I've decided to make public the letter I sent to the CEOs of the 50 top pharmaceutical firms urging a Word-of-Mouth (WOM) only launch of their next significant product.
So far, polite interest, but no action.
I'm posting it in the hope that some gutsy pharmaceutical marketer who wants to make history -- and a lot of money for his/her company -- with me will see it and take action.
If you know of any products that would be suitable, let me know, or -- more importantly -- let the relevant marketers know.
In the meantime, I'm working with several other companies who will be taking a modified version of this approach but who are not ready to let me go public with it. A couple of these will be very visible blockbusters that I think will make history. Stay tuned.
——— ———
CEO
XYZ Pharmaceuticals
Address
City, State Zip
Re: How to Solve the Current Pharmaceutical Crisis.
Dear ————,
You are in the midst of a major crisis. I have a solution.
I’m writing to you because this problem can only be solved at the highest level.
The problem: Physicians and patients are not paying attention to your messages. Traditional promotional costs have escalated to an intolerable level. This is inflating prices, causing a cascade of other crises.
I’m in a unique position to solve the problem: Thirty-five years ago I revolutionized pharmaceutical marketing by inventing peer influence groups. We’ve reached the end of an era. It’s now time for another major change.
With a fundamentally new approach you will cut spending on new drug launches from hundreds of millions of dollars to about $25-50 million with a greater effect than with traditional promotional efforts. The saved money will give you a higher profit margin while allowing you to lower drug prices. The launch will be twice as fast, cost one tenth as much and be multiples more profitable. The physician’s adoption cycle will be dramatically shortened. Physicians will use the drug more skillfully and more effectively, further driving its sales.
Here’s the solution: You announce that the next significant product will be launched totally by an organized word-of-mouth campaign, without traditional promotion. The only way that physicians can learn about the drug will be physician-to-physician communication: Instead of traditional advertising and detailing, physicians will be directed to a carefully orchestrated series of materials and events in which: the clinical investigators will communicate their experience with the super experts who in turn will communicate with the experts in each field. They will talk with specialists who will talk with generalists. All of this will be accomplished by a systematic approach that will move the physician quickly through the decision process with physicians’ enthusiastic cooperation, using a mix of teleconferences, web sites, e-mail, webcasts, podcasts, blogs, streaming media, roundtables, meetings, personal communication, etc. that weren’t possible as an integrated system even a couple of years ago.
The benefits are enormous for a pharmaceutical firm with the vision to be first. It will be perceived as the boldest move in the entire history of marketing, while in actuality the risks will be low. Physicians aren’t really listening much, their adoption using conventional promotional techniques is slow, and they mostly get convinced to use new drugs through physician-to-physician channels anyway. It will further be perceived as honest, open, and physician/patient oriented. Everybody wins.
I am not talking about leaving this to chance. I am talking about an organized, systematic approach. It’s based on an extensive analysis of how physicians really make decisions, all elements of which I have already executed successfully and outlined in my book, The Secrets of Word-of-Mouth Marketing: How to Trigger Exponential Sales Through Runaway Word of Mouth.
Why take this bold, new step? Aside from the positive PR that it will cause, there is another very sound and newly measured marketing reason. Word of mouth is 5,000 times more powerful than conventional marketing. It turns out that — contrary to common marketing belief — the more advertising and sales rep activity, the less the word of mouth! The reason is that people do not want to look foolish by telling their colleagues about things that they think they already know about from a huge amount of promotional activity. So, the more you advertise and detail, the more you are shooting yourself in the foot and the less efficient is your marketing.
I realize that this is going to take a huge amount of boldness and vision — an entirely new mindset. There are a lot of turfs that will be shaken up and vigorously defended. It will probably be tried first by a small to middle size David going up against a Goliath. But it might be a large firm that realizes that the old ways of promoting pharmaceutical products are dying, or whose sales force is stretched too thin.
I welcome the opportunity to sit down with you to discuss more of the details. I’m eager to work with a company that has the right kind of drug and is ready to make the right kind of commitment at the highest level, since that’s the only way it will work. I look forward to putting our heads together soon.
Cordially,
George Silverman,
President,
Market Navigation, Inc.
Technorati Tags: Word-of-mouth marketing, Pharmaceutical Marketing
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