Rogaine - lesson learned from innovation blunders

Here’s another great story with lessons learned from innovation blunders.

It’s an excerpt from Why (Smart Companies) Do Dumb Things by Calvin L. Hodock

In this series of case studies, Hodock shares insight on avoiding 8 common mistakes in new product development. 

In the case of Rogaine, it was mismatched positioning.

Fifty million American men experience male-pattern baldness. In 1996, they received some very good news.  The Food and Drug Administration cleared Rogaine, a topical 2 percent minoxidil solution, as an over-the-counter hair regrowth drug for men and women with common hair loss. Hallelujah! Men suffering from hair loss often experienced “anxiety, loss of self-confidence and even depression”. Rogaine gave hair-challenged men a dual benefit—a full head of hair and the restoration of self-esteem.

Rogaine had a natural contagion, because the preliminary buzz purported it to be nothing short of a miracle. As a result, it had an avalanche of positive publicity prior to its market introduction. Wall Street was especially euphoric about Rogaine’s prospects, and its parent company, Upjohn (now Johnson & Johnson), did nothing to temper the financial cheerfulness coming from the street. In this situation, Rogaine’s positive buzz turned out to be destructive rather than helpful. Here’s why.

Balding males naively believed their departed hair follicles would return instantly by rubbing Rogaine into their scalps twice a day for a month or so. Rogaine initially attracted the most extreme cases of male-pattern baldness, primarily older males in their fifties and sixties desperately grasping for their youth. Rogaine could not deliver for these extreme cases. There was a deep ravine between positioning expectations and product delivery. 

 

Rogaine is a complex product, as explained to me by a Pfizer marketing executive. It is only effective in about 40 percent of the cases. It can take eight months to see the best results. The product is not particularly effective in cases of frontal baldness or receding hairlines. Compliance is essential to see any results. It must be used twice a day. If treatment is stopped, reversal occurs, losing any benefits from treatment. The application process—rubbing it into the scalp twice a day—is awkward.  Rogaine later attempted to make it easier with an aerosol foam version.  

Since many of the initial users represented extreme cases and a desire for instant gratification, they dripped out; their perceived expectations—“where’s my new hair??—weren’t instantly achieved. The buzz-worthy product was still talked about, but the talk turned negative from a large segment of disappointed men, dampening Rogaine’s prospects for marketplace success. 

Rogaine currently does target younger men with a more forthright approach that the product works for a certain type of male-pattern baldness, but it is not a panacea for every conceivable case of male baldness.

                   

The makers of Rogaine made two major mistakes:

1. Rogaine made no attempt to dismantle the early perceptions that it was a miracle product. This set an unrealistic level of expectation with respect to its product performance with the brand’s early bird customers.
2. Rogaine required an extensive educational process to help men understand its strengths and limitations; this was never acted upon.

The net result was a wide gap between positioning expectations and product performance.

The product must be able to deliver on the positioning’s benefit promise, or there will be inevitable consumer backlash.  It’s hard to get the toothpaste back in the tube. That’s why marketers must get the positioning strategy right the first time out of the staring gate. 

Second chances are very rare. 

Rogaine never lived up to its potential, because the initial positioning and target segment were wrong from day one.

Motrin IB - lesson learned from innovation blunders

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Here’s a great story with lessons learned from innovation blunders.

It’s an excerpt from Why (Smart Companies) Do Dumb Things by Calvin L. Hodock 

In this series of case studies, Hodock shares insight on avoiding 8 common mistakes in new product development.

Johnson and Johnson still needed an ibuprofen brand in its product portfolio, and it obtained it by swapping brands with Upjohn.  Motrin IB acquired in the swap, became a companion brand to Tylenol. The brand was so reasonable successful, riding the coattails of Advil, which had established the ibuprofen beachhead. Upjohn did not want to continue playing the expressive, high-stakes marketing game, which was absolutely essential in order to survive the competitive over-the-counter pain reliever market.

Motrin IB was viewed as a potentially strong global brand within Johnson and Johnson, but there remained the same issue that confronted Medipren—how to position Mortin IB in a way that protected Tylenol’s flanks.  The company understandably wanted to keep the milk flowing from the cash cow. This time Johnson and Johnson did some very good homework.

A segmentation study of the pain relief market revealed a segment of women who medicated aggressively. Very importantly, Tylenol was not heavily represented in the segment. This became Motrin IB’s target segment, and its initial “kick butt” advertising campaign worked brilliantly with these aggressive mediators while minimizing Tylenol cannibalization. It is possible to “have your cake and eat it too” with smart positioning.

Score another one for David Ogilvy. Positioning is one of marketing’s most important decisions. It is always out there in the marketplace, ready to perform miracles.

Global Branding vs. Local Customization

How do you weigh the benefits of a unified global campaign compared to the desire for local market customization?

6 steps of ForwardFast model: listen to feature on Sky Radio

It was 4 years ago this week that I was interviewed by the Sky Radio Network for an in-flight audio  segment for broadcast on US Airways.

Dennis Michael of Sky Radio showcased ForwardFast, my first book (and one of the first books of its kind), which presents the principles of brand innovation for health, science, and technology products.

If you’re driven to accelerate the adoption of new medical treatments, then this book will show you how to move with urgency to learn fast. track fast, think fast, respond fast, and create fast, then ForwardFast will help you become more creatively prepared and focused to reach the scientists, medical researchers, physicians, nurses, clinics, and the millions of patients who use your brands.

Other topics covered include:
• putting brand innovation to work with the 6 steps of the ForwardFast model;
• defining both a quality offering and a quality experience; and
• understanding what positive brand associations you can create

You can listen to the full interview here:

HEALTH MEGA-TREND #10: more about positive nutrition

A couple of weeks ago, I shared with you the goals of moderated consumption and healthier choices, as referenced in the mega-trends report by Datamonitor.  

It was one of the 10 most important issues shaping global consumers' buying behavior both now and in the future.

Today, I want to give you the flip-side of simply eating less – and that is “positive nutrition,” or consumers who are eating and drinking for proactively for wellbeing.

Here are the key points:

• Eating for wellbeing: changeable dietary routines mean that consumers are willing to change their dietary habits, even when outside pressures can sometimes make this difficult.

• Embracing diet diversity: a more balanced and varied diet is something which an increasing number of consumers pay attention to.

• Purity and freshness: the pursuit of product choices means that consumers will not compromise on freshness, so products that cannot guarantee this face being overlooked.

• Functional foods and personalized nutrition:  consumers are becoming less skeptical about functional foods, but manufacturers must still win confidence in the key areas of trust, price and taste to widen appeal.

• Being hydrated: more than simply drinking adequate quantities of water, the need for instant and continuous hydration has grown in consumer importance.

10 examples of US healthcare going viral with social networks

US innovators are finding ways to use social networks to improve healthcare, despite a variety of challenges.  

Writer Danny Bradbury of the UK newspaper, The Guardian, offers a number of familiar examples -- along with a few I was did not know.

Social media offers a focused channel for special interest groups to communicate – and those in the healthcare sector are among them. "Health is social," says Phil Baumann, founder of a US consulting firm with the same name that advises healthcare institutions on the use of social networks. He argues that healthcare is better when people can connect to share information and experiences. "Any media, any technologies that enable those connections and encourage collaboration will only lead to a better healthcare system."

Unfortunately, healthcare facilities could be using social media a lot more. A report by consultancy Deloitte on social networks in healthcare found that the sector ranked third last in terms of social network use, beating only pharmaceutical makers and that bastion of collaborative digital media petroleum refining. Although half of the healthcare companies in the Fortune 100 are on Twitter, none are official users of Facebook or blogs, according to Deloitte.  The article lists some of the challenges faced.  Read it at http://www.guardian.co.uk/healthcare-network

Here’s a list of 10 social networks in US healthcare:

1.     Sermo - an online network exclusive to physicians.

2.     PatientsLikeMe - a social network enabling patients to share experiences and advice.

3.     CureTogether - millions of ratings comparing the real-world performance of treatments for hundreds of conditions.

4.     DailyStrength - social network of support groups for various ailments, from alcoholism to infertility.

5.     FacetoFace Health - this social network connects patients with similar ailments, enabling them to share their experiences.

6.     MedHelp - health management network and online support community.

7.     Ozmosis - social network for physicians, including a cloud-based social collaboration and clinical content management platform.

8.     RadRounds - a professional network for radiologists that also includes the ability to share and discuss interesting medical imaging cases.

9.     WebMD - part social network, part portal, this site provides insights and information about health issues.

10.  WEGO Health - a social network which aims to empower health activists and leaders.

2012 and its layers of objectives

The central challenge for business leaders looking over the horizon to 2012 is:  how to address many layers of objectives at the same time.

It’s not enough to just find new revenue growth or to create more profitability; the problem is to do both at the same time.

It isn’t just the need to produce better brand performance in the short term that makes our jobs hard, but also the need to produce results today and build for tomorrow at the same time.

Every leader and every company I know in health, science, and technology faces these seemingly impossible and simultaneous objectives.

That’s why the companies which are winning are those that not only strengthen individual brands, but also increase the innovation ability of the whole portfolio. That means new products contributing profitably sooner. Sales at launch that endure through the entire lifecycle. And high-performing brands within a valuable whole.

In my book, N-of-8, I offer a look at some obstacles that managers can fall into that can break up a brand team rather than lead to breakout innovation.

Specifically, I present details of each of the four primary ways to apply the N-of-8 methods. For each, I identify what can make N-of-8 compatible the objectives of the team.

Contact me for a personal preview.

Catarina Tagmark, Global Head of Corporate Brand at Siemens, speaks on “Answers that last”

At World Brand Congress 2011, Catarina Tagmark will share how Siemens is transforming its branding practice just as it is transforming the business, through building trust and deliver answers that last.

Catarina Tagmark is the global head of corporate brand for Siemens, based in Munich, Germany.

Here’s her perspective on the challenges of today and tomorrow that are technological in nature, and how society is looking to technology companies like Siemens to find answers:

“We live in challenging times: increasing urbanization, climate change, new demands for industrial productivity and affordable healthcare, under changing political, ecological and economical conditions - all at the same time.

Technology is a part of today's lifestyle. It's integrated into products and services, the environments in which we live and work, people and behaviors and in communications. Technology has transformed how we interact as human beings, and vice versa, how we interact is reshaping our technology. In the increasing complexity of solutions, the decision-making is shifting towards brands as hallmarks of trust.

As a technology company, Siemens has a responsibility to use its technological competence, its innovative thought leadership and engagement in the most crucial aspects for society (health, energy, city planning) and combine it with its international presence, to work with the problems that the world is facing today and create answers that last for the world of tomorrow. Siemens brand work has a central role in giving this responsibility a voice, stating where Siemens want to go and adding value for the company’s stakeholders.”

After starting her career as a chemical engineer in the Swedish pharmaceutical company Pharmacia in 1986, Catarina three years later joined the marketing function. By 2001, she had progressed to Vice President Brand Communications in what had become Amersham Biosciences after a series of mergers.

When GE acquired Amersham in 2004, Catarina moved to the UK to lead the healthcare business’ Olympic Games sponsorship. This was followed by responsibility for GE brand management in all countries outside the US, based in Brussels, Belgium.

In 2009, Catarina left GE and founded a consultancy company – Engavility - together with a group of former colleagues, and helped organizations grow their business through brand, marketing, and communications activities.

From July 2010, Catarina works at Siemens global headquarters in Munich, Germany, as head of corporate brand. In this capacity, she leads brand definition, expression, implementation and monitoring for Siemens master brand across all markets.

As it was when I first attended in 2008, the World Brand Congress will be the single largest rendezvous of best brains behind some of the world's most successful and sought after brands.  The Congress to be held November 24-26 in Mumbai, India is a meeting place for leaders from every sector and continent, with more than 500 of the world's branding and marketing elite under one roof.

Healthcare marketing: Shifting responsibilities

Healthcare marketing leaders were asked to compare their responsibilities now with what they predicted would be their responsibilities three years from now. They predicted a shift from market research, PR, and advertising, toward patient experience, physician relations, and business strategy.

We agree, and see with so many healthcare brands, that the customer experience will continue to be of paramount focus.

If you would like to read our white paper on brand experience, click here to download it.