Truth: The New Rules for Marketing in a Skeptical World

, long-time marketing consultant Lynn Upshaw makes the case that it is neither naïve nor idealistic to employ marketing programs motivated by integrity and truth. Instead, integrity is a practical and proven way of achieving a competitive advantage—the 

way for a company to gain success in this age of multiple marketing options and engaged consumers.  

Integrity rings true for a brand, which is no small thing at a time when a savvy 10-year-old can spot a phony sneaker campaign in a second. 

Truth marketing, however, is not something you can just tack on to a plan. It has to be an integral part of the marketing strategy and its execution. It also has to be an outgrowth of a company's internal culture. The company has to live its brand.  

Upshaw's book is both strategic and practical. He begins by asking a slew of penetrating questions, such as: Do you treat your customers as partners, or as nameless sources of revenue? Is your marketing message technically legal, but inherently misleading? Are you focused on building your share of credibility? He then goes on to offer advice and hard-core solutions for marketing with integrity. 

From a selfish point of view, the only problem with Upshaw's book is that pharma is not included in his discussion of different industries. Which raises the question: Can his solutions for marketing with integrity be applied to pharmaceutical companies at a time when the industry's reputation is so low it's equated with the tobacco industry? 

You covered a number of industries in your book, but not the pharmaceutical industry. Why was that?

I could have written a whole chapter, or even three, about the pharmaceutical industry. I was trying to make the book about as many different kinds of industries as possible. 

What would you have said in those missing chapters?

Trust is critical for pharma. It deals with products that, obviously, impact human beings' health and, frankly, their lives. Already, you're involved in something critically important to people. Consequently, if you promise a product will help my heart and it turns out to hurt my heart, the trust is broken to the point of almost betrayal: I've trusted you, and I've trusted my doctor, and suddenly things have gone sour. It tends to escalate. You now have people saying: "I don't know or care about your cost recovery. Why are these drugs so expensive? Why isn't everything generic? Why can't I go to Canada to get my drugs?" 

These things are happening at a time when the industry is paying enormous fines for alleged malfeasance. It's really kind of coming to a vortex. If I had to pick a single industry that needs to operationalize integrity in its marketing, it would be this industry. 

Given pharma's regulatory climate, can the marketing strategies for trust still be applied?

When you deal with the government, you always have to worry. Still, I believe the strategies can be applied. But think of where the problems have been: Think of a company that has taken outstanding corporate social-responsibility actions. They've invested in communities and done a lot of other good things. But that meritorious approach may not be ingested by, say, sales people. So, if the sales people are doing things that are marginal or questionable at the same time someone in another department is doing a wonderful work for the communities, that community work can be overshadowed in an instant by a scandal regarding sales practices.  

Is that what you mean when you talk about the quality of a company's internal culture?

Yes, and it is really the point of the book. It is about how to incorporate strategies into your marketing plan so that issues of ethics and honesty are built in and people basically police themselves.  

Sales people, for instance, will say, "No, I'm not going to print an article under a doctor's name when the doctor didn't write it." They will stop themselves. It's naïve to think it's all going to happen overnight, but I believe it can when I see a company like Johnson & Johnson that, generally speaking, operates on a highly ethical level. The company's founding credo is still alive, and it's trained into people. Senior executives regularly refresh themselves on Johnson & Johnson's credo and what it's about. 

Other companies in the industry can take heart. They can see it is possible to incorporate such practices into their working operations.  

At Merck, in the aftermath of the Vioxx scandal, new CEO Richard Clark was quoted as saying "A crisis is a terrible thing to waste." He talked about opening blocked channels of communications so the company spoke in "one voice." Is that what you mean? 

The idea of speaking with one voice, of unifying around a common culture and a common value—along with internal brand building and other things of that nature—is something corporations have started to do more and more frequently. It needs, however, to be based on some fundamental beliefs, such as: "Let's market not just legally, but also honestly. So we're not saying, 'Okay, the lawyers signed off on it, therefore we can do anything.'"  

This is not rocket science; a lot of it comes down to common sense. A self-evaluation test you see popping up more and more in corporate guidelines is: If you're not sure about taking an action, ask yourself, If it was a headline tomorrow in the newspaper, would you be proud of it, or would you be ashamed of it? That's a good litmus test. 

You point out that marketing with integrity is not only good practice but also a tremendous source of competitive advantage when integrated into a plan.

In marketing, we deal a lot with what's called drivers of choice: the reasons people pick one brand over another. Increasingly, people are looking at both the brand and the company that makes the brand, that sponsors the brand, and asking themselves, "Can I trust them?" Brands are about trust. Brands don't succeed without creating trust. We've seen, however, so many instances in business in general—and marketing in particular—where trust is undermined. And certainly in the pharma industry, it is extremely common nowadays for a brand to come under increased scrutiny first by, say, a regulator and then, ultimately, by the public.  

The pharmaceutical industry has come late to the concept of branding. The question now is how do you brand so consumers (including doctors) can trust you? 

The issue for pharma is: If it comes from such-and-such a company, can I trust it? And here is a key point: People don't expect companies to be perfect. They know they make mistakes. It's when you hide something—or if there is a sense that you're hiding something—that there's a problem. It's very much like politicians. We expect our politicians to make a mistake, but if they hide it from us, then we won't forgive them. 

So, the cover-up ends up being worse than the incident itself.

A lot of people now have the impression the pharmaceutical industry has to be forced to tell the truth. That is the biggest damage of all. You saw what happened with the tobacco industry. Tobacco resisted, resisted, resisted as long as they could until it just washed over them. The pharmaceutical industry is coming under such pressure. The name of the game for really smart companies is disclosure: Disclose, disclose, disclose. If you make mistakes, people will forgive. But the more you're forced to disclose, the more people will withhold their credit—and their approval. They'll say, "Well, they're only doing it because they're forced to do it." As opposed to companies that do it because they're forthright about it.  

Think about the companies like the ones I used in the book, including Johnson & Johnson. It took years for these companies to understand how to operate well and then how to present themselves. 

Patagonia will go out of its way in its catalog to explain that it is not satisfied with the way it makes certain products. They still are harming the environment. In other words, they're apologizing for something we'd have no way of knowing about. So that's what I mean about full disclosure. It takes a while before people get the hang of how to do this, particularly if your industry has been doing something different than that for decades. 

Do you think change hasn't occurred because there has been no incentive? 

Historically, in the pharmaceutical industry, it's so competitive that there's little time to recover enormous costs invested. That's when people take shortcuts. And when they take shortcuts, then they end up paying.  

The difference now is that the spotlight is on the industry. The pharmaceutical industry will not get away with nearly as much as it did 10 years ago. It's very much like what the mutual fund industry went through and any number of industries. When the spotlight is on you, it's far better to say, "OK, how can we operationalize this?"  

The last person you trust is the person who says, "Trust me." So it's not like you're going to advertise "trust me," but you can begin to build systems that guarantee that people operate with integrity. And then eventually that information gets out to people that the company is the kind of company it is. 

Absolutely. Pharma may be selling products, but essentially they're in the service industry. I buy a medicine because it provides a service to me. In any service industry, the people themselves have to live it before it really becomes something the external audiences believe. If you look at the great service companies (Southwest Airlines is a classy example), those people live what they believe; they live what Southwest is supposed to be about, and it makes it easier to operate and the customers get it. If they don't live it, and we all have flown on airlines where they don't, then you see this big gap between what they believe and what they claim they are offering us. So, yes, there is very definitely an internal process first. 

Isn't it harder for pharma because it's marketing to physicians and consumers alike?

Physicians were once considered to be the people of greatest integrity. Nurses now rank higher. One of the reasons is that some doctors, in association with the medical industry, have been tainted somewhat by pharmaceuticals. Consumers are aware doctors give us free samples. Where do they get them? From the pharmaceutical companies that make them. It's coming out that the pharmaceutical industry is taking the docs to lunch—all these things that were backroom things are now becoming very clear to the public. I do think it's possible to market to doctors; but now you must do it to prop up the doctor, not to demand, not to degrade the doctor. The doctor can't be tainted by what you do. You two have to be partners. 

Would it be wise to link the drugs with the manufacturers, say, Pfizer Viagra, in order to benefit from the drug's tremendous success?

It's important for pharmaceutical companies to begin to take credit through what's called endorsement branding. An example of this in the accommodations industry is Marriott. Marriott has Marriott, but then it has Courtyard by Marriott and then it has, you know, Hemphill Suites by Marriott and so on. So they take the Marriott name, which is a very powerful name, and they weave it in. Over time, if the Pfizer name, or whatever, is associated along with successful drugs, then it's consumers begin to associate the Pfizer brand with 'I think that's good.' 

Is it too late for pharma to employ the strategies you outline? 

It's just so hard now for pharma. Everybody assumes the worst for the industry. You can run advertising and talk about the wonderful things you've done for the world, if they believe that they can't trust you, it's a waste.  

But you can operationalize integrity, and the industry needs to start doing it pronto. Pharma has a model to some degree with J&J; so I certainly would spend time studying that company if I were trying to do this.  

Articles

Supplements

Lynn Upshaw posits that marketing with integrity is key to success in these skeptical times. To do so, a company has to live its brand. In his book, Upshaw tells you how.

How to Market with Integrity

The ability to review what people are saying about a brand has become a hot topic among pharmaceutical marketers. Managing a brand used to be fairly straightforward, until, of course, the advent of the Internet. Today, the challenge is enormous: blogs, podcasts, micro-blogging, instant messaging, Wikis.... 

For the pharmaceutical industry, brand management is business critical at all times and often enters regulatory realms, adding a significant layer of complexity to the mix. For most pharma companies, online brand management currently means ensuring that their brand's Web site appears first in the paid and organic search results. And that's it. Companies are often reluctant to venture further and actually investigate what is being said about their brand in popular online forums such as blogs or social communities. Why? Simply put, they are wary of FDA and their own internal regulatory committees. Companies fear getting wind of an adverse effect, such as a suspicious headache, caused by their drug that they will then need to disclose.  

This is a legitimate trepidation, but turning a blind eye to the way the drug is being perceived online will not make the problem go away—and it can easily lead to further brand mistrust.  

With so much apprehension in terms of a program, pharmaceutical marketers should initiate online reputation management in small, bite-size pieces—baby steps, so to speak.  

In a Google search for almost any pharmaceutical brand, one finds a number of negative search results. In fact, on average, about 30 percent of the branded key-phrase SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) are negative. All pharmaceutical brand managers should perform a test search on their brands. Questions they should ask themselves:   

What percentage of the results is negative? 

What percentage are negative when they search for competitors' brand names?

Does their brand have an official tolerance policy as far as negative search results are concerned?

If not, presenting a policy to the corporation is fundamental to managing brand reputation. Official tolerance policies would look something like this: Pharmaceutical Company X's Best Practices: If the SERP results for the brand name are negative by 25 percent or more, engage in search reputation management. If the SERPs are worse than Pharmaceutical Company X's competitors, engage in search reputation management. 

What is the value of implementing this first step of a SERP reputation-management program as part of an overall communications strategy? Let's say a brand wants to determine the effectiveness of a recent DTC ad campaign in terms of positive or negative perception of the brand. Having a thorough understanding of the numbers of positive and negative results in the SERPs preceding the campaign will allow them to determine whether the campaign improved or worsened the results. This is valuable and actionable insight.  

Fortunately, all online content leads to one central location: search engines. Whether the content is fact or fiction, the search engines are usually the first place consumers will form an impression of a brand. If a company can effectively manage the results on a SERP, they will inevitably be better equipped to protect their overall online brand reputation.  

Once a brand manager has a sense of positive, neutral, and negative SERP results and can monitor according to the company's tolerance policy, he can take action to ensure that the top results on the SERPs, those that consumers will see first, are as positive as possible. This is done via search engine optimization.  

Brand managers should leverage their existing assets by optimizing them. Assets include patient testimonials, method of action videos, press releases, TV commercials, etc. If these assets are in a digital format, they can be optimized to appear in the search engines for a brand's key phrases. This way, a brand can crowd the negative results off the first couple of pages.  

Besides optimization, there are also paid search strategies every brand manager can implement to help in the process of reputation management online. These include:  

Continually monitoring and notify-ing the search engines of brand trademark misuse

Purchasing the top spot for the brand name 

Monitoring for domain misspellings and brand jacking: Managers of popular brands should type in their brand names and look closely at the results to ensure that no URL jacking has occurred. Unethical marketers will buy a URL similar to another brand's (for example, "

," which is a common misspelling for the allergy drug Alavert). But consumers will be unaware that they've clicked on an incorrect link. 

At this point, a brand manager can begin to fully manage the brand's reputation. An industry as carefully scrutinized as pharma certainly does not need yet another black eye. And it is true; digging into negative search results to determine what content lies within them can open up a Pandora's box of adverse effects. However, pretending the content does not exist can leave false and misleading information sitting in cyberspace, waiting to be read by a consumer seeking reliable health information.  

And what if a consumer reads erroneous or out-of-date information about a drug and then gets sick or, worse, dies?  

Instead of worrying about the potential headaches of committing to this step in a reputation-management program, companies should be concerned about the infinitely worse headaches that can come from avoiding it.  

Negative and incorrect information is not the only content pharmaceutical companies are missing if they refuse to venture into the blogosphere. Customer advocates and potential brand evangelists are everywhere, and third-party endorsements of a brand can be priceless in this industry where so many are doubtful of trustworthiness. What then should a brand manager do to get started? This type of program is most effective with executive buy-in. Therefore, getting the corporation on board with the policy is an ambitious yet important goal to have. Regulatory teams need to be involved, too, and they can help with eventual presentations of the policy to FDA.  

These steps might seem like a long shot and overly aggressive in an industry that has long shied away from participating in new media because of strict government regulations, but they are still worth striving for over time.  

To influence consumers and demonstrate that a brand is trustworthy, the industry must show that it is not afraid of getting to a point where it will participate in an open dialogue with both its critics and its supporters.  

Heather Frahm is president of Catalyst Online, a search engine marketing firm. She can be reached at  

The ability to review what people are saying about a brand has become a hot topic among pharmaceutical marketers. Managing a brand used to be fairly straightforward, until, of course, the advent of the Internet. Today, the challenge is enormous: blogs, podcasts, micro-blogging, instant messaging, Wikis....

Brand Rescuing

for a flight at the Los Angeles airport, Australian artist Justine Cooper viewed her first direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical advertisement while watching the news on TV. Actually, she saw six ads, one after another, advertising drugs for allergies, insomnia, depression, and erectile dysfunction.  

DTC advertising is not allowed in Australia, or indeed in any countries except the United States and New Zealand. And while the content of the ads didn't interest Cooper (she didn't have any of the diseases), she was seduced by their visual beauty. She was also amazed by the very concept of marketing medicines on television, the same way you would shill beer or automobiles, by appealing to a consumer's perceived need and desire. 

Anyone else would have left it at that, caught her flight, and thought no more about it. But Cooper is an artist—and not just any artist: Her particular interest is the intersection between culture, science, and medicine. She investigates it using such interdisciplinary means as animation, video installation, and photography, as well as medical imaging technologies like MRI DNA sequencing and ultrasound. 

"I've never been the kind of artist who sits in a studio and paints a canvas," says Cooper, whose work is internationally exhibited and held in private and public collections, including those at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, Sydney's Powerhouse Museum, and the Australian Center for the Moving Image. Cooper was also awarded the first artist-in-residence at New York's Museum of Natural History. She spent a year exploring the museum's back passageways, storage rooms, and specimen cases, where the majority of the museum's curious collection is stored, documenting what she saw using a wooden 4-by-5 camera from 1910 that belonged to the museum. 

Photographs on both pages: Cooper's promotional materials and advertisements for havidol designed for specific magazines. 

Inspired by the DTC ads, Cooper set about creating her own fictional marketing campaign: The launch of a made-up lifestyle drug called HAVIDOL (sounds like: 

) to treat a made-up disease—dysphoric social attention consumption deficit anxiety disorder  (DSACDAD). The drug's tagline is "When More Is Not Enough."  

Part parody, part fantasy, Cooper's piece is extensive, detailed, and disorientingly real. It represents every stage and element of a drug's marketing process, including: a pill and logo design; promotional and supporting materials; TV spots; and an interactive Web site (

) complete with a quiz, testimonials, videos, and an online store that sells branded T-shirts and jackets. 

Art can be baffling, even maddening. Unlike advertising, its purpose is not to sell, provide answers, or tell us what to think. Viewers are left to create their own relationship to a given piece. It's not always an easy or comfortable place to be, especially with contemporary art. 

Cooper's HAVIDOL piece can be especially unsettling. Given its uncanny resemblance to a real pharmaceutical marketing campaign for a lifestyle drug, it confounded some viewers at the show's opening last winter at the Daneyal Mahmood Gallery in New York City. The entire marketing campaign was displayed along with bowls filled with blue candy to look like HAVIDOL pills. 

"Even though it was an opening in an art gallery, some people thought they were at a pharmaceutical party," says gallery owner Daneyal Mahmood. "And a few people were offended because they actually believed they had the symptoms of DSACDAD. They thought the show was making fun of them." 

Was this Cooper's intent? Is her piece simply a spoof on our consumer marketing society and our seemingly innate belief that a pill can fulfill us, make us well—even perfect? Or is it like Andy Warhol and his Campbell soup can paintings, a representation of something so familiar we are forced to look at the thing itself—as well as art, society, and ourselves—anew? 

called up Justine Cooper and asked her to tell us about the HAVIDOL marketing piece in her own words. 

What do you expect viewers to take away from the work?

It was never meant to be an indictment of the pharmaceutical industry. I saw it more as a subtle look at the way drugs, marketing, and the consumer all kind of interact to create the atmosphere we have today. It's about the way we think about well-being and about what is a disease and what isn't.  

I was interested in where the pressure points were for people and their sensitivities. I wanted to make a drug that wasn't about having lifesaving qualities so much as lifestyle-saving qualities; a drug that essentially helps you to consume more, both materialistically and personally. A drug that helps you to be brighter, to be more beautiful, to be more interesting, to be...well, more. So, I was interested in a drug that would appeal to a lot of people. Even me! 

How did you go about actually choosing the disease?

I polled people I knew. I asked them what they would like a drug for that didn't already exist. Some people wanted frontal lobe enhancers, smart drugs, which I think actually will be coming down the pipeline pretty soon. Other people wanted to be able to talk to their pets. And so while that was maybe too narrow a market for me, I did make it a side effect of HAVIDOL—interspecies communication. HAVIDOL is such an exemplary kind of drug, even the side effects are ambiguous: Is talking to your pets a good thing or a bad thing? 

) is a kind of Alice-in-Wonderland experience: At first you think you've landed on a pharma site advertising a new drug, but then you look a little closer, and you realize none of it is real. Then it's really quite funny.

I wanted to use humor to a certain degree. I think it's a more persuasive way of talking about complicated or difficult things. But I didn't want it to be so funny that the humor was the only aspect people latched onto. There's a whole genre of comedy that does spoofs on drugs. But it's over in a minute. You don't think about it much afterwards. I was looking for something that was a little subtler and a little more ambiguous, so the line between fact and fiction moved on you. 

Some people immediately know it is a parody; other people realize it later. On the Web site, especially, there's a lot of content, and they're happy to keep reading.   

What makes it so disorienting is the detail and breath of the piece. Why did you make it so complete?

It started out just being three television ads, because that was the initial idea. And then I realized to be a really successful marketing campaign, you'd need a Web site, because it's so much more efficient. It reaches so many more people seeking information. And the cost is so much less to produce a Web site than to produce TV ads or broadcast them. I started mimicking the way I imagined Madison Avenue thinks for these campaigns. If I were making HAVIDOL: Part Two, I'd have a patient-advocacy site. 

 I had the initial idea about three years ago, and then I had applied for funding from the Australia Council, the Greenwall Foundation in New York, and the New York State 

Council for the Art.  I knew that it must be a relatively good idea when I got funding from all those places. The funders could picture it; it was viable. The idea must be at the forefront of people's minds. 

How did you pitch it as a grant proposal?

I didn't have a name for the drug then. I was only making a lifestyle pharmaceutical and a marketing campaign for it. And then after I got the funding, I kept adding more components to the marketing campaign. 

It seems like there's not just one way of receiving the work.

Well, exactly. It was not meant to be preaching some higher ground. I think one of the reasons it was successful is that we all identify with having certain symptoms of dysphoric social attention consumption deficit anxiety disorder. So maybe that's what people come away with, that it is simply a sort of an examination of their own choices and their own lifestyle. I guess my hope would be that maybe they'd feel content with what they actually have. 

HAVIDOL isn't like a happy pill, really. It's so you can cope with—what does the woman say in the ad?—"our high-paced 24-hour excessive consumer culture." It's not a drug for depression. It is a drug to make it easier and to make things somehow manageable, and also to make you feel like you're living more fully. 

The whole piece, all its elements, is really gorgeous. Was that intentional?

It had to be seductive—otherwise, it fails. 

Did it seduce you in the making? Was it fun to do?

Oh, it was so much fun to make because it wasn't just me, it was collaborative. As an artist, I'm really more of an editor. Filtering through all the possibilities and picking ones that work together. And I don't think I work particularly fast, but I think I'm detailed. So I really enjoyed working with all the different people, having the discussions.  

The photographs you did at the Natural History Museum seem very different. 

Aesthetically, it is entirely different. But the thread that binds them is the idea of desire. With the museum photos, you're looking at institutional desire and the desire of science to kind of place this veil of rationalism over a pretty messy, sublime kind of world.  

HAVIDOL is a much more cultural, social idea about desire and about what we want and why we want it. My belief is that we don't just want these things because we're told to want them. It's as if we're almost biologically built to desire to be better—that it's some kind of survival mechanism. And the fact that HAVIDOL can kind of promise to deliver that is tapping into not just the glossiness of the pharmaceutical advertisements, but almost an innate genetic determinism to excel. 

Were the museum photographs done before HAVIDOL?

Yes, pre-HAVIDOL. I've actually become less science-y almost. HAVIDOL was almost like stepping outside of the institution. 

All because you sat in an airport and saw direct-to-consumer advertisements for drugs?

I guess I should have looked at TV much sooner.  

Justine Cooper's work is represented by the Daneyal Mahmood Gallery. For more information about the artist or the gallery, contact 

The direct-to-consumer marketing campaign for havidol, a drug for dysphoric social attention consumption deficit anxiety disorder, is drawing lots of public reaction. (but neither the drug nor the disease is real.)

When Branding Is Art

Choosing a name for a new pharmaceutical product used to be a pretty straightforward proposition. Twenty years ago, most drug names were descriptive or functional in nature; they relied on the indication, therapeutic category, or generic name for their creative direction. 

The primary goal of descriptive names was to create an identity that would send a clear message to healthcare professionals—the ones who needed to remember the name and write the prescription. 

Descriptive names often relied upon scientific or Latin-based terms familiar to most physicians. So, Spectracef, an oral antibiotic, took its cue from the generic cefditoren and the antibiotic classes cephalosporins and cephamycins. It used familiar word parts, which helped first-time hearers more easily understand, accept, and adopt the new name.  

When drug companies started advertising directly to consumers in 1997, names needed to speak not just to doctors and pharmacists, but also to patients and their families or caregivers. Consumers started taking on a bigger role and asking for certain brands, and names based on familiar medical terminology weren't so familiar anymore. Consumers usually don't know generic names; they just know they want to feel better. A new opportunity emerged to communicate benefits directly to consumers by way of more emotional and aspirational names. 

Names like Sanctura, Boniva, and Alvesco spring from entirely different creative strategies and involve an attempt to convey an emotional benefit or a promising message. Sanctura, created for the treatment of overactive bladder, borrows from the word 

in order to convey a feeling of security and comfort. Boniva, which is used to manage osteoporosis, combines the words 

to suggest the idea of long life. Alvesco, indicated for asthma, is created from the concept of 

In some cases, the name may not represent any tangible benefit. Instead, it may attempt to communicate a tone or feeling the pharma company wants to embody in the brand. Zyvox, for instance, doesn't have any inherent meaning, but the tone suggest strength, an important quality for an antibiotic.  

A practical reason for the shift away from purely descriptive names is the shrinking number of legally available choices. Approximately 400,000 brands are registered and protected in Class 5 of the US Patent and Trademark Office. This is partly because of the exponential growth of the industry, but also because each player is taking up more trademark territory. 

Medium-size and small firms have joined big pharma companies in applying for trademark protection for their next big idea.  

Trademarking names in Phase II and early Phase III can help some smaller companies differentiate and build awareness, but it means one less name available, even though the product may never leave the lab.  

Larger companies claim even more trademark space because of the number of products in their pipelines and their financial ability to register for many more names than they plan to use immediately.  

The strategy is to have a bank of available names should a first-choice name get rejected by the regulatory agencies. Gaining regulatory approval of names is becoming more difficult due to the potential for medication errors as a result of sound-alike and look-alike qualities.  

Regulatory agencies have also begun rejecting more names because they feel the names are too fanciful or make a claim that clinical data cannot support. 

Given dwindling options and restrictions, how can your team ensure they are selecting a name that will differentiate your product—

 get approved? Consider then these steps: 

Identify your primary and secondary target audiences early in the process. A name can only communicate one idea (or maybe two), so it is paramount to focus on the most compelling message to your particular target.  

Develop a creative strategy that takes into account the most important attributes you want to convey.   

Understand the different types of names and evaluate how each could benefit your product. 

Explore different types of names at the beginning of the process. 

Refine your creative direction until one name becomes the team favorite.

Be cognizant of the legal screening processes. Most legal teams will review a short list of names, but they won't do full legal searches until you've selected your top name candidates.

Make sure your team (including someone from legal) agrees on a tailored review schedule that meets the desired deadline, while maximizing the allocated budget. 

Conduct a global linguistics evaluation. Professional translators and native speakers can offer feedback on pronunciation, associations, cultural, or slang references, and similarity to local products. 

Market research and a medical-advisory-panel review can further narrow a list of name candidates as well as provide valuable support material.

Experiment with unique sounds and letter combinations. 

When a final and preferred name with several backup candidates is agreed on, you'll be ready with the data to support your brand in the regulatory review.  

Clayton Tolley is president of Addison Whitney, an inVentiv Health company. He can be reached at 

Choosing a name for a new pharmaceutical product used to be a pretty straightforward proposition. Twenty years ago, most drug names were descriptive or functional in nature; they relied on the indication, therapeutic category, or generic name for their creative direction.

Naming Your Brand

Trust is (or is not) built into every brand-product, corporate, or business sector. A brand isn't just an artist's logo. A brand is a shorthand symbol of trust-and many other factors-constructed over time, which helps assure people of the:

		Trustworthiness of the person or institution that offers the product or service

		Quality of the product or service, itself

	Social theorist Niklas Luhmann suggests trust is an evolutionary mechanism created in human beings to cope with high levels of uncertainty and complexity in contempory life by reducing the mental effort necessary to make choices concerning risks.

	To explain the role of trust in human transactions, economist Paul Zak and his collaborator, Stephen Knack, studied public trust levels in more than 40 countries, creating the Zak and Knack economic model.

	Their startling conclusion? "Differences in trust cause differences in living standards."

	Furthermore, the record shows that as trust erodes, the political response is more legislation or regulation-exactly what the drug industry is facing today.

	In earlier times, makers of gold coins put their marks (i.e. brands) on the coins, so that unscrupulous shaving of gold from the coins would damage the mark and reveal thieves had been at work.

	Conversely, if the mark was clear, the value of the coin could be trusted. As modern economies moved to mass production, "brands" became ubiquitous as symbols of the credibility and trustworthiness of the manufacturer, and of the strength, speed, safety, and/or other attributes of the products being offered.

	The importance of trust to the pharmaceutical industry was captured recently by Billy Tauzin, president of PhRMA, who responded to a question about the drug industry's tarnished reputation by saying: "There is one great problem that challenges the ability of America's research-based pharmaceutical companies to continue doing what they do better than any other entity on the globe: research and develop new cures and treatments. In a word, it is trust."

	From a net positive rating of 60 percent in the 1997 Harris Interactive 20-industry reputation poll, the pharmaceutical industry rapidly declined to a rock-bottom negative 4 percent in 2004. The pollsters concluded it was almost "surely a direct result of the constant drumbeat of unfavorable publicity about their prices. Industry rating rebounded to 25 percent in 2005, as success of the Medicare Part D prescription drug legislation helped to ameliorate the public's anger.

	However, as the volume of negative publicity related to drug pricing abated somewhat, the drumbeat continued with a barrage of bad publicity related to alleged drug safety and disclosure issues.

	The magnitude of the trust problem is suggested by the results of a 2007 Harris Interactive survey of opinions about the institutions identified as most responsible for drug safety.

	While FDA and drug companies are believed by American consumers to be largely responsible for drug safety-60 percent and 53 percent respectively-only 45 percent of people surveyed trust FDA, and for the industry, the numbers were worse (27 percent).

	I believe these perceptions are wrong. But in the court of public opinion, "Perception is reality." And, as we all know, what happens in the judicial courts frequently mirrors what happens in those of public opinion.

	Earlier this year, a report from PriceWaterhouseCoopers concluded that consumers do not understand the economics of the industry, nor do they understand (or seemingly, care about) the risks and costs involved in drug development-they want lower prices.

	Moreover, they believe the anti-industry rhetoric that "the industry has put profits before patients."

	These are significant misperceptions to overcome. However, if we are to restore trust in pharmaceutical industry, company, and product "brands," we must overcome them.

Harry Sweeney is chairman, CEO of Dorland Global Corporation, a Huntsworth Health Company. He can be reached at 

a brand is like putting together a jigsaw puzzle: Each piece fits into the overall larger picture. Consider then these integral and essential points:

It also strengthens the brand. Align the brand's online message with offline programs. Beyond the look and feel of the brand, the entire online experience should be consistent with the brand's position, strategy, and personality.

If the brand delivers relief to an elderly population, make sure the Web site is easy for that population to use-employ larger fonts, simple navigation, and easy-to-use tools. If the brand competes against a larger brand, but has a unique benefit for a distinct subset of patients, quickly connect those patients with the information they seek on the Web site by enabling them to "self identify" via an interactive quiz, testimonials, or profiles of brand users.

MAKE SURE THE USER EXPERIENCE IS A GOOD ONE 

Research shows a majority of people who do not find what they want within two clicks leave a site (and probably don't return). Employ best-in-class intuitive navigation that is intuitive for each of the targets. Segment the home page so visitors can quickly get to the area of the site that is designed for them. Depending on the audience, include interactive tools and/or games. Where appropriate, show rather than tell with video or flash. People are actively seeking information, not passively perusing a publication. Give them what they are asking for.

People approach the Internet like an information buffet-by surveying what's available and taking what they like from several places. Therefore, have your brand accurately and consistently represented in a variety of relevant online locations, including commercial sites, like WebMD, and nonprofit association sites. Make sure the brand and its associated content are appropriately positioned. The brand information needs to be relevant for each site on which it resides; make sure it fits in.

Measurement milestones must be established 

programs are developed and launched. Once established, ensure all programs are developed and measured by an online marketing specialist who is experienced with sophisticated online analytics software, such as those provided by Omniture, and that the person is an expert in understanding what the software can and cannot do.

	Make sure analytic tools are built into 

elements of the online marketing program-from Web sites to each of the traffic-generating vehicles used, such as banners, e-mails, paid search ads, etc. Marketers should ensure that the metrics, charts, and graphs are reported back in a way that is compelling and provides insight. Very often, the rationale for "next steps" for the online program is not communicated, preventing the evolution of the online effort.

Peter H. Nalen is president and CEO of Compass Healthcare Communications. He can be reached at 

consciously or subconsciously, for most consumers, trust is a function of a good brand story. And what is a good brand story? It is a compelling, relevant, interrelated promise of insights and attributes that's unique to every brand and written with a specific kind of consumer in mind. It is the story that invites the consumer to have a dialogue with the brand-to join it, to engage with it.

	What's the best way for a brand to engage? Successful brands listen. They realize they are not always creating loyalty and trust, but earning it, one experience at a time.

	Too often, marketing directors want to build trust (or trustworthiness) into the short list of personality traits for their brands. While that sounds like a great shortcut, it's a formula for an unrealistic dialogue. Imagine introducing yourself at a meeting or a party as a "reliable and likeable guy." Most people will save judgment until they have had their own experience with you.

	Even with all the brand "dos and don'ts" that exist, there's a simple way to look at the relationship a brand should have with one of its stakeholders. After all, what we look for in brands is a little bit of ourselves. Maybe a slight reflection of the self we want others to see. And admire.

	If that's the case, then the answer of how strong brands lead to trust is quite simple. Who can you trust if you can't trust yourself?

Jamie Cobb is executive creative director of MicroMass Communications. He can be reached at 

implies the presence-and acceptance-of a certain amount of risk. It plays a big part in all pharmaceutical marketing, whether explicitly addressed or not.

	However, there are certain situations where brand trust plays a bigger role than usual. These include:

		When the consequences of brand failure are high (doctors hate to change what's working, even in the face of improved options).

		When the nature of the problem is extremely personal and involves self-image (men with erectile dysfunction have been very loyal to Viagra).

		In crowded categories with little performance differentiation (doctors recommend glucose meters based on their trust in the company's after-market support programs).

		When market leaders and first-in-category brands are still an option (doctors have been very loyal to Fosomax, the first bisphosphonate for osteoporosis, despite patient preference for newer, once-monthly products).

		Where physician experience is shallow, such as with new product launches or infrequently seen conditions (low prescribers in every category typically commit just one brand to memory and use it almost exclusively).

	Like any other valued brand attribute, trust needs to be incorporated into the fabric of the brand, and that starts with creative messaging. Witness the creative brief: Agencies can easily restate the "reason to believe" section as "reason to trust."

	Beyond creative messaging, the other critical area where I believe trust is built every day is the sales force. Like other categories where products or services involve an ongoing relationship with a sales representative (e.g. insurance, automotive, real estate, financial services), to the customer, the pharma representative is the brand.

	In pharmaceutical selling, trust is built over time and depends on training, professionalism, and dedication to doctor and patient needs-not just brand objectives. You can see the result of this in surveys of physicians, who show clear preferences when it comes to company sales forces. They see the clinical data package, willingness of reps to present brand benefits with "fair balance," and even samples as brand components that help build and maintain trust.

Michael Guarini is regional president, North America of Ogilvy Healthworld. He can be reached at 

a time when consumer confidence has been shaken by product withdrawals and the media is spotlighting every ill of the industry (while backlighting every good), companies need to engage with the true role and meaning of a brand as never before.

	A brand is the ultimate mark of trust. It is the Kitemark of quality, the emblem of efficacy, and the reassurance of reliability that is afforded by one product over another, or indeed, by a brand over a generic. Recently, the findings of a study presented at the European Society of Cardiology, in Vienna, highlighted the stark reality of switching patients from a branded statin to a generic: Switching was shown to be associated with a 3o percent increase in the risk of heart attack or stroke. The results suggest the added reliability and strength of branded formulations-and keeping those brands alive, even in the face of generic competition.

	The principle-and practice-of trust applies to product and corporate brands alike and, of course, the relationship between the two. For too long, pharma companies have demonstrated a reluctance to assert their identity, driven for the most part by a self-protective separation of "church" from "state." In other words, there has been a tendency to maintain a degree of distance between the corporate and product brand to protect companies from, in the worst case, product withdrawal and possibly unforeseen side effects. However, pharma companies need to move toward the clear and distinctive assertion of who they are and what they-and their brands-stand for. What's more, this communication needs to disseminate from the top down. Transparency of communication is key to the foundations of any mark of trust.

	Brands have become more visible than ever before. The brands that will succeed will be those that take ownership of that visibility, through defining clear and meaningful values, communicating them consistently with all audiences, and delivering on them at every touchpoint.

	The tenets of trust already have been established. It is the exchange of trust that the industry is now grappling with-and where the work remains undone.

Rebecca Robins is global marketing director, Interbrand Wood Healthcare and head of Interbrand Wood Healthcare in London. She can be contacted at 

this premise: Marketers of pharmaceutical brands begin at a trust disadvantage, with the public instilling the same amount of faith in Big Pharma as they do in the tobacco industry. In the face of such opposition, what should pharma execs do? Remain clear-headed and focus on branding basics. Keep in mind:

Lack of trust is preventing pharma from doing what it does better than any other entity on the globe: research and develop new cures and treatments, says Billy Tauzin, president of PhRMA. What to do about it? Twelve top brandmeisters weigh in.

Pharmaceutical Executive-10-15-2007

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