Vladislav Gurin :: BioTech & Pharma consulting

The more complex a product becomes, or the higher the value ascribed to it, the greater the opportunity for value-added influencers to make a significant impact.

Consumers are influenced consistently and substantially by professionals. The real choices or decisions facing us are too difficult to take. We need shortcuts. Sometimes their advice is sought, other times it comes at us uninvited. Nevertheless, consumers listen to. It’s easier if the expert makes the decision for us. The professions that customers listen to are varied, not restricted to the white collar professions. They are listed below:

• Doctors
• Lawyers
• Financial advisers
• Builders
• Teachers
• Journalists
• Academics
• Taxi drivers
• Hairdressers
• Dentists
• Gardeners
• Architects
• Council officials
• Hotel concierges
• Travel kiosk staff

Especially in the biotech, biochem, pharmaceutical and medical sectors, the role of specific academics can be extremely influential. Not only do some educational institutions play a prominent part in the day-to-day fabric of some sectors, but the major vendors lean heavily on their academic links in order to leverage the kudos of perceived thought leaders. Besides academics are rarely even considered by sales or marketing staff as having any effect on a company’s profits and expectations. They’re often wrong. The answer is that we tend to believe people with expertise and professional standing. Academics have been proven for decades to be heavily influential.

Unlike the product launch, the brand launch is, from the very beginning, a long-term program.
Such launch will modify the existing order, values and market shares of the category. It aims at establishing a new order and different values and at impacting on the market for a long time. This can only be achieved if people are convinced of the brand’s absolute necessity and are ready to give it all they have.
In order to keep staff, management, bankers, clients, opinion leaders and salespeople mobilised for the long term, the company must be driven by a real brand project and a true vision. The latter will indeed serve to justify, internally and externally, why the brand is being launched and what its essential purpose is.
Creating a brand implies first drafting the brand’s programme, which underlies the brand identity and positioning. Presenting the brand in a programmatic format (Table 1) is fruitful.

Table 1. Underlying the brand is its programme.

It indicates where the brand stems from, where it draws its energy, what big project lies behind the brand. This is useful as a step in the brand thinking process itself, before the brand identity prism and brand positioning are defined.
Many brands no longer know why they exist, so they would be quite unable to answer questions such as those in Table 1 defining the brand programme. Such questions reflect a philosophy at the opposite of niche tactics.
Only those who are driven by a grand project within can actually set out on the long trip of brand making.