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I’ve been tinkering and polishing and generally messing…and finally produced my new blog which you can find by clicking here. It’s now part of my website and I think it’s great – I hope you do, too. Please check it out!
I found this fascinating quote today:
Remember the saying about advertising that “I know half of our advertising spend is wasted, I just don’t know which half?” I first heard about this quote 20 years ago and I think it is from 19th Century merchant John Wanamaker. I think I can comfortably say “I know 80% of my advertising spend is wasted, I just don’t know the alternative…” The problem with TV and print advertising today is that it informs rather than sells – it rarely engages with consumers at all. Online ads are worse and currently lacking in brand advertiser value and their creative formats are outdated and ineffective.Blogging Innovation, Blogging Innovation, Mar 2010
You should read the whole article.
PharmaDiagnostics is an as-yet little known but ambitious company which has found out how to screen for molecule interactions and properties in high throughput formats, without using radioactive or fluorescent labeling or specialized equipment. Their clever discovery has led to the development of a series of screening kits that will slot nicely into existing early pharma discovery labs.
Having achieved its Series B financing and validated its technology with collaborating pharma partners it was ready to take the next step to become a fully commercial screening company, providing screening reagents and protocols for screening both small molecule and antibody drugs. As is typical of companies at this stage in development, the budget was small and the timeline, tight.
Development of the Brand and Identity
Firstly, we got to grips with the company’s scientific background and its product and service offerings so that we could develop a strong and recognizable brand that would effectively reflect its values and technology.
PharmaDiagnostics’ technology exploits a long-known unusual property of gold whereby any molecular interaction at its surface causes a change in the way it refracts light. It turns out that this change is quantifiable and occurs in the visible spectrum, making it ideal for use in pharmaceutical screening applications. The team at PharmaDiagnostics has developed gold nanoparticles in solution form that can be attached to any type of molecule – protein, peptide, chemical fragment or compound. These can be tested for their interaction with other molecules in high throughput 384- or 96-well formats by a simple “mix and read” protocol, using an off-the-shelf absorbance plate reader to obtain the results. As a result, pharma and biotech customers can take the solutions into their own labs to screen their compound libraries without having to procure new equipment or adapt lab space.
As it turns out, gold nanoparticles in solution are not sparkly and gold in colour as I had imagined, but a sort of burgundy red (pink when diluted) and it turns a shade of purple when there’s a chemical interaction taking place. This was the basis for the logo design.
Before:
old logo
After:
New logo
Gold nanoparticles in solution, simple protocols, simple product and service offerings are reflected in the logo design. An inordinate amount of time was spent in getting the colours to match the bottles of gold nanoparticle solution. I am glad that it didn’t end up being yet another blue logo (is it me or is this the default colour for all pharma service companies?).
As for the product and technology branding, we prompted for the name “SoPRano™” which is derived from Surface Plasmon Resonance with nanoparticles. Some gentle, dry sense of humour was involved but actually it was surprisingly easy to use against the product lines and gave a hint of the elegance of the technology.
Website design
From this:
old tech-focused website
Technology-focused, science-heavy content, no clear product/service definitions or positioning.
To this:
new website and branding
Bright, clear navigation concentrating on clearly defined products and their applications within pharma/biotech early discovery.
To see more, visit their website.
Key messages – keeping them simple, clear and honest
The company was refreshingly pragmatic and honest in its approach to key message development. They wanted to be known as the experts in label-free screening and that’s all. It is a small company with clever, unique technology that will fit easily into mainstream early drug discovery so it is likely that they will be acquired at some stage by a larger establishment servicing the same target market. There was no need for grandiosity as is common in this sector so phrases like “partners in drug discovery” etc were not used.
We identified key words and messages and constructed the website using these in headers and in page descriptions. As a result, we were able to write the web copy with search engine optimisation in mind, rather than “retrofit” SEO, as is the norm for most company websites.
The finished product took a few weeks to perfect but it gave the tools and templates for the rest of the company’s branding – from the exhibition stand, letterheads, slide templates, sales product sheets to e-newsletters.
The result: distinctive and consistent corporate identity and strong branding for a clever company which now has the tools to do business.
It seems that most biotechs are seriously behind the curve when it comes to considering publicity as part of their aim to raise customer and investor awareness. They often gauge their level of PR investment purely by the number of press releases they send out a month.
Directors will ask for evidence that their PR effort is working by the number of online news services or trade journals that have picked up their piece. Perhaps they’ll check out their website visitor stats during a PR push. New tools such as Twitter Trending seem far out in the distance.
The issue is: have you really got an interesting story to tell, one that your customers or potential investors might actually want to read (and pass on)?
Before you start, maybe you should consider this piece of wisdom. For a small start-up or biotech writing a press release, sending it to the newswires and selling it in to the editors takes time, money, effort that could be used elsewhere.
Good timing doesn’t cost anything but can make a massive difference
Last week’s proposed shake-up of the banking system by President Obama came on the same day that Goldman Sachs announced it had made $13bn (£8bn) in profits and that its staff would enjoy average pay packets of $498,000. A coincidence? Unlikely.
The clever timing added weight to the surprise punch. The result: populist approval following the Massachusetts battering and the UK government clambering to catch up now that its own remedies were looking decidedly weedy in comparison.
Not just a press release – a story
Let’s say you’re a small tech start-up and you’ve got another round of investment following commercial validation of your technology. You want to raise your profile amongst future customers and investors. You might think that your service offering or technology is “cutting edge” or “innovative” (see here for words to avoid) but your aim here is to get the story printed or circulated online. For that you need a newsworthy “hook” and good timing.
It helps to put your announcement in context – tie it to a global conference or emerging issue, regulatory change, competitive landscape, or common problem. Spell out why your news should matter.
Starting out? Some useful resources:
Communications Agencies Specializing in Lifescience/Biotech/Pharma :
Online PR submissions:
Biotech online news release service
PRweb.com online distribution service
It’s worth noting that all the biotech trade press and news services are on Twitter these days, so it’s worth tweeting your press release with a grabby headline.
For a handy list of things that you should consider when writing a press release, see here.
Peppa Pig, Marketing Genius
This two-dimensional porcine character has successfully captured the minds of two- and three-year olds throughout Britain. She exists, along with her little winy brother and long-suffering parents in a substantial detached family home perched on an impossibly shaped hill. Nothing bad ever happens and they do really boring stuff. Her astute musings, questions and petulant attitude have been adopted widely by her target audience. Her cartoon strip and associated merchandise has made someone extremely rich.
I’m in admiration for this little pig not because her play-doh stamp figurines keep my little ones amused for minutes on end, but because of the time and care that her creators have taken to really “get” their audience.
A book entitled “Peppa Goes Recycling” is a case in point. Peppa and co sort their rubbish into plastics, paper and the like and take a trip to the local recycle centre. Utter banality. Yet it kept my fidgety three-year old enraptured to the extent that when I suggested that we sort out the recycling and take a trip to the local dump, she squealed with glee. Never would I have thought that such a grimy and frankly, boring activity would have appealed to my otherwise anything-pink-and-purply-with-sparkles-dolly-loving daughter.
And that’s my point, really. You may think that you know your target market, but really, you don’t.
Many a time I’ve enjoyed brainstorming new product and service concepts around the water cooler, or by a white board the size of a wall with extremely clever people, coming up with unique product ideas that should have served a pre-conceived unmet need. Not until we talked to honest and freely-speaking potential customers did we discover the reality.
If your innovation requires customers to adopt a new approach, a change of mindset or the creation of a whole new market, beware. Just consider what Peppa would have done.
There comes a point in a biotech’s lifetime when bringing in the business requires more than just the founder. The person who the company has relied on to get onto the podium at conferences, be invited in to big pharma to trump the theories and applications of the technology and write seminal papers can no longer sustain the business on his or her own.
Becoming “more commercial” in approach is typically something people think about after Series A funding when new investors put on the pressure develop more rigorous business practices, or if the founder decides to exit the business through retirement or a management changeover.
From “tech-led” business development to commercial best practices: a great opportunity
First of all, the advent of a new commercial way of thinking and doing business should be a great opportunity. It’s a time to rethink the business offering, perhaps examine new applications of the technology, explore potential new markets and services that may have been overlooked in the past. As you establish and grow a small biotech, there is enormous pressure to stand behind a single idea and ignore other potential avenues – through single-minded dogged determination to prove your personal beliefs or simply as a result of the shear focus that you need to put into creating a new market for a new innovation. Not to mention the limited budget that precludes spreading yourself too thinly.
Secondly, it is pretty risky for a small business to be so heavily reliant on one person for a prolonged period of time.
So how can you effectively replicate what the founder has done so far in terms of building the business?
- Define what you’re actually selling: your products and services. Sounds funny, but until this point many start-up biotechs don’t actually do this. Business is built out of peer-level consultations and each “deal” is a result of piecing together the scientific components to meet the needs of each client on a case-by-case basis. The idea of defining the “product” often only comes afterwards.
- Capture the key messages that are inside your founder’s head. Don’t just take his/her slides. They are usually useless without the anecdotes, statistics and personality that your founder uses to accompany them. You need to capture those – in note form to start with and distil them down to a set of key phrases that describe the business offering and benefits.
- Think about your different audiences: the financial community, potential acquirers or partners, your customers. Develop a set of key messages tailored to each of your different audiences and assemble the case studies, data, statistics, financials and competitive comparisons that will support each statement. Your founder probably does this on the fly but your next team of business developers won’t have the background to do this.
- Carve out your commercial budget. In the past, your founder/CSO might have attended conferences, given talks, attended networking meetings etc. They will have flown here and there to meet clients. Similarly, other technical staff members may have presented posters. Make no mistake: this was your marketing effort. The costs for these activities may have been distributed over different budgets so you may have little idea of just how much you have been spending on marketing to date. Now you need to carve out a budget that enables you to go out and achieve more in order to feed the business development pipeline. You will need to assess your return on investment for your marketing efforts – hence the need for a consolidated budget.
- Develop a communications plan. You need to assemble your case studies and supporting data so that you can develop a fresh set of materials for new white papers, editorials, blog posts, press releases and posters. Third party agencies or freelance technical writers can write all of these things in future. Don’t think that you can rely on the founder’s publication archives forever. If you’re not fresh, people think that you’re just waiting things out until the money dries up.
- Make a tactical marketing strategy for the year. Your founder may have been asked give talks or chair meetings or forums. You can achieve the same level of external presence but it takes planning and sometimes you have to pay for a speaker slot (by sponsoring a conference for example). All these require advance planning – they won’t drop into your lap any longer.
- Define the fundamental business development process. Until now, forecasting may not have happened regularly or formally. Break down your business development pipeline into leads, prospects, opportunities, contracts, and record those that have been closed/won and closed/lost (along with the reasons). I recommend Salesforce.com to help you do this – it will make the business pipeline more transparent and help you to understand the sources of your leads and marketing ROI.
- Develop a set of marketing materials that will be used by a BD team. They are not the same as those used by the technical founder who will undoubtedly be used to giving a lecture-style presentation. Slides need to be strongly visual with clear key messages backed up by sufficient supporting evidence. See here for how to develop a good slide set.
- Identify and develop your next generation of technical experts. As you develop the business and recruit more operational team members you will spot the rising stars – those technically- minded individuals who can also communicate well. Take them on road trips to see your clients, let them present at posters and on podiums and get them on the exhibit stand at a busy conference. Not only will you develop your next scientific gurus but you’ll also reduce that yawning chasm that often exists between the business development team and the people who work in the lab. Good will come out of this!
For young biotechnology companies, attracting seed and early stage funding has become increasingly difficult this year although anecdotal signs of recovery are beginning to emerge.
The main reason: venture capital funds have been focusing on their existing portfolio companies who were holding off on exits while waiting out the markets. Last year the biotech industry saw only one IPO — Florida-based Bioheart Inc.’s contentious USD 5.8 million float of Sunrise in February. Only six VC-funded companies went public across all industries, making 2008 the worst year for public entrance since 1977. The outcome has been a marked slowdown of new investments.
Against this backdrop, the achievement by Critical Pharmaceuticals, a UK-based biotechnology company, seems all the more remarkable. Yet rather than banging on a closed door, they opted for going after non-VC funding routes. The amount of effort required to secure non-VC funding amounts to the same as VC routes but the outcome can be far preferable: less “management” of investors, no dilution of shareholding, fewer “strings attached”.
However, non-VC funds are relatively few and far between, making it more important than ever for potential new investment opportunities to tell a clear and compelling story.
Critical Pharmaceutical’s investor pitch was exactly that. It was concise (12 slides from start to finish), yet contained all the components that attract and win investment from VC and non-VC sources alike, namely:
- A management team with a good track record
- Substantial growth potential
- A sustainable unique selling point and strong intellectual property position
- A scalable business plan
- Capable of achieving a profitable exit within 3-5 years
In Critical’s case, their unique proprietary drug delivery technology had demonstrated preclinical proof of concept for the effective delivery of biologicals. The market potential for their product is substantial, since 30% of new drug applications are for biological drugs, amounting to a $40bn market. Since 98% of biological drugs are given by frequent injection, any technology that reduces or removes the number of injections that a patient requires will be highly attractive for potential pharmaceutical partners.
The £1.5M that they secured came from the Welcome Trust to fund the next the clinical development of their nasal spray technology for use in the growth hormone market. Up to 50% of patients do not adhere to the existing daily injection regimen and leading endocrinologists believe that non-invasive delivery would be very attractive. The work would also demonstrate human proof of concept for Critical’s technology and open up the opportunities for novel products.
Having already secured revenue-generating collaborations and license partners, the investor pitch by Critical was successful and it gives a valuable model for surviving the current economic climate.
For lifescience companies, case studies are critical for getting across the applications and benefits of technologies or services in a way that resonates with potential clients. In a few sentences you can convey how your unique capabilities have been validated in real-life situations. The main aim: to engender trust in your potential client base.
The difficulty with assembling a good case study that succeeds in this aim lies with obtaining approval that lets you disclose confidential information without risking a lawsuit. If your case study is about a large pharmaceutical company you’re unlikely to obtain this approval in your lifetime unless you’ve specifically embarked on the project with the aim of a joint disclosure or publication. You might have more luck if your case study concerns a smaller biotech but usually only if there is something in it for them – such as free PR for attracting further investment.
You need to be careful to maintain credibility whilst at the same time gaining the interest and confidence of the audience. For maximum effectiveness you should try to include these elements:
- A good headline (see here for tips)
- What did you set out to do? Challenge/aims?
- What was the context of the study (eg budget constraints, competitive environment)?
- What methods and resources did you use?
- What was the outcome?
Here are the some different types of case studies that won’t get you into trouble:
- The client-endorsed case study. The most powerful form of case study is the one in which you can name the client concerned and reveal details of the data and methodologies used to generate it. There is nothing better than including the client’s name along with the case studies details to add some gravitas. For the icing on the cake, include a quote from the client. And for the majority of us who can’t use this format there is:
- The anonymous case study. As above, but with the client name and all data descriptors removed. I really liked this format by McKinsey. For a web format for consultants, I thought this format was also simple yet effective.
- The expert commentary. Instead of using your own case histories with the potential litigation headache not to mention the work involved in delving through archived project files, why not showcase your expertise by writing a commentary on a published example? Say your company provides formulation technology and expertise to improve oral bioavailability for poorly soluble compounds. Pick a drug with known low solubility and write a case study “The Secret to Achieving Decent Bioavailability: How Company X Would Have Tackled Drug Y.” I liked this business world example in which the business expert talked about how it’s important to understand local target markets and competitive environments before launching a new product: How Apple Blew It in China.
- The summary case study. Add up all the studies you’ve done and categorize them in order to draw conclusions about certain aspects of, for example, pharmaceutical R&D pipelines. I’ve used this format a couple of times and it drew a lot of interest for scientific posters and as an editorial eg Can oral drug absorption be accurately predicted from in vitro data? Summary of 30 pharmaceutical compounds.
- The hypothetical case study. For when you have exhausted all other options. Personally I just don’t think they work well in scientific arenas but I thought I would include it for completeness. It’s the easy way out. You just make up the data and the scenario and say what you would have done to overcome the issue. It’s O.K for talking about general problems that might be recognizable for your audience, but you can’t add in the anecdotes and specificities that make the example that bit more captivating. There’s also the danger that in the wrong hands (eg an overzealous salesperson) a hypothetical example could be “talked up” as if it were real – a very dodgy situation!
Having spent a large part of the last 3 years attracting would-be volunteers to take part in Phase I trials I collated a list of things that made life easier and cheaper. After I had overhauled the volunteer recruitment strategy I had cut marketing spend by over half and ALL studies were filled every time. That didn’t mean cutting corners when it came to getting Ethics approval. Far from it. It just meant doing things differently – like cutting out newspaper advertising and bus-back signage and improving the volunteers’ experience so that they would spread the word.
First things first: listen to what your volunteers have to say. When I did this, they pretty much came up with all the answers to making the entire process more efficient and cost-effective. Keep talking to them. Things change, both internal and external to your organisation. You don’t want to hear it from the rumour mill.
- Ask them what they do, where would be an effective place to put up adverts about clinical trials? We found out that Facebook ads were the answer for our younger crew. Cheap, effective, easy to track.
- What motivates your volunteers? Use that in your ad campaigns. For us, money was a big one, but so was altruism – helping to deliver new and better medical treatments.
- Make sure the food is up to scratch. Some units use M&S food; others have their own chefs. Just make sure the portions are decent enough and the food is…nice. Not hard, but makes a big difference to whether your volunteers come back again or recommend their friends.
- Pay your volunteers on time. Pay them for their out-of-pocket expenses on the day they arrive. Pay them for their time/inconvenience for taking part in a trial (if applicable) within 15 days of finishing the trial, preferably on the final day. They are critical to the success of your drug development programme. This is the least they deserve.
- Make sure your phones/contact system is watertight. If you go to the expense of a new ad campaign and the 24-hour contact number isn’t working/voicemail box is full/receptionist doesn’t know the key people then you’ve just wasted your money.
- Make sure your website is capable of handling enquiries. Put up an easy to read and navigate application form. For a fantastic example, see www.trials4u.com.
- Once you have all the other things in place, initiate or re-vamp your Recommend-A-Friend Scheme. If you don’t have one already, get one. Word of mouth is critical in clinical trials recruitment and volunteers happily pass on good things to say about taking part. They also pass on the bad things – hence get your act in order
- Use geo-targeted pay-per-click advertising. I set up a series of Google Adword campaigns with key words that would be used by people searching for part-time volunteer work and jobs seekers. The result? People who had time on their hands in the local area. Bingo.
- Handle the applications promptly. That’s a 24-hour turnaround. If you have forked out on an ad campaign then you should do the decent thing and respond to people who have taken the time to apply. You would expect it if it was the other way around.
- Monitor, monitor, monitor… What were the response rates for each campaign? What’s your conversion rate from applications to people who actually make it to the panel? If it’s not great (ie <40%) then address it in a timely fashion – is your process to blame? Are your applicants not suitable? Stop wasting your money and people’s time.
I just read a wise response to an interesting online LinkedIn discussion that followed a business owner’s question “Can anyone suggest the best areas to spend marketing budgets in difficult times such as these?”.
In a nutshell: a host of suggestions flew in on the theme of a “guns-a-blazing” tactical marketing campaign, such as you can achieve on a budget. Proposals included SEO optimization, blog makeovers, video testimonials, white papers, client dinners and so on. The aforementioned response pointed out that you might need a bit more information to go on before putting together a marketing strategy on a budget. Nobody had a clue about what the company was or what it really needed – “just shout about it” seemed to be the order of the day.
One size fits all doesn’t work – a case in point
The topic was exactly what I was pondering for a start-up company whose web-based tools had the potential to serve a broad range of B2C and B2B markets. Their market research work had identified a short-list of priority sectors, each requiring different key messages and product positioning and their own product development needs. Not to mention different marketing channels.
A generic tactical marketing plan would have whooshed £10K straight up the chimney, attracting interest from diverse sectors whose needs could not be met. The mess it would have created: angry clients, stressed out operational team, ever-dwindling financial resources and little chance of a bailout via a steady revenue stream, not to mention the bad press.
The solution: A mixture of strategic and tactical elements with a very tight focus on a single, manageable market segment.
The £10K marketing budget in this case needed to include a way to engage with target customers from a single market segment. This would enable the company to deliver a unique and attractive offering serving an unmet need. Being a start-up, it also needed to generate early adopters and demonstrate that it had the potential to deliver attractive profit margins that could be replicated in other sectors. This would gain the trust of would-be investors.
Whilst I did include SEO work and a revamp of a neglected blog in the plan, these elements were targeted at attracting and engaging with the chosen market segment alone. An industry feedback forum, follow-up interviews and questionnaires were also included in order to draw up a refinement of the product development plans and create a buzz around the product from a group of users who would be involved in its development from the very beginning.
What would you have done?
