No one cares about your brand

Editor's note: Soumya Roy is global head of quantitative research at Hall & Partners, a New York research firm. Kathryn Gallant is managing partner at Hall & Partners.

Every self-respecting marketer backs up their million-dollar strategy with some kind of customer research. Most rely on segmentation: breaking up likely customers into groups that share distinct, defined perspectives on the brand. But what if customers don’t actually shape their lives in the context of product suites? (Hint: They don’t.) Our research with physicians suggests that if marketers want to connect, they’ll have to start by accepting that their customers live beyond branding. Before we ask what they think about any product, we have to discover what they think about themselves.

But isn’t this the era of the brand? It is if you ask a marketer. Today, entire programs are built around semi-sacred and amorphous “brand values.” Every major agency promises “brand experiences” that “drive relevance” and, presumably, can make your company the next Apple or Google. Emotional, metaphoric customer relationships sure sound as important as (call us old-fashioned) sound business practices. The brand has become the stuff of marketing mythology: If you build it, they will come.

Even pharma jumped on this bandwagon. Twenty years ago, competition started to heat up across therapeutic categories, especially chronic diseases. Marketers veered away from the traditional attribute war, which they could lose, and began promoting each drug’s intangibles: peace of mind, quality of life, etc. Suddenly, prescription medications had mystique. The health care “brand” was born.

In some ways, we suppose it is the era of the brand. Companies care about brands. Marketers care about brands. The only people who don’t, unfortunately, are customers.

Customers care about themselves. They focus on the people, things, ideas and goals that matter most to them. They each have a story – we call it their “enduring self-concept.” This story is about who they are and who they want to be. It’s always a rich collection of emotions and beliefs, ideas and attitudes. This story can be furthered or hindered by all kinds of decisions, including product choices. But the customer, and no one else, will always be the star.

Understand doctors’ perspectives

We routinely conduct physician research to support pharma product launches. In order to refine a brand’s value proposition, companies need to understand doctors’ perspectives on solution gaps in various categories, along with what they think about medications. Typically, we engage doctors in that context – and we ask every question through the lens of a brand. What do you think of Brand X? And what would you like Brand Y to be like?

Recently, we started noticing that certain doctors felt more “comfortable” prescribing certain brands. Fair enough. But interestingly, our data couldn’t tell us why, no matter how we crunched it. Nothing those doctors had expressed could explain these particular prescribing instincts. We were missing something big.

In response, we put our 10-year perspective to work and started looking at our previous studies’ underlying assumptions. The biggest, of course, was that doctors cared about any brand. So we started over, conducting qualitative research followed by quantitative research on 450 doctors across the U.S. and EU. We wanted to know what was on their minds as they walked through the doors of their practices each day, before they encountered or thought about any brand.

We discovered something extraordinary. Most physicians could recall the exact moment that they knew they wanted to devote their lives to medicine. All expressed a strong point of view on their desired and perceived relationship to patients and their health. But not one expressed they had chosen to become a doctor so they could prescribe Lipitor. (Or Viagra. Or Plavix. You get the picture.)

Each doctor had an enduring self-concept that defined their role in the lives of patients. Some had chosen medicine to become heroes. Others chose it to become respected scientists. Others chose it to become modern wise men/women. Ultimately, we were able to identify six distinct physician portraits: Authoritarians, Bleeding Hearts, Regular Einsteins, Sages, Entrepreneurs and Crossing Guards.

Each physician portrait was driven by distinctly different motivators. Regular Einsteins favored boldly innovative products, while Sages were more concerned with being personally comfortable with treatment plans based on their vast experience. Authoritarians loved power (their own and that of the medications they prescribed), while Bleeding Hearts were entirely patient-focused, craving relationships and approval. Entrepreneurs showed preference for judging standards objectively and developing patients into satisfied customers, while Crossing Guards prioritized following guidelines and taking a relatively safe approach to treatment.

You may be thinking, “So what?” Doctors are entitled to have different personalities. But we all know they’re trained to be dispassionate and that they prescribe medications on purely rational grounds. Surely there can be no relationship between the enduring self-concepts of physicians and the drugs they prescribe. But in fact, we found direct correlations. Drug choices were not only linked to each physician’s “portrait,” they were also an expression of it.

Take treatment of high cholesterol. Lipitor, Crestor and Zocor are all leading statins: HMG-CoA reductase inhibitors that can effectively, safely lower cholesterol levels in patients. They’re not, of course, identical in their mechanisms. Depending on which cholesterol numbers a doctor and patient need to bring under control (e.g., triglycerides, HDL, LDL, total cholesterol), one statin – based on clear, objective, irrefutable numbers – will appear to be the “best” choice.

Of course, there are also side effects to consider. Statins are associated with cardiovascular events, especially when patients indulge in risky behaviors like smoking. These medications can also be hard on the liver. They can cause pain and weakness through the entire muscular system. So as much as physicians consider the appropriateness of a drug, we’d expect them to secondarily make their prescribing decisions based on patient tolerance. We certainly wouldn’t expect them to play favorites or prefer a medication on any other grounds.

But incredibly, we found that they do. When asked to identify their “top engaging brands” in high cholesterol treatment, each physician portrait-type chose products that reflected their own (previously-determined) enduring self-concept (see chart). They prescribed as the healer they’d always wanted to be.

Regular Einsteins and Bleeding Hearts felt most strongly about category leader Lipitor. Regular Einsteins were attracted to the brand’s category-leading attributes, while Bleeding Hearts responded to its patient-sensitive message. Authoritarians strongly preferred prescribing Crestor, fueled by feelings of reassurance; they associated the brand with “outcomes” for patients. Sages and Entrepreneurs also chose Crestor – Sages based on their personal experience with the brand and Entrepreneurs for the patient satisfaction it typically delivered. And finally, Crossing Guards demonstrated prescribing preference for Zocor (simvastatin). Why? Because they sensed this well-established generic would be the least expensive and could be trusted. They felt it was the easiest choice.

Doctors, like all customers, are people first. Their treatment plans offer paths toward patient wellness but also toward personal goals and sating personal motivators. Every physician wants to feel safe and secure in their choices and each wants to feel they belong in the field and deserve respect. But like everyone else, they also need to express their values. They’re driven to self-actualize.

Stop talking about themselves

It sounds simple, but it won’t be: brands need to stop talking about themselves. Instead of looking for new, inventive ways to describe the brand, talk about what it does and explain why it’s better (with some emotional positioning thrown in). Brands need to trigger the personal values of their customers by embracing who they are.

Brand messages will resonate far better when they’re linked to enduring self-concepts. They’ll be more relevant when they reflect customers’ deepest-held beliefs. And they’ll result in relationships that are deeper, richer and more meaningful when they further customers’ most personal missions.

Brands (and researchers) can start by talking less and asking more. Segmentation will continue to be the foundational element of any marketing strategy and should. But to make segmentation more actionable and to use it as a springboard for crafting engaging communications strategies, brands must reach beyond their own context. We all need to do a better job of evaluating individuals’ enduring self-concepts first, then their relationship with product categories and only then with brand attributes and promises.

More actionable segmentation will mean something different in every industry. In health care, we can imagine far superior training of pharma reps: teaching them to recognize physicians’ enduring self-concept and support doctors’ highest values. We can envision far more detailed and engaging conversations about what medications can do and the impact they can have on the lives of patients – all directed by subtle cues from the Regular Einsteins, Sages and Entrepreneurs among us.

But whatever it means, it will first require taking a step back and investigating who customers are when they roll out of bed in the morning – before they’ve made a single choice, let alone thought about choosing any product, pharmaceutical or otherwise. Because honestly, no one cares about your brand.