PM360 Product Manager Survey August 2011

CAREER HIGHS & LOWS

Respondents reveal their greatest achievements and failures in marketing.

Success
More than ever, brand managers cite a good launch as their career high point (Figure 7). Overall, 42% of respondents named launches as their most memorable successes, and another 7% pointed to a relaunch. Nearly 10% gained satisfaction from positioning or repositioning a product for better competition. Seven percent cited growth in excess of initial goals, and five percent found success in overall sales figures.

Respondents’ responsibilities included conventional and biological products to combat infertility, depression and ADHD; COPD, allergy, and other respiratory ailments; cancers; sepsis, and many other conditions. Understanding this landscape is difficult, and many respondents derived their greatest successes from understanding the lay of the land and figuring out new ways to influence their customers: 13% pointed to customer relationship management, insights into market dynamics, and educational campaigns as their signal achievements. These included leading customer-centered projects aimed at both physicians and patients, using data-derived insights to influence prescribing, increase adherence, and produce behaviors that improve health outcomes— often in deeply contradictory reimbursement environments.

Product managers were proud of bringing out orphan drugs (mentioned many times), exceeding sales expectations, and overcoming institutional and economic obstacles. The challenges met included limited resources (of course), marginal distribution networks, toppling well-established class leaders, and even the necessity of building a new sales force. About 4% mentioned solving problems that were not part of a launch, re-launch, or repositioning—but some of these were lulus: redeploying to comply with new regulations without losing sales; navigating a big recall while holding onto customers; even re-engineering manufacturing to fix supply problems.

Disappointment
Failure is the great teacher, but it’s no fun at the time. Various kinds of failures (Figure 8) account for 41% of brand managers’ reported disappointments: products that got launched and marketed but never caught hold (about 20%), products cancelled before launch (11%), and misconceived marketing campaigns (10%).

Respondents described commercial failures in many ways: in a single word (usually the trade name of an epically failed drug) or in rueful phrases like “spent a lot of money with no ROI,” “underperforming drug,” and “never gained any traction.” Some disappointments paved the way to later success, like a product that launched with a campaign aimed at prescribers, failed, and then came back strong with a campaign aimed at patients. Note, though, that some of the distinctions between commercial collapse, marketing failure, and regulatory implosion are subjective. Does a product fail to gain market share because its messaging is bad, or its price too high, its labeling restrictive, or its side-effects disturbing? Making the call requires a Harvard B-School case study. About a fifth of respondents fingered enemies within for their biggest disappointments: budgets insufficient to support sales targets (8.3%), internal disorganization (7.5%), and poor forecasting (5.8%) led the list. Specific dysfunctions mentioned included distributors who care only about price, dilution of strategy in a decentralized environment, ill-conceived incentive programs, and the inability to build solid marketing teams. In one case, the company’s regulatory division failed to let marketing know about new regulations that would change the sales environment, leaving them flatfooted.

Frustrations with the Food and Drug Administration were the next leading factor in disappointments. Five percent of respondents are smarting because FDA failed to approve a product they were working on, and another 4% mention regulatory delays and frustration.

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