Competitive Intelligence - Pharma Client Facing Push Back Due to Misleading Claims by Competitor Sales Reps

A pharmaceutical client was facing push back by physicians on the efficacy of their blockbuster cholesterol drug.

Despite recent journal articles and conferences trumpeting the drug’s efficacy, physicians who had been frequent prescribers were now switching to a competitor drug.

With budget planning taking place in the next few months, they needed answers why this was happening and needed this information fast.

Over 3 weeks, we:

• Conducted physician interviews and discovered that the competitor had introduced sales messaging falsely claiming fewer side effects and greater efficacy than our client’s product.

• Then mystery shopped 6 of the competitor’s sales reps to pinpoint what they were misleading physicians into believing.

We discovered that the competitor was basing their claims on both American and European clinical trials versus  American trials.

The client’s legal department pursued action which resulted in the competitor making a public apology and removing the misleading claims from their messaging.