Don’t Eat Apple a Day

A newly married man had to go outstation on a week tour due to some professional exigencies. During his absence his wife had to stay with his doctor friend. Before leaving, the husband handed over seven apples to his wife, with an advice: “An apple a day keeps the doctor away”.

As a pharma sales and marketing professional, you know, you just can’t afford to keep the doctor away.

Now you know why having an apple every day is a big no-no for you.

 “An apple a day is not for me. As a pharma marketer, I can’t even imagine doing anything that will keep the doctors away from my brand.” I can almost hear you saying this.  Think once again. What if, as a well meaning marketer, you are unintentionally doing few things which is actually keeping doctors away from prescribing your brand?

Ask yourself whether you are doing any of the following things?

• You try to play safe and therefore avoid any creativity that can raise few eyebrows making your communication uninteresting to field as well as doctors.
• You clutter your communication pages with too much information.
• In your anxiety to impress your customer, you tend to convey all the USPs of your brand and are extremely reluctant to sacrifice on few USPs in order to bring sharp focus.
  • You tend to get repetitive making your campaign devoid of freshness.
  • You tend to change the communication plank too often.
  • You don’t market your communication strategy to your internal customer the way you would market it to the external customer.
  • You don’t allocate enough time in internal meetings in order to ensure that every representative is thorough in his detailing.

Will doing above mentioned activities keep doctors away from your brand? You may or may not agree with me. May be few of the points will even make you somewhat indignant. But then my target is achieved, this blog post is intended to do exactly the same. It is meant to challenge you, to make you think.

Only those who dare to be different can create big brands and a successful career for themselves.

I would like to hear your views and experiences on it.

While for a pharma marketer, an apple-a-day is forbidden but breaking pill-a-day is a must. Please subscribe to this blog’s newsletters to receive your daily dose of pill through email.