City of Paris

Monday’s cover story in Advertising Age, “Bud’s Big Blunder: Letting Consultants Steer Brand” caused quite a buzz at ad agencies. The article squarely blames the consulting firm for driving the campaign that resulted in Bud Light’s first-ever full-year sales decline in history. The “Drinkability” campaign focused on process and product attributes (less watery than Coors, less bitter than Miller Lite, and you can drink a lot of it), a change in direction from the previous emotional appeals. One agency principal commented that one fundamental problem is that consultants are good at linear thinking and process, which tends to ignore the emotional component so critical in advertising.

What a great example this is for healthcare marketers. I chuckle at the reference to product attributes as I think about my frequent discussions with product managers and my attempts to persuade them to whittle down their list of “unique” features or to make their “single most important message” truly singular. Some might say that marketing to professionals about products they use in a work setting (e.g., healthcare) is different from consumer marketing. I say that these are the people who forget that we are dealing with human beings, not decision-making algorithms on a computer.

As to the role of consultants, most of us in the agency business have experienced run-ins with some bright star from a big-name consulting firm who comments, by invitation or not, on communication strategy and creative concepts. Most of these comments add up to no more than brief disruptions and annoyances. In those instances when the agency does find itself heading toward a subordinate role in communication strategy, then it’s time to look inward to see if the agency team is falling short on strategy and original ideas. If the agency has been delivering consistently, then there may be other factors such as the communication between agency and client, or the introduction of a powerful newcomer, as in the arrival of a new CEO (an Anheuser-Busch heir) in the case of Bud Light. It seems that at the end of the day, it all comes back to humans and their interactions.

Depending on whom you talk to, corporate identity can be very exciting, as it is often to an entrepreneur who is creating a new company, very restrictive (to someone who doesn’t like to follow rules but who happens to work in a big corporation) or a strategic component within an overall communication program, which to me is a pragmatic way of looking at it. And what I mean by pragmatism is that we need to look at corporate identity in light of the role it plays in helping a company accomplish its business goals and not how it provides an outlet for a company stakeholder’s creativity or self-expression. With this perspective, then, the process of building and maintaining a corporate identity becomes more objective and rational. The emotions that we are concerned about are those of our audience, not of internal stakeholders involved in the process. Suddenly, it’s easier to make decisions, because making choices based on well-defined, business-focused criteria is far simpler than figuring out who likes what or reconciling personal preferences. With this in mind, I would like to offer some basic rules I’ve learned to follow.

Consistency trumps creativity. I often counsel clients that the discipline and consistency with which a corporate identity system is implemented are far more important than how unique, original or visually distinctive it is. Standing out from the crowd is not bad, but consistently communicating the identity that a business has carefully crafted will ultimately create the desired image—one that builds value for the business.

Keep it simple. Sometimes the corporate identity “policy” goes overboard with complex rules that indeed are restrictive but, even worse, difficult to follow. For those of us who are in a position to write style guides, we need to remember that corporate identity is implemented at many levels, from the specialists in marketing and communications departments to the many business disciplines that communicate with customers, prospective employees and corporate partners on a day-to-day basis. You’ll find more followers when the rules are easy to understand.

Beyond the visual identity. I always like to quote Clive Chajet, who speaks of the brand as the sum total of a corporation’s conversation with society. Corporate identity goes beyond logos, typography, colors, grids and all those graphic parameters, to the way your receptionist (or computer voice) answers the telephone, office décor, attire, business practices, interaction with the community, etc.

If you’re interested in reading more about corporate identity and related topics, here are two of my favorites: Marketing Aesthetics by Alex Simonson and Bernd H. Schmitt and Image by Design: From Corporate Vision to Business Reality by Clive Chajet.

Last week, China’s State Food and Drug Administration (SFDA) Drug Registration Department Director Zhang Wei was interviewed by the Xinhua news bureau about the upcoming 2009 SFDA annual report. He revealed some interesting statistics about approvals as well as clinical trial activities.

In response to the H1N1 epidemic, the SFDA initiated an expedited review process. This resulted in the approval of 10 different H1N1 vaccines in 2009. Tamiflu (oseltamivir phosphate capsules) received approval for scaled-up manufacturing as well as new indications to include special populations and pediatric use. Expedited approval was also granted for the import of By Le-Wei (zanamivir powder for inhalation).

For HIV therapy, Zhang reported that key pharmaceuticals in currently accepted regimens are now available, and some of these are manufactured in China. The approval of nevirapine, zidovudine and lamivudine will go a long way in managing the disease and disrupting maternal-fetal transmission of the virus.

In oncology, the approval of Tasigna (nilotinib) for CML patients offers an alternative for those who are resistant to Gleevec (imatinib mesylate) treatment. Felodipine, developed in China, entered clinical trials.

For hepatitis B, a major health concern in China, Zhang noted that the approval of generic entecavir will reduce cost and improve access. Similarly, in CV drugs, the generic version of levosimendan was approved, and the generic paliperidone entered clinical trials. In diabetes, a dipeptidyl peptidase-4 (DPP-4) inhibitor for type II diabetes, was approved. In antimicrobials, Cubicin (daptomycin) was approved. Several traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) drugs also received approval. These approvals cover several categories including respiratory and women’s health.

All told, the SFDA approved 2,609 drug applications covering 1,464 different products in 2009. Nine of these are new drug entities that became available for the first time on a worldwide basis. And 69 of the new products are TCM entities. The overall approval rate is at 40 percent, holding steady for the past three years. (By comparison, the approval rate was closer to 90 percent in previous years.)

On the clinical trials front, the SFDA approved the initiation of 773 trials for 627 pharmaceuticals, 81 TCM entities and 64 biologicals, most of them in the anti-infective, oncology, cardiovascular and other chronic disease categories.