Building Success Into Your Global Campaign
It’s a balancing act for global marketers between the desire for central brand control and the need to adapt to local opportunities.
By Michael McLinden
It’s a funny thing about global brand strategy in the pharmaceutical business. On the one hand, any title including the words “global strategy” on a résumé is generally recognized as outranking a similar title at a national level. Even after many years of successful brand plans and product launches in the United States, I was keenly sensitive to the gap in my CV before I gained global brand experience.
On the other hand, I’d like to see a show of hands among those of you with local or national brand management responsibilities who have ever rolled your eyes or grumbled about having to work with these übermarketers from global.
I thought so.
Over the years, I’ve heard the same complaint: The people in global just don’t get it. Locals routinely complain that the global team’s analyses overgeneralize, their strategies are impractical, and their materials are not appropriate to local market needs. This is especially true when the locals are based in the United States.
Most national brand directors will remind you that products are sold locally, not globally. And the critical issues in maximizing product uptake are largely national: pricing and reimbursement; influence of local opinion leaders; local attitudes regarding treatment; structure of the market and the relative role of private and public academic centers, hospitals, clinics, and physician offices; local competitive landscape; and the quality, size, and training of the national sales and medical science corps. Then why do the most successful pharmaceutical companies dedicate considerable resources and energies to global campaigns? It comes down to three basic issues.

1. Medical science is an international endeavor. Since no country has a monopoly on scientific knowledge, the process of experimentation, discovery, and publication relies on peer networks that span the globe. This is particularly true in specialties such as oncology, infectious disease, cardiology, and neurology, where much of the seminal work is driven by a limited number of centers in the U.S., Europe, and Asia, which in turn draws talent and collaboration from around the world.
In such an environment where people, opinions, and practices cross borders so freely, it’s naive if not dangerous to suggest that what a marketing team in one country says about a product will be heard only by physicians in that country. By the same token, even a large, self-contained market like the United States is not insulated from the experiences and opinions of physicians in other countries.

2. Individual market strategies can be redundant and wasteful. Face it, as much as local brand managers like to control marketing programs in their countries, it does not make economic sense to reinvent the wheel in each country. There’s a strong practical argument for paying only once for things like naming, development of the product logo and brand dress, product photography, illustrations, and mechanism-of-action (MOA) videos. With the exception of the largest markets, most local brand teams don’t have the budget to do these things and will welcome the global resources. Even in larger markets, access to global resources can pay off in saved time and head count.

3. Drugs work the same (more or less) everywhere. Unlike plant seeds, clothing, and toasters, drugs that are effective in Düsseldorf are also generally effective in Dubai and Dallas. Given the high cost of research, development, and commercialization, once a product is on the market, it makes sense to promote it everywhere that it’s commercially feasible. And the number of countries that meet this threshold just continues to grow.
According to the IMS Health Market Prognosis (March 2009), the global pharmaceutical market generated approximately $770 billion in sales in 2008, a number that IMS projects to reach $970 billion by 2013 (see Figure 1 on page 32). IMS also projects that the North American share of global pharma business will drop from 42% to 34% in that time. At that point, the world market will be roughly divided in thirds among North America, Europe, and the rest of the world. This change will be driven by consistent double-digit annual growth rates in Asia, Africa, Australia, and Latin America. Any marketer who isn’t thinking globally will be leaving opportunities on the table.

Evaluating Your Global Strategy
There is no one correct approach to global marketing. In the end, it comes down to a trade-off between the desire for central brand discipline and the need to adapt to local customs and opportunities (see Figure 2 on page 33). Most companies with which we work opt for something in the middle. Global marketing works with local brand managers to establish a set of core ideas common to all markets. Local markets are then encouraged to work opportunistically within their markets as long as they stay within these constraints. A global marketing manager needs to understand that his or her role is to translate the clinical data and other product attributes coming out of the research and development process into a single, universal product positioning and global product benefits, said Bram Goorden, senior director, head of global marketing, movement and sleep disorders, at UCB. It’s not his or her task to tell local marketers how they should print their materials and engage their physicians.

Local Responsiveness
Even the most disciplined global marketer has to acknowledge that several aspects of a brand campaign are best done at the local level. They include:
Market research. Global observations go only so far in support of local marketing strategies. Attitudes about disease states, prescribing habits, referral patterns, branded and generic competition, and terminology vary dramatically by country and even by area within a country. As a result, there will always be a need for some market research at the local level.
Local look and tone. There is no such thing as an average person who will appeal uniformly around the world. People have obvious differences in skin color, body hair, and eye shape. But the problem is that humans are so good at picking up on the slightest distinguishing characteristics—hairstyle, clothing, posture, and personal interaction—that they immediately know when they’re looking at a countryman and when they’re not. Paul Hemsley, vice president of strategy at Iroko, recalled early in his career working on a campaign for a product targeted at the elderly. “We shot various images of a grandmother surrounded by children,” he said. The German product manager commented that she looked “too Italian,” while the Italian product manager said her clothes were far “too unfashionable” to be Italian.
The challenge becomes even greater when language is involved. It takes only a few words to distinguish a native speaker. In some markets and product categories, this can be a big issue, especially if the promotion is seen as “too American” or “too European.” Base any adaptation you make on the value of the opportunity in a country and the degree of sensitivity.

Medical/legal/regulatory review. Most global pharmaceutical companies have a central global clearinghouse for promotional materials to ensure alignment with the major regulatory and oversight bodies. Nevertheless, local authorities inevitably require that promotional materials used in their countries be reviewed for adherence to local practices and regulations. As a result, country managers need the freedom to adapt to the guidance of their local medical, legal, and regulatory review.

Global Brand Discipline
What needs to be done at the global level? In my informal survey of senior marketers with global experience, there was uniform agreement on a few key points.
Positioning. A product needs to stand for a single thing around the world. Everyone in every country should agree on what it is, what it does, and how the patient benefits.
Brand plan. There should be agreement on global brand goals and strategies and the local goals and strategies that support them. One set of global keys to success and a shared set of global strategic responses (including pricing, growth, and share targets) should shape local strategic plans.
Key messages. Global marketing presents the definitive language and supporting references for talking about the product (efficacy, safety, MOA, and patient impact) and the indication (epidemiology, symptomatology, and terminology). These should be precleared with the global medical/legal/regulatory review team and include all relevant citations.
Publication plan. Any good publication plan must by definition be a global document, given that leading medical journals such as Lancet and JAMA and most specialty journals are read, contributed to, and cited around the world. There’s a place for local-language publications, but publication of your pivotal trials and other findings to support your positioning and messaging strategy needs to be planned in a global context.
Major meetings plan. Like the major journals, the major meetings and congresses in most disciplines are international affairs, and participation should be planned on a global basis.

Finding the Balance
Some elements of a global campaign fall right in the middle—not absolutely belonging in either the global or local plan (see Figure 3 on the Web at www.pm360online.com).
Core creative. A brand’s logotype, mark, color, typography, page layout, and photographic style make it recognizable regardless of language. Ideally, these are uniform wherever a product is promoted, but I have seen enough exceptions to know that may not always be the case. Conflicts can arise with popular local products—no one wants his new prescription drug confused with a laundry detergent or soft drink. I remember one campaign in which images of horses played a central role in the brand look. Our Japanese partners said that horses would be seen as portents of bad luck and replaced them with images of fish, symbols of good fortune.
Master visual aid. To the extent that the MVA captures the fundamental messaging for the brand, its content should be developed and agreed upon on a global basis. To the extent it implements the core creative approach, it should be subject to the same rules listed above for the core creative.
Sales training. This is one where a balance between a global and local approach makes the most sense. Sales training is a local issue, and training materials should be in the local language and reflect the local culture. At the same time, you don’t need to pay for research and write disease overviews and mechanism of action descriptions for each country. The product story should remain consistent from country to country.
Patient advocacy. Most large pharmaceutical companies have someone at the corporate level overseeing charitable giving and participation with patient advocacy groups. While some disease states have global and pan-European groups, the bulk of activity in patient advocacy needs to take place locally in the local language.

Website. The problem here is that countries vary widely in the content they will permit. In the U.K., we’ve shown data from small studies and sub analyses as long as they followed the ‘spirit’ of the label. In France, we couldn’t report secondary endpoints from the pivotal trial publication. And then there’s the whole issue of talking directly to patients in the United States, which is forbidden in the European Union and much of the world. The logistics can be overwhelming.
The response has to be driven by your resources and brand plan. We recommend developing core Web content based on the global positioning and key messages and working with the key launch countries to approve it for use on their local-language national Websites. This gives us the option of local sites accessed through a unique URL, and a central brand.com site that can serve as the primary landing site for search engines and those who simply type in the brand name.

The Ideal Global Tool
It’s hard to picture how we created global brand campaigns in the days before password-protected intranet sites. An intranet site makes materials instantly and universally available, so local marketers and their agents can have immediate access any time. It also ensures that the most up-to-date materials and guidelines are always in place without massive reproduction and shipping costs. Finally, an intranet site allows materials to flow both ways: Local marketers can upload their materials to share with the rest of the global team.

Think Globally, Act Locally
In the end, no matter what your brand strategy, the implementation will rely on real people with particular language skills, national biases, and established networks of friends and collaborators. This is not a bad thing. Successful global campaigns are not the result of some utopian, one-world vision. They are the result of smart businesspeople doing the right things to help their company succeed wherever they happen to work.
For the local marketer, that means building relationships and sales opportunities and overcoming pricing and regulatory hurdles within a country or region. For the global marketer, it means building the strongest and most compelling body of evidence for using a particular drug and packaging it in the way that creates the maximum impact among prescribers and influencers, wherever they live.
It’s the job of the global marketer to make sure both these elements work together. The global strategy, positioning, and messaging must be made to have value for the local marketer. The global brand manager must help the local marketer understand why the global brand strategy was created and how the pieces work together. For their part, the local brand managers have to commit to the global brand and their company’s global strategy. That means providing meaningful insight during the creation process and working with peers from other countries to identify common ground. It also means becoming the brand’s champion (rather than its apologist) among colleagues and physicians. Finally, the local brand manager needs to share successes at the global level, so best practices flow throughout the global network of marketers.
Michael McLinden is Partner and Chief Strategy Officer for Mc|K Healthcare in Boston. He has 24 years of global brand experience, including pharmaceuticals, medical devices, and enabling technology. He has an MBA from TIAS Business School, Eindhoven, Netherlands, and an MS from the Krannert School at Purdue University. He can be reached at michael@mckhealthcare.com.

The following is additional information found only here at PM360Online.com:

GLOBAL BRAND CAMPAIGN
INTRANET SITE CONTENT

Sales materials: MVA, leave-behind, and special promotions; globally approved content with references; PDFs and printer files
Congress materials: panels, displays, handouts, and other promotional materials used at congresses; globally approved content with references; PDFs and printer files
Training materials: training modules, slides, and scripts; globally approved content with references; usually MS Word and PowerPoint files
Brand toolkit: camera-ready logo and brand artwork, photography, and fonts, plus guidelines for brand implementation; multiple formats
Medical affairs information: publications, posters, abstracts, and slide decks, with instructions for use (background, speaker notes, approved references)