Originally Published MX September/October 2005
ADVERTISING, DISTRIBUTION, & SALES
Device Marketing TodayAward-winning campaigns address new media, consumer awareness, new product categories.
Rachelle Grabowski
Outside of Hollywood, few industries are driven by awards. But awards can provide insight into what an industry values, how it has evolved, and where it is heading. As usual, therefore, this year's In-Awe awards reveal current trends in medical marketing—in particular, medical device marketing.
The Medical Marketing Association (MMA; San Francisco) issues its International Awards of Excellence (In-Awe) annually to recognize the most creative work in medical and healthcare marketing for professional and consumer audiences. Winning the award is well-known as a mark of success among device, diagnostic, and pharmaceutical marketing professionals.
The 2005 In-Awe Awards were presented in June at a black-tie dinner and ceremony at the MMA national conference in Santa Monica, CA. In addition, the association named Mark Miller, vice president for sales and marketing at Zonare Medical Systems Inc. (Mountain View, CA), one of its two medical marketers of the year. Collectively, they provide a nice snapshot of today's best medical device marketing in the country, and perhaps in the world.
Jocoto Advertising (San Ramon, CA), recipient of the 2004 In-Awe Best in Show Award, continued to be honored for its marketing savvy. The agency scored in 2005 with wins for three clients, Carl Zeiss Meditec (Dublin, CA), R2 Technology Inc. (Sunnyvale, CA), and Concentric Medical Inc. (Mountain View, CA). Seidler Bernstein Inc. (Cambridge, MA) garnered the most device category awards for a single client. Its work for Boston Scientific (Natick, MA) won three awards. Medical device marketers picked up awards in each of the In-Awe competition's 10 major categories, despite going head-to-head with pharmaceutical company campaigns backed by much bigger budgets.
Redefining the Category
The range of award-winning device marketers reflects the breadth of promotional thinking and innovative approaches behind the rapid growth of this healthcare industry sector. While the public's focus—not to mention scrutiny—is often on pharmaceuticals, devices represent a healthy market of $215-billion-plus that is expanding at double-digit rates.
This growth brings both good and bad news for medical marketers. More dollars are being spent on devices. However, competition is growing, and the device market is going through some significant changes.
"We are seeing more and more vendor consolidation and product parity," says Kathleen Bernstein, principal and head of client services at Seidler Bernstein. "Hospitals don't want to deal with many different companies to stock interchangeable products. And doctors are getting tired of hearing the minutiae of product details when the differences are so small in reality."
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| Lena Chow |
The very definition of a medical device is changing as well. "Looking at products that are coming onto the market, we see the convergence between devices and pharmaceuticals," says Lena Chow, chairman and CEO of JYT Health Media Corp. (Palo Alto, CA). She sees good examples on the interventional side in drug-coated stents and ultrasound-enhanced thrombolysis. In the diagnostics area, Chow notes, "We're fast entering the age of personalized medicine, where diagnostics and pharmaceuticals work hand in hand from development through trials and into clinical use."
Bernstein concurs. "Fusion technologies and the intersection of drugs and devices will change the landscape for device companies and marketers," she says. "Products like drug-eluting stents are creating a completely new category. And the tie between diagnostic testing and pharmaceuticals is tightening rapidly."
DTC for Devices
There is a bright side to the device direct-to-consumer (DTC) story: opportunity abounds. To date, an estimated 117 million Americans have searched online for health-related information, and 89% of a representative sample polled said their searches were successful.1
Jay Cooper, senior vice president of advertising agency Archer/Malmo Inc. (Memphis), says, "Everybody is trying to figure out how to influence the consumer." The medical device and implant manufacturers, seeing how effective DTC was for the pharmaceutical companies, are trying to take the same approach. "Unfortunately," says Cooper, "it's not as simple as swallowing a pill. These are complicated surgeries that take a good deal of training. One company's implant or device surgical procedure might not be done the same way as another. Or, the patient's needs might not warrant using a certain implant or device."
Says JYT's Chow: "From the perspective of how products are brought to the market, one significant driving force has been the empowered patient as a strong influencer in product adoption and use, even in cases of technologically complex products used by highly trained specialists. In some cases, disease awareness drives identification of patients, which then drives product use."
Jocoto Advertising's vice president of account services Colette Kuhnsman says that DTC has its place in device marketing, but requires caution. However, several device fields, such as minimally invasive neurology, lend themselves to advantage in creating heightened consumer awareness in order to speed up the widespread adoption of breakthrough technologies. "Savvy device manufacturers already make heavy use of PR in order to spread awareness to consumers and associations," Kuhnsman says, "so carefully targeted advertising and direct marketing seem a likely next step."
Kevin Tausend, director of marketing for the ear, nose, and throat (ENT) division of ArthroCare Corp. (Sunnyvale, CA), says, "I think that device makers will continue to embrace DTC marketing—especially via the Web and through public relations—despite the backlash generated by prescription-drug TV advertising."
Clearly, device DTC is here to stay. Signs of even more innovative uses of DTC channels could appear over the next year, including medical-education-style device promotion.
New Media
An examination of trends and current practices in device marketing wouldn't be complete without a look at device marketers' use of so-called new media. According to Forrester Research, 87% of all doctors go online at least monthly. "Younger physicians are leading the charge with many more PDAs [personal digital assistants] than their older peers and are availing themselves of the Internet as a tool for general research and a source of specific drug and medical device information."2
Tausend says that device companies' experience with the Web and online media is too recent and too limited in nature. "We haven't used it thoroughly enough to understand what it can do for us," he says. "And neither have our physician customers. It is also difficult to keep up with the technology changes that drive the marketing potential of new media, and we are often at the mercy of our IT departments on that front." But Tausend does see more device marketers treating new media as an integral part of their overall marketing mix rather than the esoteric specialty of a corporate interactive marketing department. "That integrated approach will make it a more effective medium for us," he says.
One exemplary use of new media for the device world is live surgical Webcasting. Internet healthcare broadcaster slp3d Inc. (West Hartford, CT) creates surgical Webcasts that function as tutorials for surgeons in remote areas. Now the Webcasts are gaining popularity among potential patients, who constitute about 70% of the viewers.3 This technology with its audience of sophisticated patients can serve as a marketing tool for device manufacturers, particularly those with appealing minimally invasive procedures.
Alex Fraser, director of marketing for slp3d, says that the technology can be implemented in a controlled environment or be available to the general public. He adds that physicians and highly educated consumers are asking which devices will be used for an upcoming surgery after the top-line information is publicized.
The Fundamentals Remain
Despite all the changes in the device industry, experts agree that the fundamental principles of marketing still apply.
ArthroCare's Tausend says, "In an industry filled with buzzwords, the basics still hold true: device marketers can make sure that their message to physicians is clinically relevant, that it is repeated across multiple media with sufficient frequency, and that the calls to action support the overall business and marketing strategy."
Cooper of Archer/Malmo says that the most important thing to remember when trying to break through the clutter is to deliver just one message at a time. Adds Kuhnsman: "It is really about developing your own brand personality in a way that is unique in your market space, and then being consistent with it. There is a tendency in devices to focus on the product itself rather than the results of the product." Where the true message lies, she says, is in the emotional satisfactions a company's focus creates, its dedication to providing the world with a beneficial technology.
Fittingly, Miller of Zonare Medical Systems, MMA Medical Marketer of the Year, has the last word: "First, you have to have a product that brings significant benefits to the customer. All the clever marketing can't substitute for a product that is mediocre or marginally beneficial to the industry."
References
Rachelle Grabowski is a freelance healthcare and medical writer.
Copyright ©2005 MX
