Ages ago, when digital was considered separate from everything else, marketers looking for a low-cost alternative to other channels quickly extended their patronage to digital constructs. The promise of one-to-one marketing, two-way conversations and dazzling multimedia was hypnotic, with the browser considered an effective (and inexpensive) way to seduce the masses.
Pharma has woken up and realized that it must respond to the digitally-amplified expectations of its customers. After all, the digital technologies in every other sphere of their lives set their expectations for pharma, as well. While there have been regulatory and other reasons for the industry’s delay, many pharma company leaders are now mandating that a higher percentage of marketing budgets be spent on digital.
Still, some marketers are unsure how to do that. They struggle to make sense of this digitally-amplified world and connect the dots back to their brands. Instead of recognising digital’s (now historic) centrality to shaping brand and customer behaviour, marketers are again bringing digital to the table skeptically as an executional afterthought. Pharma is bleeding valuable opportunity that other sectors gained long ago.
While the maturity of markets, individual knowledge and experience, leadership willingness and ability, time and budget constraints, and lack of exact and precise data are all responsible for this, the most important factor is that marketers are simply waiting too long to bring digital into the conversation. Because of that, sometimes agencies are forced to put on a tactical hat: Want an app or two? Sure! Let’s go viral! You want Facebook? Got it. How about that iPad? We end up pursuing shiny objects instead of being the strategic partners pharma wants us to be.