It is heartening to see that Pharma marketers have finally decided to include digital into their marketing mix. Even if catalyzed by Covid, this is good news. Evan Schwartz called it “digital Darwinism” – a phenomenon that caused technology to evolve faster than the society which adopts it. Digital has become a new way of thinking as social distancing, WFH and lockdown forced people to stay indoors. Telemedicine became a new way for patients to contact their doctors. E-Pharmacy has stepped up its operations and more companies are launching these services to mitigate the hardships of the patients. There was approximately 2.5x growth (about 8.8 million) in the number of households using E-pharmacy services during the lockdown period. There was a higher representation from the non-metro cities, compared to pre-COVID-19 households, according to a FICCI report. Today, the e-pharmacy companies are aggressively promoting their brands and services through high decibel advertising on television channels.

The effects of Digital Darwinism
The challenges for brand-marketing executives will probably increase as consumers opt for more complete digital interactions. We found that the likelihood of brand conversion is lower for fully digital consumers than for experimenters. Specifically, when experimenters become aware of a brand, their conversion rate reaches about 40 percent. The conversion rate for fully digital consumers, by contrast, is only 25 percent.

More actively digital consumers are prone to abandon a brand midstream for a number of reasons. They are more likely to have joined Facebook, Twitter, or product-evaluation platforms for conversations about the qualities of products or services. The greater number of touchpoints before purchase increases the odds a consumer will encounter a deal breaker along the digital highway. What’s more, companies have less control over more digitally seasoned consumers, who initiate their repurchase interactions independently. And since the level and influence of advertising in the social-media space have yet to reach the levels common in offline channels, brand messages are less likely to influence decisions.

Research according to McKinsey Quarterly indicated, however, that some companies have managed to navigate this competitive turbulence successfully. To understand the differentiating factors for that success, we rated brands across four digital skills: the ability to create brand awareness among an unusually high share of digitally savvy consumers, to serve customers digitally during the purchase processes, to generate an online customer experience deemed at least as good as the offline one, and to track the digital comments of customers about their experience and to use those comments to improve it. We added the scores across these dimensions, compiling a digitization index that represents the weight of satisfactory touchpoints leading to a purchase across decision journeys.

Business as Usual: Organizations operate with a familiar legacy perspective of customers, processes, metrics, business models, and technology, believing that it remains the solution to digital relevance.

Present and Active: Pockets of experimentation are driving digital literacy and creativity, albeit disparately, throughout the organization while aiming to improve and amplify specific touchpoints and processes.
Formalized: Experimentation becomes intentional while executing at more promising and capable levels. Initiatives become bolder, and, as a result, change agents seek executive support for new resources and technology.
Strategic: Individual groups recognize the strength in collaboration as their research, work, and shared insights contribute to new strategic roadmaps that plan for digital transformation ownership, efforts, and investments.
Converged: A dedicated digital transformation team forms to guide strategy and operations based on business and customer- centric goals. The new infrastructure of the organization takes shape as roles, expertise, models, processes, and systems to support transformation are solidified.
Innovative and Adaptive: Digital transformation becomes a way of business as executives and strategists recognize that change is constant. A new ecosystem is established to identify and act upon technology and market trends in pilot and, eventually, at scale.

Digital Darwinism has empowered consumers to become more mobile, social, and connected than ever. This has changed how they interact with each other and with products, services, and businesses. Digital transformation opens the door to new opportunities for innovation in how to design, integrate, and manage customer (and employee) experiences.