Familiarity at the Forefront: Pharma Brand Development

In the past, the pharmaceutical industry primarily utilized sales representatives to sustain familiarity with customers, influencing decisions and product selection. Pharmaceutical marketing and promotional activity continues to be extremely logical and product oriented.

In an increasingly digital society where face-to-face interaction is less common, communication must make up for the absence of familiarity. This change necessitates a review of how pharmaceutical brands operate.

Traditionalists may claim that this strategy has no place in the pharmaceutical industry. However, more often than not, doctors are not the ones to decide whether to prescribe a certain medication, which is why using emotion is crucial.

With both B2C and B2B approaches, engaging clients to prescribe is not the main objective. In order for the brand to come to mind when a customer is ready to prescribe, it must create memory associations in their minds.

In order to enter a more lucrative market for brand development, companies need to extend beyond medicine to the difficulties faced by patients. This value-beyond-the-product strategy, developed to solve typical customer concerns, is already prevalent in the B2B sector.

Brett Knutson from Wunderman Thompson said that “While product innovation is critical, being a leader means that innovation goes beyond the product itself to help customers realise their vision along the entire journey.”

Relevance, beyond just awareness, is what familiarity is all about. Both attracting new customers and retaining existing ones should be the primary objectives of pharmaceutical marketing.