ADVANCED STRATEGIC MARKETING ARTICLE REVIEW: PRODUCT POSITIONING 2.0

1. Sooner – Be first sooner
2. Simpler – Be “i-Bite” concise
3. Better – Create a better product perception
4. Clearer – Clarify and consistently communicate your positioning

This advice is based on the understanding that we are now in a “Pharma 2.0” environment, which represents a “mature [and highly] Competitive Stage” in the industry’s lifecycle. To illustrate this he presents the example of BMS pre-positioning a highly anticipated product from Eli Lilly and Daichii Sankyo as nothing more than a niche product. This took what looked like superior efficacy, and turned it on its head. The new product ended up a victim of pre-positioning and disappointed its high expectations. This now forces companies to position products well ahead of launch, even years, in order to avoid the same fate.

What the author does not say (and probably did not know), was that what BMS did to Eli Lilly/Daichii was no more and no less than what Aventis did over a decade earlier to Sanofi (prior to the Sanofi takeover, of course). Sanofi was going to be launching a new drug that would compete directly with Aventis’ then-largest product in the world, Clexane/Lovenox, in thrombosis. It was significantly more effective in reducing clot formation compared to Aventis’ brand, which at that time commanded a whopping 85% of the global market for thrombosis.

By way of background, the first indication for any anticlotting product like this is in orthopedic surgery, particularly knee and hip, where exposure and the nature of surgeries cause a high rate of clotting. Without such drugs, these clots create a high risk for stroke and death within one year of the surgery. Aventis was able to successfully niche “Erixtra” as causing a high rate of bleeding (higher than their product), which every surgeon and MD knew how to use and manage at that point.

BMS was considering co-marketing Erixtra with Sanofi in the USA, as it also had co-marketing agreements in place for Plavix and an antihypertensive product. However, Sanofi had not considered any deal with BMS at the point that they were 6 months away from launch, when they should have been much further along with the prelaunch preparations and “market shaping” to pave the way for rapid uptake of Erixtra. (In fact, 6 months before launch, they didn’t even have a global brand name selected and registered.) There are many more details I could go into, but I won’t. In the end, Sanofi was “niched” for unsafe bleeding by Aventis, and BMS realized this. They then used the same approach as Aventis, years later, to niche Lilly/Daiichi.

In fact, what BMS did to Lilly/Daiichi and what Aventis did to Sanofi is called “FUDDING”. The term “FUD” was first created by the computer industry to counter new competition. As we teach this in the Advanced Strategic Marketing training course, you may remember what it stands for: Create FEAR, UNCERTAINTY and DOUBT in the first year of launch of a competitor to delay the uptake of any competitor’s new product. You may not be able to niche the new competitor. But in addition to trying to niche them, if you also are successful in FUDDING them, they will never recover (or at least, not for many years). Pfizer niched and then fudded Crestor in their launch year – and thus forced Astra Zeneca to spend many years and hundreds of millions more (if not billions) to get to the point they were expecting to reach by the end of 1 or 2 years. Roche successfully niched and then fudded Tykerb, GSK’s new product that would directly compete with Roche’s Herceptin. Roche positioned Tykerb in such a tiny niche – for Herceptin refractory metastatic HER2 + or HER2 Neu breast cancer [less than 0.1% of the 20% of HER2 breast cancer cases], AND gained the agreement of the regulatory agencies to only approve that as the starting indication for Tykerb – that even GSK recognized they would be unable to do a thing as they prepared for launch.
Back to the article.

Other changes in Pharma 2.0 can be seen in the digital transformations of society, which the author argues have led to more uptake of digital communications as well as shorter attention spans, hence the use of “i-Bites” in his positioning. Dr. Bernard argues that i-Bite strategies to position can help marketers win in this new environment.

As pointed out in the Lilly case, being first makes it easier to gain position in the customer’s mind. How early is early enough is relative to competition of course, but you would be wise to push back that timing in order to be sure that you are not pre-empted and pre-positioned (e.g. fudded and niched) by your competitor.

He urges marketers to not confuse the product positioning statements with the actual product positioning. Recent research, he points out, shows that “humans currently are only able to remember usually four chunks or bites of information at a time.” Is your product positioning boiled down to 4 words or less? How about one word? Dr. Bernard’s example of Gilead’s one word positioning is quite interesting, and can be replicated if planned well in advance. We would, however, caution the marketer reading this to remember that positioning is NOT THE MARKETING STRATEGY, but is certainly one component of it, and generally it relates to how one wants customers to compare one’s product to competition, i.e. how one communicates to customers about how one’s product is differentiated/better than the competition. However, marketing strategy is much more than that, e.g. it may be about expanding and shaping the market aligned to your opportunity and unmet patient needs; it could be about disease management, fostering earlier risk assessment and management, and much more.

The author’s last point on clarity is nothing new of course, but it is always worth reiterating such an important point. Make the positioning clear and concise so that it is easy to understand and repeat. This is your positioning, but it will be going out of your hands, and when it does you want to make sure it is aligned and still clear and concise. At this point, one really does get the idea he is equating the positioning statement with what one communicates about one’s brand, e.g. the marketing/sales message.

The basic concept of positioning is still understood in the same way it was decades ago – when positioning was at the “1.0” level before competitive intensity, maturity and saturation we see today. He makes a good argument that in order to leverage positioning today you need to understand how the environment has changed and how you should handle positioning in the world of Pharma “2.0”, to not only position your brand, but also to consider how competition may position you before you even launch.

Review by Barri Blauvelt and Aaron Carpenter, Innovara, Inc.