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INTRODUCTION BY MIKE REA

It has been said that the only way to measure marketing is to 'do it, wait and see what happens and measure that.' This is one step on from the infamous statement by William Hesketh Lever, 'Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted, and the trouble is I don’t know which half'. Within an industry in which analyses suggest that only one launched drug in four repays its investment, there is clearly a significant need to measure the effectiveness of marketing to ensure that resourcing is appropriate, both in terms of scale and direction. With such high stakes, the pharmaceutical industry has begun to embrace the more active concept of measuring the impact and effectiveness of the components in the marketing and sales mix, and applying the lessons learned. This kind of marketing audit is becoming more commonplace in an increasingly cost-driven environment. Indeed, there are now few scenarios in the life cycle of a pharmaceutical brand where a watchful-waiting approach would ultimately be considered an appropriate risk.

Pharmaceutical marketing, in contrast to consumer-orientated disciplines, was once considered to have a relatively back-seat role to play in the success or failure of a product. In such a model, the compound, as opposed to the brand, was considered to lie at the core of sales success, and was the factor that underpinned whether a product rose above the break-even point. This model assumed that the strength of the product lay within its pharmacology and clinical evidence base, rather than in how the brand was built and communicated to key prescribing audiences.

The past decade or so has, however, seen significant changes in the perception and practices of pharmaceutical companies in driving products to market, with an increasing realisation that commercialisation and development are one and the same, implying an equal partnership between brand and product development. Although such an approach is widespread, the depth and timing of such integration remains variable within even the top 10 pharmaceutical companies, demonstrating that company reporting structures can still potentially hamper best practice in product commercialisation.


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