Healthcare marketing - driver for future viability

No progress without risk. No future without question marks. Evolution cannot be to be stopped. And that's a good thing. Only those who continually face up to these challenges can help shape the future. Speed, creativity, flexibility and openness are the keys to successful, future-proof healthcare marketing.

Our Worldwide Partners network, the largest of the world's owner-managed agencies, celebrated its 75th anniversary in May under the motto "celebrating the past, shaping the future". At the event, well-known speakers such as Salim Ismail and David Bosshart worked with Worldwide Partners to draw up long-term and medium-term scenarios for the future. In addition, 20 strategists from the network's healthcare agencies exchanged views on trends in the pharmaceutical and healthcare industry in the individual countries.

More opportunities than risks

Looking into the future is fascinating and scary at the same time. However, everyone agreed that despite all the risks, the opportunities outweigh the risks - if you take advantage of them. To do that, you don't have to be as believer in progress and technology as Salim Ismail of Silicon Valley-based Singularity University, who sees exponential growth in the healthcare industry in the following areas:

• Information & Data Driven Health- Big Data for greater knowledge and understanding to improve diagnosis,prevention and treatment.
• Personalized Medicine & Omics: from systems medicine to synthetic biology and DIY- Genomic
• Regenerative Medicine: from cell therapy to limb regeneration to 3D printing- organ production
• Interventions: from robotic surgery, smart pills, targeted personal gene therapy to nanomedicine
• Neuromedicine from Real Time Brain Imaging, to BCI, to Targeted Neurointervention
• Med Tech, Biotech & Enterpreneurship: from cost-saving programs to faster and more effective development

David Bosshart from the Duttweiler Institute in Switzerland was also optimistic, but he assessed the future from society's point of view and thus in a somewhat more differentiated way. According to him, everything will become faster: We will chew faster, which means that teeth will change. We will work and react faster with our tablets and smart phones, which will change our posture and dexterity. We will sleep faster. There are new tools and medical devices at shorter and shorter intervals, but also new diseases. We are becoming more creative and efficient, whether with the direct help of new technologies or with the help of new interactions with friends or strangers via cloud sourcing. The development of new products is accelerating, but they are also more quickly outdated, obsolete.

Only the strong and changeable will survive

This also means that the half-lives of companies are shortening more and more, as another speaker noted:
IBM had 30 years until the first big crisis hit. Because it was a well-known brand personality, the company survived, while others, at first more technically innovative, were overtaken by even faster developers or by copiers and disappeared. Today, even innovative companies like Facebook & Co have only a few years of prosperity, unless they regularly reinvent themselves. Even if one narrows the time horizon a bit, there are still a variety of changes, some of them far-reaching, that the pharmaceutical and healthcare industry has to cope with. Increasing regulatory control, fragmented target groups and increased cost pressures continue to pose new challenges for market participants. According to the participants, Big Pharma will buy up, merge and/or diversify, because development costs and the duration of product innovations are reaching unprecedented levels. Blockbusters are not to be expected, but rather niche products. Biotechnology offers prospects. Biosimilars and generics can win. Integrated therapy models are becoming increasingly important, as are personalized medicine and preventive medicine. The discussants were convinced that the healthcare and wellcare sector will grow, as will lifestyle medicines and OTC, because consumers are increasingly looking for ways to improve their general well-being - at least in highly developed societies with high purchasing power.

New thinking - towards marketing and communication

With increased cost pressure, marketing budgets are of course once again under scrutiny, especially those for traditional measures from the past. But especially for the marketing future, there are many new opportunities at the same time, because the need for marketing thinking is increasing. The changes demand new thinking - in the direction of marketing and communication.

• Less product innovation: "This must be compensated for by marketing and process innovations," as one participant quoted from an ME-Booz study.
• New business areas and business models: Marketing can and must be involved and provide valuable input.
• The target groups are shifting: On the one hand, payers are moving to the center of attention, i.e., cooperation with health insurance companies and thus health economic marketing is becoming increasingly relevant.
• The role of patients is changing: they are increasingly informing themselves and thus exerting more influence on the choice of medication. With the development from health care to self-determination, patients are becoming consumers, especially when it comes to products that are not prescribed and reimbursed. This means that more expertise is needed in consumer-oriented marketing and social media communication.
• Communication to physicians and pharmacies will also continue to have its importance, albeit in a different form. Participants did not share V. Khosla's opinion, as S. Ismail quoted that 80% of all physicians will be redundant, at least not in the next 5 years. However, physicians and professionals need support in their interaction and communication with patients
• Other target groups are moving into the center such as regulators, associations, media, patient organizations. There is a need to restore trust in the pharma industry through transparency

All these changes, which are already on the horizon, require one thing: creative and strong marketing leaders and consultants who bring their perspective to the table. Who think new measures and a new communication mix. So enough to do. Let's tackle it together.