New Name Reflects Greater Breadth of Agency Solutions

PRINCETON, N.J., July 22, 2010 — Compass Healthcare Communications announced today that it has changed its name to Compass Healthcare Marketers.

“We realized that our company name needed to better reflect the type of organization we are and the breadth of services we offer our clients,” said Peter H. Nalen, President and CEO of Compass Healthcare Marketers.

Acknowledging that “communications” can be a general and somewhat misleading term, Nalen went on to emphasize that Compass serves as a true marketing partner to its clients. While communications solutions are, in fact, part of the agency’s service offerings, Compass equally provides critical marketing strategy and execution solutions.

“Marketing has and always will be central to who we are,” noted Nalen. “We focus first and foremost on providing smart marketing solutions for our clients. We then consider the necessary medium required to optimize results.”

Compass Healthcare Marketers offers a full range of marketing services for healthcare companies including interactive programs, analytics, relationship marketing, public relations, and branding programs.

About Compass Healthcare Marketers — www.compasshc.com

Compass Healthcare Marketers is a leading, full-service marketing communications agency focused on specialty healthcare companies. We develop innovative marketing solutions that help improve the health of people with serious and chronic conditions such as diabetes, pulmonary hypertension, melanoma, and hemophilia. Our reputation as smart marketers stems from our strategic approach to marketing, which includes building insightful analytics into every program we develop. These strengths, combined with our company-wide belief in honesty and integrity, are what drive our organization and keep our clients coming back.

Innovation Lab Panelists

Alan G. Reicheg, SVP Commercial
Operations, Qforma

Devin Paullin, Ex. VP, Business
Development, Physicians Interactive

Mary Anne Greenberg, President
Alliance Healthcare

Michael J. Laferrera, Sr. Vice President,
Sales and Marketing, J. Knipper & Co.

Everywhere in the industry these days, you hear talk about Healthcare Professional Relationship Marketing (HCP RM), Non-personal Promotion (NPP), and Channel Preference Marketing (CRM). Nearly every company has these programs on their “to do” list, but few are actually implementing them. Why is this? On November 4, 2009, Compass Healthcare Communications hosted its Innovation Lab Series workshop in Princeton, assembling a team of participants and expert panelists to discuss this very topic.

HCP RM: Why Now?

The old model for how to target and communicate with healthcare professionals has been turned on its head. The time physicians have to interact with sales forces continues to diminish and access to physicians is becoming increasingly difficult. Up to 35% of all physicians are now considered “no see” docs and some states such as Massachusetts are imposing restrictions on sales rep activities. Add to this the fact that pharmaceutical companies are drastically cutting their sales forces and you have an environment that’s ripe for new and more effective ways to reach HCPs.

What HCP RM Is Not

Before exploring HCP RM programs in more detail, it helps to establish a few things that HCP RM programs are NOT. They are not newsletters or mailers or phone calls created in a remote conference room and then force-fed to a recipient. They are not comprised of generic content that makes no provision for how the recipient wants to be communicated with, what his or her level of knowledge is with the brand, or where the recipient resides along the brand adoption continuum. They are, instead, customer-focused programs, delivering the right message to the right audience segment at the right time using the right channel. The right message is one that is meaningful to the HCP. Figuring this out means understanding who the HCP is—what their needs and interests are, what motivates them—so that you can truly service their needs, not just sell them stuff.

Where To Start

When many pharma marketers hear the term relationship marketing, they are quick to think of patient relationship marketing efforts such as compliance programs. But given that some physicians either cannot or do not want to meet with reps and that many prefer other and more varied forms of contact, it’s clear that HCPs want to engage with the brand through several communication channels.

Building a successful HCP RM program is no easy feat. It all starts with understanding the different segments of your audience and delivering tailored, meaningful communications to them in the form, method or vehicle they prefer. Every disease state and therapeutic class is different. Organizations will have to adopt a different mindset beyond just a rep knocking on a quickly closing door. And there are no simple formulas that will guarantee success in any given specialty. But there are some best-practices tips we discussed over the course of the Innovation Lab session that can help overcome common challenges in the HCP RM space.

1. Identify leadership, budget, and resources: One of the biggest challenges to implementation, especially in larger pharmaceutical companies is: Who is going to lead the initiative? Who owns this “new” program? The brand? The sales force? Another party? Who will pay for it? And what changes will need to be made to the technical infrastructure to support the program? This may prove to be the biggest obstacle. A truly effective RM program should be thought of as an infrastructure investment; not a mere campaign. By its very nature and considering the many departments that an effective RM program impacts, this initial step has the highest likelihood of derailing or significantly delaying the entire project. Our advice is to pilot a program with one or more brands that share the same specialist. Do not go “enterprise wide” right out of the gate. Learn from the mistakes that were made with the adoption of online programs in Pharma. (See sidebar)
2. Devise the right segmentation strategy: Who are the right and wrong physicians for your program? What are the best messages to deliver to your different audience segments? To succeed in this area, you’ll want to work with outside resources to “really” understand your audience segments. Successful programs are based on segmentation that’s psychographic rather than segmentation that’s demographic, script-driven, or decile-driven. It’s important, too, not to forget the nurse segment, as nurses perform most of the legwork and patient interfacing. By first effectively segmenting HCPs and determining your goals, you can then move onto choosing the appropriate tactics and channels for those various segments.
3. Build the right databases. Having a database that meets your RM goals is key to delivering customized communications to each specific audience segment. Successful and strong relationships can only be attained when the database can continually “learn” and react over time. Pharmaceutical companies are notorious for having physician databases that are anything but robust. And many lack the capability to appropriately design, build, and maintain the right kinds of databases. Unfortunately, many vendors who excel in this area have proprietary databases that pharma companies can only rent, preventing the pharma companies from truly owning, mining, and leveraging its own data. Still, there are tips for creating an effective database. It’s essential, first of all, to set up your database correctly from the beginning, ensuring that the data fields you collect are indeed the right ones and that the right people are using the database. It‘s critical, too, that the database be designed to acquire and decipher incoming information—eMails opened, poll questions answered, site pages visited, rep observations—so that the database continually learns where each target is on the behavioral continuum and what is required to move them further along. This ensures that your communications meet the specific information needs of each segment, reflects their knowledge of the brand and where they are on the continuum. Your budget and technical requirements must also be able to support the data to be collected and stored.
4. Abandon political silos. Beware the turf battles that may ensue, although this may be easier said than done. Chances are, a lot of hands will be touching your RM program, and there will be many interested, affected and vested parties—from individuals in multiple internal departments to a network of outside vendors. This is not the time to retreat to political silos. These different teams need to work together and complement each other’s contributions. Pick the core competencies of each group and have them focus on the task at hand. Everyone needs to know how to play well together in order to deliver the best program results.
5. Address sales force fears. Nearly everyone would agree that the in-person relationships developed by the field force are the number one relationship marketing vehicle available. However, it’s not uncommon for sales reps and their management to view HCP RM programs with resentment. In reality, these programs aren’t intended to replace the sales force—ideally, these programs should serve to assist and augment sales force efforts. A successful RM program must be integrated with all the efforts put forth by the sales group, and be developed with their involvement at all levels. To do so, it is imperative that all parties see the value of the program from the beginning and be allowed to not only participate in the upfront design but also have direct access to all ongoing reporting and results.
6. Measure results. It’s amazing how many companies budgeting for HCP RM programs fail to invest in proper metrics. ROI strategies are key to analyzing which strategies and tactics worked, which didn’t, and which audience segments are worth investing in. It is hard to predict which tactic will work, and which path is most successful for each segment. There are no easy formulas for determining all this. At a minimum, everyone needs to identify and agree to specific measurement criteria before ever launching a single program. Given the pioneering stage of HCP RM programs and the number of variables involved, pre-program ROI analysis is difficult. Many times, a combination of models, formulas, and basic trust among your partners and internal measurement team is all that will suffice. You take your best collective guess ahead of time, implement a pilot of your program, and then closely measure the results.
7. Develop a program of tactics. This is not about eMarketing or Interactive Marketing, but about giving your targets another opportunity to engage with your brand. It’s less about selling and more about customer service. There is seldom one singular tactic that you can pursue at the expense of all others. Tactics should be regarded as an entire program. Thinking multimodal is key. We have to give physicians a chance to respond to determine their preference for not only the tactic but also how it is delivered. The good news is that physicians are already accessing some of the technology you’ll be using. An estimated 80% of all physicians under the age of 45 carry smart phones and nearly 1 in 4 participates in eDetail programs . There are many vehicles at your disposal—take the time needed to invest in the right ones.
8. Don’t lose sight of the message. If you’ve been delivering the same message to your audience for a while, changing the medium in which you communicate that message is not likely to have much of an impact. Concentrate instead on delivering information that’s new and meaningful to physicians. Translate those hours and pages of physician insight research into meaningful content that can result in behavior change. Find a balance between branded and unbranded communications. Focus on providing needed services to your audience versus simply selling yourself and you just might find yourself becoming the de facto expert in an area.

Clearly, HCP RM programs are growing in prominence. Finding success in this area requires understanding your customers like never before in order to offer them meaningful information and tools that they actually want to use. By integrating these tactics and resources so they all work well together you can successfully shift from the mindset of physician “selling” to one of physician “service.” Making that shift will strengthen your relationships with all your key targets—a critical requirement in moving HCPs closer toward ultimate brand loyalty.

The first part of the day was led by a panel of experts in the mobile media space including:

• Ethan Ross,Vice President of Sales, Millennial Media
• Michele Bennett, Managing Partner, MobileTag Company
• Sandeep Shah, President and CEO, Skyscape (now Physicians Interactive)
• Eugene Lee, Executive Director of Media Development, CMI

During the second part of the day, attendees and panelists worked together to develop mobile marketing solutions to real marketing opportunities offered by the attendees.

Mobile applications can complement or enhance a brand’s other traditional media programs (print, billboard, television spot, radio or Web) with a mobile call to action such as a mobile ad, link to a site, video, applications, a keyword QR code and short code.

Like social media, Mobile has changed control of the message. A brand’s message is “no longer delivered top down”, observed Eugene Lee. The user now controls the message by determining what they want to consume, “including when and where they want to consume it.”

As Michelle Bennett noted, “Mobile devices are quite personal to their users — it’s part of people’s daily life — an appendage.” And for the most part, consumers are connected to their devices 24 hours per day. The mobile phone is a personal extension of its owner. “Super relevant and meaningful communications are not only expected, but demanded by this audience.” This audience responds to ads differently and has a lower tolerance of ads and communications that are not fully resonate with their needs. “With higher targetability comes higher risk,” warned Ms. Bennett.

Mobile applications can complement or enhance a brand’s other traditional media programs, (print, billboard, television spot, radio or Web) with a mobile call-to-action such as a mobile ad, link to a site, video, applications, a keyword QR code and short code.

Mobile Stats — Why As a Marketer You Should be Interested

Mobile devices and use are growing and should be a dominant medium within the next 10 years.

• 90% of Americans use cell phones with 20% adopting smartphones¹
• 74 million U.S. users (26% of all mobile phone users) access the Internet via their phones²
• +81% estimated growth of Mobile Internet users from 2009-2013 (74M à 134M)²
• There are 3 times as many web enabled phones as there are PCs. (3.4B active mobile devices vs.1.0B active PCs) with more people accessing the Internet on mobile phones than on PCs.³

And the technology has advanced to support the incorporation of fair balance in mobile ads. Millennial Media is poised to launch three separate campaigns for the pharmaceutical industry with an expandable iPhone unit that gives room for Fair Balance.

Mobile vs. Other Mediums

“People are into ‘big pictures’ not small text,” remarked Ethan Ross. As mobile marketers, “we need to ensure we conform the message to the vehicle — take advantage and recognize the challenges of the smaller screen.”

Additionally, communication and ads within the mobile realm need to match the expectation of the device (e.g., the recent Docker’s campaign that allowed the “shake” feature to move the communication forward).

Mobile’s ability to provide superior targeting beyond age and gender, to include location, time of day and day of week, and to facilitate two way communication between advertisers and consumers, makes it one of the main reasons that mobile is now.

Where we acquire trusted information has changed. As a result, our thinking on how we deliver information must also change. The ability to target specific groups of individuals is greater than it has ever has been. This makes it possible to provide customized messages with increased relevance like never before. For example, Mr. Ross shared how Millennial Media used competitive targeting in the cell carrier vertical. They were able to target those handsets they knew were old and thus the users’ contracts would be coming up on expiration. In addition, to further refine the target, they utilized a questionnaire to determine if the cell phone contract was going to expire in 3 months. If so, they would drop a cookie and retarget them with offers to sign with another carrier.

Mobile consumers are generally either looking for ways to save time or ways to kill time.4 Because a mobile phone is such a personal device, consumers’ mindsets are completely different on the mobile Web than they are on the wired Web. While consumers accessing the wired Web at home or in their office often browse for extended periods of time, on mobile they tend to seek snacksize information or entertainment content such as:

• Breaking news headlines
• Weather updates
• Sports scores
• Image galleries
• Television and movie schedules
• Alerts
• Database references
• Short-form video content

Adoption in Pharma will be Driven by HCPs vs. Consumers:

Mobile marketing is a “young” technology for our industry with few significant widespread uses available for the next 24 years. However there are some very promising applications for specific conditions and situations.

The mobile marketing medium, unlike the other “new” marketing tactics in pharma, is going to be driven by HCP audiences. Already, 64% of all HCPs have a smart phone; that figure climbs to 79% for HCPs under the age of 45.5 And 100% of all residents have one. HCPs consume information from sources that they trust.

Historically, these sources have been “places.” The trend over many years has moved the use/consumption of information from “place” to “person” with digital communications truly creating exponential growth in the convenience of receiving information at the point of need.

The “Green” Marketing Solution

Sandeep Shah shared an example of how Skyscape saved physicians from the huge conference compendiums at the America College of Cardiology, held in March 2009 in Orlando, Florida. In fact, they have done this at the ACC for the past 4 years. They took what was available in printed form — 5 separate manuals, for a total of 750 printed pages, weighing 4 ½ pounds — and made it available as an “eGuide” on most PDA’s, iPhone, BB, and Palms. The eGuide was also available from the iPhone APP store a week before the meeting so that attendees could download and plan prior to arriving at the convention. For those who couldn’t download beforehand, a “Beaming Station” was set up at the conference site. This year, about 10% of all attendees downloaded eGuide, double the number from the previous year. Skyscape has also produced the eGuide for ACOG and The Heart Rhythm Society and are in discussions with many more societies right now.

The Ultimate RM Marketing Tool

Mobile’s ability to provide superior targeting beyond age and gender, to include location, time of day and day of week, and to facilitate two way communication between advertisers and consumers, makes it one of the main reasons that mobile is now. Not only does Mobile have a ubiquitous presence — with us 24/7 — it can also reach more people, more efficiently, and with greater targetability By building relationships via timely, relevant and valuable interactive conversations, Mobile can form the basis for strong long term relationships.

Note: *The Innovation Lab informative and collaborative workshop event series provides insight and guidance about emerging marketing trends and how to successfully apply them. More than passive “sit and listen” sessions, these are engaging and interactive events from which attendees emerge smarter and armed with real marketing solutions for their company or brand(s). Our next event in the series will focus on HCP Relationship Marketing.To find out more go to compassinnovates.com

Source: 1. FierceWireless , 2009; 2. eMarketer, 2009; 3. Mobile Marketer, 2009; 4. Mobile Marketer, 2009; 5. Manhattan Research

For Tercica, getting physicians to adopt Somatuline Depot versus staying with the well-established market leader required acknowledging some substantial barriers up front. Few patients were dissatisfied with current treatment options, Tercica was competing against a well-supported and well-established market leader, US physician brand familiarity was low at launch, and Somatuline Depot would have constrained sales and marketing resources compared with the competitor. These challenges meant that Tercica needed a creative and ambitious launch plan for Somatuline Depot.

How can small brands launch against larger, better funded competitors? With speedboat-like maneuverability inherent in interactive marketing.

Prepare the Market

To help establish awareness and drive adoption of its new product, Tercica worked with Compass Healthcare Communications to develop a measurable interactive plan divided into a three-phased approach: prepare the market, launch into the market, and become the market.

You can create pre-launch excitement by developing and launching, as soon as allowed, an initial “placeholder” Web site as a destination for those who are seeking information about the soon-to-be launched brand. In addition, visitors can opt in to a database for the latest news about the brand, launch timing, and availability, which can be used at launch to drive trials.

In the case of Somatuline Depot, the market was neither excited nor clamoring for a new acromegaly treatment. So the goal, to create excitement, was tough. Fortunately, Somatuline Depot offered enough unique benefits to make physicians and patients take notice. Never before in the US had an acromegaly treatment come in a ready-to-use pre-filled syringe for easy injection. Simplicity, efficacy, and tolerability were three key areas that differentiated the product from the competition—and these were the benefits highlighted in the placeholder Web site, developed to generate excitement for the soon-to-be-launched brand.

Ready, Aim, Launch!

The brand’s launch was supported on a number of interactive fronts that included:

• Targeted email blasts to healthcare professionals Endocrinologists, nurse practitioners, physician assistants, and pharmacists received emails announcing the arrival of the only somatostatin analog in a pre-filled syringe. For pharmacists, in particular, the announcement was particularly newsworthy, as this marked the first time that they would dispense this type of therapy.
• http://SomatulineDepot.com/ launch As the email campaign hit professional audiences, the full brand site was also being launched. The site contained sections for both healthcare professionals and patients. It reinforced to both audiences the key branding hallmarks of Somatuline Depot—simplicity, efficacy, and tolerability. A brief video on the site highlighted features of the product that distinguished it from the market leader—shorter needle length, smaller injection volume, and a subcutaneous delivery method—and emphasized its easy, two-step injection process.
• Search marketing with the TEEM approach (Targeted, Efficient, Effective and Measurable) Another interactive strategy that helped propel Somatuline Depot into the market was paid search or text ads or sponsored links that appear at the top or side of search results pages. Marketers can buy certain keywords or terms that customers use to search. In leveraging paid search, Tercica was able to identify critical keywords that people were using to find information on the Internet about acromegaly and its treatment. By incorporating the findings from this research, Tercica developed a search engine optimization (SEO) strategy that drove even more qualified traffic to the Somatuline Depot site.

Get Social

To support your patient targets, leverage social media and insight-driven resources. While it may seem farfetched for a small and relatively unknown newcomer to dominate the market, the goal seemed an achievable one. Through our SOCIAL MEDIAtion process, Compass began observing the social media space—identifying
key sources of information relevant to our brand such as message boards, Facebook, and other networking groups and online communities.

Next, we identified 20 key sites that contained acromegaly and treatment information, including http://Mayoclinic.com/, http://About.com/, and http://Drugs.com/. To ensure that the Somatuline Depot message appeared in as many places as possible and was always accurately represented, Compass employed its Online Outreach service. Using Online Outreach, Compass developed, distributed, and gained placement of educational content on many of these prominent sites, often with links back to http://SomatulineDepot.com/.

The Results

In terms of building brand awareness, driving traffic to the Web site, and establishing product trial, the results of Tercica’s interactive efforts far exceeded the company’s goals for the brand.

The email campaign enjoyed a highly favorable open rate, with 13.4 percent of physicians and 11 percent of pharmacists opening the launch announcement email. Of the 18,000 pharmacists who opened the email, close to 7,000 clicked through to the new Somatuline Depot Web site.

Online Outreach efforts resulted in 75 percent penetration and adoption, with eight of the 11 identified sites implementing the educational content submitted to them.

Furthermore, Tercica was especially pleased with how many patients and healthcare professionals visited http://SomatulineDepot.com/. In the first 12 months post-launch, more than 32,000 unique visitors arrived at the site, with 80 percent of site traffic being delivered via paid search.

Not only were the interactive marketing efforts successful in driving qualified traffic to the site, once visitors arrived, but they were also effective in driving online traffic. Visitors averaged 6.2 minutes on the site with 125 visitors opting into the database in the first month alone (60 percent of those were patients; 40 percent, healthcare professionals). Within the first six months, 115 consumers signed up for the CRM program, and 20 percent of CRM enrollees went on to print the online coupon for Somatuline Depot, with 46 percent of them redeeming it.

Somatuline Depot is living proof that for small, specialty pharma companies, interactive marketing can bring them into the big leagues, but more importantly, emerge them as a star player. While Big Pharmas may have greater resources, their sheer size can cause them to move slowly, like a battleship. So, get moving—propel your brand into the market like a speedboat, and in the process, create powerful waves.