PM360 April 2011

PM360 TRENDSETTERS: Up Close with Phil Deschamps, President and CEO of GSW Worldwide

By Jon Brulloths

Phil Deschamps is President and CEO of GSW Worldwide. He is responsible for worldwide operations and led the creation of GSW Worldwide's global network. He continues to work directly with clients on the marketing of global products.

PM360: How does managing a global marketing agency today differ from one year ago?

PHIL DESCHAMPS: There are two big differences. Certainly, in the last year we’ve heard the phrase “emerging markets” more than ever before. This is a result of emerging markets being now an operating committee position inside each of the major bio/pharmaceutical companies. As a global healthcare agency, we're feeling increased pressure to help our clients find new solutions in the emerging markets.

The second dynamic has crept in over the last four years, and even more so over the last year and that is regional and global pharmaceutical business management has increased, resulting in the global and regional marketing teams beginning to consider it their responsibility to market to patients and caregivers in a given geography. I don't think that's the right way to handle global marketing. This power shift within our clients’ organizational structures has left local affiliates feeling somewhat displaced; ultimately, local affiliates need to continue to know and understand their customers better, in order to best represent their interests. We’re hearing more about the need for better global, regional, and local marketer role definitions, which has refreshed my own perspective on how I structure our own agency to make sure that we understand those differences and the importance of those roles.

What do companies need to know when they attempt to break into emerging markets overseas?

Many have collectivized the term “emerging market” to generally mean the BRIC [Brazil, Russia, India, and China] countries, but I think the people who are involved in emerging markets understand that these are vastly different markets; for instance, let’s consider Russia’s market compared with that of Brazil. In Russia, there’s no pharmaceutical industry as we know it in the West. There are no intellectual property rights. There’s no pricing structure, and it’s a 100% managed industry. Whereas in Brazil, there’s every connotation of an emerging market based on the huge number of people beginning to be able to afford new medicines and devices, yet there’s already a highly developed domestic and international pharmaceutical industry possessing fairly advanced intellectual property rights. If I may offer a piece of advice to my fellow marketers, be cognizant of this market individuality during your planning, and be certain to customize services to the marketplace’s needs.

What are your thoughts in regard to improving the success of a product’s development commercialization and launch?

Many clients don’t yet do a wonderful job at planning a commercial development approach very early in the clinical development process. This impedes their ability to adequately synchronize commercialization and launch in such a way that defining product intended use, audience, and most suitable form factor are addressed during product development. We’re entering a new era of comparative effectiveness, when we can address questions early on, such as which patient population segment will respond to a medication, and then ensure that the clinical development program answers those kinds of questions.

Additionally, we need to know our product’s real marketplace advantages, and be certain to bake those advantages into the product. This product research knowledge plays a critical role in determining how to best encourage the desired marketplace response. At GSW Worldwide we call this our ValueMagnifier process. We identify what is unique or different about the product and what unmet need magnifies the value of that differentiation. Then we place the product feature/advantage into the proper context, i.e., a disease-state type approach to guarantee powerful and efficient positioning.

What are your experiences regarding creative concept development and the value of icons and branding?

Icon branding is an important component of the marketing mix, and icons present enormous brand and product value. Icons are complex and variable. An icon, as Intel has shown us, can be a few notes of music. An icon can be the means through which you transition into your communications, or it can be something very different. I do think that in today’s diverse media environment that it’s important to have something that’s common and recognizable in your branding strategy. Having said that, more important is what value you ascribe to that icon; the creative concept development should embrace a legitimate reason why that icon and those other elements are present. The icon’s importance should build over time, but marketers need to be ready to ensure the icon remains relevant to your marketing mix. It’s nice to have an easy remind vehicle, but you do have to be mindful of how you manage that icon to make sure that it’s consistent with your brand.

What do you foresee as the top three emerging trends in pharma marketing today?

I think one of the biggest trends pertains to pharmaceutical marketers themselves. Pharmaceutical companies are looking to do what they do today with smaller teams, essentially more with less. I think everybody recognizes that the industry probably needs to become three-fourths its current size. Therefore, marketers need to focus on strategies and actions that will bring value to their organizations and shareholders, such as spending time with customers to gain much better insight and thereby refine strategy. Marketers are increasingly outsourcing, or considering outsourcing their jobs’ more “tactical” project management aspects to their agencies.

The second major trend, well, it’s impossible to talk about marketing today without addressing the impact of social media. Marketers continue to ask themselves what they should be doing in social media, and there’s no easy answer because the FDA has not yet really pronounced themselves on what exactly is permissible. I know the folks at DDMAC are evaluating what that looks like. I think that alone gives us a small indication of how passionately those in our industry feel about the importance of the Internet as a critical and influential medium for health consumers.

The third emerging trend is what we spoke of earlier, a more global and regional approach, with a different role for the local marketer. If you look to marketing three or four years ago, the power really resided with the affiliates and in their ability to say, “My market is different,” and then we would strongly consider that insight. We’re approaching the global and regional marketplace by saying, “Okay, what unites us?” We can build what we have in common into a bigger, broader platform to increase marketing effectiveness and efficiency. We’re asking the local affiliates now to define better methods for connecting those global and regional messages to their audiences.

What can pharmaceutical manufacturers do to improve the patient adherence problem, and how does the agency fit into that process?

I think what’s really gratifying to know is that if you look at the top 15 pharma’s CEO letters to shareholders in the annual reports this year, virtually all of them talked about the importance and commitment to evolving their model to become more patient-centric and provide more value than being just a pill manufacturer to the patients that they serve. The industry is developing an integrated and holistic perception of the patient. I believe this is a recognition that pharma’s role is more important than simply providing pills to patients. It’s really become, “How do I make a patient who takes my drug have a better chance at a positive outcome?” Companies are starting to become more responsible for that and thus producing richer, more effective adherence models as a result.

As agencies, we need to be able to provide a means by which our clients can continue to learn how to improve in this area. Agencies are in a great position to design these patient programs, to make sure that they create a database and have a means to measure, and then give them the insights necessary to build a more robust value for their customers. Also the agencies can be an important component in understanding the new media space, so that rather than forcing the adherence message onto patients, pharma marketers can really be a listening point through social media on what it is patients are struggling with to be more compliant with their medicine, what kind of information they need so that they are taking better care of themselves. It’s a positive evolution of our industry, and one that ultimately will yield the manufacturers losing some of the stigma that they’ve carried as “pill-pushers.”