Events

Pharma bets big on branding!

Nandini Patwardhan / Katya Naidu

Its not just Coca-Cola, Surf or Maggie that move consumers to action and boast of their brand supremacy, all the pharma products are betting big on branding. As a testimonial to the increasing brand awareness in the pharma world, IBC Asia (S) Pte organised a conference on 'Pharma Branding and Marketing' on the 23 and 24 of February, 2006 at Taj Lands End Hotel, Mumbai. The session chaired by N Anand, Vice President, Sales and Marketing at USV Limited was a success.

The conference was kick-started by a presentation by K ShivKumar, Vice-President of Sales and Marketing, GSK. K Shivkumar shared the GSK experience with pharma brands. GSK leads with 6.5 percent market share in the $4.5 billion ethical pharmaceutical market. Indian pharma industry is ever growing and is pegged at $4.5 billion. It is also the fourth largest in volume and ranks thirteenth in value. And how do companies like GSK make it in the pie? They have a two pronged strategy to survive in this complex environment, that is, to innovate by building great brands and executing with sales force excellence.

Dr T D Rajan, a medical doctor at a Pharma Consultant Doctor's Centre, tried to mediate between the Pharmaceutical companies and Physicians. The pharmaceutical industry side of this story is that the industry makes huge investments in the making of drugs but in spite of all the efforts, the companies face tough competition from “me-too” drugs. This calls for high-end branding for embedding the minds of the physician to achieve target sales.

P K Pathak, Senior Director, Marketing and Sales, Dr Reddy's Labs talked on post IP reforms—the way forward for Indian companies. But there is a shift in the focus of the Indian pharma industry. The generic players are investing in R&D. Copycats are treading the innovator way. The business models are shifting from low-margin generics to high-margin R&D models.

Yugal Sikri, Vice President, Pharmaceuticals-MP & PC, Novartis stated that brands are designed to illustrate what the designer wants to say. Giving examples of Voveran, he went on to explain that like people, brands, too, are vibrant, growing, adapting to various events, have families and die eventually. The trick lies in postponing the death.

From being a secondary function to sales, marketing has come a long way. With the world becoming a global village, it is essential for marketers to understand various aspects of marketing and branding, like managing brands for a long time, finer points of multicultural marketing, managing the field force's interaction with physicians. The conference was one platform that answered all the questions in the minds of pharma marketers.