PRODUCT PERFORMANCE - To Insist or Accept - That is the Question
You may be too young to remember, but back in the 1970's one of the best-selling books around was one titled, I'm OK, You're OK. As the title suggests, this book about personal relationships aimed to get more of us to accept that none of us is perfect, and that each of us is worthy of being perceived and acknowledged as "OK." It seems to us that, more and more these days, marketers everywhere are adopting a similar philosophy - not about their peers but about their brands - more specifically their products. To us, this is a troubling trend. To win in the marketplace, "My product is OK, your product is OK" won't cut it. Read on.
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The DISPATCHESTM for August 28, 2011 can be found here:
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ProdPerformance.pdf (PDF File
posted by BDN International @ 12:04 PM
2 Comments
2 Comments:
Interesting work. In the pharma world, I think competitive positioning statements that are worth their salt are fast dissapearing NOT because of reduced competitive spirit, but because of the heightened regulatory environment and enforcement action. The environment necessitates head to head studies to justify claims that are clinically relevant. Those trials add significant cost and risk and are not the mainstream yet. Given the right data, pharma marketers are eager to make appropriate claims that aim straight at the competitors jugular.
Anonymous: Thanks for reading this week's Dispatches and for your thoughtful comments. You're right, of course, that in addition to some of the reasons we cited for fewer and fewer product performance-advantage positionings (such as greatly reduced research budgets), in the Rx world there is the ever-tightening regulatory scrutiny...and corporate fears of fines & litigation. I just wish that, even in the face of such scrutiny, more marketers would nevertheless challenge their legal and regulatory "teammates" to help brands find creative, supportable ways to, at a minimum, deliver a perceived better-performing brand--for the right professional & patient targets, of course.
But it's good to hear from someone in the "heat" of the Rx positioning battle who wants to "insist upon" a winning product performance. Thanks again.
Mike Maloney
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