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Skills For Success

May/June 2002

Back to the Basics:

What Every Medical Marketer Needs to Remember About Branding

Faith S. Tomases
Tomases+Company, New York, NY

In this era in which brands are so important, it is crucial that marketers don’t lose sight of the basics of branding—the essential elements that define any brand’s success (or failure). This article reviews the key components of branding, exploring what a brand is, why brands have become soimportant and what the trends are in brand management.

What is a Brand?

A brand is a name or trademark that identifies a product or service as coming from a specific source. A brand represents the feelings, experiences and associations of consumers. Where a product provides tangible benefits—such as cleaning your clothes—a brand represents the intangibles that consumers value.

Brands endow a product with credibility, assurance, status, quality. They allow marketers to differentiate on the basis of attitude or image rather than concrete attributes. And, most important, brands are the way marketers reflect their product’s positioning.

Positioning is the relative place in their minds consumers put a brand: For Adults or Children. Extra Strength or Mild. Every Day or Occasional Use. Daytime or Nighttime. Especially for Seniors. Increasingly, product positioning is based on abstract concepts of lifestyle and attitude: How I see myself. Who I want to be.

The more similar the attributes of all products in a category, the more important are the intangible dimensions of a brand’s positioning to allow it to stand out. This is particularly true for luxury goods, beauty aids, cigarettes and automobiles. Brands offer something consumers can identify with, a way to make a statement about themselves, to show membership in an exclusive club. For example, ibuprofen is available over the counter for pain relief. But which brand do consumers choose—Advil, Motrin, Excedrin IB? Allergy sufferers can use an over-the-counter product—national or store brand. Or, they can ask their doctors for a stronger, prescription brand such as Claritin, Allegra or Singulair. The positioning of each of these “designer” brands influences which one the consumer will request.

Brands Are Big Business

A known brand brings with it recognition, confidence, a sense of quality. It is a vehicle for creating an emotional bond with the consumer. Brand names are now considered so valuable to corporations that they are assigning them dollar value on their balance sheets. One vice president of Coca-Cola was quoted as saying that if all the physical assets of The Coca-Cola Company were destroyed tomorrow, whoever owned the rights to the trademark could immediately get a loan to rebuild everything.

As it becomes increasingly expensive to introduce new products, and since the majority of new drugs in development will never reach Phase III trials, it is less risky to enter a new product or market with an existing brand name. Following is an outline of the major trends in branding today:

1. Cross-Category Brand Extension—Because brands have so much power to sell and develop customer loyalty, and because they have their own heritage, brand names increasingly are being used to allow marketers to broaden their segment’s offering or to enter new product categories via revised formulation or new indications. For example, the Tylenol brand is now on products for cough and cold, flu, sinus pain, nighttime, children, women, and extended relief of arthritis pain, in addition to the initial regular and extra strength varieties. Alka-Seltzer Plus moves that brand from upset stomach to cough and cold symptoms. Zoloft, once indicated solely for depression, is now approved for severe affective disorders including obsessive-compulsive disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder. And Vioxx, while advertised for osteoarthritis, is also indicated for severe pain in adults and primary dysmenorrhea.

2. Umbrella Brand/Sub-brand—An outgrowth of the first trend is the use of sub-brands marketed under a parent umbrella name. For example, Dr. Scholl’s stands for foot care and comfort. When the company developed specialty products to use just for blisters and calluses, wart removal and pedicures, they introduced the sub-brands Cushlin, Clear Away and Pedicure Essentials. The subbrands are used to sell the line to a different, larger audience and to indicate that there is a significant difference in the products. By identifying these new products with a sub-brand and the Dr. Scholl’s parent brand, the marketers brought the Dr. Scholl’s reputation and heritage to a new area. Ortho-McNeil Pharmaceutical has pursued a similar strategy with Ortho Tri-Cyclen for birth control and Ortho-Prefest for use during menopause, while Johnson & Johnson capitalized on the Band-Aid brand recognition in its introduction of Band-Aid Blister Block.

3. Licensing—As brands are increasingly used to position and differentiate on the basis of a lifestyle, attitude or image, the brand name takes on a life of its own. Marketers can increase revenue by licensing the brand name for categories further afield from its original product base. For example, the Playtex brand is used in nursing products and tampons as well as bras and other apparel.In these instances, the value of the brand feeds off itself. Brand awareness is expanded and advertising becomes stronger and more effective since one ad supports the brand name in all categories.

4. Globalization—Brands are marketed internationally and brand names are recognized around the world. This is happening because companies want to grow and going overseas is one way to expand their markets. The global marketplace and direct-to-consumer advertising campaigns that extend well beyond our shores have made overseas consumers accustomed (and loyal) to many US company brand identities.

5. Co-Branding/Dual Branding— Two names are better than one. By jointly marketing and promoting branded components of ingredients, marketers increase the quality perception and capitalize on existing brand recognition and loyalty. Not only do computer manufacturers promote their Intel Inside, but Betty Crocker highlights Hershey’s Dutch cocoa in its SuperMoist Cake mix, while L.L. Bean coats are made with Gore-Tex fibers. In the pharmaceutical world, Gas-X now contains Maalox and Abbott Laboratories’ glucose testing products are dual branded MediSense Precision.

6. Family Branding—Some marketers segment their product offering within the original business category to grow by bringing a broader base of consumers into their franchise. This is often done to expand the price or quality range or to indicate a different usage occasion. Wyeth Consumer Health Care has done this with Centrum Silver, Centrum Performance and Centrum Kids. There is GyneCort and Gyne-Lotrimin, Clear Blue and Clear Plan Easy, and again Abbott Laboratories’ Precision PCx, Precision Q.I.D., Precision Xtra, Precision Sure-Dose and Precision Link.

7. Private Label—Because brands, especially national brands, elevate the perceived quality level, many retailers are developing brand names for their private label or proprietary products. These names serve to separate the store or house brand from generics and also establish reputation and loyalty. For example, A&P’s house brand has gone from Anne Page to America’s Choice and Home Depot has Husky Tools. The power of brands is reflected in how they are copied by the house brand or generic. For example, the Duane Reade store brand of stomach reliever is a pink product branded Pink Bismuth while their cough product is Tussin, respectively cannibalizing the Pepto-Bismol and Robitussin brand equities.

8. Celebrity Brand Endorsement—Because celebrities are already known by consumers and their names already have recognition in the marketplace, pharmaceutical manufacturers are capitalizing on them to endorse brands. By associating their name, their reputation and achievement, and their image and persona with the brand, the celebrity spokesman reinforces the brand’s position. This is exemplified by Olympic figure skating champion, Dorothy Hammill, speaking for Vioxx and by the switch in Viagra promotion from Bob Dole to a younger Mark Martin as spokesperson.

9. Franchising—Brands represent a promise—of consistency, of quality, of what you are going to get. Consumers can walk into a McDonald’s anywhere in the world and get a hamburger with no surprises. The strength of brand names has led to the growth of franchises and chains. Opening Lenscrafters in a new city or neighborhood allows a retailer to bring the recognition and equity of the brand name to his business and a stature that Mainstreet Opticians just does not have. As a result, however, the large brands and chains are causing the demise of the corner bookstore, hardware merchant, restaurant and drugstore.

10. Revitalization—Brands have life cycles and successful management is important to their survival. Some brands have remained steady in the marketplace over time, such as Colgate. Some go out of favor or disappear, like Ipana. St. Joseph’s brand aspirin is an excellent example of a brand that has seen a new life. Barely staying alive as a product for children, the marketers have capitalized on the new daily use of aspirin for heart health care and cardiac prevention The brand has been repositioned as low strength for adults, and with new packaging and marketing communications, sales have taken off.

What are the lessons of these trends for the pharmaceutical marketer to successfully build or preserve a brand? First, as the world becomes more complex, as the number of products mushrooms, as the importance of brands grows and as the designated target market become more specific, it is critical that the marketer create a unique positioning, a focused appeal, a distinctive image and a clear message.

Second, it is imperative that marketers develop strong brands to establish trust and to put brand loyalty in place, so that as patents expire, consumers will want and ask for the brand name instead of accepting the less expensive generic. And, as prescription products move to OTC, brand loyalty is maintained.

Third, with the growth of competition and the increasing use of expensive consumer advertising to pull demand, elements of branding must be in place to assure that marketing efforts and expenditures are made effectively.