In most sectors, marketers have the luxury of talking directly to the consumer. With doctors in the middle responsible for writing prescriptions before a patient can even get a drug, pharmaceutical companies usually aren’t quite that lucky.
This is one of the challenges faced by Mitch West, director of consumer relationship marketing for GlaxoSmithKline. GSK was formed in late 2000, when Glaxo Wellcome merged with SmithKline Beecham. West joined Glaxo Wellcome prior to the merger in March 2000 to head up e-business and CRM. Before that, he oversaw integrated marketing at the Mead Johnson division of Bristol-Myers Squibb for products such as Enfamil, Boost and Sustical.
He began his career by working for Targetbase for 10 years, where his first assignment was programming databases for companies such as Warner-Lambert and R.J. Reynolds Tobacco. To reach patients who use medications such as Flonase, Advair, Avandia and Paxil, GSK’s Raleigh, NC-based pharmaceutical division sends more than 10 million pieces of direct mail annually, as well as e-mail newsletters, both from GSK itself and third-party partners like Yahoo! It’s often not easy, because the Food and Drug Administration reviews all communications.
"They’re sniffing around and looking at virtually any piece of consumer material we put out and giving their thumbs up or thumbs down. That’s a difficult environment," he says. "It slows down the process."
But despite the challenges, West enjoys this niche.
"There’s got to be emotion in the purchase to do really good CRM," he says. "And there’s a heck of a lot of emotion in pharmaceuticals. People are taking it for their very lives, or they’re supporting a loved one. I’m very excited to see what’s going to happen in the pharma world, because boy, is it new."
West talked with DIRECT recently about GSK’s CRM strategy.
DIRECT What were the challenges to implementing CRM at GSK after Glaxo Wellcome, which had an ongoing CRM program, merged with SmithKline Beecham, which didn’t? WEST We were integrating databases, integrating approaches, integrating strategy. [We had to figure out] what we were doing. Did we want to have an ongoing dialogue with the people who use our drugs, or did we just [want] to push out direct mail to send free trial coupons? And there was a lot of justification around finance—‘Does this make sense? Is there a better way? Can we achieve the same thing through television or print?’ ‘No, you can’t—and here’s why.’ There was a lot of education and the philosophical issues were huge, but I think we’re in really good shape right now.
DIRECT How does GSK judge the results of its CRM programs?
WEST The good thing about the consumer side is that it is infinitely measurable. The only issue is [also found in] packaged goods, where you’re using self-reported data. Before I send stimuli, whether it’s e-mail, a newsletter or direct mail, I’m going to ask how much you’re using this drug. I send you the stimuli, I don’t send them to a certain [segment] of people in the control [group], and I read the difference. Very straightforward. There is a self-reported bias, meaning that people are overstating how much they’re using. But they’re overstating in both the control and the test, so it doesn’t matter to me, because I have a control cell to compare it to. We do some matches to pharmacy benefit management (PBM) company data. Our data is passed to a third party and passed through encryption logic, and is completely secret. That same logic is passed from the PBM company and it goes to a third party and we get the data back, but it’s completely anonymous. I can’t link to your record and say, ‘Here’s your prescription usage over the past six months.’ I can do it aggregate. For a group of 100,000 people, I know roughly what their prescription patterns were, but I never know the individuals I’m dealing with.
DIRECT What types of pharmaceutical products do you find CRM works best for?
WEST CRM doesn’t work for acute conditions, like a vaccine. You go in, you get the shot, you’re done. What do I need to have a conversation with you for? A lot of the chronic medications work, diabetes is probably one of the better ones. It’s not like all of a sudden you’re going to be cured; you have to take your meds daily. We want to be there for you, we want to make it easier for you to remember. Asthma, allergies, those seem to work quite well in the CRM world. Sensitive disease states are poor for CRM. Do I really want to have a conversation with you about your herpes, or your hormone replacement therapy? And this may sound sexist, but men stink for CRM. They don’t read their mail, they won’t talk to anyone on the phone, they rarely read their e-mail unless it relates to sports or porno. (Laughs.) They’re just terrible for CRM, so any male-dominated disease states are poor for CRM.
DIRECT Do your print and TV campaigns encourage people to go to a Web site or call an 800 number?
WEST Virtually every drug we make and actively promote has a Web site. But clearly the strategy in most pharmaceutical companies is to [get you to] go see your doctor. The pharmaceutical industry is uniquely laser-focused on getting the consumer to go in and ask for the medication to start on therapy. That’s the most important step, to realize you have a problem and start on therapy. Take care of yourself. We’re trying to change that paradigm a bit. ‘OK, great. We spent all those dollars for you to go and start on the drug. Let’s give you a reason to stick with it.’ It’s a heck of a lot easier to keep somebody than it is to get them to start.
DIRECT Do you also work at building relationships with physicians and pharmacists? WEST We do—it’s just different. The primary medium for dealing with physicians and pharmacists is still face-to-face, so we have sales reps who do that for us. We’re trying to get a better handle on how to have that holistic view, but I wouldn’t say we have a centralized effort yet.
DIRECT Do you think physicians are interested in relationships with pharmaceutical companies?
WEST I don’t know about the depth of relationship [they want], but clearly they have to have some interaction with pharmaceutical companies. Physicians are under an enormous strain. Managed-care companies have made it virtually impossible for them to truly engage with their patients anymore. Now [managed-care firms] are more interested in volume than quality, so the average amount of time spent with a patient has declined precipitously in the last decade. If they’re trying to squeeze more patients in, and the number of pharmaceutical sales reps has grown probably tenfold in the last decade—if not twentyfold—somewhere there’s a disconnect. We have more shoe leather going in to talk to doctors who really don’t have the time to talk to us, so that’s the impetus for us to figure out something, whether it be CRM or sales force automation. Whatever you call it, at the end of the day it’s how do you maintain a decent dialogue with the physician that’s cost-effective and beneficial to both parties.
DIRECT Are there challenges in pharmaceutical CRM that marketers in other sectors don’t face?
WEST Absolutely. The biggest one is privacy. You’ve got federal and state legislation around what do you really have the right to know about somebody’s health condition. You’ve got the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. Are you selling or doing stuff with that data that you shouldn’t be? Are you opt-in? Another huge part of the puzzle is that we don’t have a straightforward [dialogue] in the pharma world. I can talk to the patient, but the patient can’t get my product until the doctor writes the ’script. So we’ve got to understand the patient/doctor relationship, because you don’t want to rub that the wrong way. You certainly don’t want a bunch of angry patients going into their doctor saying ‘I want this product, I need this drug,’ because that can backfire. And you don’t want a bunch of apathetic consumers who don’t give a squat and walk in like zombies waiting for the doctor to save their lives. So you have to strike a balance. There’s dynamics in the pharma world that are tougher. A lot of times [in marketing] it’s loyalty to a product or brand that you’re trying to achieve. In pharmaceuticals, sometimes it’s not loyalty you want, its compliance. Take your pills like the doctor said, for goodness’ sake. That’s good enough for us.
