.com
Found this article interesting?
If you are looking for a solution such as any of these, and want to hear from a company who solved it and how they did it, join the Eularis Membership as we find the best in breed solutions, and find people who have had these challenges and solved it and interview them to know:
- which vendors are best in breed for the solution
- how the on-boarding went
- how long it took
- how much it cost
Then check out our membership as these interviews are all available in the membership.
ps. We are not paid to endorse any of these companies. We have integrity, and only feature solutions from companies that we have investigated and firmly believe are the best for the challenge. Our duty is to our members, and to find them the best solution for their needs, not to the companies we feature. We believe that these are companies that do a great job for their specialization.
To learn more about how Eularis can help you find the best solutions to the challenges faced by healthcare teams, please drop us a note or email the author at abates@eularis.com.