Case study –
Game-changing insights and strategy that fueled massive growth for a popular pharmaceutical brand
This case study was written by:
Kathy Relias
Head, Strategic Commercial Development and Client Service, US
Branding Science Group
Stella Pratsinakis
Brand Scientist
Branding Science Group
The Challenge
This highly successful pharmaceutical brand was launched a few years ago and has been in high demand as the first in its class. Now this therapeutic area is highly competitive, with several products in the space and many potential products coming to market. The company was moving ahead, seeking to understand how to leverage its recent adolescent indication as an additional driver of overall brand growth.
Our client needed to address several critical objectives to inform brand strategy:
Develop a patient journey with identified drivers and barriers to inform strategy for the upcoming adolescent indication. There had already been identified drivers and barriers in the category.
Develop a patient journey with identified drivers and barriers to inform strategy for the upcoming adolescent indication. There had already been identified drivers and barriers in the category.
Unpack the real-world emotional experience of living with the condition.
Unpack the real-world emotional experience of living with the condition.
Understand perceptions among Caregivers and HCPs of the adolescent indication, including its potential to drive a ‘halo effect’ for usage in adults.
Understand perceptions among Caregivers and HCPs of the adolescent indication, including its potential to drive a ‘halo effect’ for usage in adults.
The Challenge
This highly successful pharmaceutical brand was launched a few years ago and has been in high demand as the first in its class. Now this therapeutic area is highly competitive, with several products in the space and many potential products coming to market. The company was moving ahead, seeking to understand how to leverage its recent adolescent indication as an additional driver of overall brand growth.
Our client needed to address several critical objectives to inform brand strategy:
Develop a patient journey with identified drivers and barriers to inform strategy for the upcoming adolescent indication. There had already been identified drivers and barriers in the category.
Unpack the real-world emotional experience of living with the condition.
Understand perceptions among Caregivers and HCPs of the adolescent indication, including its potential to drive a ‘halo effect’ for usage in adults.
OUR APPROACH
We executed a multi-faceted approach with a diverse group of stakeholders to garner insights and develop tactics to activate an evolving strategy. The first step was getting feedback from internal stakeholders about their knowledge and experience with a particular condition and therapy area. We then sought customer feedback, featuring a comprehensive patient and caregiver journey engagement.
To help stakeholders understand the objectives and the co-creation process to align on patient journey goals and approaches, we hosted sessions through the engagement from kickoff to activation.
Highlights of our approach included:
Online and social media scraping to capture the patient voice and understand the preferred language of the customer to provide additional depth and understanding of the physical and emotional journey for both adolescents with the condition and their caregivers.
Qualitative research, including written pre-work sessions and in-depth interviews, were conducted to understand adolescents’ experiences living with the condition, as well as the perspectives of their caregivers and HCPs treating both adolescents and adults with the condition.
We used our patient and HCP expert panel technique to validate and empower next steps, presenting firsthand adolescent and caregiver interview clips to HCPs to develop authentic insights and reveal the behavioral science behind managing and treating the condition.
Patients are sensitive about their condition, therefore special recruiting techniques including personalized patient centric outreach were used through the engagement. Our fieldwork organization, Just Worldwide, a division of Branding Science Group, provided the recruiting.
Our moderators made sure respondents were comfortable during the entirety of their participation in the research from start to finish.
As a result of our partnership with this product’s brand and insights teams and their activation of our recommendations, their brand has grown dramatically in the past year alone. The strategy built for adolescents and caregivers was activated with marketing and support tactics to propel overall growth and the brand keeps growing!
GRowth outcome
As a result of our partnership with the product, brand, and insights teams, the brand has experienced dramatic growth over the past year. By taking a holistic view of the patient journey, we helped foster meaningful change by clearly understanding the needs of adolescents and their caregivers.
Our strategic and tactical solutions included recommendations for stakeholder education of this condition, updated guidelines and optimized cost and access to the product.
Insights informed effective marketing, messaging, and patient support initiatives.
The revised approach, and successful activation by our client, resulted in a 55% increase in overall sales growth year over year and the brand keeps growing.
Get in touch
Branding Science Group is an insights-led consultancy. We work across the product life cycle from clinical trials to patent expiration. Our behavioral focus on patients enables life sciences companies to make smart decisions for patient futures.
We now use AI to create agile and efficient learnings, providing the ‘Whys’ around the patient journey. To learn more, contact us:
