Is Pharma Focus Shifting from Branded to Unbranded?

Jon Richman had a nice post today on his Dose of Digital blog titled “RealAge, Wii Fit, and Pharma Marketing.” I’m a fan of the Wii Fit myself, and the game has definitely come up in brainstorms around Intouch as a way to reach new audiences, set within the healthy living conversation.

But there was actually a single sentence in his post - unrelated to the Wii - that sparked the idea for my post today:

“Every pharma company seems to be moving towards the realization that simply providing information about its products isn’t enough.”

Does this mean pharma is moving towards more unbranded or disease-state marketing over branded communications? It really depends on who you ask, which I’ve blogged about in the past.

It is interesting to note, however, (and some of you may remember) that providing “unbranded” disease state information is actually exactly how pharma started out on the Web. In the early days of the “World Wide Web,” first-generation versions of MSWatch.com, DiabetesWatch.com, and other content-rich sites like these provided support and helped sufferers better understand the chronic diseases they were living with. The branded message was secondary, and often completely absent. You might be surprised to learn (or remember) that some of these sites even had what’s now considered “social media” components, with features such as online forums, chat rooms, and other forms of user-generated content.

Pharma marketers were just beginning to experiment with the new online medium, and focusing on disease management felt more “comfortable” than just lambasting and broadcasting brand messages back then. It felt less self-serving. It was a way to test the waters of this exciting but confusing new medium.

It has only been within the last few years that I’ve seen marketers steer away from heavily unbranded or disease management approaches to a more centralized focus on BRAND BRAND BRAND. And with that uber-branded-focus came two things:

1. A bad reputation for Pharma
2. Further scrutiny from FDA

Think that is a coincidence?

I get it. Pharma marketing VPs ask tough ROI-related questions like “how does this disease.com site help my bottom line?” That can be a tough question to answer if you don’t have your strategies lined up properly. But if you do - and if you have decent tracking and analytics tools in place - you can prove the value of your unbranded programs.

What’s best for your brand - unbranded or branded? Depending on your objectives, who you’re trying to reach, and where they are in the treatment decision, it’s likely you’ll need a mix of both. But if the pendulum is indeed swinging back from heavily branded to more unbranded advertising, I don’t think it’s a bad thing for pharma right now. It’s definitely not a bad thing for consumers.