In today’s heavily promoted medical marketing environment,an effective advertisement is one that captures the attention, heart andintuition of the physician and over time embodies the brand promise. Craftingan effective pharma advertisement requires a blend of creativity andsystematically gathered and channeled customer input.

Process Overview

The process of creating a pharmaceutical advertisementshould begin once the brand team has concluded several other key aspects of thebrand promotion development process. Specifically, the team already should have(in the following sequence):

1. Conducted a thorough market landscape and customerinsights evaluation

2. Established a market segmentation structure that willdrive the focus and priority of brand promotion

3. Elected a brand positioning statement and brand promise

4. Ideally, but not necessarily, built a compelling brandstory

Inherent Challenges

Before detailing techniques of ad testing, it is importantto enumerate a few important challenges. The first is that physicians tend tobe skeptical of pharma advertising primarily because of concerns aboutexaggerated product claims; this skepticism has become heightened in the wakeof new product safety considerations. Many also deny that advertising playseven the slightest role in their therapeutic decision making – their decisionsare based upon science and not symbolism—and thus have little regard foradvertising.

The second key marketing research challenge of involvingphysicians in the process of developing advertisements is the inherentsubjectivity in their reaction to visual stimuli. While physicians may respondmore uniformly to product messages, each becomes an “art critic” when lookingat advertising, often bringing varying opinions and personal preferences tobear in assessing visual imagery.

  • For example, one physician may regard a speeding car as a symbol of rapid onset of action and power, while another may view it as dangerous and suggestive of safety issues.
  • To one physician, a picture of rowers suggests power, smoothness and cohesion or teamwork, while to another physician it may represent a slow onset of action (vs. a power boat).

A third, related challenge is that advertisements often aredesigned to appeal to physicians’ emotions and intuitions in addition to theirrational sensibilities. However, similar to the way that they may deny theinfluence of advertising, doctors often are reticent to admit that emotionplays a role in their prescribing calculus.

A fourth challenge is that physicians pay cursory—ifany—attention to advertisements when looking through journals. They look at adsmore in-depth in marketing research than in real life. Therefore, it isincumbent upon the team to create ads that are at once credible, deliver themessage and communicate this message in an immediate, at-a-glance manner thatdoes not require “work” on the part of the doctor.

Start Broad: The Art Gallery

Since the creation of an effective advertisement requires agreat deal of work on the part of the creative team in channeling the feedbackfrom customers, it is best to anticipate several rounds of marketing research,each one intended to refine and narrow the potential spectrum of promotionalconcept candidates. Plenty of time should be allotted between sessions topermit the digestion and incorporation of marketing research feedback into thecreative process.

An effective way to initiate the process of pharmaceuticaladvertising crafting is to start broad—to test a wide variety of alternativepromotional concepts (prototype advertisements) with the target customeraudience(s). Typically, this phase is generally one in whichcustomers/respondents may be exposed to a relatively broad assortment of roughblack and white sketches (perhaps up to 25 to 30) using an art gallery approachto determine which concepts are: (1) effective in communicating the brandpromise, and (2) reside in physicians’ visual, emotional and intuitive“neighborhood” (as well as, conversely, those which may be potential “trainwrecks”).

This approach is most effectively achieved by employingone-on-one interviews (IDIs) with physicians since they permit in-depthassessment of physicians’ rationale and, to the extent possible, emotionalreactions to the visual stimuli. Following is the typical flow of these interviews:

Physician introduction and practice background: A briefintroduction is designed to understand the physician’s practice and relevantpatient and practice characteristics (volume of patients, treatment patterns,etc.).

General views on advertising: Before showing the physicianany advertisements, it is often helpful to find out how much he or she paysattention to advertising in the first place; as well, it is useful to gauge thephysician’s recognition of previous advertising for the brand itself since thismay influence reactions to new advertising.

Exposure to the product profile and brand promise: The brandpromise is a statement intended to embody the singular goal of the advertising– that one aspect of the brand which is an intriguing introduction and whichsummarizes the long-term value of the product; showing this to physicians helpsorient them to the purpose of the ad.

Evaluation of the ad concepts: During this component of theresearch, the physician is asked to browse a gallery of images and arbitratethe winners from the standpoint of their correspondence and effectivecommunication of the brand promise. These prototypes often are literallyaffixed to the walls so that physicians can shop the various pictures in anunrestricted manner.

Drill-down: Once the physician has selected three to fourconcepts that best correspond to the brand promise, the moderator will querythe physician specifically on the following facets of the concepts, including:

  • Attention-getting capacity
  • The take-home message communicated by the advertisement
  • Whether this is credible given the product profile
  • Whether it is motivating to seek more information about the brand (and/or to start prescribing the brand)
  • Why it is or is not consistent with the brand promise
  • Ideas for rendering the concept in an intriguing manner (i.e., recommendations on selecting an appropriate image, etc.)

During this stage of the research, it is critical to gaugeand observe how the physician is programmed to view the visual stimuli beingconsidered and how they resonate with him or her.  For example, certain specialists tend to scrutinize visualimagery in an extremely precise and technical manner. If images of an MRI areshown, results of a particular laboratory test, or even the way in which thepatient looks, physicians may even involuntarily attempt to render a“diagnosis.” Thus, there are subliminal cues within particular therapeuticareas that may mean nothing to the untrained eye but may speak volumes to agiven specialist. Based on the feedback collected from this initial round oftesting, the brand team selects the winning concepts to advance into a secondphase of testing. Typically, the creative department would amend and augmentthe winning concepts by incorporating the feedback.

Refine the Winners

The next step in the process should involve a more in-depthevaluation of a narrower set of concept prototypes based upon standardizedcriteria used to gauge the effectiveness of pharmaceutical advertising. Fromthe standpoint of data collection, this next round of research also shouldinvolve one-on-one in-depth interviews in multiple locations. Following is thetypical flow of these interviews:

Introduction and practice characteristics: Similar to theart gallery research, there should be an initial physician introduction andbrief discussion of the physician’s awareness and recognition of pharmaadvertising in general.

The “flash test:” The next step would involve testing the imageryof the concepts only through a flash test—no headlines, taglines or bodymessages are included. The purpose is to identify the concept with the bestvisual recall power and one that delivers brand essence in a single second bysimulating the natural habitat in which physicians encounter advertisements,i.e., quickly flipping through medical journals. Once all of the concepts havebeen flashed, physicians would be asked which one they recall most strongly.

Attention-getting capacity: After studying the concepts inmore detail, physicians are then shown more developed versions of the concepts(concepts which include headlines, taglines and body copy) and instructed torank them based upon attention-getting capacity. The objective here is toascertain which ad best attracts physicians’ attention given more time toreview them (again, prior to being exposed to any previous information aboutthe product); the moderator then will probe the respondent on why each ad wasmore or less attention-getting.

Key advertising diagnostics: Next, the moderator would querythe physician on the two or three most attention-getting concepts in terms ofseveral key dimensions including:

  • Key message(s) communicated
  • Credibility
  • Motivational impact to learn more about the product
  • Motivational impact to start prescribing the product or prescribing the product for more patients
  • Assessing the correspondence of the visual imagery with the other creative elements, i.e., headlines and taglines
  • Ensuring nothing is problematic, unclear or offensive
  • Ensuring that the concept is unique and thus not reminiscent of other advertisements
  • Other suggestions and recommendations

Alignment with the brand promise: The physician would thenbe exposed to the brand promise statement and asked to re-rank the mostattention-getting concepts with regard to how well they convey the brandpromise. This way, the brand team can determine how close the message(s) playedby the physicians is to the brand promise.

Following the art gallery approach, this second drill-downround is designed to reduce the spectrum of advertisements from seven or eightto two or three that  can then bemigrated into final-round testing.

Quantitative Testing and Semantic Differential Scales

Based on the qualitative testing, a small cadre ofadvertising concepts has been selected, two or three that are not only alignedwith the positioning but that also perform best on the key dimensions ofadvertising effectiveness (previously enumerated). Now the team may elect to conducta quantitative examination of the advertisement’s effectiveness with a largesample of the physician specialty/specialties in question.

One particularly effective technique is “tip-in” testingwhere the advertisement is placed in the authentic context of a mock medicaljournal to truly gauge its “stopping power,” its alignment with the brandpromise, its credibility and motivational impact and whether it really leaves adurable impression.

Another approach that is useful in evaluating the perceivedmeaning of advertisements is to use semantic differential scales. Such scalescan be useful in measuring how concepts perform with respect to a series ofabstract themes such as “good-bad,” “unique-common,” etc. Such an approach canhelp identify potential dissonance within an ad, such as one which portrays thebrand as “strong” but “bad,” or “good” but “common.” This technique has beenapplied and validated in a variety of contexts to understand how peopleperceive stimuli and is an excellent method to evaluate reactions to bothadvertising images as well as other promotional elements (e.g., taglines,icons, logos, etc.). The output of this exercise would feature perceptual mapsthat display the association between a given stimulus and the various thematic dimensions.

Keeping Things in Perspective

As much as this article has laid out the rationale andmethodology for productively involving physicians in the process of testingadvertising prototypes, it is important to keep the following key facts inmind:

Physicians mostly do not study the pictorial aspects of thepromotional materials nearly as in-depth as they do in research. Therefore, theprocess by which such materials are tested is somewhat artificial.

While physicians are extremely intelligent and often highlycreative and/or intuitive, most are not themselves good marketers and know verylittle about marketing. Physicians have no particular stake in the success orfailure of the medication being assessed. Therefore, it is always important tobalance the input of physicians as one aspect of the process of decision-makingsurrounding the development of an ad, with the other aspects obviously beingexperience and good marketing judgment. It is also helpful for the research tohave some useful comebacks to dispatch the concerns of physicians who areeither skeptical of or object to pharmaceutical advertising. One that has beenparticularly useful is reassuring them that the ad is part of a broader mix ofpromotion, which would include presentations, data and medical education.

An effective ad is one that is instantly appealing and thatvisually embodies the promise of the brand over time. Such ads are the fruit ofa successful matrimony between the creative and account departments within anagency and the analytic techniques and good moderation brought to bear by themarketing research vendor in constructively incorporating the physician intothe process. Beyond planning and promotional development groundwork, craftingan ad that successfully infuses the right message into the brain of thecustomer is the offspring of an effective partnership between creative andanalytic minds. 

 

Noah M. Pines is executive vice president of the globalpharmaceutical marketing research firm GfK V2. Cathy A. Su is senior manager,market research at Gilead Sciences

From the March 01, 2008 Issue of MM+M - Medical Marketing and Media