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 Choose Packaging, Not Trinkets, for Detailing Your Brand’s Benefits
A familiar means of promoting pharmaceutical brands now appears to be taboo. In revising its code of ethics on interactions with healthcare practitioners, Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) is dissuading drug marketers from providing promotional items “that do not advance disease or treatment education.” In other words, no more “pens, note pads, mugs, and similar reminder items with company or product logos,” PhRMA explains. “Such noneducational items should not be offered to healthcare professionals or members of their staff.” Such is the case even if these items are accompanied by patient or physician educational materials.
What is still allowed, you ask? “It is appropriate for companies . . . to offer items designed primarily for the education of patients or healthcare professionals if the items are not of substantial value ($100 or less) and do not have value to healthcare professionals outside of his or her professional responsibilities,” reads PhRMA’s revised code.
Here is where packaging can save the day. PhRMA says that companies may offer doctors educational items to help patients with treatment or management of
their conditions. For example, companies may “provide through healthcare professionals patient starter kits and/or patient training kits that help enhance the patients’ appropriate use of the prescribed medicine.”
What comes to Joe Lally’s mind is the Pegasys starter kit that his company, Howell Packaging, made for Hoffmann-LaRoche. “Educational materials, both for the physician and patient, may be one of a decreasing number of options to build brand equity and support goals of relationship marketing,” says Lally. He serves as Howell’s marketing manager, packaging for pharmaceuticals.
Lally says that starter kits/training kits are just one example of relationship marketing. This term has been used to describe establishing a strong connection between a drug company and its various points of interaction, Lally says. “Packaging is part of the entire relationship marketing strategy. Packaging can organize and deliver educational and practice-related materials, it can create compliance-enhancing features to improve patient outcomes, and it can help drive patients to specific sponsored Web sites. The use of compliance packages, starter kits, and therapeutic category education materials can establish a relationship between the patient and the pharmaceutical company.”
When asked about the potentially widening role that packaging could play in brand promotion, PhRMA’s Jennifer Page says that “packaging is not mentioned in the revised code.” However, it would be “appropriate for samples to be distributed.” She does point out, though, that “trinkets are no longer allowed.” So starter kits or other packages should not contain other items unless they are educational. Reads the code: “Providing noneducational items to healthcare professionals for patient use is not appropriate, even if these items are of minimal value, such as pedometers, stopwatches, or other general fitness items.”
Items that could be distributed within starter packages, therefore, may be limited. What is the determining factor? PhRMA uses a word you are all quite familiar with: compliance. “Companies may also provide to healthcare professionals educational items designed for use by patients to assist in the administration of their treatment or management of their conditions. Such items . . . may be considered essential to proper treatment or compliance.”
Providing patient starter kits that encourage regimen compliance isn’t a new idea. But it does require some effort. Drug companies must enlist the support of marketing, packaging, and regulatory teams. These sectors must work together closely to execute a well-branded package that can be produced on packaging lines and that meets all FDA regulations regarding labeling and the like.
Indeed, most companies have opted “to not put branding on packaging because of the 6- to 12-month lead time needed for FDA approval on packaging,” says Holly Ong, a marketing professional within CHS, a strategic marketing firm within inVentiv. “However, that may start to change in scenarios where the packaging can address an educational need or a convenience need.”
She adds that there are other steps that pharmaceutical companies could take. “For retail products, there’s an opportunity to develop customer-centric packaging, such as dose packs and school packs, which help support patient compliance. For other products, packaging might be used to enhance the ease of use, for example, by including an applicator with a dermatology product.”
Any advice for pharmaceutical packaging professionals? PMP News asked Ong. “Consult with packaging engineers,” she says. “If you begin branding your packaging, remember any rebranding change must be FDA reviewed and approved, so a longer lead time is needed. Plan early for stability studies and regulatory review because packaging changes usually require FDA review and approval.”
Daphne Allen
Editor
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