Main Subject - Business

We Are All Outspent Most brands face daunting tasks in preparing marketing communications to steal market share. If you have unlimited budgets and are capable of out-spending the competitive set, your job is that much easier. For the rest of us, we have to learn how to win without the largest ad budgets

According to USFDA, a combination product is one composed of any combination of a drug and device; biological product and device; drug and biological product

and without dominating share of voice (SOV).

There are some rules that Stealing Share has discovered in our quest to be the authority in stealing market share. In marketing, advertising, brand development, and the rest of one’s life, focus and clarity always lead to better results. How do you know when you have such

; or drug, device, and biological product and fixed dose combination would include two or more combinations of drug.

Examples of combination products may in

ocus? That is the subject of this short article.

More Than The Category

First, you must make sure that your brand was built, not just for clarity and simplicity (both are vital) but also for persuasion. If your brand symbols and brand equity markers are clear but static, you have some serious and immedi

lude drug-coated devices, drugs packaged with delivery devices in medical kits, and drugs and devices packaged separately but intended to be used together.

ate work to do (take our Evaluate You Brand test (www.stealingshare.com/brand_quiz.asp). When we ask companies to tell us what their brand means, more often then not we hear a litany of category descriptors like convenient, effective and value. Even Nordstrom could claim those brand values in the department store catego

here is enormous increase in the number of combination products entering the market in the recent years. Combination products have proven advantages but fixe

y. So could TIDE detergent and Apple Computer. In order to persuade, your brand must have, within its definition, the core “life” beliefs that propel your customer to choose — not just products and services, but life choices as well. They need to see your brand as an important touchstone for people who define themselv

d dose combinations are still in the process of convincing regulatory authority on their advantages over the single ingredient formulations.

Combination pro

s as they do. You want them to look at your brand and see it as such a powerful self-descriptor that to choose a competitor would be akin to emotional suicide.

What Is Your Brand’s Permission?

In addition, brand is the permission that your advertising and marketing of your product or service is built up

ucts have become life saving products for the pharmaceutical companies who doesn’t have many innovative molecules in their product pipeline and have been inc

on. If your brand does not foster that permission, if in its woven fibers your customer does not find an illumination of their own self- description and the language of personal importance, your advertising and marketing is wasting most of its budget. A great adman once told me that the enemy of great advertising is not

easingly used in the product life cycle management. Even the companies having product patents are trying to extend their product life cycle through the combi

bad advertising, anyone can spot bad advertising. No, he told me, the enemy of great advertising is good advertising — and he was right! The same is true for brands and the underlying permission that forms their foundation.

Customers Have Choices

All choices in this world are attempts to self-define,

nation products and maximize the revenues. But the companies involved in this practice are overlooking that they are burdening the patients both economically

ven B2B choices. The brand mix, the “recipe,” for your brand definition and resulting permissions, consists of both left-brain and right-brain elements. For the left-brain, your brand must include the logic and reasoning that conveys importance. It must be built upon a foundation of believable truths. But, oddly enou

and physically. They need to rightly judge the benefits of the combination products and they have to even look at the risks involved when combining the produ

gh, truth is most often a right-brain perception and PERMISSION comes from a belief in a truth. As a result, your brand recipe must include the ingredients of motivation and esthetics, and they must all be mixed together into something that “tastes” satisfying and substantial.

If your brand is build upon such a foundatio

ts. Some of the combination products were well accepted by physicians while others suffered. Companies involved in development of combination products are fi

and its permissions are persuasive, then your marketing strategy needs to be altered. The media wisdom of the day always talks in terms of reach and frequency, and these are both important... but they are not science. They are based in part on the experience of ad agencies and most of that experience is founded on med

ding difficulty in defining their combination products and facing various challenges from selecting a combination to marketing it.

Following aspects would a

ocre brand definitions and forgettable advertising executions. The goal, if you are being outspent, is to out-reach your competition with less frequency. This means that you need to ignite the right and left-brain responses of more people with fewer impressions.

A properly defined brand creates that space and it defines

dd to the challenges in developing combination products:

Which markets to tap where the combination products can do fairly well?
Which combination prod

your executions in the same way that your eye color was defined by an allele on chromosome 19. If your brand is differentiated from the competitive set by customer precepts — the core “life” beliefs that propel your customer to choose — then the resulting marketing and advertising, if it is true to the brand, will be

cts are meaningful and rational?
Which therapeutic categories to select?
Which Combinations can address unmet needs of the patients?
Do combin

y definition — different and better.

Choose Your Agency

All too often we see brands choose and ad agency because of personality and reputation. They assume that bigger is always better and that you must “get along” to be effective. If you are going to steal market share, one rule to remember is that it

tions increase the patient compliance?
What would be the developing cost?
How to tackle the risks encountered during combination product developmen

is folly to copy the market leader. This includes looking for ad agencies that “specialize” in your category or have experience in your category. If an agency has had previous category experience but no longer has a client in your category, then it is imperative to ask the agency why the previous client fired them. How

t?

As combination products don't fit into the traditional categories of drugs, medical devices, or biological products, the USFDA is in the process of devel

they answer will tell you a lot about the agency. Were they quick to blame the client? Was there some mix-up? Do not rest asking this question until you are completely satisfied with the answer. It is important the client/agency relationship begin on the right foot.

Our clients come to Stealing Share® because they w

ping new procedures for reviewing their safety, efficacy and quality.

Professional from academic institutions, pharmaceutical industries, health care indust

nt to win — it is as simple as that. We counsel them to be more dispassionate when choosing an ad agency. We warn them to listen carefully, judge objectively, and be careful not to hear what they want to hear. How much you like an agency may have nothing to do with their ability to be effective for you. Remember, with th

y and representatives from various regulatory agencies are working out to design the regulatory requirements for manufacture and sale of combination products

exception of an “Effie”, winning “Ad” awards have nothing to do with building great brands. They are self-serving aggrandizements judged by other ad folks. Today, the advertising world is crammed with delightfully entertaining ads that become the fodder of conversation for everything other than the brand they are inte

.

As there is an increasing trend of the combination products companies manufacturing such products should be able to tackle the problems involved in the de

nded to propel upward.

How To Succeed

The moral of this story is that if you want to steal market share you need to think outside of the current box. If just changing ad agencies was the best solution, most brands would be successful every 2.5 years (the average ad agency tenure). If just spending more

elopment. They need to be wiser in analyzing the market trends and the regulatory requirements.

Companies that provide selfless information through particip

money was the solution, then we would all know the price of success. At Stealing Share®, we believe that building a brand infused with the DNA of the target customer is the best solution for stealing market share. A great brand can level the playing field, making you more relevant to your target market and help you WIN

tion in industry events and feedback to regulatory authorities would be able to face the challenges and will be successful in developing combination products

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It doesn't matter if you are a small firm offering computer parts to local businesses or sell clothes to a wide range of international consumers, launching your bricks and mortar venture across the Internet will most definitely work in your favor.

There has been a complete turnaround in the concept of manpower management in most leading companies. The focus has shifted from authoritarian style of management to a more personal and caring style, which treats people who make up a company as associates and comrades. This change in attitude has led to the formation of the Associate Acknowledgment program that helps improve employee communication with the management and boost their morale. This kind of a work environment makes the employees feel supported, celebrated and acknowledged. One part of this program is the Employee bereavement policy that conveys sympathy for staff members that have suffered a family death.

Headlines play a crucial role in the success of your business. Your subject line must get your prospect interested enough to read your copy! An effective headline, whether in an email, ad or book, will literally force your potential customers to want to learn more.

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