An Rx for Emotional Research
The Challenge
The competitive environment in bio-pharma is more intense and difficult to navigate than ever before. Many therapeutic areas are now threatened or dominated by generics, biosimilars or biologics and drug development often results in new molecules that are minimally differentiated from existing treatments on clinical characteristics such as efficacy or safety. In this new environment, the ability of a brand to connect with customers on a differentiated emotional level has never been more important.
This need presents pharmaceutical market research with two distinct challenges:
- How to measure and map the emotional white space of a competitive therapeutic area to establish potential areas of resonance with customers in a way that results in clear and actionable marketing recommendations for a specific brand.
- How to link the right clinical characteristics that establish the most compelling reason to believe the emotional promise. Recognizing these challenges, Ipsos Healthcare has developed and deployed a sequence of research frameworks that are designed to work together, that result in a clear and concise brand story that exhibits relevant emotional resonance linked to compelling clinical reasons to believe.
The Solution: Censydiam and Ipsos Bayes Nets
Ipsos has developed a powerful approach to defining, measuring and mapping the emotional motivational space of a particular category. This framework is called Censydiam and is based on a well-established psychological theory of human motivation. Our Censydiam framework has both qualitative applications in which the specific emotional territories are uncovered and articulated as well as a quantitative model that enables empiric measurement of what emotional territories brands and customer segments inhabit.
Once we have mapped the emotional territory of your brand and competitors, we turn to our proprietary analytic technique: Ipsos Bayes Nets. This approach has many interesting applications but one of its key strengths is what is known as a Structural Map. In the context of building a differentiated brand story, the structural map allows us to measure brand associations (both emotional and functional) and then observe how these are linked in the minds of your customers. These linkages provide direct recommendations about which reasons to believe you should apply to maximizing the relevance of the differentiating emotional benefit.
Ultimately, the outputs of this sequence of research are:
- Well articulated and customized emotional spaces for your brand to target.
- Empiric measurement of whether your preferred emotional territory is available to your brand or whether this territory is already occupied by a competitor.
- Core linkages between your optimal differentiating emotional territory and potential reasons to believe from your clinical trials.
There are many potential uses for this set of outputs. The obvious deliverable is an objectively grounded white card to guide the development of specific marketing tactics and messages. But these results can also be used to:
- Provide detailed guidance on the sales call dialogue
- Provide ideas for printed materials / detail aids
- Provide a unifying theme for future messaging efforts
- Improve the resonance of support programs for HCPs and patients
- Create optimal pilot or ambassador programs with KOLs
We are truly excited to be able to provide this new approach to building a more compelling and relevant emotional brand story.
