Do You Recognize Your Situation In Any of Our Case Studies?
Eularis is engaged in work that covers a wide variety of issues for pharmaceutical companies. The case studies mentioned below all resulted in significant growth in the bottom line for the brands concerned. Our work is not restricted to the areas shown in these case studies, but they provide a flavor of the kind of work we have carried out.
1. Case Study 1: Declining Market Share from New Entrants Eating Away at the Market
2. Case Study 2: Declining Market Share Despite Increases in Marketing Budget
3. Case Study 3: Poor Performing Sales Force and Market Share Plateau
4. Case Study 4: Early Lifecycle but Not Growing Significantly Compared with Competitors
5. Case Study 5: Significant Advertising Budget but No Growth Seen Despite Advertising Winning Awards!
6. Case Study 6: Poor Patient Adherence in a Chronic Therapeutic Area and Patient Adherence Programs Not Helping Measurably
7. Case Study 7: Determining How to Allocate Globally for Maximum Global Bottom Line
1. Case Study 1: Declining Market Share from New Entrants Eating Away at the Market
Background
A core brand was launched in the 90s and was a star performer for its company in a high revenue therapy area. As the years went by, it became a large brand for the company and was well respected in the market. However, over the last few years, performance has declined. Market share fell month after month. The marketers did not know why. The product was good, run by a strong team with a good plan and focused on accountability and performance. The business unit submitted detailed financials with key performance indicators and updated forecasts. The team tried increasing spend but the brand consistently dropped in market share, despite spending close to double any of the competitors. A new head of marketing came in. She felt that they were missing something obvious and needed to dig deeper and understand the problem before throwing more money at it. She decided to use marketing analytics - basically a mathematical way to identify relationships between variables to increase effectiveness of marketing activities.
Actions
The marketing head employed the Eularis analytics approach, designed especially for this industry and situation. This process highlighted where the problem lay. The brand was well liked by Physicians, hence the high market share. The messages were strong; the sales force was skilled; the promotional activities were also strong and yet smaller competitors were stealing market share nibble by nibble. It would be easy to say: That is just how it is, we will have to live with it, but the analytics uncovered three interesting areas that could be improved. These were acted upon by the client.
Results
Six months later, the analytics were re-employed. The recommendations had been followed and the brand had gained 1.7% market share and this was the first market share increase in several years.
2. Case Study 2: Declining Market Share Despite Increases in Marketing Budget
Background
A successful brand had been in decline for several years. To slow the decline, the company increased activity spend dramatically to almost double its competitors and yet the brand continued to decline, with no market share impact from increased spend and activities. The company was confused as they were using extensive ROI analyses and allocating according to these so could not understand why they continued to decline so much. In fact, the therapeutic category (and the industry in general) were undergoing significant changes which meant that utilizing traditional ROI analyses to determine how to allocate budget moving forward was a fundamentally flawed exercise.
Actions
The Eularis system analyzed the brand and its competitors and determined how focus and budget should be directed in various areas. For example, it showed which were the key messages which would have maximum impact on the brand performance, how the reps should be focusing their time within a detail call. It also showed which communication activities were not having any impact at all on prescribing and could be dropped, and which should be increased and the budget diverted from the poor performing activities to the high performing ones. The brand team refocused on messages with potential to give the most marked increase in market share by:
Reallocated marketing effort to areas analytics recommended
Trained rep to do detail differently with different emphasis
Reallocated current budget to budget mix recommended by system.
Results
The brand market share went up by 0.8% in the six month period after the first analytics were carried out, despite almost three years of straight decline previously. On top of that, the brand was now performing at a much higher level market share, which meant that the good work done in the past few months had actually not only moved the brand up to where it had, but now it had boosted results enough to support an even higher market share. In the 6 month period following this the brand market share increased by 2.2% market share. Subsequently, the team now redo it every six months to ensure new market environment and other factors are accounted for continually for continuous refinement and growth in market share. In the latest analysis the brand had grown even more.
3. Case Study 3: Poor Performing Sales Force and Market Share Plateau
Background
A primary care brand was in a crowded marketplace at a decent market share and had been growing well until the last two years. The brand team regularly commissioned a number of primary market research studies including Detail Follow-ups (DFUs) to understand how the detailing was influencing the Doctor perceptions of the product and how the sales force was performing. They had data on message recall and on share of voice and knew they were performing at the same level as key competitors in this regard. Using this data, they had formulated some changes but alas, the market share results remained the same. The team commissioned Intent to Prescribe research to uncover the Physicians intent following the changes implemented. Physicians said they intended to prescribe more of this brand but sales continued to stay static. Undeterred by failure to impact a change, the team searched for other methods to measure performance and uncover real influencers that would have more actionable recommendations. To answer these questions, the team turned to Eularis analytics. They were eager to know the following:
1. How effective are our reps in delivering key messages?
2. Is our key message differentiated enough against competitors?
3. How effective are our messages and should these be changed?
4. Which of our messages provide the most influence on changing actual prescribing behavior?
5. Are our sales materials providing the appropriate messages for most influence on prescribing?
6. Are our sales materials providing the best use of the messages?
7. Is our call frequency appropriate or should it be changed?
8. How much market share is our detailing getting us compared with our promotional activities?
9. How should the focus of the detail call be broken down?
10. What activities should we be teaching the reps to be able to do better?
11. We know our share of voice is the same as our key competitors but what are they doing differently to our sales force?
Actions
The Eularis analytics system was implemented to uncover that the field force activity (quality) was just supporting the current market share (i.e. equivalent to the current market share of 24.7%) but would not be effective in growing the market share if it continued as it was, despite the results of the intent to prescribe research. When looking at the overall analytics for the brand it was seen that, although the product messages were reasonably well entrenched from all the previous good work, the promotional effort was now lagging behind key product messages it had previously established. This means that the brand could defend its current market share but not necessarily get more market share from their budget if they continued doing what they were doing. Recommendations around message focus and focus within the detail call were made. For example, how the detail call should be broken down. The recommendations around messages, rep activity, detail aids (and promotional activity reallocation, although that is not within the remit of this article) was followed and the result was that, six months later, the brand was in much better shape.
Results
The market share had increased 3 market share points and importantly now the field force could clearly be seen to be having a real impact on market share results through the changes made in their activities.
4. Case Study 4: Early Lifecycle but Not Growing Significantly Compared with Competitors
Background
This brand had been launched for 2 years and had grown to a degree but not an impressive amount. Its key competitor was sitting on a huge market share and continuing to grow while this brand struggled along at a very modest market share. A plethora of analyses had been conducted and followed but the brand continued to struggle and not grow.
Actions
Eularis analytics were then employed as a last resort measure to attempt to impact the brands growth before a decision as to whether to continue marketing the brand or not was made. Key barriers to uptake of the brand were uncovered that had been previously thought to be not a problem in their other analyses. In addition, a tricky but significant issue was also uncovered for this brand. The Eularis team took all the data and ran extra mathematical analyses on it to see what was underlying this issue and how it could also be dealt with. The results of both sets of analytics were then utilized to make recommendations and an action plan for the brand.
Results
The brand doubled in market share within 2 months of implementation of the recommendations and after 6 months had increased by 8% market share.
5. Case Study 5: Significant Advertising Budget but No Growth Seen Despite Advertising Winning Awards!
Background
This brand was spending significantly on advertising. The overview analytics conducted by Eularis for the brand showed that, in its category, advertising was highly impacting return for the therapeutic category. However, for this brand, it was not supporting the brands market share, which was down to either poor content/messages or poor execution. Given that the team was spending significantly on this, and the advertising campaign had been the recipient of some advertising awards, the brand team wanted to be able to understand why the advertising was not performing and also to be able to correct the underperformance.The brand team had already commissioned a number of primary market research studies on brand awareness, ad awareness, brand images and attributes, recall of advertising content, brand ranking and preference, advertising vividness measures and more. They also had data on advertising spend and knew they were spending at the same level as key competitors. However, the advertising activity stubbornly remained unsupportive towards the brands market share despite it being clearly an influencer for the therapy category.
The team decided to use the Eularis Advertising Analytics to find the answers to these questions:
Is our key message differentiated enough in our campaigns?
How effective are our campaigns in delivering key messages?
How effective are our advertising messages and should these be changed?
Which of our advertising messages provides the most influence on changing actual prescribing behavior?
Is our advertising frequency appropriate or should it be changed?
Which advertising campaigns have given us what market share impact?
How much market share is our advertising getting us compared with our promotional activities?
What do we need to change to be able to do better?
How does our advertising agency compare to our competitors agencies in terms of results for their clients?
Actions
The Eularis advertising analytics system was implemented and the picture of this brand’s advertising broken down into content/themes, execution, frequency, individual campaigns and sentiment. The analytics provided answers to these questions and showed the key topics/themes that the advertising needed to be built around and highlighted some of the problems found in execution, suggesting what needed to be done to improve results in advertising effectiveness and bottom line results. The various campaigns were redone with the message was focused on the messages found to be having the most impact. The execution elements were also corrected.
Results
The results six months later, following action on the recommendations for the advertising, found that the content had much more impact and the execution had increased effectiveness resulting in improvements of 3.5% market share directly attributable to the advertising - for a change!
6. Case Study 6: Poor Patient Adherence in a Chronic Therapeutic Area and Patient Adherence Programs Not Helping Measurably
Background
A large Pharma brand was a star performer for its company in a high revenue therapy area. As the years went by, it remained a large brand for the company and well respected in the market. However, the brand team noticed that the compliance rates were hovering around 50% and realized that if they could improve this, even slightly, their CMO and CFO would be very happy with the bottom line profit improvements, given the eroding annual growth. To implement this improvement, they created numerous patient compliance programs, including putting significant budget into short message services (SMS) reminder programs to increase adherence. However, these programs were not having the desired impact on compliance and appeared to be wasting the significant resources being put behind them. The brand sought a way to understand how they could identify which factors were having the greatest impact on reducing patient compliance, which programs would have the most impact and bottom line improvement and how they could better employ their budget to improve patient compliance. They chose the 94.8 analytics approach, which examined current market data in the key areas found to influence patient compliance. The brand was used to treat a chronic condition which was symptomless but potentially fatal. The brand team knew that the adherence rate for their brand was only around 50% and had already implemented many different patient adherence programs in an attempt to address releasing some of the hidden value here. The brand team approached Eularis to understand which of their patient adherence programs were having what impact on bottom line results.
Actions
The analytics examined a number of intersecting areas that impact compliance and identified the relative importance of each for this brand:
Product attributes
Moderating factors
Non-intentional non-compliance
Compliance/Adherence programs
Emotional factors
This data was then validated and put into predictive analytics, which showed that specific emotional factors were the primary reason patients were non-adherent with this brand rather than non-intentional adherence, for which reminder programs like SMS might have been appropriate. It was clear from the results that only two of their eight patient compliance interventions were currently impacting adherence. The brand team refocused on the key messages in the patient adherence programs that addressed the underlying causes, implemented the type of programs that were shown to have an impact on this, reallocated their focus and budget to the areas recommended by the analytics.
Results
The results were impressive. Within 6 months of the analytics recommendations being implemented, the company was able to report that the compliance rates for their brand had improved significantly, meaning a bottom line increase from improvement in compliance alone of $67 Million - which was significantly more than the cost of the programs implemented - providing a strong return and a very happy CFO. Needless to say, the career prospects for this team within the company improved considerably.
7. Case Study 7: Determining How to Allocate Globally for Maximum Global Bottom Line
Background
One company has nine priority A1 brands in a mix of primary and secondary care. Until recently, the company had worked in a functional silo approach and each brand had a brand team in each country (plus regional and global brand teams). Performance of brands was mixed. But what about the company bottom line across brands? To understand this using traditional analytics is a difficult feat. The company operates in 107 countries and, taking into account different product/category/country combinations, the quantity of date to collect is significant. By undertaking an intensive concomitant four month project, the company gained the ability to determine, with high accuracy, which markets should receive what resources and how to allocate them within portfolios within a market. Once this was set up for all A1 products, the process would be redone annually but the time frame to do it thereafter would be only two months as the systems set in place first time round were established. The company was now able to know, with a high degree of mathematical accuracy, which products in which countries should spend what on marketing and, within a country and portfolio, how that budget should be allocated across activities for maximum bottom line growth for the company.
Data Collection
There were many factors to be considered when setting up the initial project. These included examining each brand and each of its segments (indications, target audiences, etc) in each country. They then needed to examine each country, the size of the markets, the growth potentials of the markets and the disease areas for each product. Eularis conducted market research in the main countries identified as the priority markets in terms of volume and/or growth potential. Given that the affiliates have a far greater knowledge of local market conditions and will need to execute strategies and tactics derived from the research in the long run, it was imperative to get their full participation and local research was done after identification of local issues with the local marketing teams. This involvement did include a political buy-in but the local teams also wanted access to the final data on their own markets as, clearly, this would help them get better results also.
This data was collected, with local input, in a significant market research project on each brand in each country which examined a variety of factors around the brands and their competitors. Consistent methodology was applied in each country and to each brand. The reason for this was that, previously, each brand had been using a variety of indices and analytics to determine how to allocate resources but they were not uniform in their approaches, although some regional groups had consistency across brands. Globally, it was like comparing apples and pineapples! After the research was done, the Eularis process was applied. Firstly, validation within categories to uncover growth drivers, then predictive algorithms for each and then individual brands in each country were analyzed together to uncover where the real growth opportunities were. Out of all the brands and countries analyzed, the ones with the highest growth potential were subjected to even more in-depth analytics right down to the level of messages and tactics with key stakeholders. It was discovered that the company had some serious mismatches between allocation and potential. The first insight generated was that the company was significantly over-investing in areas with lower growth potential (North America and Japan). North America and Japan were important markets for the brands but their potential did not justify the percentage of spend they were getting if the company’s bottom line was considered. The second insight generated was that there was under-investing in high growth potential markets such as Asia and Latin America. Together they were receiving only 24% of the global marketing budget and yet their growth analysis and profit potential analysis showed that they should, in fact, be receiving closer to 34%.The third insight generated from this was that three of its brands had the lion’s share of the marketing budget but these were the brands that had already grown and were less likely to grow as much as some of the smaller A1 brands. Imbalances across both the portfolios and regions emerged and if these were addressed, the potential increase in profitable growth was predicted to be in the hundred Million range!
Actions
To address these issues and ensure that the optimal growth occurred, the company started to reallocate overall budgets across portfolios and countries as recommended by the analytics, as well as across individual sales and marketing activities for each brand in each country for optimal global growth. Marketing budget was reallocated from the mature markets and products to the emerging opportunities in the way the analytics recommended. They freed up some of the investment in the U.S. and put it into where it would provide more return. It was not necessarily an easy process but the Global CFO saw it as a necessary one, given all the issues the industry and the company were facing with investors.
Results
The results two years later were good. They had continued high growth in priority A1 brands and countries which was higher than their key competitors. Importantly, not only their sales grew but so did the bottom line profit. The investors were also impressed and the share price increased despite a gloomy market. Everyone was happy: brand managers who saw their sales and bottom line growing, the country managers who saw the same, the global CFO who saw the global company bottom line grow and, finally, the CEO and investors who saw good growth and return for their efforts. Now the company is displaying the Eularis global results in an Intranet so that individual teams in any country can look at their data and pull out different cuts of data to compare it in different ways. Importantly, the project is an annual one and only takes two months to complete now that the resources and infrastructure are in place.
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