
The pandemic changed healthcare. It also changed pharma's approach to marketing medicines.
It was the kick up the backside the industry needed to finally take their brands online. Cue an influx of digital transformation programmes and omnichannel customer engagement.
But the response has been too narrow-sighted.
Bigger than media choices and interaction preferences, the pandemic has changed what people value. As Deloitte summarised, “the universal experience of the pandemic has driven people towards shared values of control (of their experiences of the world around them) and caring for others.”
This has big implications for how healthcare brands behave. Beyond digital product experiences and data-driven customer journeys, we need to consider how we build brands that are relevant to future healthcare professionals and resilient for a new world.
Rise of the socially conscious consumer
The socially conscious consumer is not a post-pandemic phenomenon. Nor is it simply a generational trend.
A 2015 report documented a growing segment of our society – termed ‘aspirationals’. A generation not defined by age but their desire for authenticity, wellbeing, sustainability and social purpose. Aspirationals believe that business can and should be a force for good.
Similarly, the Conscious Consumer Spending Index has tracked the importance consumers place on purchasing from socially responsible companies. 2021 saw the highest score in the studies 10-year history. Despite a slight dip in 2022, it's clear there is an increasing consumer belief that brands have a responsibility beyond just delivering good products and services.
Doctors are consumers too
These studies are told through a consumer lens. But the findings are equally relevant for healthcare professionals.
A recent study found that 73% of HCPs believe pharma & biotech should add value to society beyond their goods and services ‘to a large extent’. And that outside of a medications functional characteristics such as efficacy and safety, corporate reputation is the number one factor that influences an HCPs decision to prescribe or recommend a therapy.
In pharma marketing (and marketing in general), we too often think that our products are the centre of our customers universe. We build customer journeys from product awareness through to prescription and reinforce the same clinical data in slightly different ways.
When in fact, we should be considering the journey our customers are going through in their day-to-day lives. Understanding their needs and desires, challenges and motivations – and then aligning our brands to them.
From purpose to action
The growing desire for authenticity means it’s not enough to just talk the talk, brands also need to walk the walk. A great example of this is a project from Australian insurer, Suncorp, called ‘One house to save many’, a prototype house designed to withstand extreme weather.
The project was inspired by the insight that 97% of disaster funding is spent on repairing and rebuilding and only 3% on prevention (which has interesting similarities to healthcare) and led to a long-term strategy shift from supporting recovery to enabling resilience.
In 2022, the brand went a step further and applied the learnings from One House to a vulnerable street in Queensland (thanks to Contagious for the free case study drop this week – very timely):
The strategy shift led to a 30% quote uplift and increases in both spontaneous brand awareness and consideration, demonstrating the value of aligning business objectives with a social purpose.
One House is an example of how a brand can be distinctive in a cluttered, undifferentiated market – a challenge that is very common in pharma.
It also shows the power of actions. These days, people see through empty marketing messages. In an industry with an almost ubiquitous ‘patient-centric’ purpose, finding tangible ways to demonstrate commitment will help pharma brands build trust and following.
Moving forward
Our expectations for how brands should behave is changing – shifting towards trust, transparency and meaningful human interaction.
Society will always need medicines. But in the future, our role in the pharma industry will not be to simply promote them. It will be to relieve the patient education burden, optimise diagnosis and care and even prevent disease occurring in the first place.
Practically speaking, what this means for pharma brands today is the need to:
understand the true needs of our audience as human beings not customers
build long-term strategies that find the common ground between business objectives and social purpose
deliver meaningful value to people and society
Taking a quote from the aspirationals report, “the greatest opportunity of our time is to leverage the power and scale of business to serve humanity, and harness the best of our humanity to reimagine the way we do business”. For all of us in the pharmaceutical industry, this should be a clarion call for progress.
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Thanks for reading.
At The 4th Partnership we use OUTSIGHT° to build healthcare brands people care about.
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