Press Release

TGaS Advisors’ Mercante Speaks on New Data Sources in the Digital Age, New Competitve Strategies for the Pharmaceutical Industry

East Norriton, Penn., February 9, 2010 – Pharmaceutical companies are struggling with the transformative effect of digital media on every aspect of sales and marketing, finding new and diverse channels and sources of customer information, redefining “the customer” in the broadest possible context and developing actionable intelligence through it all. Jim Mercante, Partner, TGaS Advisors, together with Xavier Petit, Senior Manager, Consumer Database Marketing, Shire Pharmaceuticals, dealt with these issues at a recent Center for Business Intelligence (CBI) conference where they spoke on the topic, “Integrating Customer Relationship Management and New Sources of Customer Focused Data.” Mercante also moderated a panel of industry experts on what the end of the “blockbuster era” means to business strategy. “Optimizing the Use of Secondary Data” was the theme of the January 22, 2010 conference, held in Philadelphia, Penn.

Mercante cited TGaS Advisors data from the firm’s Digital & Relationship Marketing Benchmark showing that companies are getting the digital marketing message – 43% of the 63 brands in the benchmark have ads or content in social media, 55% monitor discussion forums and 87% include social media in their 2010 plans.

In his presentation, Mercante highlighted the value of being able to tap into patient and other perspectives on a virtually real-time basis and what this means for pharmaceutical marketing. In the new paradigm, “customer” is defined much more broadly, with the goal of opening a discussion with each key customer group.

The digital channel is a rich source of insights, according to Mercante, who noted there are 80,000 searchable healthcare comments every day. Every digital marketing effort provides thousands of data points to a brand. This gives market research an “anthropological” view of what influences customer behavior but can also be overwhelming. To ensure quality information analysis, marketers must focus on what provides real value to the customer.

Critical success factors, he said, include applying a global perspective to data procurement, deriving actionable intelligence from the multiplicity of new information sources, finding and managing the right talent for this new landscape and determining market applications for the new data.
Mercante made five predictions about the new emphasis on customer-focused data:

• Greater awareness and call-to-action in pharmaceutical companies
• Further erosion of both sales and marketing resources
• Leveraging cross-industry marketing best practices (e.g., from consumer goods)
• Tiering of service levels by therapeutic area, brand and lifecycle
• An aggressive move in market research and marketing sciences to “information synthesizers”

In the panel session, “End of the Blockbuster Era – Looking Forward at Business Insights and Competitive Strategy,” representatives of two leading pharmaceutical companies spoke about the need to make all functions more productive as the world moves into a new period of economic uncertainty and greater government involvement in business. To set the stage, Mercante presented TGaS Advisors benchmark data showing that of nine companies surveyed, 82% were doing market analytics on the impact of the economy on their brands.

The discussion highlighted the need for pharmaceutical marketing to expand its creativity in the innovative use of both traditional and non-traditional data. Panelists stated that pharma must sharpen and focus its marketing initiatives and appeal to the broad spectrum of pharmaceutical customers – providers, patients, payers and regulatory/policy decision-makers and reviewers.

In closing Mercante highlighted not only the challenges but also the opportunities available to the industry in the coming year. “We believe this offers pharma an unprecedented opportunity to leverage all marketing channels to enhance the quality and impact of its message across all customer groups.”

About TGaS^® Advisors

TGaS Advisors, ranked in the top 50 among U.S. Business Products & Services companies by the Inc. 500, is the leader in benchmarking and advisory services to the pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical industry. The TGaS Advisors roster includes the top 10 and the majority of the top 50 pharmaceutical companies with operations in the U.S. market. The firm’s benchmarking and advisory services suite of solutions, PharmaStance^®, provides clients with a way to measure where they stand with respect to their organizations and answers the question, “How do other pharmaceutical companies do ‘it’?”^® TGaS Advisors is based in East Norriton, Pennsylvania.

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