Combining your global strategy with local insight, evidence, and engagement will make the difference in enabling access to life changing therapies.
For all their benefits, global strategies often falter when they land in ANZ. Why? Because what resonates in Brussels or Boston rarely translates seamlessly to Brisbane, campaigns devised by the head office are frequently met with silence from prescribers, scepticism from payers, and indifference from policymakers. Sound familiar?
Local healthcare systems, cultural nuances, and policymaker priorities have a knack for upending the best-laid plans.
1. The ANZ healthcare landscape: A world unto itself
Australia and New Zealand are not smaller versions of the US or Europe. They’re distinct markets, each with its intricacies.
Take Australia: its public healthcare system, Medicare, ensures universal access to care, but that doesn’t mean patients can easily access every therapy. Funding is determined by the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS), which evaluates cost-effectiveness and sets strict pricing caps. Pharmac plays a similar role in New Zealand, but with an even tighter budget.
For pharmaceutical companies, this creates a bottleneck. Global strategies that push premium pricing often clash with payer priorities in ANZ. So the onus is to showcase the innovation and patient impact here – profiling clinical trials is an effective way to capture the effectiveness.
2. Global messaging: lost in translation
In ANZ, doctors tend to be conservative in their prescribing habits. A global Key Opinion Leader (KOL) endorsement might carry weight in Melbourne, Florida, but in Melbourne, Victoria, not so much. What resonates here is hearing from respected local voices—specialists who understand the specific challenges of treating patients in ANZ.
3. Overlooking the policy maze
Pharmaceutical companies frequently underestimate the role of government relations in ANZ. In ANZ, influencing policy is just as important as engaging prescribers or patients.
To succeed, you need to build relationships with policymakers, government advisory committees, and even patient advocacy groups. This requires crafting a compelling narrative highlighting your therapy’s clinical benefits and economic value to the healthcare system.
Whilst the route to reimbursement on paper is straightforward, Australia has one of the longest and most challenging pathways in the world. Extra efforts must be invested here. Otherwise, the risk is your therapy will never secure approval and funding.
4. The “set-and-forget” mindset
Another common mistake is assuming that what works at launch will continue to work indefinitely. ANZ markets are dynamic, with new competitors entering the fray, guidelines evolving, and patient expectations shifting.
Global strategies often adopt a “set-and-forget” approach, rolling out campaigns and leaving them to run their course with minimal adjustment.
How to Fix It: localising for impact
So, how do pharmaceutical companies bridge the gap between global ambition and local reality? Here are four practical steps:
Involve local teams early
Local market teams understand the nuances of the healthcare system, payer priorities, and HCP behaviour better than anyone else. Involve them early in the planning process as well as during execution.
Engage policymakers proactively Build relationships early. Develop a strong health economic argument for your therapy and tailor it to align with ANZ funding priorities.
Adapt your messaging
Even the most compelling global campaign needs to be localised this means tailoring the messaging to address the specific concerns of ANZ stakeholders.
London Agency recently supported our clients in strengthening their KOL relationships by developing a compelling messaging narrative for ANZ. This narrative informs clinicians about a legacy therapeutic that has seen poor market penetration in the region. Often, we encounter clinicians who are unable to access these legacy therapeutics—still considered standard of care in Europe and the US resulting in optimal treatment options failing to reach ANZ patients. Our messaging narrative enables their commercial and medical teams to communicate consistently and clearly with healthcare professionals, utilising local data whenever possible. This consistent messaging strategy has helped us cultivate a ar,y of advocates who recognise the urgency for clinicians to take action today.
The opportunity cost of sticking to Global
Pharmaceutical companies often justify global strategies by pointing to the cost savings, but the question is: How much is your global strategy actually costing you in missed opportunities in ANZ?
A therapy that languishes on the sidelines because it wasn’t adapted for local conditions fails to deliver ROI, and worse, it fails patients who might have benefited from it. And in an industry where lives are quite literally on the line, that’s a cost no company can afford.
ANZ might seem like a small market compared to the US or Europe, but it punches well above its weight in terms of opportunity.
Augmenting your global strategy with local insight, evidence, and engagement needed to succeed will ensure transformative therapies reach the people who most need them.
Published by London Agency: 27th January 2025
