Reconfiguring DTC with Patient Behavior in Mind
Executive Summary
While DTC ads work when the end consumer is an able judge of product performance, as with medications for seasonal allergies, sexual dysfunction, or hair loss, they don't work nearly as well for asymptomatic illnesses. For these conditions, DTC may help increase patient acquisition and trial, but often fails to improve long-term use, thus under-performing both clinical expectations for patients and financial expectations for manufacturers. Optimal DTC programs should integrate patient acquisition strategies with direct-to-patient support strategies such as, disease-state web sites, refill reminder programs, and financial incentives able to drive ongoing product use.
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Activating Consumers
A new survey shows top drug executives still question their ability to exploit consumer promotion. They've got good reason: while consumer promotion clearly works in driving patients to doctors, increasing diagnosis rates and increasing patient requests for specific products, large numbers of their switch requests are denied. To give consumers sufficient power to influence their physician's prescribing behavior--Effective Voice-companies need a deeper understanding of physician attitudes towards requests in general, the specific therapeutic area and the product vis-à-vis competition.