Late 2017, MSD launched it’s much
anticipated product, Gardasil, a vaccine that can prevent cervical cancer and
genital warts, in China. While this launch created lots of excitement
among consumers and industrial insiders, it afforded the Illuminera consultants
who had worked on the brand over a span of five years a strong sense of rejoice
and achievement.
In 2012, Illuminera was selected to
partner with MSD to build the brand strategy for Gardasil. Unlike our typical
engagement, Gardasil created very different challenges and many unique but
extremely critical questions were raised and answered throughout the process.
Consumer Product or Pharmaceutical
Product? To be
sure, Gardasil, like most vaccines, is a highly regulated healthcare product
that can only be administered by the CDC system. Most pharmaceutical companies
in those days typically approached vaccines like prescription drugs.
Illuminera, however, argued that for Gardasil, an expensive vaccine targeting
teens and adults whom the CDC system and HCPs had little influence on, a
consumer-centric strategy was the only way to success. Luckily our then
seemingly unconventional view was accepted by the client and this thinking
greatly influenced the strategic directions for Gardasil.
POV or Beyond? Traditionally vaccines can only be
distributed through the CDC system. This could be a major liability for
Gardasil as most of its target groups simply would not appear in POV (point of
vaccination). To overcome this hurdle, Illuminera and the client team devised
mechanisms that could bring consumers to POV and explored the possibilities of
establishing presence beyond POV.
Make Indirect and Unbranded Communications
Work? It was
accepted that Gardasil would benefit from a consumer-centric approach. However,
another hurdle immediately arose: how could Gardasil take a consumer-centric
approach when any direct and brand communications were simply out of questions
due to regulations? The answers lied in unbranded yet sharp and pointing
messages as well as what we called an “orchestration” of various touch points
converging on our target consumers.
With the above and many other critical questions addressed, Illuminera, together with the client team, essentially rewrote the business model for such an innovative vaccine. Now Gardasil was finally launched, Illuminera is again helping the MSD team to revisit and update the strategy. The arrival of Gardasil will not only bring MSD great business success but also benefit millions of Chinese women; it might even help reshaping the vaccination operating environment and practices in China. We look forward to witnessing the success of Gardasil.
