Marketing Strategy and Tactical Development

Buckle Therapeutics

Mentor 

Malcolm Nason, PhD, MBA, Chief Commercial Officer at Buckle Therapeutics

Company Overview

Buckle Therapeutics has developed a novel drug delivery method utilizing the buccal membrane on the inside of the cheek, offering an innovative way to introduce soluble drugs into the bloodstream. This patented system bypasses first-pass metabolism in the stomach, eliminating the need for injections or intravenous methods.There are several promising commercial opportunities for this technology. The first of these opportunities that Buckle will pursue is the commercialization of a novel naloxone administration device to reverse opiate overdoses and poisonings.

Externship Description

This externship will focus on the development of a key success requirement of businesses: relationships. One of the largest hurdles that any new product faces in the market is awareness. That fact is going to be particularly true for Buckle Therapeutics because of the ubiquitous marketing and free media dedicated to nasal naloxone administration. We will need to gain entry to that stream of information. To do so, we will need to develop relationships between Buckle and key “communication nodes” in the opioid overdose environment.

It is of particular interest to society that we continue to break down the stigma that prevents people from pursuing treatment and help for serious medical issues such as addiction and mental health. Students at colleges and universities are one avenue that could be of critical importance to accelerate the reduction of the stigma around opiate use. In a previous externship, it was established that most student-led harm reduction groups on campus are supportive of programs that bring more naloxone to campus.  What is less clear is the ‘infrastructure’ behind student groups: what are the key pillars that keeps a student group going year after year, when most of the senior students graduate and move into different challenges?  We would like to better understand this at Buckle Therapeutics.

The externship is based on the concept of “customer development” and will follow some of the educational platform designed for the ICorps program. In brief, by discovery of a customer’s needs, it is possible to build products specifically to suit those needs. While engaging with customers, a business can not only build-to-suit, but will establish a trusted relationship.  This facilitates the conversion of that “helper” into an active buyer.  We will identify and interview 30 – 40 stakeholders to discover how they keep their organization going, what kinds of faculty/administrative support they receive, and how they source, order, store and distribute their naloxone (if they do at all).

The skills acquired in this externship are readily transferrable into the private sector in many areas: business development, program management, market research, strategy, business transformation, clinical development, and many others. The basic format will consist of 2 weeks of training and hypothesis formation, 6 weeks of customer discovery and iterative hypothesis testing, and 2 final weeks dedicated to the development and refinement of the deliverable which will be presented to senior management.  While some parts of the externship deliverable will remain proprietary, where confidentiality will be expected, it will have aspects that can become part of an Extern’s portfolio.

Objectives

1. Develop and test hypotheses about the marketing strategy of helping student organizations increase the accessibility of naloxone on campuses around the country.
2. Perform iterative customer discovery interviewing student leaders and administrators, including writing of discussion guides, customer development (finding/contacting/scheduling interviews) and interview skills.
3. Produce presentations of relevant knowledge, including communication node analyses, Student Leader journey, and results of market research. (Each of these deliverable elements will be considered “Works in Progress”, since there is not sufficient time in the Externship to finish all of them)

Qualifications

• Willingness to step into the unknown
• A certain level of comfort with interpersonal communications with strangers would be helpful for the interviews, though this is a skill that can be developed
• A desire to carefully ask great questions and probe potentially difficult emotional territories to elicit deep and powerful answers that can create true change in medical care
• Awareness of non-verbal cues and the ability to interpret them as a secondary data source
• The ability to use questions to shift the focus of a discussion towards desired goals while maintaining interviewee attention
• Ability to work unsupervised, ask questions, set goals and meet deadlines
• Available for two weekly meetings: a weekly Monday meeting will set out the week’s opportunities and a Thursday meeting will review progress. This specific schedule can be altered, but the basic principle of a planning meeting and a results meeting should be expected.  Externs will not be expected to commit more than 10 hours per weeks.