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Trental (pentoxiylline) has been on the market since 1984 for intermittent claudication, an aspect of peripheral patients experience severe leg cramps while walking, cold feet, and paresthesia or numbness. As the only drug approved by the FDA for this condition, Trental is, in effect, the market, with sales approaching $200,000,000 in 1995. Facing patent expiration in 1997, Hoechst Marion Roussel has opted to maximize return on the brand in 1996 with a new campaign before the price-cutting begins and, hopefully by the effort, to establish a prescriber base resistant to generics. "We're not just going to wait around and see what happens," says Steve Cullinan, product manager at HMR. "It's time to become even more aggressive in the marketplace."
Trental already has a track record for energetic promotion -- being an early practitioner of direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising, for example. To escalate promotion, HMR and its agency, Dudnyk Healthcare Communications, are employing both humorous and threatening graphics to dramatize the symptoms of intermittent claudication and, in a logical execution of a market segmentation strategy, have created varying campaigns for three prescribing audiences -- specialists and other physicians with a high Rxing potential, podiatrists, and minority M.D.s (African-American and Hispanic).
One size fits one
HMR and Dudnyk have discarded the "one-size-fits-all" approach -- a single creative statement for all audiences -- for tailored programs to homogeneous groups. "The underlying theme is symptom awareness," says Carleen Niemiec, Dudnyk's vice president and creative director, "but we felt that each segment of the audience deserved its own campaign look. From our research and experience, we knew the key to building loyalty in a segment was to create materials targeted specifically to psychographic and prescribing behaviors."
In late March, promotion began to the three audiences with high Rx'ers receiving both fieldforce and print coverage. For podiatrists and minority physicians, Steve Cullinan explains, "There were some physician segments that we're...