Contingency plan - Protect your brand from potential hazards

A contingency plan is something that all pharmaceutical marketers should consider when writing their strategic brand plan.

What is a contingency plan?

A contingency plan is an outline of tactics and budgetary changes that the marketing team anticipates if a potential scenario comes about which is different from the baseline assumption.

For example, you may have competitive intelligence that suggests that a generic is expected to enter the market within the next 6 months. Depending on your company's faith in the research, your brand plan may be designed with the assumption that a generic will enter the market in 6 months. However, what if the generic does not enter the market? Be prepared. Provide a contingency plan with the assumption that a generic competitor does not enter the market. What would you suggest? You could recommend that if no generic product enters the market, then the sales force continues to sell the brand status quo. What would be the implications of continuing the sell the brand - you need more samples, reprints of leave-behind materials, and so on. This new contingency plan means that sales revenues would be higher, but that you would need to spend more direct-marketing funds to meet the needs of this new scenario. If you have agreement for this when your brand plan is in the approval stage, then all you will have to do is send out a memo informing the appropriate employees that the contingency plan is activated and remind them of the financial and tactical implications.

All assumptions that are included in the brand plan are subject to change. Therefore, theoretically, all brand plans should have several contingency plans. However, this is not practical. It would be wise to include a contingency plan for assumptions that carry a lot of weight with regards to sales and budget outcomes, such as the example of a generic competitor entry.

Other examples of assumptions that could warrant a contingency plan;

1) Brand is expected to get approved for sale by a certain date.

Have a contingency plan in case the brand is approved earlier (ie. Will your sales force be ready? Will there be medical conferences that your brand should participate in that you would not have attended otherwise? Will you have stock ready for sale? How quickly can the brand be covered by formularies?).

Have a contingency plan in case the brand is approved much later than expected (ie. What will your sales force do in the meantime? How will you keep the representatives motivated? How will you update your KOL's about the delay?)

2) Have a contingency plan in case formulary coverage (procurement) change in key revenue areas.

3) Have a contingency plan in case an ongoing study comes out negative.

4) Have a contingency plan in case a competitor gets approval quicker than expected.

5) Have a contingency plan in case a co-promotion partner breaks the contractual agreement.

There are many more examples of situations where you would require a contingency plan. It all depends on your baseline assumptions, how much financial and tactical impact would a change in the assumption cause, and also how significant is the brand to the company.