Best Practices' report provides marketing, branding strategies for expanding multi-drug portfolio

In today's highly competitive marketplace, bio-pharmaceutical companies often look to expand their product portfolios in the same indication. This "double-dipping" can result in a new brand gaining more profitability at the expense of a more established brand. The challenge for all product and brand leaders is to introduce the new product so that it does not affect the sales of the established brand while remaining competitive.

To help companies to meet this critical challenge, Best Practices, LLC has published "Expanding a Product Portfolio without Cannibalizing an Established Brand," a 61-page report that provides superior marketing and branding strategies for expanding a product portfolio without cannibalizing an existing brand.

While it can be a complex decision, having more than one brand in a therapeutic area clearly pays off for an organization - 96 percent of the study participants realized positive benefits of introducing a new brand treating an indication for which it had an existing product. More than 70 percent of the benchmark class identified market leadership, expanded market share and enhancing brand reputation among physicians as major contributing factors for marketing multiple products.

Participants in the study successfully used a range of positioning strategies to prevent or control cannibalization. Fifty percent or more of the benchmark class rated 10 positioning strategies somewhat effective to very effective at minimizing product cannibalization. Targeting different patient subtypes and aligning with thought leaders are among those positioning strategies rated effective by more than 80 percent of the benchmark class.

Topics covered in this study include:

• Effective methods of differentiating multiple brands
• Positioning strategies that minimize product cannibalization
• Operational changes that drive success when introducing a new brand into a product family
• Positive and negative impacts of introducing a new brand
• New product's share of the combined marketing spend during first three years both are marketed
• Marketing mix for new and legacy products
• Marketing activities that drive continuing success for legacy brand
• Best indicators of marketing effectiveness

Participants in this benchmarking research included 28 respondents at 22 leading pharmaceutical, biotech and medical device companies. Product and brand leaders can use this study to review successful strategies and tactics for managing resources and avoiding - or controlling - product cannibalization when marketing multiple brands for the same area of use.