Sentrix Global Health Communications Bob Adler Senior VP, Director Strategic Planning AGENCY SERVICES S upporting and continuously encouraging broad strategic thinking in all appropriate directions is vital for any brand’s success.This goal, though often discussed, is inconsistently pursued as the daytoday demands of tactical brand management usurp forwardstrategic planning. For the successful productmanagement team, the role of “brand steward” carries with it unbounded leadership opportuni ties and a portfolio of shared responsibilities and crossfunctional accountabilities. Partnering with an agency team that can earn a seat at the brandsteward table and that is valued for its broadbased experience and unbiased counsel on all brand issues and opportunity assessments can help meet these demands. Orchestrating Results Unless one has walked in a brand manager’s shoes, it is difficult to appreciate the wideranging perspective that defines the essential role and necessary pas sions of today’s brand steward.To attain success, brand stewards are called on to be tireless master conductors of great orchestralike efforts.Like the maestro who must harness the orchestra’s raw power into melodic shape, so too must the brand steward lead,distill, and integrate a cacophony of perspectives,attitudes,and experiences to manage a brand’s success. In this age of agency specialization and skillset compartmentalization, it has become commonplace for brandmanage ment teams to tread cautiously into “vendor”relationships rather than expand the brandsteward role externally to include a comprehensive communications part ner. But, the identification of a partner worthy of the brandsteward title can make a huge difference in the daily rewards that come from sharing goals, challenging beliefs, assessing opportunities, and ultimately maximizing sales. Strategic Continuity Matters Brand stewards seeking to improve opportunities should court strategic agen cy partnerships with organizations that consistently demonstrate bestinclass, day today brandstewardship abilities. Alignment with a strategic communication partner capable of decoding market information across broad constituencies and delivering strategic thinking and tactical solutions regardless of ultimate imple mentation responsibility is key. Simply put, the ideal brandsteward relationship is one in which a clientagency partnership is focused on strategic continuity and longterm success. It includes shared vision and responsibilities. Brand stewardship mandates an unselfish goal of shared success, which includes contributing in cross The Brand Steward: Focused on Success Through Strategic Continuity functional meetings in purely strategic and unselfishly supportive roles. These are meetings where no new work may come to the agency, yet the agency’s brand steward contributions help the brand advance by leaps and bounds. When judging an agency against its brandsteward value index, pharmaceutical brand managers should find a comprehensive agency team fully focused on tacti cal mandates with actively engaged senior members who thoughtfully and consis tently deliver definitive strategic insights and imperatives driven by handson expe rience across a myriad of marketing and communications disciplines. Effectively managing strategic continuity and executing marketchanging tactics that create brand advantages are the essential shared roles of the clientagency brandsteward team. In this role, agency leaders must support a brand’s success by venturing far beyond brand positioning, messages, ads, and detail aids. Brand stewards must actively uncover hidden opportunities within diverse physician and clinical perspectives and leverage various market factors that will help lead the brand to success, from analyzing market segment opportunities to navigating the nuances of pipelines to integrating managedcare, populationmanagement, and relationshipcommunications strategies that drive behavioral change. SENTRIX GLOBAL HEALTH COMMUNICATIONS is a Short Hills, N.J.–based division of the Sudler & Hennessey Group, a global healthcare communications network and part of Young & Rubicam Brands, providing comprehensive communications and strategic services to leading healthcare products and organizations worldwide. For more information, contact Bob Adler, SeniorVP, Director Strategic Planning, at 9732182020. In our complex competitive environment, brand stewardship represents a new internal and partnership metric for excellence that needs to permeate daytoday thinking to yield actionable insights for comprehensive brand success. Brand n. the sum of both physical and emotional triggers that create and deepen relationships between consumers,products,and services. Steward n. one who actively manages resources with both longterm perspective and care.

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