Going Around the Brand 'Positioning Wheel' With Kantar Health

Having brought together several well-known specialist consulting companies in the past year (including Consumer Health Sciences, MattsonJack, TNS Healthcare and Ziment) and unifying its structure as consulting and marketing insights, Kantar Health now (New York) is promoting its services under a “positioning wheel” that explains both its analytical approach and the defining services it offers to brand owners.

The wheel (see figure) borrows strongly from consumer research, with analysis of functional and emotional benefits to customers (whether they are physicians or patients). These benefits, together with the product features and “persona,” define the brand’s character, and from that, the messaging that the brand owner should deploy.

“This wheel is not a groundbreaking discovery,” assures John Tapper, PhD, president of the Market Insights unit of Kantar Health. “But it does illustrate the proper framework for bringing a product to market, and the strategic consulting necessary from a pre-clinical phase through to product launch.”

Tapper says that today’s pharma market has, on one extreme, products like unique oncology drugs, where people will spend less time thinking about positioning. On the other extreme might be some drug for aesthetic use like wrinkle removal, which will have a very consumer-oriented launch category, and where positioning is very important. “The vast majority of the industry,” he says, “is in the middle between these extremes.” PC