How Octasa achieved big growth in a seemingly no-win situation

This case study describes how Octasa, a branded medicine for treating ulcerative colitis (UC) in the UK, used a communications campaign to break out of an undifferentiated market and become the prescribed drug of choice.

How Octasa achieved big growth in a seemingly no-win situation

Principal authors: Shamim Karim and Nicky Oates, MJL Limited

Introduction

We recognise that spending time reading about the dry and factual world of pharmaceutical products and strange diseases is perhaps not the norm for an IPA Effectiveness Awards submission document but please bear with us!

This paper will show how, despite a tiny budget, a me-too product, an uninterested audience and only 11 sales reps, we managed to relaunch Octasa (a branded mesalazine for the treatment of ulcerative colitis (UC)) into the highly competitive branded drugs market making it...

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