The elaboration of a digital marketing stategy for the pre-lauch and the lauch of an innovative contraceptive pill in the United States of America

Abstract

Mithra Pharmaceuticals is a biotech company that has been a pioneer in women's health for countless years in Belgium. Recently, Mithra's product portfolio has become highly innovative to address the unmet needs of women from an early age. Since then, in full expansion, the company wishes to market its products worldwide through commercial partners. Its first challenge is a major one: Mithra is targeting the United States market, a leading country in birth control methods. Nevertheless, to turn the idea into success, Mithra must overcome the challenges linked to the emergence of information and communication technologies. To do so, it must take into account the evolution of a large number of external contextual elements: regulations, better educated patients and environmental challenges. In addition, it must keep an eye on its internal structure, governance and information systems, which directly impact the implementation of a change project to meet the expectations of the American market. Therefore, Mithra and its US partner Mayne Pharma have joined forces to review their marketing model to use digital technologies and target all stakeholders in US healthcare, among which a new element has become central: the patient. The two companies are joining forces through a promotional campaign aimed directly at the patient. Their common goal: to ensure the success of an innovative pill containing the revolutionary estrogen Estetrol (E4). For this reason, our intervention was recommended given the urgency of the launch and the government restrictions of the Food and Drug Administration. This thesis highlights the 3 essential poles in the development of an innovative project to ensure its success: context, content and process. Thus, the objective of this thesis is to implement the change project requested by Mithra. To do so, we will take into account the external factors of the project, support it through a polyphonic participative management process based on the actor-network theory (ANT) and deepen Mithra's knowledge of patients' needs through a market research.