PharmaVoxx - Advanced Analytics for Pharma Marketing

This past September, Med Ad News began its now-annual search for the future of pharmaceutical marketing. We sought out young companies to profile that are providing the most innovative and interesting products, services, or marketing opportunities to pharmaceutical companies and the healthcare community. After reviewing dozens of nominations, many of which were provided by our own readers, we narrowed the list to just three. Each of the three companies chosen by Med Ad News is very different in business model and products and services offered – one of them is not really a company at all – but all of the profiles do share one singular characteristic: that spark of creativity that makes frustrated entrepreneurs say, “Why didn’t I think of that?” In these companies, we see a little of what the future of our business might hold. Here are Med Ad News’ three Pharmaceutical Marketing Ventures to Watch for 2010.

PharmaVoxx

The PharmaVoxx offering includes three key features. VoxxVault is the comprehensive database, updated daily, of pharmaceutical promotional materials. The material that goes into VoxxVault is collected by the company’s researchers from a diverse panel that includes generalist and specialist offices, pharmacies and hospitals, medical conferences, manufacturer programs, industry journals, consumer publications, and online media. VoxxBrief & CI Dashboard offers clients ready-topresent reports that provide targeted, relevant information at a glance. The reports summarize and prioritize the latest messaging, positioning, and promotional activities that may affect a disease market. Finally, VoxxAlerts are customized e-mail alerts that identify new promo materials matching a client’s specific criteria.

The problem that PharmaVoxx’s founders were attempting to solve when they launched the company was one that is familiar to any marketer: too much information, too little time.

“PharmaVoxx’s founders are marketing and competitive intelligence professionals who served the CI and pharmaceutical industry for a combined 20 years,” says Dao Vo, the company’s general manager. “As CI consultants to the pharmaceutical industry, we often monitored promotional activity with the purpose of understanding competitors’ positioning, identifying marketing weaknesses or opportunities that our clients could exploit, and predicting competitor or market trends.

“In 2005, it was easy to see that the sheer volume of pharmaceutical promotions creates a massive need for a comprehensive source of materials, and that the Web as a promotional channel was going to transform the way pharmaceutical companies could interact with both patients and healthcare providers. But the volume of promotional activity also creates the most enduring obstacle that we and our clients face: data overload.

“The only existing product available at the time did nothing to address data overload. In speaking with our pharma CI clients, they reiterated the same pain points over and over again. Too much data, most of it irrelevant; don’t have time to browse 100+ promo items when I am looking for the answer to a single question. So we set about to resolve their pain points and discovered that there was plenty of enthusiasm for a better product.”

Thus, the PharmaVoxx database. But the company’s founders didn’t just want their offering to be a database; part of their goal was to help clients turn all that data into insights on which they could take action.

“The goal for PharmaVoxx was always to be more than just a database of marketing and promotional materials,” Ms. Vo says. “Anyone can build a database. But our aim is to transform all that data into insights that are really valuable and provide business application. For example, seeing a competing drug’s brochure after it’s in the field is interesting, but what decisions can you make based on that?”

In addition to viewing that new brochure, with PharmaVoxx a client can analyze what types of messages competitors rely on the most. For example, a marketer might be placing significant emphasis on convenience and cost but not so much on efficacy and safety. Such a situation, Ms. Vo says, could offer an opportunity for a new entrant to the market to distinguish itself in the messaging space.

“Will a doctor remember which drug said they were most convenient for patients, when all the competitors in that space are saying the same thing?” she says. “Probably not. But they may remember when the new drug says how effective they are since it isn’t a message they’ve been given before.”

In the beginning, most PharmaVoxx clients used the PharmaVoxx database simply to see what brochures, detail aids, and advertisements their competitors were using out in the marketplace. Ms. Vo believes that this was just a function of what they were used to doing because they didn’t have a choice with their existing database product.

“Our first step was to show them that they didn’t have to go through hundreds of documents to find the five that were relevant to them,” she says. “Now, we’ve been steadily introducing them to the many insights and opportunities that can be gleaned from our data.”

Building up a truly representative database of pharmaceutical marketing materials is no easy undertaking. The most common examples of drug/disease promotional activity are the brochures seen in doctor’s waiting rooms, television commercials, magazine and online banner advertisements, and health-related Websites. But PharmaVoxx has found that DTC only makes up a little more than a quarter of all promotional activity, and the other three quarters are not quite so visible or easy to track.

“The majority of pharmaceutical promotional activity is directed toward healthcare professionals,” Ms. Vo says. “Doctors, pharmacists, and other healthcare providers receive an abundance of marketing literature, presentations and videos, reference materials, support items, and advertisements that aren’t easily monitored because of volume and the more limited distribution.”

Collecting all that requires what Ms. Vo calls “network development”: the management, growth, and cultivation of all such sources of pharmaceutical promotions. PharmaVoxx systematically collects promotional content and materials from a diverse panel of generalist and specialist offices, pharmacies and hospitals, medical conferences, manufacturer programs, industry journals, consumer publications, and online media. Then, to make all this useful, the company must go through the process of sorting, cataloging, and everything else that gets the promotional content from its original form (hard-copy, electronic, mobile application) into a format that can be made available online.

But that’s not all PharmaVoxx’s staff does. The company is constantly trying to anticipate its clients needs and offer greater insight into the data it is collecting. The database itself, after all, is only a starting point.

“First and foremost, we are innovators, from both a technological standpoint and a product standpoint,” Ms. Vo says. “We are constantly innovating and refining the product and services we provide. In doing so, we’re changing the way our clients monitor promotional activity and the depth and value of information they’re providing to their target audience and stakeholders.”

As PharmaVoxx grows up, its leaders are attempting to transition the perception of the company from aggregator to analyzer. This has necessitated a significant change in approach.

“I spent the first two years in business trying to get our clients into the database,” Ms. Vo says. “Our thought was the more they log in, search, download things from PharmaVoxx, the more value we’ll provide. But that way of thinking has gone out the door. Now, my goal is to keep my clients out of the database. Because if I have provided the right information to them, in the right format, then they don’t need to be searching our database. I’ll have created value for them, without making them do the work.”

But the company continues to expand its database, both in volume and new media. In 2009, PharmaVoxx expanded its database of competitors’ marketing materials and promotional channels to include digital media and mobile applications. Then, in late September of this year, the company announced that its customers will now be able to track and analyze competitors’ online video marketing materials, including video advertisements, presentations, symposia, and more.

“The pharmaceutical marketing landscape is continually growing and changing with the emergence of new media and technologies,” Ms. Vo says. “Our customers’ ability to quickly and adeptly respond to competitor messaging is critical. The only way to provide our customers with an accurate picture of the whole pharma marketing landscape is to give them access to all the promotional material that is produced and distributed by the competition.”

As the company’s aggregating and analytical capacity expands and its experience grows, the future may take PharmaVoxx far beyond its present dimensions. “We have lots of choices to grow the business,” Ms. Vo says. “Between our network of panelists, database and data-mining expertise, and multiple healthcare related and non-healthcare related industries where promotional activity is extremely competitive, we can expand into a lot of places.”