Agenda 2021 Special Feature: Choose your own adventure

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Agenda 2021 Special Feature: Choose your own adventure

Med Ad News asked Agenda 2021 participants to write their own questions and answer them regarding what will have a major impact on pharma marketing during 2021.

From ’20 to ’21 …

The pandemic in early 2020 had a dramatic effect on the underpinnings of the U.S. healthcare economy. Despite the demand for COVID patient care, HCPs across numerous specialties saw a dramatic decrease in patient visits. In response, practices reduced staffing and held off on practice investments. Overall patient care participation declined with preventative medicine, elective procedures, health screening and routine care being delayed. In gross economic terms, we saw oversupply and lower demand through the first three-quarters of the year. 

This affected the pharmaceutical marketing environment in a number of ways. The most significant was the change in location-based marketing. Dramatic reductions in available in-person communication with both HCPs and patients shifted marketing to synchronous and asynchronous virtual communication. With less access and fewer patients, HCP content consumption and digital engagement increased dramatically. The efficacy of patient point-of-care communications to drive brand knowledge decreased, while patient digital engagement continued to increase. In simple terms, more people had the time and the inclination to use digital access from home to engage in health-related activities. Rapid adoption of telemedicine and distributed diagnostics enabled patients and HCPs to engage and communicate outside of the traditional points of care.

Marketers shifted investment from supporting in person marketing and events to the digital and virtual environments, increasing the insights gained from digital footprints. Marketers leveraged this digital engagement and content consumption to better understand and influence beliefs that lead to better healthcare decisions and marketing success. This shift in investment enabled growth and innovative new communication technologies. Social media and SEM became core to brand development plans for HCPs and well as patients. MCM and CRM became a more shared practice. Detailing became virtual and sales support more automated. The ability to measure digital behaviors refined the ability to optimize marketing efforts along the decision journey. Virtual communication tools kept the interchanges personal. 

The reward marketers received in marketing accountability will likely continue to grow in 2021. New communication technologies and digital channels that can be attributed to marketing success will continue to drive investment. With widespread vaccinations, we will see a significant increase in demand for in-person patient care. However, the convenience and familiarity of using virtual communication platforms will not likely decrease their utilization. We will see a slow opening of location-based marketing as patient treatment protocols evolve with the population vaccination rates. 

Marketers will continue to rely on their agencies to untangle the wealth of information. They won’t just coordinate the optimization of efforts but will provide the choreography of marketing and measurement. Agencies will invest in deeper talent across more disciplines to serve this demand. Fully-integrated capabilities will provide greater strategic stewardship for brand marketers. Agencies will need to refine and recognize the measures that matter, which can be attributed to a change in belief that leads to better healthcare decisions. And marketers will hold them accountable to those measures.

— Christopher Dimmock, senior VP, insights and engagement, AbelsonTaylor

As the old adage goes, “It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it.” But for biopharma sales forces during the pandemic, the adage just might not hold. It is “what we say” – and not every company is getting it right. What must biopharma companies do to hit all the right notes?

As the pandemic set in, sales force promotion changed drastically overnight. Overall levels of face-to-face calls dropped precipitously. Field teams set out to quickly adapt to a virtual means of engagement, which physicians indicated that they preferred. Organizations spent a fair amount of time and effort figuring out how to deliver their messages to health care providers via alternate mediums – but perhaps not enough time assessing if what they planned to say still made sense.

In addition to the drop in face-to-face visits, the other big shift the pandemic created overnight was a shift in customer needs – many related to patient journeys and access to care. To wit, topics like these were not brand new, but were exacerbated in the pandemic. Massive job losses created shifts in insurance coverage. Both lack of physical access to care and fear of physical access to care created gaps in treatment pathways across many categories. Physicians indicated these access-related challenges quickly rose to top of mind and sought to discuss with biopharma manufacturers.

To succeed, biopharma companies first need to be adaptable and empathetic. This ensures they can understand and tune in to what physicians need in the moment – and then quickly pivot to address their needs. Further, commercial teams need to build flexibility and resilience into their planning and execution, rather than rely on more traditional rigid processes. A focus on flexibility and resilience can help address the dynamic and local nature of these quick shifts in customer needs, enable proper commercial execution and improve the customer experience.

— Jude Konzelmann, managing principal, ZS

What’s the silver lining?

The global COVID-19 pandemic brought the world of health and us as a human race closer, even when we had to be distanced from one another. The great reset and reinvention proved that radical change is here to stay. We’ve shown that we can work as a collective to solve global health issues, and this will undoubtedly become something that continues to be considered and practiced. This is an exciting notion for pharma marketing and all those that benefit from a unified state of mind striving for a healthier whole world tomorrow. 

— Kate Shaughnessy, executive VP, head of client services, Calcium