One Drug, Two Companies: Three Tips for Successful Co-Promotion

When two companies share the responsibility for promoting a drug, there’s always the potential for tension. Visions may not align, priorities may compete, or personalities might not mesh. But, by keeping the following tips in mind, you can help smooth the process, and improve the alliance’s chances of success.

Make time to meet and greet.

It’s easier to collaborate with people you know… and who know you! Take the time up front to match faces and names. Bring everyone together – including both marketing teams, and all agency partners. Consider a lunch, dinner, or team-building activity that might feel comfortable for conversation.   

After that initial interaction, integrate your medical, legal, regulatory, and marketing operations teams into the getting-to-know-you process. Be sure to allow enough time for the stakeholders to interact and connect. This can be hard with hybrid and virtual teams, but the effort will pay dividends. You can’t stop there, though. Strong ongoing communication across stakeholders and agencies is necessary to keep everyone aligned, which, in the long run, will save time and build stronger, more effective relationships.

Formally decide who does what, and get it “on paper.”

When everyone clearly understands their roles and responsibilities, things tend to move much more smoothly. To facilitate that, make sure everyone understands everyone else’s strengths, and make sure that internal stakeholders are clear on each person and teams’ expertise and area of responsibility – including your various agencies.   

One way to get everyone on the same page is with a RACI document, which identifies specific roles in terms of who is responsible, accountable, consulted, or informed on each type of decision that gets made. Once this type of collaboration rule book is developed and agreed upon, it sets expectations and identifies accountabilities, and this can save an enormous amount of time and energy. Who’s responsible for the legal/medical/regulatory submission of a shared project? Who makes edits after submission? Who do you have to wait to hear back from before proceeding from one step to the next? Done right, all the answers are there. 

Instill a culture of information sharing.

It seems obvious, but transparency is key in co-promotion, so set the expectation up front that partners will expediently share information, including materials, lessons learned and changing timelines.  

For example, by immediately and broadly conveying the outcome of an MLR review, there’s a better chance that future reviews will be streamlined, fewer partners will be frustrated, and the whole process can be accelerated. Encouraging your agency partners to speak directly to one another will cut down on the time it takes to get work done. You can avoid he-said/she-said roadblocks by having regular meetings in which all players are represented.   

Collaborating with new team members – whether internally or externally – can be challenging at first, but if you take the time to get to know your team, agree on who does what when, and work to keep lines of communication open, the rewards will be well worth the time and effort!