The early pharma brand often finds itself in the position of being overexposed, yet underdeveloped, for a large part, due to concerns with the risk of pipeline attrition. However, what of the missed opportunities in early-stage branding?

In crowded and cluttered therapy areas, early-stage branding can be leveraged to create clarity and understanding, to help shape and condition the market, providing a platform for building a relationship with key target audiences.

Establishing equity in a brand name, rather than a code name, taking ownership of what is unique and differentiating in a compound through supportive nomenclature, such as class names, are just some examples of the critical means by which a company can begin to build awareness and generate initial interest and pull. If a compound is in the privileged position of revolutionising a treatment category, of being first in a new class, taking ownership of the way in which that compound is talked about, enables a company to fight the marketing battle on its own terms.

Branding is indeed for everyone in the organization, even for the scientists. You see, branding is not just logos, PR, events, and all other extrinsic properties; it includes a set of values by which the company lives. When I say company, I mean its people. Branding is developing a culture where everyone must be on board and truly know the business that they’re in, why, and how will they use this knowledge to first and foremost, with each other internally and then taking this culture externally to their paying customers. There needs to be an infectious enthusiasm about the place and what they do, at every touch point; be it in person, by paper, website, telephone, advertising, PR, events, down to what their stationery bears. ,p> Branding is more than meets the eye. In fact a lot of it doesn’t; it’s the soft stuff that does; the intangibles, so to speak. Branding needs to live throughout the organization in order to have a chance at succeeding. By the way, branding is not a program or project, it should be a living organism that filters from top down and back up again. A continuum.

This is when you know everyone lives it. Starbucks, Harley Davidson, FedEx, Virgin, Microsoft, UPS, Nike, Disney, etc. These are strong brands and they are winners at it.

Branding, therefore, should be an inherent part of any action a company endeavors to undertake because, again, it’s not something you turn on and off. Most companies do just that, because, one: they don’t understand the full scope and meaning of branding and/or two: they don’t appreciate it and therefore put little or no money toward it. This is why the majority of companies fail at branding and at their businesses, for that matter. Branding is a culture and needs to drive, in many ways, everything a company plans and does. It’s certainly not something that should be left to the end. This is not branding; this is an advertising initiative or PR or event-like standalone tactic. By the way, branding does include all of that, too. I’ll take the liberty of assuming that a significant number of readers here drink bottled water. Why? Because, and this has been tested and confirmed many times over, you think it’s better, purer, cleaner, etc. when compared to natural tap water, assuming you don't live in a contaminated area. Well, apparently, it’s not. Studies show it’s the brand that drives consumer behavior, here. It’s the advertising, the brand label, the claim or promise the brand makes, etc. that pschycologically affects the purchaser to buy it.

Would you just as easily buy a no-name pill to alleviate your headache or would you just buy Advil or Tylenol because it sits right with you and you know that it’s effectively worked for everyone you know and millions of others and that's the comfort zone you need? But even these brands had to start somewhere and branding, believe it or not, had much to do with it.

The question is not whether preparing the ground benefits the launch of the new drug to be profitable or help grow the brand. Seeding the field will get more selling time out of the finite patent life in a time when generics manufacturers are becoming more effective at grabbing market share at the tail-end of the patent.

Anyway, the question re. branidng is not when to start, but as always, what name to give the chemical substance.

Starting early is the smartest choice, and in 99% of the cases a working name is developed in the 2nd cycle. By the time the efficacy is proven and safety tests kill less than the benchmark assigned by a group of key opinion leaders, we enter the third cycle where a name has already been approved behind closed doors, and testing is prepared prior to launch for feedback from both the professional (doctors and pharmacists) as well as consumer groups.

The pro's are that the chemical just darn sells better when it has a geat name and interesting pill design. It's like selling candy (or cigarettes) to children, the earlier you start, the larger the following of loyal customers in the future = more profits down the road.

To see how successful BIG Pharma is in branding, just take a look at the world top 50 corps. today and compare the list with one from 10 to 15 years ago.

Among my favorite brand cases are: Bayer Aspirin, Alka-Seltzer, Prozac, as well as Danone's Actimel.

To ensure that every brand asset within a portfolio adds value, companies are beginning the branding process earlier. Why? It helps to establish brand equity and 'seat' the brand in the marketplace in preparation for launch.

The brand name is one of the first branding initiatives to take place. In terms of brand benefits, it can help to cement that early-stage equity in the lead-up to launch, as opposed to referencing a drug by its code name or the generic. With therapy areas becoming more cluttered, the battle for differentiation is becoming harder, therefore getting through the requisite legal and regulatory hurdles can be a time-consuming task.

The immediate future (3-5 years) in traditional pharma will see a swing to more emphasis on category branding as opposed to product branding.

It will be more important for Pfizer to own the cardiology brand, than the statin brand.

DTC ads have failed to make any valid connection here, hoping people will think that Rx drugs are the same as basic FMCG brands. But we know that they're different, and the impact of DTC on the expensive, miserly and crumbling US healthcare system has been entirely negative.

Take for instance the Piriton brand. To ward off competition from generics that were cheaper but which consumers called and believed were also 'piritons', the manufacturer GlaxoSmithKline had to start an aggressive campaign in its markets in Africa. Customers were then able to differentiate between Piriton and other generic anti-histamines and this in turn saw the return of the dominance of the Piriton brand.

The issue of branding pharmaceutical products took a new twist in the UK when a children's book that seems to promote anti-allergy drugs was released. In 2003, a government watchdog (the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency) moved in to investigate the book 'Mr. Sneeze' written by Adam Hargreaves whose father created the Mr. Men series. GSK paid for the children's story book about the adventures of a fictional character Mr Sneeze. It has two pages promoting the Piriton and Piriteze drugs by GSK. The government watchdog, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, said it would investigate the book.

Pharmaceutical marketing watchdogs and GlaxoSmithKline said the book had broken no rules.

Branding in pharma/biotech is not simply a catchy brand name, a color theme or a tagline remembered by consumers and their physicians. It is instead, the appeal of the singular promise of unique CLINICAL VALUE, ideally expressed early and often to all relevant and appropriate stakeholders. In this manner, both internal and external audiences share a common view and hope for a new agent's utility when it comes to market. The problem with this seemingly logical construct is that in most pharma/biotech firms commercialization and clinical development teams are not organized (or rewarded) for building this common, consistent 'brand' expectation together.

Many clinical researchers cringe at the mere mention of 'branding,' largely unaware of the value of consistent communications in increasing the clinical and commercial value of the research compound. Without a strong coordinated influence between these two vital internal teams, branding is often a 'hurry up' last minute exercise, resulting in many missed opportunities to place an emerging compound in an optimal and believable clinical context.