Product Team Cialis: Getting Ready to Market

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REV: JULY 2 8, 2 010

ELIE O FE K

Product Team Cialis: Getting Ready to Market

It was early 2002, and Mark Barbato, the executive director and global product team leader for Cialis, knew he faced a daunting task: launching a medicine for the treatment of male impotence in a market with an established leader—Viagra (Cialis is a trademark of Lilly ICOS LLC. Viagra is a trademark of Pfizer, Inc.).

Not only had Viagra been generating over $1 billion in sales annually for its parent company Pfizer for three consecutive years, but it also enjoyed the highest brand recognition of any other pharmaceutical drug in the world.

Despite the huge success of Viagra, Barbato and his team were very optimistic about the future prospects for Cialis. The innovative new drug, developed through a joint venture (Lilly ICOS LLC) between Eli Lilly, the pharmaceutical giant, and ICOS, a young biotech upstart, showed promising clinical results. At an upcoming prestigious urology conference, to be held in the spring of 2002, medical investigators would present data showing that a 20mg oral dose of Cialis improved the ability of up to 81% of men suffering from male impotence to respond to sexual stimulation over an extended period of time, even 36 hours after taking the drug. Since Viagra’s effect lasts approximately four hours after dosing, the new treatment offered such men a significantly greater window of opportunity to choose the right moment of intimacy. Furthermore, the body’s ability to absorb Viagra was diminished when the drug was taken during or after a high-fat meal, potentially leading to slower onset time. In contrast, the absorption of Cialis was not affected by food intake. Cialis demonstrated a generally favorable safety profile, similar to that seen with Viagra. Both drugs were not to be taken in conjunction with nitrates, which may be given to treat select heart problems. The incidence of visual irregularities, a side effect of Viagra, was notably rare for Cialis.

The Lilly ICOS LLC board members, comprising both Lilly and ICOS top management, were hoping for a launch in 2002. In preparation for the launch, a brand council was scheduled for January 18. The brand council would bring together top Lilly marketing representatives from around the world, all eager to learn how Cialis would be differentiated from the competition and how they should promote the new drug once it wasapproved. With the meeting less than two weeks away, the global marketing director for the Cialis product team, Rob Brown (from Lilly), and Leonard Blum, vice president of sales and marketing at ICOS, had their work cut out for them. They had to come up with a strategy that would guide all future marketing activity. In particular, they had to clearly identify a target market for the drug and a way to position it against the competition. Brown and Blum were contemplating three possible approaches: Cialis could either follow a “niche” strategy, whereby a specific and relatively narrow segment would be identified and targeted; it could follow a direct “compete” strategy and go head- to-head with Viagra’s positioning; or it could follow a “beat” strategy and try to come up with a differentiated positioning that would allow it to pursue a broad market.

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