Gauri Chaudhari’s perfect prescription to build a healthcare brand

The Indian pharma market has always been a challenging one. In a highly saturated and crowded market, there are hundreds of similar brands trying to fight for their space at the doctor’s chamber and at the chemist shops. Establishing a competitive edge with strong product differentiation is often considered to be very challenging.

In an effort to give a comprehensive guide to marketeers in the pharma industry and aspirants who want to join the growing world of healthcare industry, Gauri Chaudhari, an accomplished healthcare marketing expert with an impressive track record, has released her book ‘The Perfect Pill’.

‘The Perfect Pill’ propagates a robust 10-step healthcare brand building model that helps you create the much-needed differentiation and a unique value proposition for patients and physicians. The steps suggested in the book help establish an ultimate win-win situation for patients, physicians and the sales and marketing professionals.

In a free-wheeling conversation, Gauri Chaudhari, Co-Founder, Brand Innerworld, spoke to Ganapathy Viswanathan (Independent Communication Consultant) on the thought process of this book and how this book will benefit a lot of professionals from the healthcare industry.

Writing any book needs a lot of patience and time. What was your objective, and what inspired you to write this insightful book, ‘The Perfect Pill’?

I distinctly remember the day I felt the need for a book on pharma marketing/ branding. I was coaching a team of pharma marketers from an esteemed multinational company. The top leadership wanted the Rs 5 crore brand to become Rs 35 crore in three years and requested me to help the marketing team.

In the very first session, the brand manager said, “Reaching Rs 35 crore in 3 years is impossible. After all, mine is a me-too brand.”

“How can it be me-too if it is a brand? Products can be me-too, brands can’t.” – was my simple response. But the brand manager was not ready to accept.

It took six coaching sessions for him to understand what I was trying to say.

That day, I once again realised how most pharma/ healthcare professionals are trapped in “molecule thinking” and wished they had opportunities to learn “brand thinking”.

“Is there any book on pharma/ healthcare brand building?” I wondered. Despite searching extensively, I couldn’t find any book to help my mentee.

I was highly impressed by Ambi Parameswaran’s book on building brands. So, I went to Ambi and requested him to write one on Pharma Branding. His instant reply was, “Why don’t you write?” When I hesitated, he said, “No harm in trying.” Thus came ‘The Perfect Pill: 10 Steps to Build a Strong Healthcare Brand’.

When you planned to pen this book, who was the target audience in your mind? Could you explain the kind of thinking and process that went behind compiling this book and making it relevant and useful?

The target audience was clearly marketing and sales professionals from pharma Rx and OTC, medical device, consumer health and healthcare industry.

When I decided to write the book, my thinking was clear. I wanted to put together my experience in handling over 100 flagship pharma and healthcare brands.

In the past 27 years, I have handled brands as a marketing professional, advertising professional, consultant and coach.

While working on brands from different genres like prescription, quasi-prescription, OTC, medical device, surgical and hospital brands, I realised there could be a unique ten-step approach to healthcare brand building.

This approach helps differentiate pharma and healthcare brands in a manner that brands provide unique benefits to both physicians and patients.

Thus, the brands built with the 10-steps framework can create an ultimate win-win situation for Patients, Physicians and Professional from the industry.

The book covers in detail the ten steps to build a healthcare brand. What, according to you, are some of the challenges the industry is facing and how have you addressed that?

Several countries, including India, allow the marketing of branded generics. Branded generics essentially mean being able to brand a generic molecule with a distinctive name and identity.

Branded generic promotion provides an opportunity to create differentiated brands catering to the unique needs of the patients. For example, insulin is a generic molecule for patients who have diabetes. But every diabetic patient is different. Their context and lifestyles are different. Hence, their needs are different. An executive who needs insulin before lunch can’t inject himself in the office cubicle or bathroom. A convenient pen-style dose-dialed injection provides much-needed convenience to him. The same insulin needs to be in a vial form for a housewife who can use it as per the prescription. You may need to colour code insulin vials and give visual instructions if she does not understand English and read the instructions. After all, the wrong dose of insulin can be fatal.

Again, an executive who may not have the luxury of eating pre-planned home meals, who has to travel ten days a month for office-related work, needs help managing diabetes and his insulin dose. An Insulin brand can provide beyond-the-pill services like patient education/ advice service, carb monitor chart/ app to help him understand what to eat and not to eat to avoid hypoglycaemia or hyperglycaemia.

Thus, for the same molecule of insulin, one can bring about differentiation and relevance in several ways.

‘The Perfect Pill: 10 Steps to Build a Strong Healthcare Brand’ offers more than ten strategies to differentiate brands of the same generic drug so that doctors have the most effective option and may prescribe the most appropriate brand to patients depending on their unique needs.

Is this the first comprehensive book published on how to build a pharma brand? How have you structured this book to ensure that it covers the A to Z of building a pharma brand from start to end?

This is not the first book, and I am sure it won’t be the last one. There are several books in the market written by experienced professionals, and each one is a must-read. Yet there wasn’t any book on pharma branding that could have got the pharma marketers out of the “molecule thinking” trap.

This book covers almost every part of building a pharma/ healthcare brand. The book has everything from formulation aspects to physician and patient insights to developing brand value proposition, designing a brand logo, brand identity, planning media, and evaluating your brand’s equity.

As a seasoned practitioner in the business of pharma marketing, what would be your advice to young aspirants who want to build a career in pharma marketing? How will your book ‘The Perfect Pill’ help them?

Absolutely, this book will help them on multiple accounts.

1. It will help them understand how to differentiate and create value for customers (physicians and patients).
2. It will help them understand that the healthcare brand’s sole purpose of existence is to improve patient outcomes.
3. Young marketers can identify enormous brand-building opportunities and never give in to unethical tactics of giving freebies to get their brand prescribed.
4. Last but not least, the framework used in this book can help marketers build their personal brand.

I firmly believe that the fundamental principles of brand building are the same across industries. The principles remain the same whether it is a pharma/ healthcare brand, consumer or personal brand.