A good sprinter doesn’t waddle. With a sprinter all parts are efficiently moving in unison in a single direction for maximum speed. If the arms are moving from side to side or the hips are swaying, that sprinter waddles. Waddlers don’t win.
Winning a blue ribbon for a pharmaceutical marketer is to have a strategically designed brand name and brand positioning that differentiates the brand from its competition and a creative execution that visually pays off.
Today, your brand name will be seen billions of times, most of which are out of your control. That said, that brand name had better be strategically designed for association with the business opportunities presented by your brand. That way, the meaning of that name will dovetail with whatever strategic brand positioning that is eventually selected for your product.
Strategic brand positioning is the promise delivered by your brand based on a premise derived from a compelling insight regarding the medical condition, current treatment or other issues that will resonate with both prescribers and patients. The proof points lend credibility to the brand promise.
Strategic positioning is one of the most important exercises in brand development because all downstream brand communications are derived from its positioning. The direction and creative brief you provide to your creative agency are based on brand positioning. If the positioning is not really strategic, the creative direction will be not be either. The effectiveness of all your brand communications will be diminished.
If the brand name, the positioning and the creative execution fail to align, you’ve created major obstacles to effective communication.
The resulting brand trajectory will be mediocre. Three to six months after launch, your brand trajectory will either hug the baseline or look like a broken hockey stick. The pharma literature confirms that the decline your brand is in at 3-6 months probably won’t change over the next 5 years!
Are you happy with the trajectory of your brand?
Happy enough to look at the same thing for 5 years? If not, we should talk soon. We help underperforming brands make big turnarounds. Contact us.
