KEY TAKEAWAY: DTC is meant, at its basic objective, to get patients to ask for and fill a prescription for your product but today that’s not enough. Pharma needs to think beyond “marketing” and be more empathetic to patients who become lost in a world where healthcare is in transition.
Empathy
It was perhaps my worst day in market research ever. I listened to an MS patient, who is making $100,000 a year, tell us that she cannot afford the MS drug that works for her because her insurance won’t cover it and it cost $17,000 every month. As I listened to her, she said she had a savings account with close to $40, ooo in it, but that it would soon be gone because the drug she needed. She said the drug company said “they can’t help” because she makes too much money so her progressive MS symptoms will return.
POST SUMMARY: In order to be great DTC marketers, we have to better understand patients and the wealth of health information that consumers have to sort through just to make basic healthcare choices.