How to talk to your doctor: creating great advertising in the

pharmaceutical industry

Philip Reynolds

Palio+Ignite

The challenge: getting off the pharma bike path

The solution: insight-based advertising with some kick

• Learn about your target and discover a deep insight about them

• If possible, find a competitive advantage for your product

• Build to a differentiating position

• Execute against a single-minded idea

Emotional insight: Stribild

• HIV medication launched in 2012

• Benefit: 1-pill-a-day convenience

• Insight: starting HIV therapy means you’re sick, life is over

• Solution: Starting Stribild means you’re starting a new, better phase of life

Stribildjournal ad

• Text here

Emotional insight: Brevibloc

• Intravenous heart rate agent used in hospital critical care

– Requires monitoring/allows adjusting

• Critical care physician needs to feel like a life-saver in command

• “Minority Report” concept turns potential drawback into benefit by feeding need to be a hero in control

Breviblocjournal ad

Differentiating: ED drugs

Being single-minded: Creon• Market-leading pill for exocrine pancreatic

insufficiency (inability to digest food)

• Used in wide variety of conditions and patient types, by many different kinds of physicians—can there be a unifying creative idea?

• Analogy of mining equipment creates a simple icon of a hard-working, dependable brand

Creon poster

Being bold: Colcrys

• Gout medicine with long history

• Relaunched on news that it is packaged in a lower dose yet just as effective

• Creative idea answers the question, What if you take something strong and ask it to behave a little more sensitively?

Colcrysjournal ad

As it is in my business, so shall it be in yours

• Communicate with a simple idea

• Build the idea from an insight about your customer

• Don’t be afraid to be different

• Find your industry’s beach, and stay far away from it!