Issues and Challenges in Marketing to Physicians

Who Wants An Educational Program that Docs Actually Trust?

I was exchanging e-mail last week with Rick Bukata, the physician executive who owns and runs the Center for Medical Education [www.ceme.org]. Actually Rick is much more than a physician executive; he is the soul of his company. Everything his company stands for in terms of quality and honesty is a reflection of Rick and the 30 years or so he has been both a physician and a clinical educator.

I've known Rick since the early 1980s when I worked in the California contract medicine industry. He was the medical director of a community hospital emergency department. He had just started a small business creating and publishing medical abstracts to help emergency physicians update their cognitive knowldege of the standard of care. Now, Rick operates an international enterprise with live seminars, audio tapes and written publications. The audience is the full range of acute anc primary care clinical professionals. My company, Challenger Corporation [www.chall.com], is grateful that Rick permits us to exhibit and market our eleectronic physician education materials at his live seminars. When we can, we provide promotions for CEME courses on our web page and by direct mail. Rick's physician instructors also use some of our content in their lecutres and presentations.

Although both companies somewhat overlap in terms of their product offerings and are therefore competitors in principle, the truth is that our relationship is one of those rarities where the sum is greater than its parts. We each reflect and enhance the quality and reputation of the other, and benefit from doing so.

In the last 15 years, CEME's live seminars--high risk medicine, emergency medicine and family medicine boards review courses, primary care updates, continuing certification courses--have acquired a reputation for excellence, consistency, measurable benefit, and continuity unmatched by any other commercial live seminar network in the country. Why?

Here's why:

(1) Brand built by long-term consistency in faculty, sponsorships and outcomes.
(2) Offers backed by money-back guarantees and commitment to remediation for unsuccessful candidates.
(3) Investment in prestigious faculty with proven speaking and teaching skills.
(4) Integrity in each and every aspect of marketing, promotion and fulfillment--claims limited to what can be verified and delivered.
(5) Arms-length production and validation of the instructional content provided in the courses--sponsors cannot "salt the shaft" in terms of subject matter or subject matter interpretation.
(6) Avoidance of sponsorship relationships simply for short-term cash.

Come to think of it, my company stands for the same principles and we have gone about our brand building and development with the same ideals in mind.

What should this tell the drug and device industry about their sponsorship efforts? From my perspective, there is an untapped opportunity for the enlightened corporation that wants to build a long-term bond with the physician community. I am not suggesting that industry abandon its short-term, narrowly focused promotional efforts. Those things are directly related to the enormous pressures created by quarterly financial reports and public finances. But there is room and logic for a longer term strategy. Which firm will take the lead? Who really wants to be known as the standard setter for physician training and education? Who wants to be the "CEME" or "Challenger" of industry sponsored clinical content?

This kind of decision will not be made at the level of the product manager. That individual by necessity has to be focused on the short term and whatever specific drug, device or treatment modality he or she is reponsible for, this year. The visionary we are looking for is at the CEO, Chairman or Board level. I say "visionary", because the culture of the entire industry is aimed at narrow treatment approaches and short-term return. The focus I am suggesting will be broader, longer term [five to ten years] and outside the annual promotional budget. Next week, I will discuss some specific concepts that might work and what they might cost.

Bob Sweeney, PhD
CEO and President

posted by Robert E. Sweeney, DA, MS @ 12:25 PM