AstraZeneca's top marketer says integration is about consistency, requires breaking down internal walls.

Don Apruzzese is senior director of consumer marketing for AstraZeneca, the international pharmaceutical firm responsible for Nexium, Zestril and other products in six therapeutic areas which treat conditions and diseases ranging from asthma to heart disease. Apruzzese leads the company's Consumer Marketing Center of Excellence. He has more than 14 years of consumer products and services experience in brand management, marketing strategy, advertising, direct marketing, market research and category management. Before joining AstraZeneca, he was with Ford Motor Company, Gillette and MediaOne/Continental Cablevision. He holds an MBA in Marketing and Strategic Planning from the Wharton School and a BFA from the Tisch School of the Arts, New York University.

Apruzzese will be a panelist for the "Building for Integration -- Aligning Structures, Roles and Resources for Integrated Marketing" session at the iMedia Brand Summit Sept. 12-15 in Park City, Utah.

iMediaConnection asked Apruzzese to describe online marketing's potential and offer solutions to the pharmaceutical industry's challenges.

iMediaConnection: How has online's role at AstraZeneca grown over the past few years?

Apruzzese: We have pockets of online expertise. For example, Nexium is strong and our work is considered cutting-edge. Since I've come on board, we've created a consumer marketing group for all of our brands. So we've evolved so that every brand has an online presence. We still feel we are under-investing online. Even though we've done some breakthrough things with Nexium, I'm not sure that we've explored all of online's potential opportunities. Our intent is to mine the online opportunities to a much greater extent than we do today.

iMediaConnection: Which of your goals does online marketing achieve and which doesn't it achieve?

Apruzzese: It achieves both acquisition and retention. For acquisition, since our target consumer seeks information, we have the opportunity to provide that information and therefore influence their product choice. For retention, consumer adherence is the main issue. Adherence is made up of two parts: compliance and persistence. The adherence rate in the industry across product lines is terrible. Our Crestor customers tend to drop off after three months for various reasons we're trying to uncover, but not for switching to another product. Online will play a stronger role to improve this adherence issue and allow us to communicate with these customers. This could involve email and other CRM capabilities that allow for a more personalized experience.

iMediaConnection: What are the benefits of using online in the pharmaceutical industry?

Apruzzese: Pharmaceutical consumers are information-hungry. Because the cost has been shifted to them, they are taking a much more active role in their treatment. They're seeking out information about it and solutions for it. The more serious the disease, the more active the consumer. So, for example, consumers needing our oncology product are the most active online. Because of this trend, marketing for our oncology category is almost all online. On the other hand, online for Nexium represents only a small portion of the mix.

iMediaConnection: What is your definition of "integration?"

Apruzzese: Ensuring that your media and touch points are consistent, no matter where they interact with consumers. The pharmaceutical industry's touch points are very inconsistent. There is a lot of room for improvement. Our biggest challenge is to determine the optimal marketing mix. We want to find out how and when to know at what point we should spend our next dollar on something else. We can all debate whether television is the most effective and efficient medium to build a brand, but at what point is the next dollar better spent in a different place for a better return?

iMediaConnection: How must your internal structures change to support full integration?

Apruzzese: AstraZeneca has been product and brand management focused. We're looking at how to give this focus more of a customer focus. Structural barriers are a challenge for us to break down. Historically, our employees have only marketed to physicians, so this is all very new to them. A great deal of education is required.

iMediaConnection: What do you see for the future of metrics?

Apruzzese: Metrics are absolutely critical. We spend a great deal of money on our marketing activity, so we need to develop consistent metrics across all of our brands to determine how well our activity performs. I'm not a big fan of ROI. It's a good metric to show what the end result of the total marketing is, but because of the interaction between many marketing activities it doesn't show the overlap or what's wrong with them. ROI tells me how fast I'm going, but doesn't tell me if I'm in first or second gear, or whether I'm about to blow the engine. Marketers have to learn how to handle and avoid obstacles.

In the future, there are other metrics that could tell us overall how we're doing. We're certainly not going to throw out all of the existing metrics, but the actual instrument may change. New technology and media necessitate new metrics and they will depend on the activity we're trying to measure.