Patient Voices

Sep/10/2008 06:57

"One day I was waiting for the subway and looked down at the third raid and thought let me go touch it and end it now". This is the voice of a patient who has bipolar disorder and it's a powerful voice to listen to. The New York Times has has the stories of patients, in their own words, who have been diagnosed with bipolar disorder. This should be required viewing for everyone in DTC marketing.

I believe that that the drugs and medical devices we sell can enhance the quality of life for patients. But somewhere along the way I also believe that pharma marketers have lost a little bit of their passion as they continually struggle to justify, and re-justify, dollars for DTC advertising campaigns. This consistent process I believe is wearing some really great marketers down as they struggle again and again to provide ROI.

How many market research people are used to track DTC ROI versus really spending time to find out what consumers and patients are thinking about the brand and disease state? My guess is that there is a lot of money being spent on tracking studies so marketers can then show the results to management only to have to explain how they arrived at their ROI. Even then some senior managers look at DTC marketers with disbelief. I saw this when I conducted a pay-for-perfomance DTC online ad campaign that provided an ROI of over 5:1. Even though I had buy in from finance the Directors I worked for would not spend more money to continue the program. We even had a program that could target messages to patients just before they went to see their physicians and we declined this program.

I believe that there are two qualities that make a great DTC marketer: one is the ability to put yourself in your patients shoes and understand the decision matrix that a patient would go through when deciding on treatment options. The second is to really believe in your product and that it can help patients lead a better quality of life. When I was on the Cialis team and we were doing research with partners, women, and I heard the story of a woman who was suffering in a relationship with a husband who had ED because he had diabetes I wanted to reach out to her to let her know that there are treatment options. That is why I suggested that we add copy to the website to target partners and it was read according to the Web logs.

Still in todays ROI-MBA world we sometimes lose track of patients needs and their voices. It's important to hear them to remind us that we are not just selling a product but an ability to live life to the fullest despite medical conditions that would have, in the past, led to a diminished quality of life....

bipolards