When Chris walked into this Global Pharmaceutical company, he was handed a failing product launch and given a one hour handover from the departing Product Manager. Not the best of starts, but what this Pharma Marketing expert did next was both decisive and the turning point in the fortunes of this product and the company supporting it.
He spent an hour making calls to people in his network to confirm his suspicions about how this company was marketing their new anti clotting agent. His suspicions were confirmed. The company had tried to impose a US marketing strategy on a European market and it had fallen flat. The change in strategy that Chris imposed would result in a much greater proportion of the European market– an increased yield of £35 million in sales over expectations.
It took a lot of confidence for Chris to turn round and challenge the marketing plan for this new product, especially when the business had already spent hundreds of thousands of pounds pursuing the wrong strategy. But with 20 years' experience of product launches in the global Pharma market for organisations like GSK, Shires and Astra Zeneca, Chris had both the backbone and the knowledge to challenge the status quo.
The realisation that the US marketing strategy wasn’t satisfying the drivers of the European market was one thing, but what next? Chris quickly devised a European and UK led project plan, focusing on the Payer Values and industry drivers. This was about ensuring the right people were being reached with the right messages in the right way, taking account for all European regulatory and compliance issues.
He chose one trusted client in the UK to pilot the strategy and test the market. He then used the success this pilot had, to support change to the entire European marketing approach. What followed was a take up of this product in Europe that the company couldn’t have imagined possible a year earlier.
Chris’s achievement was to take a flawed marketing strategy, turn it around and implement a replacement approach within just 12 months. This revised approach would yield £35 million across Europe in the following two years. It was also instrumental in the company achieving a sale.
Chris’ former colleague and Manager stated that, “Chris is an extremely talented and knowledgeable individual who is efficiently and quickly able to assess a situation, to add value and high quality solutions. In short, Chris just gets it. I can highly recommend him as an individual and a colleague who is able to consistently deliver.”
The sponsor of the launch had this to say, “Chris is a solid and mature marketeer who, not only understands the full Product Life Cycle, but also has the ability to transform and re-organise a marketing department. He is a proven deliverer who is able to quickly assess a situation and achieve tangible results.”
