Guest column: cultivating hope with biotech marketing

BT Catalyst,  April, 2003  by Darren Whitt

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The current recession has hit the biotechnology sector hard, and many Nasdaq-listed companies are trading below their cash value. While it may be argued the industry doldrums are a function of negative sentiment surrounding corporate scandals, poor or lackluster clinical trial results, and FDA bureaucracy, investors and patients are challenged to find the silver lining among the gray clouds.

If you have a biotechnology company, publicly traded or not, what can you do? Most continue to "fight the good fight," battling time until things turn around. But the battle is plagued with "head-in-the-sand" survival strategies practically void of any marketing.

It is easy to dismiss the need for a marketing budget when a company is years away from producing a marketable product and generating revenue, let alone profits.

Biotechs with this mindset need to take an unconventional approach and look beyond their pipeline to communicate the message of a different product. At this juncture, the product biotechs need to market is hope. A recent public relations campaign for the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) says, "Biotechnology is a big word that means hope."

Hope is a product in demand from two distinct audiences--the patient and the investor. At first glance, it might appear the product serves the unrelated interests of each constituent; however, hope is closely aligned with the objectives of both. While hope to the patient is the desire to obtain a cure, the investor's desire is to obtain an adequate return on investment.

The economics of this paradox are co-dependent on the demand for hope by patient and investor, and if either party is removed from the demand equation, the other will be adversely impacted.

Without marketing to meet patient demand for innovative products and investor's interest in identifying companies with pipelines offering the potential to produce a positive return on investment, the biotech industry will continue to suffer.

The biggest marketing obstacle faced by a biotech company is the ability to bridge the communication gap with non-scientific audiences. Investors and patients have diverse educational backgrounds, and there are extreme discrepancies in the ability to comprehend science and technology.

Most biotechs make an effort to explain the technology of their product pipeline through information on the company Web site, but the content is usually communicated in a scientist-to-scientist manner. White the Internet is a tremendous vehicle to disseminate information efficiently and deliver marketing and educational messages, the biotech sector has yet to fully embrace the power of this medium.

Biotech companies should not remove scientific content targeted to a professional demographic, but should add relevant information to bridge knowledge barriers between dynamic audiences. In a recent speech to the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business, Dan Eramian, vice president of communications for BIO, said:

"But because we [the biotechnology industry] toil in the mysterious caverns of science, our daily task is to offer light and familiarity so that those who decide the future of our enterprises will trust us. We do that by communicating--in every way possible, and to every audience possible--to educate and inform (January 17, 2003)."

A number of key trends are starting to make biotech and life-science organizations consider improving their Web sites' ability to convey a successful marketing message. These trends include:

Consumer demand for online health information. Approximately 63 million Americans actively use online health resources, and up to 125 million are indirectly influenced by such resources (Manhattan Research);

The success of the direct-to-consumer marketing movement by pharmaceutical companies influences consumers to seek drug information online and request prescriptions from their physicians;

The emergence of broadband, which currently accounts for 20 percent of all U.S. Internet users and will surpass dial-up services in 2006 (Wall Street Journal).

As more patients search for potential cures and therapeutic options via the Internet, the increase in bandwidth capacity is producing a richer media channel for content delivery, and biotech companies need to extend their online educational efforts beyond text-based information.

Molecular simulation, using 2D and 3D animation, is extremely effective in bridging the educational divide between a company and non-clinical audiences. The old adage "a picture is worth a thousand words" is particularly relevant to biotech marketing, and animation extends this opportunity by combining audio with visual resources to improve comprehension.

While pharmaceutical companies with sophisticated marketing plans use integrated media strategies and have embraced multimedia to deliver targeted messages to distinct audiences, many biotech companies dismiss the use of animation because of budget constraints. In most instances, elaborate pharma-sized multimedia campaigns are difficult for biotechs to justify, even in the best economy, but animation can be a highly effective educational resource for those with "champagne taste and beer money."