Cover all bases

Strategic planning
As decision-making in Europe’s healthcare system is becoming multifaceted, the industry needs to adopt a similar approach. This has to start within the brand planning process, utilising methods that encompass all three customer groups. Each of these has different needs and different pressures that must be understood. Also, it is just as important to consider your audience’s environment, which can vary greatly from disease to disease. For example, patients with certain conditions may gain ‘heroic’ status due to preconceptions of the disease or media portrayal. However, other conditions may have a stigma attached or be largely ‘invisible’.

The identified stakeholders’ influence and their potential alignment to the marketing objectives needs to be taken into account when establishing how to influence the decision-making process. Each stakeholder type therefore needs bespoke communication messages, delivered through relevant channels in a way that it will respond to. In short, the brand planning process needs to carry each stakeholder right through the process to deliver a strategy that can be implemented in an aligned fashion.

Once the strategy is defined and the tactical plan finalised, you may consider getting an agency on board for certain projects. The best way to approach this is to conduct a gap analysis to identify what skills and capabilities are missing internally. This way, you can determine what type of agency you need and what skills they can offer. With a clear idea on what you need an agency to deliver, you can start selecting suitable agencies for credentials presentations.

Selecting agencies
The best place to start is to seek the views of your peers in the industry to ask which agencies they have worked with and which they would recommend. Communiqué is a good source of information to allow you to find an agency that is the right size for the budget you have. Ideally, your spend should account for enough of the agency turnover to remain important to it, but not make it reliant on your spend. Equally, Communiqué is also a good source to get a feel for therapeutic experience or any potential areas of conflict.

When inviting agencies in for credentials, always contact them by phone, as this will give you a feel for what they could be like to work with.  Briefly explain what skills and experience you are looking for and enquire about their capacity. Be selective; do not invite too many agencies in – it wastes your time and theirs.

Before the presentations, set yourself some performance qualifiers that you and your team can rate the agencies against. This should be driven by your gap analysis, but will also include some must-haves, such as quality of reference work, capacity and feel for likely relationships with key personnel. Drawing up a scorecard to include these factors will provide you with a quantitative way of comparing the agencies’ likely performance.

Depending on the level of spend, you may select an agency on the basis of the credentials presentations or select two or three agencies to go forward to a formal pitching process. 

Pitching for an agency
Firstly, as part of the housekeeping, get each agency to sign a confidentiality agreement. Secondly, get your brief right. Be specific about what you want: the target audience, the behaviours you are trying to change, timelines for delivery of projects, any constraints or guidelines to follow, what success looks like and finally, a guideline budget. It is also a good idea to insist that only agency staff that would work on the account on a day-to-day basis be involved in the pitch and attend the presentation. This avoids you buying the work of senior staff that you never see again afterwards.

Your brief may also include a full market background from your strategic plan to allow the agency the opportunity to demonstrate added value by suggesting alternative tactics. Finally, be transparent about how you are going to rate the agencies during the pitch.

Always provide the agencies with adequate time to prepare for the pitch and never invite an agency to pitch if you have no intention of working with them. Pitches consume considerable resources, so you need to make sure everyone invited can truly win the business.

The pitch
Ask yourself the following about the agencies: Did they ask astute questions? Did you enjoy interacting with them and would you enjoy working with them? Did they impart confidence? During the presentations, rate the agencies against your predefined criteria, probe on areas that you are unsure of to provide each agency the opportunity to shine. Finally, take notes to allow you to provide constructive and detailed feedback to all agencies post-pitch.