Johnson & Johnson's advertising and promotion strategies across business units

Johnson & Johnson Marketing

What types of advertising and promotion are used?

Johnson & Johnson (NASDAQ: JNJ) competes in three core businesses including consumer, medical devices & diagnostics, and pharmaceuticals. Each of these businesses have significantly different market segments, and the customers in them have completely different needs and preferences for how they learn about new products (Henke, Rachel M., et al., 490). The consumer market is heavily influenced by online and Web-based advertising and promotion, and relies on e-mail-based coupons and communication as their purchasing cycle is the shortest of all three JNJ business units (Pressman, 70). The advertising and promotion used in medical devices and diagnostics however is heavily slanted towards expert-based selling including through leadership-based selling events where JNJ product experts meet directly with physicians and other members of the buying process. For the medical & diagnostics segment, advertising and promotion is geared more to expert-selling and having actual PhDs on staff at JNJ meet personally with customers. Credibility is a critical selling factor in this market. The third market segment is the pharmaceuticals and this is the most heavily regulated of all. JNJ must stay in compliance to government regulations and requirements within these advertisements as the Food & Drug Administration monitors and audits them. As a result, JNJ will often use print media in this business segment and rely more on consumer-based Web media to show just the benefits (Lizbeth, P103-9). Print media is used with doctors on sales calls in the pharmaceuticals segment as the sales strategy at JNJ concentrates on leave-behinds and the need for continual reinforcement of their brands and new products.

2. Does the company have a website? Who owns the site and how is it hosted?

JNJ has over two dozen websites, many of them dedicated to specific products and a few dedicated to the entire company in various languages. The internal IT department in JNJ manages these websites.

3. Does the company use e-mail for marketing notifications to customers?

JNJ uses e-mail as a means to communicate with all customers, across all business units. The company had to use e-mail extensively to support the recall of Tylenol when that product was recalled, for example (ORourke, 8). E-mail is pervasively used across all product liens and all business units.

6. What is the company's market share? What is the trend?

In the consumer products segment, JNJ has a market share of 36% globally, in medical diagnostics equipment, 57% and in pharmaceuticals, 39% in the categories they compete in (Henke, Rachel M., et al., 497). The trend ids up for JNJ as they are capturing greater market share in the consumer products segment, in addition to medical diagnostics equipment.

7. Are there new markets in which the products can be sold?

JNJ sees significant upside potential in the BRIC nations including Brazil, Russia, India and China, specifically in the area of consumer and pharmaceutical drug sales (Henke, Rachel M., et al., 496). As a result of this focus on BRIC nations the company is also beginning to invest heavily in supply chain development and fine-tuning in each country, hoping to be preemptive in their cost controls in each market segment they choose to compete in (Yacovone, 104). The primary focus of the new product development efforts is on geriatric and aging drugs given the demographic shift to older populations in these most rapidly growing regions of the world.