In Desperate Need of Reform: Market Access Brand Planning

Cameron Izadi

Is it finally time to approach market access brand planning differently?

The pivotal process of brand planning is now upon us: slides, meetings, strategic imperatives, big ideas, and budgets. This year marks my 20th season of brand planning and my 10th year participating as a market access (MA) professional. As important as the effort is in dictating the strategic direction, I can’t help but reflect on the challenges it presents for MA teams.

Many MA professionals will privately admit that brand planning is predominantly a promotional marketing exercise. While the cross-functional collaboration is welcomed, for MA, it can often feel like that square peg in a round hole.

In fact, it’s not too uncommon for MA strategies to get shoehorned into the brand’s strategic imperatives and relegated to generic form to fit the mold: 1) Reinforce value to protect access, 2) enhance the patient experience, and 3) partner with organized customers. Do these sound familiar? They should. As should MA teams routinely getting one to two slides and five minutes of “stage time” to demonstrate their contribution to the brand.

While progress has been made integrating access into brand strategy, this year serves as yet another reminder of how traditional brand planning still creates disconnects for many MA teams.

Disproportionate focus on demand generation. Brand strategies often focus entirely on demand generation, overlooking MA tactics that can enhance brand profitability, such as contract, channel, hub, and site-of-care optimization.

Misaligned time horizon. Brand strategies often focus on the next calendar year, but access teams operate on a different timeline. Payer-focused teams in particular have likely already secured formulary coverage for the coming year, so instead focus on coverage dynamics two to three years ahead. This misalignment can lead to missed opportunities and suboptimal resource allocation.

There’s nothing more challenging for MA professionals than trying to demonstrate productivity through a process that fails to recognize their team’s full potential.

So what do we do?

Companies have at least three ways to better capitalize on MA opportunities.

1. Educate your organization

When organizations oversimplify MA as a function focused solely on payer marketing and patient support services, when in fact MA scope is much broader, one remedy is education. Understanding that MA engages various stakeholders and influencers across the entire healthcare ecosystem—not just consumers but also essential business-to-business players throughout the value chain—is vital for maximizing its impact.

2. Redesign your approach

While most organizations adopt compliant ways to align commercial and medical strategic plans, medical plans often encompass broader objectives that extend beyond the brand’s focus. Apply a comparable approach to MA: Develop distinct MA brand plans that include not just promotional tactics aligned with brand goals, but also broader access goals, such as those aimed at business optimization, long-term customer partnerships, and the generation of value evidence.

3. Create alternate funding and governance channels

Companies commonly allocate funding to tactics that generate the highest ROI in a typical 12-month cycle, leaving many initiatives that require sustained investment over multiple years unfunded. Among other things, MA value lies in building partnerships and generating data, efforts that take longer than 12 months. Identifying new governance channels to accommodate long-term MA strategies enables the organization to capitalize on significant opportunities that would otherwise go unrealized—and underfunded.

When organizations focus exclusively on demand generation or 12-month budget cycles, they sacrifice what MA offers. Avoiding this oversight means thinking differently. By broadening their planning approach, companies will harness the full potential of their MA capabilities and be positioned to realize enhanced brand performance and fewer missed opportunities—in time for better planning next summer.

Cameron Izadi can be reached at cizadi@fingerpaintaccess.com.