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Increasing payer scrutiny and the rise of generics is making brand differentiation harder. As welfare systems reform and technology disrupts the industry, the clear objective for politicians, payers and physicians will increasingly be how to create the most value for patients at the lowest cost - and this means being patient focused.

CLEAR SETS OUT A NEW MODEL FOR BRAND DIFFERENTIATION

n many ways, the healthcare industry is like the financial services industry used to be: it

focuses on hard technical features such as rates and price, and often talks about customer centricity without fundamentally changing the customer experience.

These narrow technical definitions of value make it hard to differentiate brands over time and we are increasingly seeing payers define value as not just quantity of life, but quality of life.

Using our experience, working across the globe in OTC, pharmaceutical and health services, we have identified a number of ways in which businesses can break out of the old models of brand building and marketing and truly differentiate, by thinking differently about how to create value for HCP’s, payers and ultimately patients.

1. What business are we really in?Physicians come into healthcare to make a difference to their patients’ lives. When building our brands, we need to start with this as our context - not just the disease. Often in healthcare, we think narrowly about our competitive set and market. When working in the vitamins and minerals market, it is essential to look at the whole range of activities that people undertake to be healthier, not just their behaviour with nutritional supplements. By exploring and understanding how supplements fit into a broader repertoire of strategies, including exercise, hydration and juice drinks, we have been able to identify new opportunities for innovation and how to better organise the category. Our landscape includes physicians, carers, payers, and charities. We need to understand the full context of patients’ lives and the role our brand can play in them.(See Barclays Bank case study)

2. How to align the energies of your team to one clear purpose.It is hard to generate new ideas for value adding experiences if ultimately the focus is still on selling a pill. This tends to limit thinking to traditional activities. A higher brand purpose can inspire people to think differently about what they are here to do, and how they can create value for their customers and patients.(See USAA case study)

I

JAMESOSMONDCEO, CLEAR

A major point of differentiation occurs when you start to see and define the customer journey in the same way a customer does

B A R C L A Y S B A N K

When working with Barclays Bank we helped them to

view their true market as helping people to borrow and

buy, not selling credit cards. This helped to identify new

opportunities to create value in peer to peer payments.

In healthcare, taking a step

back and remembering that we are in the business of

helping people to get and stay well - not pill manufacturing or

patient processing - will help us spot new opportunities to

create value for patients.

3. The total customer journey from the patient’s perspective. A major point of differentiation occurs when you start to see and define the customer journey in the same way a patient does. Air travel does not start at check-in, but much earlier when considering destinations. Value in this industry has been created with inspiring and simple services; from courtesy cabs to the airport, to exclusive departure lounges. Virgin has even added value to the in-flight experience by having their captains draw attention to local landmarks as they fly over them. In healthcare, the opportunity is to consider the full patient journey and identify touchpoints where we can add value. The patient journey can be very simply broken down into the four motivations for wellness:

▪ avoid getting sick ▪ get well ▪ get well faster and more easily ▪ stay well

In recent weeks, both Samsung and Apple have made significant announcements about how they intend to use their technology to integrate multiple diagnostic and lifestyle apps to prevent illness and manage wellbeing. This presents a significant opportunity for healthcare businesses to become better integrated across the four motivations and add more value for patients. (See Virginia Mason case study) 4. How to drive insight into the heart of your organisation. This will require a huge cultural shift for healthcare companies, as currently more value is placed on hard clinical data rather than qualitative research. In a 2013 study, we found that just 18% of healthcare companies felt that they used and communicated insight effectively within their organisation whereas the scores for professional services companies were almost twice as high. This matters, as finding out how patients think, feel and act along the full patient journey is what brings clarity on where the opportunities are for differentiating your brand by adding further value to patients.(See Netflix case study)

5. How to treat physicians as people and not just prescribers. Across industries, the old segmentation model of prioritizing one big segment and tailoring messaging to them is being superseded by a micro-segmentation approach. Sales reps can now personalize each sales visit to connect effectively with the target segment. Understanding what each micro segment values improves relationships, word of mouth and sales conversion.

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U S A A

USAA is a financial services provider for the US Armed Forces. Their purpose is to

serve those that serve us. This clear focus on making the lives

o f the armed forces and their families easier led them to

create the first smart phone cheque deposit application. They did this because they

realised that with customers serving oversees in remote

locations, depositing cheques can be very difficult.

In summary, brand differentiation is not easy. The only way any healthcare company will thrive in the future is by being clear on how to create more value, more efficiently for patients. It requires fundamental change to the organisation, the culture and even the business model, and this must be inspired by insight and driven through the business with a clear purpose. However, with the speed of change and disruption we are seeing in the world of wellness, we need to start now.

V I R G I N I A M A S O N

Integrated Practice Units combine primary care with

multidisciplinary specialists focused on addressing a

specific disease or group of related diseases. Using this approach, Virginia Masons

Spine Clinic has been able to more than halve lost days at

work due to back pain - one of the most prevalent causes

of sick days in the USA.

N E T F L I X

Netflix gathers and analyses data from all the content that

its customers watch to identify under-served segments. In to-tal it has identified 76,897 sub segments or micro genres. In

one case they found that view-ers of the BBC show ‘House

of Cards’ also liked films with Kevin Spacey and directed by

David Fincher. This connection led to a category redefining

‘House of Cards’ segment.

Clear is a global marketing strategy consultancy. Over the last 10 years we’ve worked with some of the world’s leading pharmaceutical and healthcare companies, including Novartis, GSK, Pfizer, and Reckitt Benckiser.