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Targeted, multicultural programs are now crucial for the truly customer-centric pharma organization.

By Adam Hill on Aug 12, 2015

Reaching out to different types of customer is something that pharma is slowly getting to grips with in a variety of ways. In the US, Boehringer is seeking to engage the Hispanic population with its program Cuida Tu Don de la Salud. Directed specifically at people with Type 2 diabetes, it offers advice on changes in lifestyle and available treatment options – and crucially, it was conceived and written in its intended recipients’ native language. “A big part of the difference is that it starts out in Spanish,” says Lisa Valtierra, Associate Director, Cross-Cultural Marketing at Boehringer, who oversees the initiative. “That sounds so simple – but we’re not trying to fit an Anglo-European, American mindset into a Hispanic one.” The text is translated into English only for review and information purposes.

Understanding the Latin perspective

Getting into the mind of the customer is crucial and Valtierra credits the company’s ‘Latino-focused’ agency for the success of the venture. “They’ve made a huge difference because they truly understand the Latin perspective,” she says.

Due to speak at eyeforpharma’s Customer Engagement USA conference in Philadelphia in November, Valtierra represents something of a one-person center of excellence. The cross-cultural marketing function – which is in effect just her – was set up two years ago, sits within marketing but does not report to any brand. The company examined its therapeutic areas and saw opportunities, focusing primarily on diabetes because there is a high prevalence in the Latino population compared to the Anglo population.

Valtierra’s role is to help colleagues– in this case the diabetes team – with their Hispanic strategy, advising them on how they might differentiate, what is required to have a successful campaign and helping them see how it fits into their other plans.“This is what’s working, let’s take advantage of that concept in what we’re planning, it is not a cookie-cutter approach,” she goes on. One practical area in which teams have been able to tap into her expertise is in the finding that 90% of people coming to cuidatudon.com were doing so via smartphone or tablet. “This community behaves differently and can be reached in different ways,” she says.

The manufacturer’s initiative reflects the sort of changes that eyeforpharma’s Customer Experience Management 2015 report highlights: the idea that pharma must increasingly structure itself around the customer, putting patients and others at the center of an organization and aligning that effort with commercial strategy.

Practical help and simple message

Cuida Tu Don, centered around the idea that ‘don’ is a gift or God-given talent, aims to support users by offering practical help and a simple message: “Our gift of health is extremely important but without it we cannot share our other gifts with the people we love,” Valtierra explains. “The three pillars are medical care, exercise and nutrition and they must be working together to reach the best level of health. Small changes in lifestyle can lead to big changes so it’s a matter of showing usable bits that people can incorporate into their lives.”

The site reinforces the idea that the HCP is part of a patient’s team. “It’s for everyone’s benefit when you can see people staying out of the emergency room,” she goes on. “Everyone can win here: patients, hospitals, drug companies, governments.”

There is no mention of brands on site, rather it is about diabetes treatment, but a key feature is unscripted interviews with patients where they talk about their experiences. “It’s not just about what pharma thinks people should know,” she says. For the company, the advantages are clear: it gains a better understanding of the population and can track the on-site behavior of people who sign up for monthly emails and texts – for example, whether they follow a link to a branded medication page.

Incorporating key learnings

Valtierra says the capability exists to incorporate these learnings about the population into business strategies and to allow them to become more customer-centric. “Teams are beginning to and it’s happening much faster than I thought,” she says. “They’re beginning to free up a bit of budget to deal with this. It’s a great opportunity to do things you haven’t tried before. We’re evolving a great laboratory. We know where people go and in what order when they reach the site – it’s a way to discover how people are interacting, what they want to find out, it’s exciting.”

Users of cuidatudon.com opt in to receiving communications from other brands, and the technology is certainly there to allow cross-cultural marketers in pharma to feed automated, specific content which is geared towards a person’s needs. “We’re beginning to see the kind of information people want,” she agrees. “It’s just a matter of understanding how best to use it and how not to be intrusive.

Compliance rigor is essential, insists Valtierra. “Once people come to the site and opt in we are very careful to show what they are signing up for – we follow this to the letter – we never want to feel they are getting something they don’t ask for,” she says.

But the truth is that the demographics have changed to the point where, if pharma companies don’t market to Hispanic populations they won’t be successful in the long term. This goes across all businesses, not just pharma. By 2060, Hispanics will be 30% of the population in the US.

Integrated approach

Getting customers to buy in to your brand – and to persuade others to do so – is a key goal of creating greater customer focus. While it is yet in its early days, the hope is that this becomes a standard way in which all marketing teams approach things, so as brand teams develop plans they automatically incorporate a Hispanic element into their way of doing business. “It’s very easy to say: ‘It would be nice to market to Hispanics but we don’t have the budget this year’,” she explains. “But the truth is that the demographics have changed to the point where, if pharma companies don’t market to Hispanic populations they won’t be successful in the long term. This goes across all businesses, not just pharma. By 2060, Hispanics will be 30% of the population in the US.”

So from a business perspective Cuida Tu Don makes absolute sense – something that executives saw immediately. “It wouldn’t have happened without senior level buy-in,” Valtierra says. “Each brand is operating with its own budget and trying to get everyone to buy in would be next to impossible. But they get the business sense of it – I’ve been very fortunate.”

Sustainable effort

C-Suite support is certainly needed because this type of activity needs to be integrated into marketing efforts and not done on a “one year in, one year out” basis. It has to be a sustainable effort, she insists.“The way you get trust is to be in the community consistently, in a way which makes sense to the Hispanic mindset,” she adds.

A logical move would be to translate this sort of effort into other disease areas in the US Hispanic population “because the numbers are so large”, although it is by no means certain that this is possible in other cultures – after all, part of the point of this activity is that it is so specific to a certain group and is therefore not transferable. It is also very expensive – but there may be opportunities elsewhere. Valtierra accepts that more research is needed but suggests that there are possibilities once you understand your targets.

Expanding the approach

Something similar might be tried with African Americans around heart disease and diabetes - but while there is scope to expand this approach, it comes down to available resources or, as Valtierra puts it, “bandwidth”. “We wanted to make sure we got good at one thing before spreading ourselves too thin,” she says.

Another way of expanding cross-cultural marketing may also be in targeting HCPs and institutions, although it “will depend on therapy and disease area”.

Whatever happens, Valtierra hopes that pharma will take note of what it is going on in cross-cultural and adapt. “As an industry, we’re pretty bad at understanding cross-cultural,” Valtierra says. “Some efforts are just translations, so there’s a huge opportunity for us to understand that these are people’s lives and how we can help. That’s the opportunity: to discover how we can become part of the solution, partnering with institutions that are caring for people, their challenges – how can you communicate more effectively than selling drugs one at a time. For instance, adherence data across the board is terrible – so there must be something we can be doing better.”