Rich customer insights accelerate brand growth

Client
Brand Team within a Global, Integrated Healthcare Services and Products Company

Situation
A multinational healthcare company acquired a novel oncology diagnostic agent two years earlier and continued to use the brand insights and messages established at launch by the original owner and inventor. After six years in the market, it was time to refresh the brand insights to ensure the messaging remained relevant and to accelerate growth as the brand moved through its lifecycle.

The brand team engaged Leverage Point Advisors to achieve the following objectives:

• Understand clinical protocols and standards of care for the top two indications
• Uncover clinical insights from key users and influencers, including any differences between academic and community-based physicians or specialty groups
• Evaluate the current messaging and collateral materials Leverage Point Advisors recommended a combination of qualitative and quantitative research. Designed to understand current clinical protocols and standards of care, the qualitative research also gleaned clinical insights and reactions to the existing messaging and materials. The quantitative research technique tested alternative messages, created using the physician preferences discovered in the qualitative research.

Solution
Leverage Point Advisors developed a phased research plan that utilized results from earlier phases to drive the dialogue in later phases. In all, Leverage Point Advisors engaged with 31 healthcare professionals during the first three phases of qualitative initiatives, while 120 completed the quantitative survey. Ultimately, the research phases included:

1. Advisory Board – 8 surgical oncologists from academic medical centers (AMCs)
2. Advisory Board – 8 surgical oncologists from community hospitals
3. In-depth Telephone Interviews (IDIs) – 15 operating room (OR) directors from AMCs and community
   hospitals
4. Quantitative Messaging Survey – 120 surgical oncologists and general surgeons from AMCs and
   community hospitals

During the advisory boards and IDIs, Leverage Point Advisors gathered rich feedback from each audience on awareness levels of the new product, interest in trying it, challenges it could address, process for selecting products, and reactions to current messages and materials. One finding uncovered during the advisory boards that required follow-up prior to the quantitative survey was the potential interest level and involvement of the OR director in the selection of this product. In order to manage the budget and timeline while gathering feedback from this new audience, Leverage Point Advisors chose telephone IDIs to engage OR directors and reap additional information on the day-to-day challenges OR directors face, their involvement in procuring this drug class for the OR suite, and their ability to influence surgeons.

The brand and Leverage Point Advisors teams worked together to craft new message points based on the qualitative feedback and tested these new messages against the existing messages using a max-diff methodology. This quantitative survey uncovered clear opportunities for message prioritization and wording improvement.

Collaborating with the brand team throughout the engagement, Leverage Point Advisors developed screeners, recruited participants, wrote discussion guides and surveys, and facilitated advisory boards and telephoneinterviews. At the end of each phase of research, Leverage Point Advisors delivered a final report of findings and paid all honoraria – directly or in collaboration with client’s compliance organization – based on fair market value for each specialty.

Results

The results delivered using this systematic approach, leveraging qualitative and quantitative research, provided the brand team with a clear course of action for message improvement and laid the foundation for the 5-year strategic brand plan.

The brand team and senior leadership are now confident they know their key customer audiences and how best to speak to each of them. And, with the road map laid out in the 5-year plan, they have a clear path to accelerated brand growth.