How to Make Your Drug Launch
a Success
Three things that winning pharmaceutical companies
do right.
By Rafael Natanek, Christoph Schlegel, Michael Retterath
and George Eliades
Rafael Natanek is a partner with Bain & Company in the London of ce, Chris-
toph Schlegel is a Bain partner in the Frankfurt of ce, Michael Retterath is a
Bain partner in the New York of ce and George Eliades is a partner with Bain
in the San Francisco of ce.
The authors wish to give special thanks to Gilbert Grima, Nathalie Fetzer-
Hoernig, Anna Boleininger, Will Menz, Nicole Sinclair and Giovanni Miani
for their contributions to this report. Additional thanks to Gail Edmondson
for her editorial support.
Net Promoter, Net Promoter System, Net Promoter Score and NPS are registered trademarks of Bain &
Company, Inc., Fred Reichheld and Satmetrix Systems, Inc.
Copyright2017 Bain & Company, Inc. All rights reserved.
How to Make Your Drug Launch a SuccessThe pain is becoming all too common for many
pharmaceutical executives. After a decade or more of
investment in drug development and clinical trials, a
company launches a promising new product only to see
sales fall far short of expectations. Our research shows
that nearly 50% of launches over the past eight years
have underperformed analyst expectations, and more
than 25% have failed to reach even 50% of external rev-
enue forecasts.
That’s a serious concern for the pharma industry, which
is expected to derive 25% to 80% of its revenue from
new launches by 2021. While the level of clinical differ-
entiation plays an important role in a drug’s success,
there are many examples of successful drugs that were
not considered a major clinical breakthrough at launch,
such as Bayer’s and Johnson & Johnson’s Xarelto. To
understand how success factors that are within the con-
trol of a launch team are changing, we surveyed 100
senior launch executives from the top 20 pharmaceutical
companies. The Bain & Company study examined the
performance of each launch across 20 launch activities.
Ourndings show that companies with successful
launches do three things right:
postlaunch data and services.
rior customer experience.
ensure continuous frontline feedback.
Other factors, such as comprehensive market research,
key opinion leader advocacy and competitive resourcing—
all important for a successful launch—do not ensure out-
performance (seFigure 1). Our research also shows
that executives signi cantly underestimate several key
success factors, including customer advocacy and orga-
nizing the launch as a micro-battle. And while they
understand the importance of messaging, postlaunch
data and services, they often fail to effectively commu-
nicate their market research to payers and providers.
Figure 1: Many senior launch executives overlook important success factors1030
40%
02468101214%
Market research
Insights-based messaging
Postlaunch data
and services
Key opinion leader advocacy
Physician
advocacyPayer advocacy andprotocol shaping
Share of voice
Micro-battle
approach
Salesforce
feedback and
engagement
Bare minimumUnderrated differentiators
Recognized differentiatorsOverrated success factors
Per
cei
ved
im
po
rta
nce
Difference between overperformers and underperformers
Company readinessCustomer advocacyDifferentiation beyond phase III data
Notes: Comprehensive market research includes physician segmentation, patient journeys, and unmet patient and payer needs; perceived importance is the percentage of senior
executives who consider activity among top four most important for launch success; difference between overperformers and underperformers is the absolute difference in launch
activity performance (100%=best practice performance); share of voice is the share of total available time in which a target audience is captured with a focused message; a
micro-battle approach includes teaming and frontline mobilization
Source: Bain 2017 launch survey (n=100 senior executives from top 20 pharmaceutical companies)How to Make Your Drug Launch a Success
pared with twice-daily for Boehringer Ingelheim’srst-
to-market rival drug Pradaxa.
A second important success factor is conducting post-
launch studies to close any remaining gaps in data and
ensure superior data quality over competing products
and new entrants. High-quality data, in turn, enhances
market access. Successful companies put a postlaunch
evidence-generation plan in place 18 months before
the launch to generate a steady stream of data after the
launch that supports the drug’s ef cacy. Take the ex-
ample of Celgene, which produced almost twice as
many postlaunch studies in Europe for its multiple
myeloma drug Revlimid as compared with its closest
competitor. Celgene’s steady drumbeat of fresh evi-
dence has given Revlimid a competitive advantage by
keeping it at the forefront of hematologists’ minds.
Third, successful companies increase the effectiveness
of their messaging by including a competitive service
offer to address patient and physician pain points—
a factor many pharma executives overlook or under-
value. Physician services, such as diagnostics, patient
identi cation, onboarding, reimbursement support
and compliance, play a signi cant role in successful
launches. During the recent launch of a neurology drug
by a top pharma company, for example, the launch
team noted that the administrative burden of getting
patients started on therapy was a crucial pain point. In
response, the team invested far beyond the initial plan
to relieve the burden.
Build customer advocacy through superior
customer experience
Physicians today consider a much wider set of factors
beyond clinical data when deciding which drug to pre-
scribe, including clinical protocols, drug price, the type
of patient to whom a drug can be prescribed and over-
all treatment regimen. And they are rapidly shifting to
a broader array of information sources, especially on-
line sites and peers.
Our research shows that at least 40% of physicians’
brand preference is attributable to customer experi-
ence factors beyond the product, including, for exam-
Go beyond clinical trial results to make your
product stand out
New drug launches face more intense competition to-
day than they faced a decade ago. The average window
of time in which a drug remains on the market before
competing products arrive has fallen to four years,
down from eight years between 2000 and 2004. The
onslaught of new products makes it much harder to use
phase III clinical trial data alone to differentiate a drug
in the eyes of doctors, regulators and health insurers.
Companies with launches that repeatedly outperform
expectations are adept at communicating the key clini-
cal and nonclinical bene ts of a new product to pre-
scribing physicians and other decision makers. Often
they also use postlaunch data and services to further
differentiate their product from the competition.
Most senior executives understand that effective mar-
keting messaging is critical to launch success. But get-
ting it right is not easy. Our survey and experience
show a large gap between winners and losers.
Companies with the most effective messaging follow
three key guidelines. First, they translate research into
actionable insights. All the companies we surveyed
said they use market research tools, including patient
pathways, physician segmentation and focus groups.
However, only those with successful launches trans-
formed market data into actionable insights to make
their product stand out. These messages are grounded
in clinical data and built on ef cacy and safety, but they
also take into consideration the cognitive shortcuts
doctors deploy when they learn about new treatments
and make decisions (heuristics). Understanding these
pathways can help pharma companies communicate
the bene ts of their medicines more effectively.
Bayer’s successful launch of its anticoagulant drug
Xarelto highlights the power of effective messaging.
Even though Xarelto was second to market and many
stakeholders did not consider it the most effective
compound in its class at the time of launch, it rapidly
became a market leader. Xarelto used simplicity as a
differentiation factor: It offered once-a-day dosing com-
How to Make Your Drug Launch a Successple, how well pharma companies support physicians
by providing answers to medical questions, identifying
patients and connecting physicians with peers.
Many pharma companies, however, focus their advo-
cacy activities on the most in uential physicians in a
giveneld—the key opinion leaders—and miss the op-
portunity to create advocates among the day-to-day pre-
scribers. Bain research shows physicians give pharma
companies an average Net Promoter Score of nega-
tive 11% across all their interactions with them. That
negative score highlights the signi cant potential to
increase launch success by designing and delivering a
superior customer experience to physicians.
Leading companies look beyond the key opinion lead-
ers and turn day-to-day prescribers into advocates by
providing them with a superior customer experience.
They understand that a physician’s overall customer
experience is a sum of individual interactions with a
pharma company. Every interaction or episode is an
opportunity to engage in a positive dialogue. One exam-
ple is providing easy and accurate medical science liai-
son contacts within 24 hours of the physician’s request.
Our study showed some of these interactions have a
greater impact on prescribing behavior than others.
Organize your launch as a micro-battle
New drug launches today require greater coordination
across the entire organization, including market access,
patient services, medical affairs, regulatory, marketing
and sales. Many pharma companies continue to rely on
loosely organized cross-functional teams with a nomi-
nal global leader. The problem with that approach is
that functional silos control the power, budget and tal-
ent decisions. And silo leaders manage drug launches
via checklist, a rote approach that undercuts the group’s
ability to raise or respond to critical issues and make
cross-functional decisions.
Companies that outperform organize drug launches
into micro-battles (seFigure 2). They create a com-
pany within the company, giving launch teams the au-
thority and agility to make decisions that are best for
the patient or the brand. Importantly, a micro-battle
Figure 2: Transforming a drug launch into a micro-battle
Traditional launch approach Launch as a micro-battle
Head of launch reports to medical marketing
90% of work takes place in functional silos
Functions control launch budget
Team focused on functional check lists
Linear approach to work
Head of launch team reports to CEO
Launch team empowered to work
across functions
Head of launch team controls budget
Team focused on strategic issues
Rapid approach to work: test, adapt,
learn and scale
Sources: Bain experience; executive interviews
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