Sunday, February 03, 2008

Keeping Your Head When Those All Around You Are Losing Theirs

Kudoes to J&J's Rogaine. Sales are reported to be up 25% following the launch of Rogaine mousse foam.

Form does follow function.

Before the launch of the foam, Rogaine was oily, didn't necessarily stay on the top of your head and didn't leave hair looking shiny and free.

So what did J&J do? They reformulated the product into a more consumer friendly version and sales shot up.

The Minoxidil active didn't change. Just the way the product was delivered to the consumer.

In the consumer healthcare operating space, you rarely get novel new actives unless you are switching a compound from Rx to OTC status, such as GSK successfully did with its alli, the weight-loss product formerly known as Xenical (orlistat).

So what you can in consumer healthcare is a lot of development effort put behind forms, flavors and condition-specific indications. That's a lot of effort and most of the time all it does is keep your market share in place and add mopre sku's to your product line-up.

But when you can truly introduce a form that improves your product's consumer-friendly usage you have a real winner.

I only hope pharmaceutical marketers begin to understand more deeply the roles than form can play with product adherence. Using Rogain everyday really is all about compliance and adherence.

Why can't we say the same for statins or blood pressure meds?