CSL Biotherapies has hired an advertising and marketing agency as it prepares to throw its hat into the seasonal flu vaccine ring. The Australian company--which sells its vaccine in 24 countries and has captured one quarter of the British flu market--is hoping to launch Afluria in time for the 2007-2008 flu season. If approved, the product will be competing against Chiron's Fluviron, Sanofi-Aventis' Fluzone, GlaxoSmithKline's Fluarix, and MedImmune's FluMist.

CSL, whose US offices are in King of Prussia, Pa., is working with the Hal Lewis Group on advertising, branding, and Web-based marketing efforts. Although the company is keeping most launch details close to the vest, one driving theme will focus on pumping up demand for flu shots overall. "There is a great opportunity within the US flu market to increase public awareness about the need for the vaccine," said Ronan Gannon, VP of marketing in the US.

Gannon declined to discuss how Afluria would differentiate itself from the pack. But it's safe to say that all manufacturers in the flu market stake their success on how many individuals opt to get vaccinated during a given season: A mild flu season can lead to vaccine surpluses the following year, while the opposite is also true. The company plans to supply up to 20 million doses of the vaccine. Last year, 100 million doses were produced overall, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

This seesawing has led companies like Wyeth to abandon the market, and the number of suppliers has been steadily dwindling--citing high costs, low margins, and liability risks associated with inoculating healthy individuals. But CSL is undeterred. "We think they've shown real strength in their sales and marketing, and they're well-positioned to compete in the US market," said David Winigrad, president of the Hal Lewis Group.

Public health officials have recently been rallying the industry for more participation. The market's fragility was exposed in 2004 when production problems left Chiron unable to supply roughly half of the country's flu vaccine supply.

Despite the risks, some companies are heeding the call. Most notably, Pfizer last year purchased PowderMed, a British biotech working on a needle-free flu vaccine that uses virus genes rather than dead or attenuated viruses to create an immune response. If the concept proves successful, the product would be cheaper and faster to manufacture than traditional vaccines.

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CSL Biotherapies hires branding agency to prepare for possible product launch later this year.

Will New Flu Vaccine Fly?

Teva Specialty Pharmaceuticals--which has been breathing easy since FDA mandated the use of more environmentally friendly asthma inhalers--is hoping for a slam dunk with a new disease-awareness campaign featuring NBA players. The company, which makes the ProAir (albuterol) and Qvar (beclomethasone) inhaler brands, is teaming up with the basketball association as well as the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America to educate fans about how to prevent and manage the disease.

The campaign--dubbed "Are You Ready to Go Pro?"--plays on ProAir's brand name, which was changed last July with the tagline "Our name has gone pro." Teva is one of four firms that reformulated their inhalers with hydrofluoroalkane (HFA) rather than chlorofluorocarbons (CFC) in their propulsion systems. Since CFC inhalers must be phased out of circulation by the end of 2008, a market that was once squarely in the hands of generics makers is now up for grabs.

With limited competition, Teva, it seems, is off and running. The latest figures from IMS Health show that the company has captured 66 percent of the HFA market, and Citibank is predicting 390 percent growth this year for ProAir--for a total of $270 million in sales.

Teva--which is largely known as a generics makers but acquired branded products as part of its merger with Ivax--is also running separate branded campaigns for the two products. During last year's third-quarter earnings call, George Barrett, president and CEO of Teva North America, spoke about the complexities of switching patients from its generic CFC drugs to the branded HFA products.

"We built a small sales force, but this is going to be a unique situation, which in a way involves the physician but also in a way involves the pay orders and the resell chains," he said. "And we are going to work with all of our tools across both our branded and our generics enterprise to supply to that market."

The NBA campaign centers on a sweepstakes in which fans can win a free trip to the 2007 draft by writing an essay entitled "How I (or My Family) Stay(s) Active With Asthma." Several current and former players are asthma sufferers. Facts about the medical condition will also be posted on the Web site www.readytogopro.com, and displayed at NBA events like the All-Star Jam Session and the Summer Tour.

Teva plans NBA-themed campaign for re-branded ProAir.

Asthma Brands on the Rebound

Companies are shoring up efforts to market their products not only to doctors and consumers but also to the middlemen who are footing the bill. Analysts, of course, are asking what took so long.

When Pfizer reshuffled its business operations into separate units last month, it dedicated four divisions to specific therapeutic areas--and a fifth entirely to managed-care strategy and access. That move hints at a larger development within the pharmaceutical industry: Companies are increasingly gearing their R&D platforms around therapeutic areas that are most likely to gain traction with payers.

"Some executives have said that they want to know before they fully bring a product to market whether they can be effective in getting on formularies," said Kevin Barnett, who heads the managed-market practice at Campbell Alliance. "Clearly the days of focusing on the cash business and ignoring payers have changed."

With the launch of Medicare Part D, the government and private payers together now fund more than 85 percent of all drug purchases, according to Barnett, who noted that it's become common for press releases about new product launches to reference formulary and reimbursement challenges.

Pfizer is hardly the only company realizing that payers increasingly hold the reins on their financial future. Allergan recently asked Pacific Communications, which already works with the company's brand teams, to also handle the managed-markets account--essentially developing specific value messages to go along with the sales pitch. The company previously had separate agencies handling those two audiences.

"We're linking managed care, which is usually in a silo, with brand teams," said Craig Sullivan, executive vice president and management director at Pacific. "All the messages are aligned. We're saying the same thing to each audience."

One thing managed-care organizations has been saying to pharma for years is, show us the value. They want to see more real-world data on outcomes and cost comparisons?but pharma has largely ignored them. "Managed markets have been a relatively open book, but managed markets were not taken seriously," said Michael Russo, partner at the Bruckner Group, which specializes in managed-care strategy. "Drug company executives haven't been trained that way in the US. They're starting to see losses--and [are making] new policies."

Companies like Amgen are responding by conducting head-to-head studies with competitor products as well as compiling data to show how products are used outside of a controlled clinical-trial setting. "Payers are a different type of customer--they're sophisticated organizations," Barnett said. "For those companies that do well, the payer's view is that the pharma or biotech 'gets' managed care. That's the differentiating factor that we hear."

Companies put new emphasis on marketing to managed care.

Pharmaceutical Executive-02-14-2007

Will New Flu Vaccine Fly?

Asthma Brands on the Rebound

'Valuing' Managed Markets