What biotech brands can learn from Denis’s Toyota

Is the loss of individual brand identity the future of biotech marketing?

Since he’s moved from New York and joined Dudnyk, Denis, our Vice President, Account Supervisor, drives Toyotas. Not even nice ones. Just bland, baby-poop-brown- colored Toyotas.  His father-in-law owns a dealership, and I think Denis gets a deal. Then he drives the baby-poop out of them until it’s embarrassing, and then he gets another. He spent much of his early career in Manhattan, so cars were not a huge priority. He doesn’t care about cars. I’m not sure why, just for that, I even like him, but since you can pretty much get along in the city, and many people do, without even owning a car, I forgive his lack of automobilphilia.

It just so happens that Denis just got a new Toyota recently. So the question of “what car do you drive” should be an easy one, right? Even for Denis. But he thinks for a second and says, “…A Toyota…Corolla? Or is it a Camry? Not sure, but I think it’s one of those.”

The etiology of brand identity loss

For a guy raised steeped in the lore of the American automobile brand, with grease in his blood as I have, this is sacrilege. For a creative marketing guy who lives life dedicated to building distinct and differentiated biotech brands, it is blasphemy. But you can’t really blame Denis. Beyond anything but premium brands, most production cars are pretty similar. I wouldn’t doubt that a lot of people would have trouble telling one Toyota brand from another, or even telling a Toyota from a Nissan from a VW from a Chevy without looking closely. The brand lines are blurring.

The lesson for biotech and biopharma

That’s pretty close to what is going on in the pharmaceutical industry over the last decade. And now the age of biosimilars is coming, where the “generic-ization” of brands is almost built into the design. And while biosimilars are a marvel of technology, the only thing different or distinct about them may be the company that manufactures and distributes them, and which of them managed care will cover. Between generics, branded generics, biosimilars, and a host of other new entrants in the biotech and biopharma space, prescribing physicians are going to end up like Denis and his Toyotas: caring about your drug’s difference about as much as the distinction between a Corolla and a Camry.