“Keep it safe” seems to be the mantra of a legion of pharmaceutical marketers these days. Unfortunately, their attempts to try to fly under the regulatory radar can end up being more hazardous to their brands than they think. Over the next few days, I’ll be exploring some of the pitfalls that marketers are falling into — and how to avoid them.

One of the biggest traps when you go down the yellow brick road towards perceived safety is that you can end up marginalizing your brands’ distinctive qualities. Beyond the obvious — that this goes against all the philosophies of good, powerful branding — you never hit your highest mark.

Remember this: You’ve got to give physicians something they can relate to.

A perfect example is a common advertising approach that we in the industry call the “big face ad,” which usually depicts a patient or a healthcare professional. It is used to make an emotional connection between the brand and the target audience. The desired goal is to communicate that the brand understands the target audience’s needs and challenges. It can be a very effective approach when it’s done right, but when used in a more generic fashion (as seen at right), the brand’s message is diluted and the result is a generic ad that any brand (pharma or non-pharma) could be inserted into. The outcome will always be the same: the brand never makes the intended emotional connection with its target audience.

What is more effective is homing in on that one element that the intended audience can relate to. It’s that one compelling point of differentiation that begins to connect with the audience. That helps them see that you truly understand their needs.

For example, we employed a “big face ad” for our client’s brand, Catapres-TTS®, a transdermal antihypertensive. One of the biggest challenges physicians encounter is patient non-compliance. The ad we developed for Catapres-TTS® succeeds in connecting emotionally with physicians because it puts a distinctive face to this problem and highlights the product being a patch and not a pill, alleviating patient compliance issues. It incorporates the usual “big face ad,” but puts an engaging twist on it by adding something very unique — a bottle of Rx pills taped to a patient’s forehead. Now this is something that physicians can definitely relate to — and it’s presented in a humorous way that makes it friendly and inviting. Physicians feel good about the brand because it truly understands their challenge and can effectively solve their problem.

These are attributes that motivate them to choose it, and that’s the measure of effective advertising: influencing people to take an action or make a change. The way to get them there is by engaging them in a conversation. I’ll be focusing on that next, so come back and see.

RELATED TOPICS