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You may
say it’s easier said than done. You’re right. But we
don’t see any way around the need for it. When this
columnist asked Peter Goldschmidt, president and CEO of
Novartis Healthcare Philippines Inc., what
differentiated his company from the competition during
the years of its spectacular rise, he replied, “We have
a tremendous, passionate commitment to taking care of
the lives of Filipino patients. That passion absolutely
is the difference.” The absolute difference! A passion
for providing better treatment options to more
Filipinos! One of the striking things about his reply
was the conviction with which it was delivered, without
a moment’s hesitation. Goldschmidt is still driven by
gaining his own personal insights into taking corporate
citizenship and social responsibility seriously.
The key
to success Novartis has highlighted in case histories
has become the key to its own unique success. In 2006
Fortune magazine voted Novartis as the world’s most
admired pharmaceutical company. The following year
Ethisphere magazine, a respectable publication that
emphasizes the correlation between corporate citizenship
and long-term profits, named Novartis as one of the
three most ethical pharmaceutical and biotech companies
in the world.
If there
is one supreme lesson to learn from the experiences of
the innovative company, it is never to settle less than
devising your own daring solution to answering patient
needs. Health-care solutions provided by Novartis
include innovative medicines, high-quality low-cost
generic products, disease-driven vaccines and diagnostic
tools, and consumer health products. “Novartis is the
only pharmaceutical company that holds global leadership
positions in all these areas,” Goldschmidt pointed out.
Part of
the company’s appeal is that it offers a black-and-white
view of reality, from the mess of real relationships and
life conflicts. This worldview is often pinned to a
broadly defined aim that few could disagree with, like
“peace and clarity.” They reinforce this aim through
constant repetition. Novartis as a brand achieves iconic
status; it obtains a deeper meaning among its users—a
sense that the company is true to its values and the
product is true to its function. A sense, in other
words, that the brand is indeed authentic.
“We put
a lot of effort [as our global strategy] into research
in the area of vaccines and tropical diseases. We have
research institutes in Shanghai and the other in
Singapore,” he said. Novartis is squarely facing the
challenges of the country’s rapidly changing health-care
environment through its complementary business sectors.
“At the
moment, the Philippine market is not growing like [other
markets] Indonesia and/or more developed markets like
Singapore and China. How can we create better access to
treat more patients?” he asked. “One differentiation to
other key markets is because some markets are more
advanced in government health-care coverage.”
In
recent years, Novartis has supported Filipino patients’
access to medicines. With the World Health Organization,
the company has provided over 82,300 treatments of
antimalaria drug Coartem to Filipino patients at cost.
The Novartis Glivec International Patient Assistance
Program (Gipap) has helped provide its cancer drug
Glivec to almost 900 patients since its inception in
2003. This innovative program is being implemented in
more than 67 participating centers across the
archipelago. To date, benefits provided by Gipap to
Filipinos are valued at P1.2 billion.
Nevertheless, uncovering social truths does not lead to
mere product innovation. It leads to market innovation.
In other words, brands based on social insights make a
major leap that dismantles status quo and changes the
rule of the marketplace. As such, market innovation is
not generated through a process, but through a way of
looking at things, through a visionary way of thinking.
“Novartis Philippines is committed to providing better
treatment options to more Filipino patients. Its mission
is to improve the lives through innovation,” Goldschmidt
stressed.
The
company has pioneered breakthrough treatments for
Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, epilepsy,
depression, migraine, attention deficit hyperactivity
disorder and schizophrenia, among others. It is the
leader in the treatment of eye conditions, most
importantly “wet” age-related macular degeneration and a
leading cause of blindness in people over age 50.
Likewise, Novartis is a leader in providing products to
fight more than 20 vaccine-preventable viral and
bacterial diseases.
Another
area in which Novartis promotes patient access to
affordable medicines is generics. It is the only
pharmaceutical company that has achieved leadership
position in both patented drugs and generics. Sandoz,
the generic division of Novartis, offers a broad
portfolio of medicines no longer protected by patents.
Novartis
blazed a trail in innovation by demonstrating that
commitment to responsible corporate citizenship can pay
off bigger in the long run than any number of
superficial or fawning image campaigns. The company
dared to march to a different drummer and make caring
for Filipinos synonymous with caring for the quality of
life in the community it serves. It’s another dramatic
example of what truly “caring and curing” global culture
can accomplish.
But how,
we wanted to know, do you convey that passion to the
people who work for you?
“First
of all, it has to be practiced within the company by the
people at the top. It’s not something you show on a
chart or a piece of paper you send and say, ‘Just do
this.’ It becomes the DNA of the business. It becomes
what we do because it’s what we are. I think what you
were saying about ‘caring and curing’ absolutely makes
sense,” Goldschmidt concluded.
Optimize digital tools
In a
roundtable discussion, two regional executives of
Neo@Ogilvy recently shared tips on how to bridge the
marketing confidence gap to enable companies to optimize
their digital marketing efforts.
Neo@Ogilvy is the online media planner and buying arm of
OgilvyOne Worldwide, the one-to-one marketing
specialist of Ogilvy.
 The
marketing confidence gap refers to the difference
between the percentage of time consumers spend online
(29 percent of their time) and the percentage of
marketing money invested by companies (9 percent of
their advertising budget) to strengthen their presence
online. Given the increasing use of digital
communication channels, Neo@Ogilvy expressed the need
for companies to close the gap.
Damien Cummings, Neo@Ogilvy (Singapore) general
manager and OgilvyOne’s regional digital consulting
practice lead, discussed three approaches: optimize the
digital assets companies already have; try search engine
marketing; and shift to a performance marketing model in
the use of digital tools.
“Companies need to understand further how their
customers get information about their products and
services. Based on this, they can improve how their
target market experience the brand, especially through digital means, may
it be through websites, mobile communication, digital
points of sale, etc.,” Cummings said.
Meanwhile, David Temple, Neo@Ogilvy
regional head of search, expounded on search engine
marketing—the deliberate effort to optimize Yahoo!, for
instance, through both organic and paid search.
 “Search
is a strong facilitator of the purchase process,” Temple
noted. Quoting a recent Pan Asian media survey, he said
that in the past 12 months, one in every eight affluent
buyers has made purchases following online searches.
Cummings
added that search marketing is cost effective, highly
targeted and fast. “It is also flexible because the
company can turn it on or off at will, make adjustments,
even change the creative materials. It is likewise
predictable, allowing companies to forecast traffic
volumes, ranking, returns and costs.”
Performance marketing, according to Cummings, is a
philosophy rather than a specific product set. It
entails a more strategic use of digital media, focusing
only on using those tools that will track the customer
experience path and eventually result in sales. “It goes
beyond simply buying media space as it requires
well-defined success metrics and targets as well as
optimization methodologies,” he explained.
Closing
the marketing confidence gap will necessarily entail the
willingness of companies to be “in perpetual state of
beta,” said Elly Puyat, managing director for the Manila
offices of OgilvyOne and Neo@Ogilvy. This means
constantly in step with external changes that companies
may need to adjust to.
Cummings
pointed to the rapid growth of Internet users in the
world. Over 500 million of the 1.3 billion world
Internet users come from Asia. The Philippines, together
with China and India, are among the hotspots, Cummings
said.
Heavy
hitter blocks the way
When the
personal computer was born in the early 1980s, mighty
brands had a huge start with the knowledge, capital and
reputation developed in marketing mainframe computers.
What the business world wanted was formidable
businesslike commands typed with Industrial Age
precision.
The
Japanese and Koreans entering the market where whizzes
at gearing up for large production runs of a
standardized requirement and desires in the corporate
and institutional market for the computer change almost
daily, and the exporters didn’t have the understanding
of the American market or the flexibility to satisfy
that need. The new computer revolution saw a broader
implication that went far beyond the selling of PCs. The
experiences of the computing industry provide striking
insights into the challenges managers in every business
eventually must face.
The way
to win is to reexamine every cherished assumption and
redesign entire organizations around customer needs.
Anyone who hopes to escape the woozy inertia that
disabled so many erstwhile giants of computing can
benefit from the lessons—as well as the products—this
industry provides.
Everything a company does is linked to everything else.
You can’t have great advertising, promotion and
merchandising without a corporate culture that puts the
customers first. How does Acer (Philippines) Inc.
respond to the marketplace?
Top
computer manufacturer Acer (Philippines) managed to keep
its dominance of the PC market in the Philippines by
consistently outperforming its competitors due to the
introduction of more quality-based yet affordable
products.
Based on
latest results released by international marketing and
technology research group IDC in its Asia-Pacific
Quarterly PC Tracker Summary for the first quarter of
2008, Acer continued to dominate the consumer desktop
and total notebook markets in the Philippines, an
important market for the Taiwan-based computer maker.
For the
consumer desktop segment, Acer led the pack by selling
6,911 units this quarter compared with only 4,468 units
sold during the previous quarter. This translated to
P6.3 million in value and thus capturing 11.9 percent of
the market.
On the
commercial notebook side, Acer also showed the way
against its competitors for the first three months of
the year by registering sales of 8,539 units for a
29-percent market share against the previous quarter’s
numbers of 6,516 units and a 27-percent share,
translating to about P11.3 million in value. And just
like in the previous quarter in terms of total notebook
units shipped, Acer again paced the market during the
first three months of the year by selling a total of
24,673 units valued at P26.3 million compared with last
quarter’s figures of 16,603 units sold.
For the
consumer desktop and consumer notebook segments, Acer
also led the way with 23,044 units sold for a
19.6-percent share of this segment compared with the
last four months of last year with only 14,556 units
(17.5-percent share) sold. These figures resulted into a
total value of P21.4 million.
Summing
up total results for the desktop and notebook
categories, Acer again led the market, selling 37,131
units for a 13.2-percent share valued at P37.3 million
compared with the previous quarter’s figures of 26,409
units and an 11.4-percent piece of the total pie.
“We
still continue to lead the market overall for the past
several quarters and this we attribute to our continued
resolve to come up with significant and
consumer-friendly products. And with the introduction of
a new subnotebook category, coupled with the launch of
our new Acer Aspire One that will compete in this
segment, we will continue to capture the Filipinos’
attention, and still they can be assured of top-quality
and innovative products and consumer-focused service
from us,” explained Manuel Wong, Acer Philippines
general manager. |
