Naming may not be a priority during product development, but Vince Budd of Leaderboard Branding thinks that’s a mistake. Wait too long, and you’ll be playing catch-up with commercial activities, including everything from customer perception to marketing. As it goes through each stage of development, the product should have a distinct name, and choosing the right name matters. It makes the drug feel more real to patients and less like a science experiment during clinical trials.
Budd believes the end user is the most important audience, and the ultimate goal of strategic product development is creating value for the patients who take them and their caregivers. Ultimately, patients want time. Some want to live longer. Some want to live better. Now is an exciting time in the world of drug development because the use of technology in drug development is making it possible to give patients what they want. Patients are increasingly able to administer meds at home instead of spending time driving to and waiting at medical facilities. All of this adds up to the gift of more time and fewer disruptions in their lives.
Stephanie Butler:
Hi, I'm Stephanie Butler. I'm a senior conference director with Fierce Life Sciences. I'm here with Vince Budd, who is Managing Partner with Leaderboard Branding, a Fingerpaint Group Company. So welcome Vince.
Vince Budd:
Thank you.
Stephanie Butler:
So I'd love to hear a little bit more about what you do.
Vince Budd:
As Managing Partner of Leaderboard. I direct a global team of naming and branding experts. Although we offer services to a multitude of segments. We very much are focused also in healthcare, biotech, and pharma. We have a lot of different services, anything from brand strategy to package and label to regulatory consulting. We do market research, but I think probably the thing that we're known for most is naming. We'll start working with companies as early as early phase one, to create the non-pro proprietary name. And then of course, as the development plans kind of unfold, we'll start working with companies for clinical trial naming and development, as well as trade name development, somewhere around the phase two level.
Stephanie Butler:
That's great. So, what I'd like to know is how do you think companies can create value through strategic product development?
Vince Budd:
So one, I think value probably means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. I think as a company you have a lot of different members of your target audience. You have employees. You potentially have investors and analysts and Wall Street. You have end users and patients and caregivers. A lot of different kind of factors that play into, that ultimately, you'll need to provide value for. I think at the development phase, the most important thing is to identify who your most important audience is. And in my opinion, that is the patient or the end user. And I think the value really comes from the fact that, I guess, the intersect is time. Everyone wants more time. And I think as a patient that has just received a very poor diagnosis, very poor prognosis, they want more time on this planet, they want their life extended.
They want to be able to see a wedding, they want to see a graduation, they want to be potentially part of a 50th anniversary, that if that drug or that therapy wasn't in existence, that patient maybe wasn't afforded that opportunity. I think patients with chronic diseases, they too want more time, but they want better quality time. Better quality life. They don't want to be a victim of their disease and they don't want their therapy or their drug to control their life. So for example, HIV is one that very much stands out to me. 20 years ago, if you were an HIV patient, you're taking a cocktail. You're taking 4, 5, 6 capsules a day to be able to treat and manage your disease. And if you look at the evolution within this space 10 years ago, 15 years ago, now all of a sudden they're taking those five different active ingredients and they're combining it into one single tablet regimen.
So, now instead of taking five capsules a day, you're taking one tablet a day. The convenience in everything that now that value that is offered to that patient is extraordinary. Now you fast forward and they're coming out with drugs now that you administer every six months. So instead of having to remember to take your medication every day, now you have a twice a year dosing. So those are things that a lot of times you have to understand what is the value I want to bring, but more importantly, what is the unmet need? What is the patient and/or the caregiver, how do they define value? And I think if you could build your development plans around there, everything else will kind of fall in place. And then that value at a later time will be extended to investors, endless employees and other members of your target audience.
Stephanie Butler:
No, that's really interesting and it's a great perspective and I'd like to move on to something more related to new products. So what do you think are the factors for driving success for a new product launch?
Vince Budd:
I think probably the most important factor is starting a lot of the commercial activities at the time in which they should be initiated. So begin or start earlier. And that may seem very basic. You'd be shocked how many people do not follow that one key principle. And I think a lot of it is, I continually hear it. "We would love to do that right now. But we need to see more clinical data." So it gets pushed back a quarter and then guess what? It gets pushed back another quarter and then gets pushed back another quarter. And at that point in time, you're really playing catch up. You're jeopardizing quality for speed because you continue to kick the can down the road.
And there are so many things that can happen very early in development. For example, phase one. There are a lot of low impact aerobics, low cost, low budget items too, like creating a generic name in early phase one. One Of the values of that is when you're in phase two, you can start using your generic instead of your alphanumeric code, which by the way moves nobody. No one gets excited about MDX 101. And also, when you're in development, a patient now is seeing a generic name. It feels less investigational, it feels more real. It feels more scientific. So those are things that you can immediately start getting ROI from some of those earlier activities.
Clinical trial naming and branding. Some companies see that as a nice to have. It is a must have. If you are in phase two or phase three and you've got a big pivotal study and it's unbranded, you are at a competitive disadvantage. Because I guarantee you, everyone around you has a branded trial. They have a name, they probably even have a logo. They have color. They have all kinds of materials built around that. That gets investigators excited, that helps in patient recruitment. So, a lot of those earlier activities that one, companies continue to want to push or they don't find value in, I think are really missing an opportunity to drive value early and absolutely long term.
Stephanie Butler:
Wow. So, what do you think are the game changers in drug development over the past couple of years?
Vince Budd:
Two come to mind. I would say one is the continued use of technology in drug development and bringing drugs to market. And I'm not talking about computer software types of things. But if you look at historically some of the, for example, the monoclonal antibodies, the big biologics in cancer. Where patients had to go to an infusion clinic or they had to go to a doctor's office or they had to go to a hospital, sit in an infusion chair for four hours, travel to and from. I mean, just the disruption in that patient's life is unbelievable. So now they're coming out with on body device systems, for example, where a patient could self-administer a cancer drug at home in the comfort of their own home by clicking a button on a device that is secure to the abdomen and it's done in 30 minutes. Or some of the auto-injectors that are Bluetooth enabled, where a patient is able to not only administer drug in the comfort of their own home again.
And that goes back to what I also mentioned about what is a patient looking for time, less disruption, things like that. Not having to travel to and from. Also, if you're a cancer patient, especially under COVID or a pandemic, you take the risk now every time you leave your home of potentially becoming sicker than you already are. So, I think a lot of those things. Now that you have drugs that are connected to apps where you know when you've been dosed, the correct dosage, titration schedules. That information is also shared with your physician so that he or she can make sure that you're on track, which is incredible. I think technology will continue to revolutionize the drug world so that it's kind of this harmonious benefit for a patient. The other thing absolutely is gene and cell therapy. Again, a lot of companies are still studying drugs where they're providing a cure. You look at, especially one company comes to mind around hepatitis C. They’re curing hepatitis C. Our kids and people 10, 15 years from now, will see it in medical journals and everything. And some of them will say, what is hepatitis C? And that was a chronic disease, something that patients could live with for a long time. But there were a lot of restrictions. They're curing hepatitis C and a single tablet regimen in eight to ten weeks, which I think is just amazing. But you look at some of the other therapeutic areas, cancer, ultra rare diseases, some of those things. There really weren't cures. And for a lot of them there aren't cures yet. But ten years ago, five years ago, the introduction of cell therapies and gene therapies where probably a couple decades ago to even mention cure in oncology and in cancer was probably a little bit hopeful. It's becoming a reality now and I can't wait to see what these incredibly smart people are continuing to do with some of the gene editing and CRISPR and some of those technologies. They're going to cure cancer, at least a lot of them, which to me, I just think is unbelievable.
Stephanie Butler:
It's going to be really interesting to see where all of this goes, but unfortunately we are out of time. So thank you so much. Great insights. Thank you for sharing them, Vince.
Vince Budd:
Thank you.
Stephanie Butler:
And it was great to meet you.
Vince Budd:
Thank you.