In collaboration with Reinhard Angelmar, INSEAD’s The Salmon and Rameau Fellow in Healthcare Management Professor of Marketing, IMS organised the first Pharma Leadership Conference in Paris, on July 3 and 4.
The conference was centered on Professor Angelmar’s groundbreaking work in Condition Branding. This concept applies the principles of brand leadership and brand equity that are familiar to many marketeers to the issues surrounding conditions and drug classes themselves.
Many examples of the phenomenon are well known, including efforts in HIV and breast cancer, but few pharmaceutical companies have managed to apply these important concepts in a systematic way. Professor Angelmar has built some important and applicable frameworks to help the pharmaceutical sector understand how best to raise the awareness of specific conditions among both healthcare professionals and the wider population.
The Pharma Leadership Conference was a 1½ day event that began with a presentation by Professor Angelmar about his theories. A spirited discussion about the application of these theories between Professor Angelmar and various senior participants from the industry ensued. This was followed by a treatment by the participants of the Celebrex case study, in which the launch of this product was considered in the light of the concepts just discussed. The first day concluded with a simulation exercise based on IMS’s Strategic Marketing simulation. During this simulation, participants had the opportunity to experiment with ideas surrounding condition branding in different legislative and market situations.
The second day of the conference consisted of a presentation by IMS’s Sarah Rickwood, who led the group through an examination of IMS’s Launch Excellence study. Over the past two years, IMS has examined more 4,000 launches of ethical pharmaceutical products and has applied a myriad of statistical analyses in order to isolate the factors that lead to truly excellent launches. Of these launches, 35 were determined to have performed above normal expectations, with these 35 being closely scrutinized.
The Launch Excellence study has been used to create presentations for senior level clients in a number of situations. For the Pharma Leadership Conference, IMS drew on its data to specifically investigate those features of launch excellence that relate to condition branding.
Resounding success
We are pleased to say that the first IMS Pharma Leadership Conference was a resounding success, with participants offering an average rating of six for total quality and usefulness on a scale of 1 to 7. This rating was complimented by positive feedback from delegates, including:
Dorota Brzostek, Marketing Manager, Nycomed: “There is a big gap in conferences dedicated to experienced marketers, this conference is one bridging this gap. The topic of the conference was very interesting, and in fact - "multidisciplinary" - even in pharma field, as it may concern hospital/specialists products and OTC products as well. It was overall a very interesting conference”
Sven Pfleging, Head of Marketing Pharmaceuticals EMEA, Fresenius Medical Care: “I enjoyed the conference greatly – it was a structured teaching approach of presenting "condition branding" as an effective way of selling drugs.”
The next IMS Pharma Leadership Conference will be held in Paris early 2009. More information about next year’s conference will be announced in coming editions of this newsletter. In the meantime, you can also visit the conference website for further details: www.imshealth.com/LSCMconferences
