Pharma Marketing Buzzwords - Pharma Marketing Network

May 2015 Vol. 14, No. 4

• Pharma Marketing Network® www.pharmamarketingnews.com

Pharma Marketing Buzzwords The Good, the Bad, & the Just Plain Useless! Author: John Mack

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Pharma Marketing Network [email protected]

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Vol. 14, No. 4: May 2015

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ately, there’s been a lot of “buzz” regarding the use of "buzzwords" at commercial pharma conferences focused on marketing and sales. Among the critics are bloggers and publishers such as Andrew Spong (@andrewspong, STweM) and Paul Tunnah (@pharmaphorum, pharmaphorum media). Even industry insiders are concerned about pharma’s use of buzzwords.

Massively Counter-Productive? Spong suggested that buzzwords erode patient and healthcare professional trust in the pharmaceutical industry. He invited readers from the industry who doubt the “pernicious, trust-corrosive, massive-ly counter-productive impacts of being seen to be associated with or employing concepts such as multichannel marketing, closed loop marketing, sales force effectiveness or market access to deliver a presentation on them to an audience of patient advocates or healthcare professionals. Having done so, ask your audience for their honest opinion of them, and whether they trust you more or less as a consequence of having discovered that you give credence to and utilise ideas that seem expressly designed to alienate pharma from those it wishes to connect with when considered in isolation” (read “For pharma, the era of multi-channel marketing, closed loop marketing, sales force effectiveness, and market access is over”; http://bit.ly/1bMgghy).

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While pharma marketers rarely make buzzwordladen presentations at conferences attended exclusively by patient advocates and physicians, they do make such presentations at commercial conferences focused on pharmaceutical marketing. Even at these conferences pharma people are criticized for using buzzwords. A Failure to Communicate? “At one of the industry’s biggest commercial conferences last week,” noted Tunnah, “the patient was mentioned in almost every presentation, from junior marketers to C-level executives… While this all seems well-intentioned and genuine, it did flag one key problem for pharmaceutical companies in trying to engage with patients—they don’t speak the same language.” Tunnah went on to mention a few terms that pharma marketing professionals use every day “without thinking twice, but are utterly, utterly meaningless outside our own walls. For example, we have ‘multichannel marketing’, ‘key account management’, ‘closed-loop marketing’ and ‘salesforce effectiveness’ being bandied around as buzz words for more effective sales and marketing. But patients don’t want to be attacked via multiple channels, have Continues…

Big Data

Closed-Loop Marketing

Cross-Channel Marketing

Disruptive

Gamification

Going Beyond the Pill

Innovation (as in “Open Innovation”)

KAM (Key Account Management)

KOL(Key Opinion Leader)

KPL (Key Patient Leader)

KSOL (Key Social Opinion Leader)

Market Access

Multichannel Marketing

Non-personal Communication

Patient Empowerment

Patient Journey

POL (Patient Opinion Leader)

Patient Storytelling

Patient/Customer Centricity

Patient/Customer Engagement

Sales Force Effectiveness

SMAC (Social, Mobile, Analytics, and Cloud)

Target Audience

Transparency

Value-Added Services

Value-Based Messaging

Table 1: A Non-Definitive List of Pharma Marketing Buzzwords. These “buzzwords” were evaluated in a recent Pharma Marketing News survey. See “Grading Pharma's Favorite Buzzwords” for a summary of the results.

© 2015 Pharma Marketing Network. All rights reserved. Pharma Marketing News

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closed-loop conversations or be managed more effectively— they want meaningful, genuine dialogue” (read “Pharma Is from Mars, Patients Are from Venus”; http://bit.ly/1NHfaQB). Unhealthy Obsession? “We on the commercial side of the business have an unhealthy obsession with ‘buzzwords’,” said Timothy White, Senior Director & Head of Global Customer Interaction Management at Lundbeck. “From Value Added ‘Beyond the Pill’ Patient-Centric Services to Integrated Multichannel Customer Centric Closed Loop Marketing, it often seems we spend more time marketing our own innovative ideas than actually innovating for patients, caregivers, and healthcare professionals (HCPs).” Sometimes, notes White, marketers cannot articulate the usefulness of the buzzwords they use. For more, read “Pharma's Love Affair with Buzzwords”; http://bit.ly/1PgKZWC In Defense of Buzzwords Most of the terms in Table 1 (page 1) are part of the pharma marketing lexicon, which is not shared with the “target” audiences of pharma marketers. It’s only in the closed, small world of industry conferences, ad agency press releases, and marketers’ LinkedIn pages that these terms may be seen and heard by the public. Therefore, my guess is that marketing

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speak has little effect on pharma’s reputation among ordinary, every day patients and physicians. To be on the safe side, however, the industry should limit the use of buzzwords in communications to consumers and physicians. Aside from hurting pharma’s reputation, many buzzwords may not even be useful or understandable by industry insiders. Sarah Morgan, a communications consultant writing for InTouch Solutions, recently challenged pharma marketers to “take note of the different acronyms and buzzwords [heard at meetings], and when it’s over (not during — you don’t want to embarrass anyone) pull a colleague aside and ask him or her to define them. More often than not, people have a general sense of what they believe the term means, but they’re not really certain” (read “Surviving Buzzworld: Beware the Buzzwords of Pharma Marketing”; http://bit.ly/1F4FjXO). Pharma Buzzword Bingo All this buzz inspired me to develop The Pharma Buzzword Bingo Card (see Figure 1, below) , which anyone can use at industry conferences and internal meetings to gauge the “buzzwordiness” of the meeting. Continues…

Figure 1. The Pharma Marketing Buzzword Bingo Card. The card on the left was from Transforming Healthcare Conference and the card on the right was from iPharma 2015 (see text). Note: A speaker at iPharma 2015 opened a remark with the phrase “As a pharma guy…”, which is a generic version of PharmaGuy, a brand name buzzword.


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I used the Buzzword Bingo Card while virtually “attending” the Transforming Healthcare Conference that was hosted by MM&M on April 30, 2015 and when I physically attended CBI’s iPharma 2015 conference. Both conferences were held in NYC. I followed the MM&M conference via the Twitter #transforminghealthcare hash tag. Of course, in neither case was it possible for me to hear every buzzword, but whenever I did hear (or see) a buzzword (or equivalent term) I marked it off on my Pharma Buzzword Card. For the MM&M event, I was able to mark off 7 out of 24 buzzwords. Thus, this conference has a buzzword score of 29% (7/24). For the CBI conference, I marked off 13 buzzwords for a score of 54% (13/24). Actually, I achieved PharmBINGO because the whole bottom row was marked off (see Figure 1, page 2). You can download your own Pharma Buzzword Bingo Card and compare your results to mine: http://bit.ly/PharmaBuzzBingo Grading Pharma's Favorite Buzzwords To distinguish between useful and useless industry buzzwords, Pharma Marketing News hosted a survey that asked respondents to grade the terms in Table 1. There were 115 total responses, 54 (50%) from pharma marketing ad agencies, consultancies, or service providers and 28 (26%) from the pharmaceutical, biotech, or drug device industry. Sixty-three percent (63%) of respon-dents were “very supportive” of the pharmaceutical industry and 27% were “somewhat supportive.” Only 3% said they were very or somewhat unsupportive of the industry. Respondents were asked to grade at least 10 of the words in the list according to these parameters: • Very useful (rating = +10) • Somewhat useful (rating = +5) • No opinion (rating = 0) • Could do without (rating = -5) • Dump it now! (rating = -10) The terms were presented in random order. In the end, terms received between 96 and 111 ratings each. In addition, respondents were asked his or her level of agreement or disagreement with the following statements/points of view regarding pharma marketing buzzwords such as the ones in Table 1: A. Some technical buzzwords such as “multichannel marketing” & “non-personal © 2015 Pharma Marketing Network. All rights reserved. Pharma Marketing News

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communication” negatively affect pharma’s reputation among patients and physicians. B. Buzzwords like “patient centricity” were introduced just for appearances only (i.e., to bolster pharma’s reputation). C. Pharma marketers should spend less time thinking up buzzwords and more time actually implementing effective customer communications. D. As long as there are pharma marketers there will always be pharma marketing buzzwords. Survey Results See Figures 2, 3 and 4 on pages 4 and 5 for a summary of the results to date. For up-to-date results, go here: http://bit.ly/buzzwordshare. If you haven’t done so already, you can take the survey here: http://svy.mk/1ITn5ev Looking at each buzzword in Figures 2 and 3, if the bar extends into the gray region (left), then respondents think the term may need to be dropped. The farther to the left (-10 rating on extreme left), the more they feel it should be dropped. Whereas, if the bar extends to the right into the pink region (+10 rating on extreme right), the respondents think the term is more or less useful. Overall, respondents think the commonly-used terms “Closed-Loop Marketing,” “Disruptive,” “Gamification,” and “Going Beyond the Pill” are less than useful and the industry can more or less do without them. A few uncommon terms like KSOL and SMAC are also in this category. “Big Data” gets a somewhat negative rating, but it seems it will live on. Whereas agency respondents don’t like “Innovation,” pharma respondents think it’s OK. The same for “Value-Added Services.” Pharma respondents like “Transparency,” but agency people have no opinion one way or the other. Obviously, pharma people like to think what the industry does is innovative and transparent. These terms, however, are less relevant to agency people who offer “value-added services,” which some in the industry might think are not so valuable after all! Buzzword Blame Game Who’s to blame for creating buzzwords? One respondent commented: “Don’t just blame the marketers. The people selling ideas to them are probably more at fault.” While the ratings are similar among both camps, the differences in opinion of agency and pharma respondents regarding a few terms should be mentioned. Continues…

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Survey Results

Figure 2. Rating of Buzzwords (ALL Survey Respondents). See text for explanation of scale and color code. N=115.

Figure 3. Rating of Buzzwords (Agency Survey Respondents, N=54, vs. Pharma Survey Respondents, N=28). See text for explanation of scale and color code.


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“I’ve been in the industry over 18 years, and our agency has helped launch and build momentum for hundreds of products and services. We know what the media and industry thought leaders want to hear about new and emerging growth companies. We find ourselves playing devil’s advocate, pushing our clients to think strategically about how their product or solution is truly innovative and differentiated from others in the marketplace. Sometimes that message gets through to clients, and sometimes it does not. Figure 4. Opinions Regarding Buzzwords. See text for an explanation.

Respondents were divided regarding the possibility that buzzwords negatively impact the reputation of the industry (43% agree, 36% disagree). Over 60% of respondents think some buzzwords like “patient centricity” were introduced for appearances only. Although over 90% of respondents think pharma marketers should spend less time thinking up buzzwords and more time actually implementing effective customer communications, there is no hope that buzzwords will disappear—over 90% of respondents believe that as long as there are pharma marketers there will always be pharma marketing buzzwords. Several survey respondents suggested additional candidates for buzzwords, including: • • • • • • • • • • • •

closing the gap customer facing customer table deep dive interoperability (as in EHR's) gamifying Influence Mapping Internal matrix/stakeholders market-leading/market-leader moving the needle patient-focused socialize (as in "once we agree on a strategy, I'll 'socialize' it with senior management”)

Some Comments from Survey Respondents Molly Thompson, Account Director, Biotech and Pharma Practice Lead, Crossroads PR and Marketing, sent the following comment via email: “As a PR and marketing firm that serves the B2B technology and biotech/pharma tech industries, I can't count the number of times a client has told us they are the ‘only end-to-end, market-leading, innovative, disruptive, revolutionary solution’ to serve their market.


“A lot of our clients are in the fundraising phase or playing an active role in M&A activity, so we encourage them to look at their messaging through the investor lens. Investors don’t care about buzzwords and marketing fluff; they want to see the facts. While the company may very well be the best, the first or the only ones at what they do, our job is to draw out the proof points to support those claims. Those are much stronger than any adjective or descriptor you could use.” Comments from survey respondents included: “[Often buzzwords] are used in place of a meaningful review of goals, objectives, costs and desired outcomes,” said a respondent. “While some of these buzzwords can be useful, I honestly think people use them without even knowing what they mean,” said Dyan Bryson, Director, Patient Advocacy at Retrophin. “For instance – ‘innovation’; for an industry that is so slow to adopt anything new ‘innovation’ is actually ‘late adoption’ of some competency that other industries have already fully embraced. This especially applies to ANYTHING related to patients!” “Buzzwords would be more useful if they were looked on as descriptive words or phrases to help the listener understand what you are talking about,” said Ray Chepesiuk, Commissioner, Pharmaceutical Advertising Advisory Board (PAAB). Some buzzwords describe something that should be done … like patient centricity. When was the patient not the focus of healthcare?” “A few random thoughts” from an anonymous agency respondent: !

PharmaGuy – definitely the most useful buzz word and never goes out of style! (Kind of like Hawaiian shirts) :-) Continues…

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Value-based messaging – If it’s not of value, should we be messaging it anyway?? Patient: journey, storytelling, centricity, etc – We need to start acting on putting the patient first vs just talking about it. Pharma is consistently ranked at the bottom of industries that are trusted. Until we change that, we have not truly put the patient first! Disruptive – I’m so over this term. Gamification – Great concept if it’s done well. Problem is… just “gamifying” something doesn’t make it valuable. So many bad attempts at gamifying and/or creating an “app for that.” Please, someone kill "disruptive."

“Problem isn't so much the existence of buzzwords, but the misuse & appropriation of buzzwords (e.g., big data, patient engagement) when they don't apply,” said an anonymous media person/blogger. “Many buzzwords are useful shorthand within the industry,” said an anonymous agency respondent. “They're only problematic when we use them with outsiders. Kind of like wearing your house slippers to meet a friend for coffee.” “Been in the biz for 30+ years” said Jerry Amari, Creative Director—Art and Design at M Health. “Buzzwords come and go. I think it's a way to show that you stay current with the jargon. Some


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folks are impressed with the fact that you know all the latest buzzwords. Sometimes you're in trouble if you don't (unfortunate). Woe be to those who use the outdated ones...” “Buzzwords in my opinion come up because marketers in pharma are still more focused and rewarded internally on appearance of what they do, not necessarily on patient satisfaction with the product they market,” said Rob Nauman, Principal at BioPharma Advisors. “Buzzwords are a form of internal communication short hand to help clear through the clutter.” “Buzzwords, whether we like it or not, are effective,” said an anonymous publisher/blogger. “In fact, these terms wouldn't be considered buzzwords if they hadn't already caught on. One thing we can give Pharma marketers credit for is knowing how to generate buzz! Others need to learn from their tactics and borrow some ideas (although budget is a big factor).” Timothy White said it best: “Let’s imagine a world where all these common buzzwords were real, where we were developing truly innovative services in combination with our novel new compounds that were improving or extending the lives of people; where pharmaceutical representatives were trusted advisors to medical professionals, relied upon to both educate about new treatments AND facilitate and coordinate various services for patients.” Pharma Marketing News

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