The radical change to deliver patient- and customer-centric engagement
Part Two – Innovation
The pharma and biotech industry is perceived as less innovative – how can pharma drive greater innovation through its brand teams?
Pharmaceutical companies have made ‘innovation’ one of the biggest industry buzzwords, incorporating it into their values, vision and mission statements and delivering innovative medicines and technologies to the market. The WE Communications ‘Brands in Motion’ global study, however, surprisingly highlighted that key stakeholders are not perceiving the industry as forward-thinking. Decision-makers in the healthcare sector were surveyed, and only 39%, 38%, and 50% of respondents in the UK, the US, and Germany, respectively, saw the pharmaceutical industry as innovative (Devaney, 2019). So, how can pharma / biotech companies be more innovative? We propose that medicines and technology should not be the sole drivers of innovation. Instead, we suggest how to develop new ways of driving innovation through brand teams and how to introduce innovation into pharma brand teams.
How pharma brand teams can drive greater innovation
Pharma brand teams can drive innovation by developing deeper insights, identifying customer needs and finding novel ways to deliver value to customers and improve patient care. Rather than starting with new technologies and then finding a purpose for them in the context of pharma, innovative technologies could be developed based on pharma / biotech industry insights. As Steve Jobs stated, “You’ve got to start with the customer experience and work back toward the technology – not the other way around” (Solomon, 2014). This could be achieved through innovative methods of insight generation (see Part 1 – Insight) and earlier collaboration between tech and pharma companies. Issues with the compatibility of the two industries, however, will need to be addressed to permit such innovative cross-industry collaboration. “Pharma, for example, is traditionally conservative, slow moving and highly regulated, whereas technology firms are faster paced, more likely to take risks, and less regulated” (Marchisio & Walters, 2019).
Industry example: How deep insights can be generated
Gather a diverse cross-functional team, including representatives from the field who are close to the customers, to brainstorm and work through an issue over one to two weeks.
As compliance restrictions limit direct contact with patients in most markets, alternative marketing models are also becoming a necessity… necessity drives innovation.
We conducted a series of independent interviews with seven industry professionals, to discuss innovation in pharma / biotech in the commercial setting. Interviewees urged marketers to stop relying so strongly on the traditional sales force driven model and explore innovative non-promotional work, multichannel marketing and personalised digital methods for engaging with customers. For example, one leading pharma company is dedicating a few individuals to go into the field to talk to network leads (a payer / pathway group) and then collaborate with them in non-promotional work. Through this, they are building relationships in the field which provide the company with an indirect leverage.
Industry Example: How non-promotional work builds customer engagement
One company had a project that investigated the total cost of cancer services and treatments for a specific tumour type across the entire patient journey to explore how to manage the pathway differently. They created a model that found leverage points for possible wrap-around services and shared the findings with the cancer network. This strengthened the company’s credibility as it demonstrated that they are not just focusing on medicines, but also the patient experience.
Exploring the barriers and enablers of innovation in marketing – improving innovation in brand teams
In our series of independent interviews with seven industry professionals, we also identified the key barriers and enablers to innovation in pharma / biotech marketing, summarised in the table below.
| Barriers | Enablers |
| Fear of ethics and compliance | Right leadership – leaders who buy in to innovation |
| Company culture does not allow for mistakes | Culture that supports innovation – a ‘let’s try it and learn from it’ attitude |
| Short-term outcomes mentality and limited budget flexibility | Reward system for team to incentivise the development of innovative ideas |
| Organisational – middle managers lack ability to say ‘yes’ to innovative ideas | Tools and techniques to support teams leveraging innovative thinking techniques |
| Resistance to change – strong reliance on traditional marketing methods | Available budget to support more innovative ideas to be tested |
Regulation is seen as one of the biggest barriers to innovation in pharma / biotech marketing.
Interviewees stated that pharma
have the tendency to hide behind the code of practice and blame ethics and compliance for their departmental lack of innovation. One company, for example, will not engage with any pre-licensing preparation activity either internally or externally. Leading pharma companies, however, are pushing the boundaries and testing new innovative marketing strategies, taking advice from the compliance bodies and working with them on how to interpret the local code of practice. Once an innovative idea is created, pharma needs to invest in trying to navigate the idea and adapt it so that it will comply with the regulations. The interviewees argued that if a pharma brand team is able to show that their innovative marketing strategy benefits patients, then innovative strategies, or adapted versions of their initial concepts, can usually be implemented.
To support such innovative marketing, companies need to invest in excellent relationships between pharma brand teams, heads of compliance and medical leaders.
The interviews also highlighted two key enablers of innovation in pharma / biotech marketing: company culture and senior leadership. There was a clear consensus that not many marketers are willing to take ownership of risky innovations as company cultures do not support failures. Moreover, teams have adopted a short-term mentality in which the long-term benefits of innovations are not recognised. Gartner, a leading research and advisory company, share this opinion, stating ‘the biggest threats to innovation are internal politics and an inflexible organisational culture that does not accept failure or ideas from outside’ (Voth, Ames, Davis, Bird, & Kleyn, 2017). Our interviewees also suggested it is often unclear which team members have the authority to provide permission for innovative ideas to be carried through. Middle managers can have innovative ideas, but these must be approved by the senior management team before being able to implement them. Taking all of these observations into consideration, if companies wish to improve innovation in their brand teams, they will need to:
- Overcome the current resistance to change
- Address their company culture, implementing sustainable medium- to long-term strategies for embracing innovation. This includes eliminating the fear of failure by adopting a mindset in which experimentation is seen as valuable
- Ensure senior leaders are aware of their responsibility and authority for driving innovation, providing them with the necessary tools and support they need
- Re-evaluate the budget for innovation – interviews revealed that in most pharmaceutical companies, less than 15% of marketing spend goes towards innovative tactics due to the high risk associated with innovation
- Improve diversity in brand teams – including people with a variety of backgrounds and experiences lends itself to more diverse thinking, looking at the same problems from different perspectives, expanding the capacity for innovation
- Explore developing internal innovations since the internal working environment should reflect the vision of a company just as much as its outputs. For example, one leading pharma company uses social media internally to communicate strategy within the company
“The paradox of digital health innovation today is that there is a strong desire for innovation, but an equally strong dislike for the spending and risks involved” (Padmanabhan, 2019).
How brand teams can work in a more innovative way
‘Innovation is not one more thing that marketers need to do, innovation is the way that a marketer needs to think and behave’ – Antonio Lucio, HP (Rogers, 2018).
The interview responses strongly highlighted that marketing in pharma is lagging behind other industries and most ‘innovation’ involves the implementation of technologies / tactics that are already mainstream in other industries. In fact, many argued that pharma brand teams are not innovative and that the implementation of most innovations in the context of commercialisation results in limited success. The key to innovation is to identify problems and then create solutions to these problems, yet many pharma companies do not appreciate this. Instead, most companies invest in innovation for the sake of being innovative, rather than adding value and aligning with customer needs to deliver innovative solutions.
Case Study 1: Innovation for the sake of innovation
A project was initiated to create an IT-management cockpit, so that leaders could see the performance of all their brands on a dashboard. Throughout the development of two prototypes, the end users were not consulted and therefore the project lacked the necessary insights needed to develop an innovative prototype that met the needs of the end users. Consequently, the project was ended because the prototypes did not meet the needs of the leaders.
Case Study 2: Successful innovation that came from a need
A pharma brand team recognised the need to develop a way to analyse their brand’s markets in a standardised way across different countries. A market tracker was created using data from teams in a variety of countries. Initially the project faced a lot of resistance from other countries because collaborators thought they needed to provide a lot of information and that they wouldn’t benefit. However, the project required only limited key pieces of data and the tracker was shared, providing teams with more information… this is a good example of how innovations are successful when they add value and meet a need.
‘Most companies invest in innovation for the sake of being innovative, rather than aligning with customer needs…’
Case studies 1 and 2 outline how different internal working styles / approaches in companies affected the success of their projects. Whilst the outputs weren’t based on particularly innovative ideas, they were novel to the brand teams. Assessing their working principles, Case Study 1 was unsuccessful due to a lack of understanding and acting on internal customer needs. Case Study 2, on the other hand, identified a need and aimed to develop a solution that brand teams throughout different countries could benefit from. These case studies may give insights into the ability of these companies to innovate. If these companies were developing external innovations, one could expect similar outcomes for the two companies due to their different approaches.
Collaborating and adding value are essential for successful innovations.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the pharma / biotech industry has a large potential for innovation in areas other than science and technology, however, intrinsic issues such as company culture and senior leadership remain critical barriers. We have outlined issues companies could address to promote innovation in the future, as well as made suggestions as to how pharma brand teams themselves could introduce innovation into their work: generating deeper insights and exploring innovative non-promotional work, multichannel marketing and personalised digital methods.
If you would like support with how to drive innovation in your pharma brand team and incorporate innovation into your planning and launches, please do get in touch to discuss how we may help you.
References
from http://www.pharmatimes.com/: http://www.pharmatimes.com/web_exclusives/pharma_has_a_case_of_innovation_fatigue_-_heres_how_to_treat_it_1293102
Marchisio, F., & Walters, L. (2019, December 17). Digital Intelligence Blog, Pharma’s race to digital. Retrieved from PM Live: http://www.pmlive.com/blogs/digital_intelligence/archive/2019/pharmas_race_to_digital
Padmanabhan, P. (2019, June 19). What is holding back digital health innovation? Retrieved from https://www.mobihealthnews.com/: https://www.mobihealthnews.com/content/north-america/what-holding-back-digital-health-innovation
Rogers, C. (2018, May 21). HP’s Antonio Lucio on why diversity is the only way to achieve innovation. Retrieved from Marketing Week: https://www.marketingweek.com/hp-diversity-innovation/
Solomon, M. (2014, November 21). How To Think Like Apple About The Customer Service Experience. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/: https://www.forbes.com/sites/micahsolomon/2014/11/21/how-apple-thinks-differently-about-the-customer-service-experience-and-how-it-can-help-you/#40e6142e27c9
Voth, R., Ames, M., Davis, C., Bird, J., & Kleyn, T. (2017). Transforming Consumer. Retrieved from www.russellreynolds.com: https://www.russellreynolds.com/en/Insights/thought-leadership/Documents/Consumer%20Banking%20Structures%20_9.17%20v5.pdf
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