Medical Device Link.

Originally Published PMPN July 2004

Brand Matters

Robert C. Sprung

The growth of the European Union (EU) this May by 10 countries is a general cause for celebration. But the expansion is already causing headaches for marketing and labeling professionals, forcing them to make strategic decisions affecting label design, translation, printing, and delivery.

Legislation like the EU’s’s Medical Devices Directives already require local-language labeling. If you wish to sell product in Spain, your labeling must be in Spanish. The 10 new nations represent only seven languages. But if you wish to sell across the EU, you are still looking at up to 20 languages on the label and associated product literature.

There are major strategic questions that need to be faced now as a result of the changes in the EU.

Where do we draw the line on significant markets? Conventional wisdom says that overseas sales are driving U.S. profitability. To build brands in these new markets, one must “ante up” the price of market entry, whatever the cost, otherwise competing firms will grab market share. But some argue that adding each language and market needs careful cost-benefit analysis. 

What are the physical limits of our packaging? Even if you decide to translate into 15 or 20 languages, where can you put them? Companies already selling in Europe have reduced type size on labeling to the point of illegibility. Every square inch on the package is spoken for.

The first solution is regional packaging. Instead of 15 languages on a single package, one can create three groups of five (e.g., north, south, and eastern European). But this, too, comes at a cost: increased pressure on accurate sales projections per market and more-complex inventorying of packaging components.

The second solution is more painful. Even though the payload is identical, many companies are increasing package size to accommodate the added label text and newly bloated insert. This is not without irony given the importance of environmental considerations in the EU. The new languages are eating up more paper and increasing costs to the consumer through higher production costs.

Are we using too many words? Others take aim at another culprit: the number of words in translation. In late May, the EU announced that its own cost of translation was skyrocketing. “We encourage our services to write documents that are shorter,” says EU spokesman Eric Mamer. 
The math is simple yet profound: If an English label of 20 words is translated into 20 languages, removing five words on the original will reduce the total verbiage by 100 words or 25%. This will dramatically reduce the space required as well as translation cost.

Can we leverage technology? Pushed to labeling’s edge, managers are taking a hard look at solutions that include icons to replace text and technologies such as accordion folds.

Many are girding up to go paperless with package inserts being delivered electronically via the Web or an automated fax-back service (with prompts in the user’s local language). 

A five-page original insert that now pushes 100 pages in translation is, by common consent, read by very few people. For regulatory and safety reasons, though, it needs to be available. 

But packaging and marketing professionals are finally daring to ask whether the package-design and translation tail is not wagging the dog. Stay tuned as we report on how companies are solving this complex problem. 

Copyright ©2004 Pharmaceutical & Medical Packaging News