Positioning terminology - an introduction

Positioning terminology
Introduction For something that is supposed to be so clear, the terms used in pharma strategy can cause confusion. This document is an explanation of the way we use some terms at IDEA Pharma they are reasonably industrystandard, so there is no chance that if you use them the way weve indicated here that anyone can ever correct you! Throughout our processes, there are cheats easy ways to achieve rapid progress. One of these is that the word efcacy is banned efcacy never means one thing for any product or therapeutic area you can always come up with several different things that efcacy can stand for. Similarly, the word better is subjective, and can mean a hundred different things, depending on the parameters that affect the decision. Words like better, I like or I dont like should be followed by because... Because informs the group of why you have taken a particular viewpoint, and allows the group to contribute it makes the opinion something that can be built from.. Why position? The rst question that is always asked in a process is why do it in the rst place? This document deals with terminology instead of philosophy, however the basic rationale is this: there is no clinical decision that does not have commercial consequences, and no commercial decision that does not have clinical consequences. Positioning a drug is simply about making active choices about where it ends up which patients, which dose, which indications, which endpoints, which unmet needs, etc. rather than the passive positioning of allowing it to nd its own way (through wrong turns and wrong choices). The key thing about positioning is that it should direct all activity towards launch the clinical plan, the communications plan, etc. Therefore, the best time to do positioning is before phase II, and certainly before phase III begins. Where you choose to place or position your drug affects its competitive set, expectations of efcacy, safety and tolerability, perceived value, etc. To illustrate this, the following wheel shows some of the decisions that have to be made about path-to-market strategy during development. Although many of these are traditionally made independently of the other decisions, the truth is that each is interdependent on the other decisions. Positioning, therefore is a strategic activity, not something that can be left to later or given to an ad agency or market research agency to deliver - as an active decision, it should direct all other activities downstream in development and marketing.

(c) 2011 IDEA Pharma

Transforming Strategy in Phase II

ideapharma.com

Page 1 of 11

Positioning terminology - an introduction

Position It is only natural that a lot of conversations about a products positioning are actually describing the position for the product. The position is not the same as the positioning. The position is the place in therapy for your product, the physical place you want your product to occupy in the market, so a lot of the development phase is devoted to decisions about this placement. It should describe the patient segment, line of therapy, competitive set and the way you expect the product to be used, among other things. For example, rst-line, nonsquamous or non-haemorrhagic are terms that describe a products position, but not its positioning. It is possible to have a launch position and a strategic position that the product moves towards over time (as it acquires new data, for example). It isnt that launch or strategic is better than the other, but it is important to remember which position (launch or strategic position) is being discussed at any time.
(c) 2011 IDEA Pharma Transforming Strategy in Phase II ideapharma.com Page 2 of 11

Positioning terminology - an introduction

Because a market, by denition, does not know much about your product, market research cannot be relied upon to direct the positioning for an agent. At best, what results is a deductive but passive position. Choosing an active position for the agent is an inductive exercise where the product achieves its highest overall value. Product vs. molecule We always have to remember that the molecule is only part of the picture. A product is a collection of other choices, a product of all the variables that matter in developing a new medicine. It is possible to describe the factors that relate directly to the product as intrinsic factors

Differentiation Differentiation describes the process of either making your product different than others that might be considered competitors, or nding a way to describe it differently. Differentiating the product should be an active process, as a passive differentiation risks a competitor choosing the terms of reference. From the following table, it is clear how important differentiation is to every part of a products strategic framework.

(c) 2011 IDEA Pharma

Transforming Strategy in Phase II

ideapharma.com

Page 3 of 11

Positioning terminology - an introduction

Positioning Strategic Positioning

Vision

Value Proposition

Messaging Regulatory submission

HTA/ Market Access

Brand

Differentiation

/ /

Comparative Effectiveness Patient Segment

Physician Segment Place in Therapy

Reason to Believe

Intrinsic differentiation lays an important core upon which extrinsic differentiation can be built. However, differentiation is not automatically a good thing. It is incredibly easy to be differentiated (on items youd rather not be differentiated by). Every product is a set of positive and negative attributes. If you are genuinely inventive, you might succeed in turning a negative into a positive (see KFC Finger Lickin Good or Viagra for examples), but more often products become differentiated by their safety prole, formulation problems or lack of a certain kind of efcacy. The hard thing is to nd the perfect combination of the thing / things your audience want and that you are or do better than any other product. Differentiation, as a process, should begin with an assessment of the kind of difference audiences want to see. Do they want what they currently have, but better (sameness with difference), or something different? Unfortunately, much market research (often masquerading as insight) tends to produce the former we would like it to be like what we have, but 10% better on this dimension, while not doing anything worse. This kind of differentiation is quantitative differentiation the product is differentiated only by being slightly or somewhat better numerically than its opponent. More useful is qualitative differentiation. Qualitative differentiation means nding something that the product does that no other product does. This can look a lot like quantitative differentiation, but is a lot more powerful. For example, the difference between dropping LDL levels by 5% over the competition and getting patients to a tipping point that starts to reverse atherosclerosis might be no difference at all numerically, but one sounds a whole lot more valuable than the other. Unfortunately, a lot of pharma propositions fail to make this step towards a concrete
(c) 2011 IDEA Pharma Transforming Strategy in Phase II ideapharma.com Page 4 of 11

Positioning terminology - an introduction

qualitative proposition what does a 25% increase in PFS mean to a physician or patient, or a 4 point increase in ADAS-Cog actually achieve for an Alzheimers Disease patient, for example. What does Benefit mean? Benefit is simply defined as the connection between a goal (or a want) of your audience and an attribute/ feature of your product your product helps them achieve one goal or more. Positioning Positioning or strategic positioning describes the belief your customers will have that will drive them to choose your product. It is a clarication of exactly what the product is, who it is for and why it delivers that promise. It takes the position as a starting point and then adds a reason to believe that it should be the predominant product in that position. It is important, with this denition, that the belief must be built - it doesnt come for free just by choosing a positioning. The difference between positioning and strategic positioning

Positioning or strategic positioning describes the belief your customers will have that will drive them to choose your product

may be chronological. Strategic positioning is where the product is aiming to be in time, and positioning should always be aligned with that point, but recognise that not all of the elements might be in place yet (data, scientic story, etc.). It is possible to consider a launch positioning or launch platform from which to build towards a strategic positioning. There is no right view of how to move from a launch platform towards the strategic positioning... Each of these diagrams illustrates viable strategies.

Strategic Positioning Directs All New Data! Activities! New indications! The Product!
New formulations! IS! !

Strategic Positioning Directs All New Data! Activities! New indications! The Product!
New formulations!
STEP 3!

IS! !

Opportunity!

Opportunity!

STEP 2!

STEP 3! STEP 2! LAUNCH! PLATFORM!

STRATEGIC! POSITIONING!
LAUNCH! PLATFORM!

STRATEGIC! POSITIONING!

Time!

Time!

(c) 2011 IDEA Pharma

Transforming Strategy in Phase II

ideapharma.com

Page 5 of 11

Positioning terminology - an introduction

Strategic Positioning Directs All New Data! Activities! New indications! The Product!
New formulations! IS! !
Opportunity!

STEP 3!

STEP 2!

STRATEGIC! POSITIONING!
LAUNCH! PLATFORM!

Time!

A great positioning is built around some unique insight about the way that the market works and has been pressure tested to withstand competitor and environmental erosion/attack. There should be a clear differentiation embedded in the positioning in terms of perceptions of better or different. The challenge is to nd the thing or combination of things that your audience want and your product is perceived to do better than any other product. The inclusion of perception here is deliberate not all of the beliefs in Pharma are based on evidence. When people say positioning is the place in the mind of the customer that you want your product to occupy that is what they mean. If done well, customers will form their opinion about the product from the coordinated communication activities planned for each customer type and this opinion will reect, over time, the strategic positioning, without it being overtly communicated. Importantly, positioning should not be something that the marketing department decides alone. It should be crafted and owned by the whole product team. Positioning should be directive, providing guidance for all downstream activities (for example, clinical trial designs, regulatory strategy to gain approvals and all commercial communications) being coordinated, consistent and clear. All future labelled indications and subsequent communications should be working towards the strategic positioning for the brand. Ideally, the product positioning and the Value Proposition should be interchangeable they are essentially the same.

(c) 2011 IDEA Pharma

Transforming Strategy in Phase II

ideapharma.com

Page 6 of 11

Positioning terminology - an introduction

The IDEA IDEA Pharma specialises in positioning and we approach the challenge by creating a wide range of possibilities that the molecule can become, based on the molecule attributes and the potential market opportunities. We call these possibilities IDEAs, as it more closely reects the way people think about products - what is the IDEA of your product?. The IDEA is equivalent to a product concept. It allows more room for thinking laterally about what a product could be, instead of just nding the best way to describe the product it will become by default. An example: deciding that the IDEA of Cymbalta was as a pain drug has been central to its success, instead of the mediocre anti-depressant it could have been. IDEAs have a measure, criteria that make a great IDEA. Great product IDEAs can be MEASURED for: - Motivation - Evidence-base - Authenticity - Sustainability - Uniqueness - Relative opportunity - Executability

Positioning Statement The positioning statement expresses the positioning in a succinct single statement. It is built after the positioning is created. There are many different versions of template for a positioning statement, but it is important to remember that the positioning must come rst, and that the template is just a way to communicate it internally. The statement is not for external use, so there is no point at all in testing a positioning statement externally. The positioning statement does not have to do all of the heavy lifting for your product. If the market needs to change its understanding of the way a mechanism works, for example, that can be achieved via communications, and does not have to be embedded in the positioning statement. Co-positioning Positioning two or more products within a portfolio is more of a challenge. The optimal position and positioning for each product must be explored independently. After that, potential synergies, trade-off assessments, etc., can be decided against a known base case.

(c) 2011 IDEA Pharma

Transforming Strategy in Phase II

ideapharma.com

Page 7 of 11

Positioning terminology - an introduction

Value Proposition Although your brand may be better in some way compared to the competition, the value proposition is the reason why your brand is worth paying for and if launching into already contested space, worth being used instead of another established brand. The value proposition will help dene which specic population will gain the greatest benet from the brand and will guide pricing based upon value expected. If done well, the positioning should be the same as the value proposition. It should answer the question what does better mean to the stakeholders and how much is this worth? The Value Proposition is, in rather simple terms, the reason (the rational reason) that your drugs difference is worth paying for. It is the hard measure of whether you really have any differentiation, the sanity in any positioning process. It is also, by the way, something that should be studied in the phase III (which may mean you need to validate the scales in the phase IIb). Vision The brand vision is a much more aspirational positioning that must be consistent with the strategic positioning but if used outside the company will be subject to approval. The vision can be seen as the acceptable and approved external communication of the aspirational positioning. The Vision is what happens when the developers of a drug are allowed to dream about where it could end up. Story Flow The best communications that resonate and are remembered by stakeholders are ones that tell a story. Stories start with grounding some common beliefs around the disease or patients. We can call these disease issues or insight driven wants and they can open up a dialogue with stakeholders. Their purpose is to agree on some common ground from which the brand messages address and/or help satisfy. Brand The brand is the deliberate set of ways that you decide your product should appear, behave, and represent itself. As with all the other decisions, choices of personality, key messages, visual representation (logo, logotype, imagery) should be taken actively. Brand is a set of strategic decisions. Branding is often a visually-led exercise, that should follow, not direct, a brand strategy.

(c) 2011 IDEA Pharma

Transforming Strategy in Phase II

ideapharma.com

Page 8 of 11

Positioning terminology - an introduction

Messaging Messages are the blocks that join up to make the story ow. A message is a succinct statements that reect disease area issues, and product features/attributes or customer benets. A headline message is a top-line concept. Think of it as a headline in a detail aid. These are the core concepts we want our target audiences to hear, understand and believe in. Key messages are messages that (i) support the headline message and (ii) are backed by citable references. To tell a story, we arrange these messages into 3 sections: 1. Disease area key messages
(c) 2011 IDEA Pharma Transforming Strategy in Phase II ideapharma.com Page 9 of 11

Positioning terminology - an introduction

2. Brand key messages (feature/benets) 3. Brand key messages (safety/tolerability/convenience)

Points 2 and 3 can be mixed/switched if the positioning includes safety as the core theme.

Detailed story flows: on-going development process

Headlines Disease issue 1 Key messages Disease issue 1a Disease issue 1b Disease issue 2 Disease issue 2a Disease issue 2b Agent features/benefits 1 Agent features/benefits 1a Agent features/benefits 1b Agent features/benefits 2 Agent features/benefits 2a Agent features/benefits 2b Safety and tolerability Safety and tolerability a Safety and tolerability b

(c) 2011 IDEA Pharma

Transforming Strategy in Phase II

ideapharma.com

Page 10 of 11

Positioning terminology - an introduction

Summary

Strategic decision-making!

Externalisation!

Molecule!

Product!

Brand!

Position! Positioning! Value Proposition!

Place in therapy! Why this product in this place! Why this product is worth paying for in this place!

(c) 2011 IDEA Pharma

Transforming Strategy in Phase II

ideapharma.com

Page 11 of 11