Juice execs share launch expertise	August 2008

As the agency behind two of the top 10 products for which 2007 represented the first full year of sales, Juice Pharma Advertising has demonstrated its ability to get new brands off the ground. Juice Pharma was the professional agency responsible for the global launch of Merck’s cervical cancer vaccine Gardasil as well as the launch of Merck’s herpes zoster vaccine Zostavax. To learn more about what factors go into successful product launches, Med Ad News spoke with Juice Pharma’s Executive VP, Managing Partner Forrest King and Executive VP, Managing Partner Lynn Macrone.

Med Ad News: How early in the pre-approval, development process do you begin working with your clients to develop launch materials?

Lynn Macrone: Generally speaking, it makes great sense to begin the process around the time of the Phase III trials, which gives you about an 18 month to two year time period. As a rule of thumb, that’s a good place to start.

Forrest King: We could probably say that for both of those [vaccines] that, for brands that were of that magnitude, the importance of those brands for Merck as well as for society as a whole, they were fairly typical in terms of their promotional development and time line.

Med Ad News: What unique qualities led to the success of Gardasil and Zostavax, and how did your launch campaigns deliver the products’ respective messages to physicians and/or patients?

Lynn Macrone: For both of those products, the great news was they were solutions that fulfilled a serious unmet medical need. They were needed for society, they were important advances, so that’s a key quality right there. They’re both first-in-class innovative products, and those are two extremely important success factors when you have something you can offer that is really needed and fulfills an unmet need.
Then when it came to developing the campaigns, you do have to understand what are the particular insights that are important to your audience so that you can reach your audience in the right way so that your messages that you’re educating on can get received in the right way, so that has to be understood and has to be delivered. And what the creative has to do is evoke an understanding and belief in the science and in the product. So, I would say there’s an educational spirit, if you will, so that your audience can appreciate what these products are bringing.

Med Ad News: Generally speaking, what goes into a successful launch campaign?

Forrest King: There are some inspirational words or phrases that we live by. These might be no-brainers, but it’s pretty important to state them again because they’re hard to pull off. A successful launch campaign requires discipline, rigor when it comes to charting a course and staying true to that course, a creative or brand vision, and those things followed up with flawless execution. You can misstep anywhere along the way and lose your focus and have a less than ideal launch. And then the last thing for a successful launch campaign is you need a group of people that are really committed to the brand, the science behind the brand, on our front, to the client, and to patients and the need that’s being solved. If everyone can stay true to those beliefs or those goals, then you can pull it off.

Med Ad News: As products move beyond the launch stage, how does the marketing focus shift?

Lynn Macrone: It’s probably safe to say that one thing you always have to continue to do is make sure that your messages remain clear and accessible. That the information is there and readily available so that your audience, when they’re ready and interested in hearing about the brand, that they can receive that information.

Forrest King: It’s the responsibility of the agency to ask questions early on to see, what’s the projected life cycle of the product or the brand and to take steps to make sure you’re paving the way for the future. You always want to be knowledgeable about where a brand is going to be five years from now, ten years from now, what the plan is and be thinking about that as you’re creating the work. That’s one thing we try to be mindful of with all of our brands, is where, ultimately, are they headed?
You can’t message off label or promote off label, but you can know where the brand is going to go or where you’d like it to go.

Lynn Macrone: It’s important, because when you’re in those early stages, and you’re developing the brand, you want to be able to plan for the future and know that that brand can sustain, however that brand evolves over time.