Market Access is Marketing

So far in this blog when it comes to the future of pharma marketing, I’ve mainly talked about us working to a better understanding of how pharma marketing really works - by adopting elements of diffusion theory and word of mouth (WoM) marketing.

There is another big change that’s already happening in pharma, and as with WoM it also shows how the consumer model aped for so many years is woefully inadequate – it’s Market Access.

“Back when I were a lad” learning the pharma marketing ropes in the 90’s, reimbursement and pricing was simple. The answer was always “premium price” regardless of the question. The only tricky bit was figuring out how much you could charge for something first in class. You called the pricing guys in at the last minute to do some research and put a price on it, and hey presto.

Such a scenario is clearly laughable today. As professor Michael Rawlins, head honcho and chief ball-breaker at NICE put it:
“The industry has to accept that just because new drugs are licensed does not mean that the health service wants or needs to buy them.” Ouch. But as a tax (or insurance) payer though, you’ve got to admit he’s on the money.

I realise this isn’t news to many in pharma. These days we’ve all got departments focusing on ‘market access’ or ‘managed care’; some companies doing better jobs than others.

But here’s my challenge – how long should it stay like that; with a marketing department and a market access department? Sure, you might need a small army of people to go smoothing the numbers with to HMOs or Primary Care Trusts, but at a central strategic level there is no real division.

It’s still about marketing strategy, it’s just that we’ve finally added in price and access (volume) into the equation, along with the customers most interested in these points.

For us old-timers (hey, I’m still in my 30’s!), on first sight this can be a little scary: new customers with new jargon to deal with who seem hell-bent on not paying for our products. The way I like to think of it though is as one big negotiation and the fun bit is that it isn’t necessarily all about price.

Let me give you an analogy. I was talking to someone a few weeks ago who sold her car on ebay. By self-admission she is a neat-freak who had every skerrick of information on the history of that automobile, as well as a ton of photos detailing its condition. The car was in good order and so she put it on at a premium price.

In the auction it went at full asking price to a bidder who said that the reason they paid top-whack was because, sure it looked like a good car, but she was the only seller who had fully answered their gazillion questions and so they were comfortable to buy at that price.

The same thing can work with payers. Have the right data answering their troubling questions (like, just how much better than generics is it?) and you too can snap up a great price. Other levers to think about with your access strategy include the patient segment you’re going to target and proof of the buckets of money you can save them elsewhere in the system.

It takes a little practice to start getting this thought process in train, but rather than thinking of it as menacing hoodoo, we need to see it as a fun strategic challenge that’s part of the role. The “kids” growing up as product managers today no longer see the distinction. Get on board or get outdated – it’s the future I tells ya!
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