It's possible to do this in any field of marketing, but it's a particular danger in healthcare: taking the facts about a product, identifying their key features, deriving patient or physician benefits from these, finding a universal truth ... and ending up, before you know it, with a pivotal thought that reads something like:
'Product X gives you a better quality of life' ... or 'Product X is both effective and safe' ... or ... 'Therapy X is the simplest yet'.
And how very uninspiring these thoughts or 'propositions' are. Reductio absurdum at its very best.
This morning I had to reject a proposition that read 'simply the best'. And another one that read 'freedom to get on with life'.
Frankly, instead of being on the topic of anti-retroviral treatment, it could have been a piece of chewing gum or a tampon. And you don't want to confuse those.
So the trick when you're messing around with a 'brand ladder' or whatever species of wanky marketing tool you happen to be using, I reckon, is to stop short of the clouds and give people real sight of what the damn thing is that you're talking about.
2 comments:
As someone who's had to write quit a few positioning statements, brand ladders, etc, in pharmaceutical advertising, I can appreciate your concern, that these statements all start sounding the same. In fact, if you do enough of these, you tend to feel like you should just collect a bunch as as templates, suitable for one product or another.
Ha - too true - and thanks for your comment. My collection of templates is nearly at saturation point...
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