Q1 Most industry followers know Capsugel for its leadership in hard capsules, but your company has become much more than that, hasn’t it?
It absolutely has. Throughout our history, Capsugel has been at the forefront of innovation in hard capsules and polymer science, and we have built great relationships with customers in the biopharmaceutical and consumer health and nutrition industries. Over the past few years, we saw several opportunities to offer our customers even more — to complement our capsule engineering know-how and establish ourselves as a leading global provider of technology platforms for the design, development and manufacture of a wide range of innovative dosage forms. During that time, we have made four strategic acquisitions, invested in enhanced capacity and capabilities and launched new technology platforms — making us an even stronger, more differentiated partner for our customers.
We are also taking steps to develop shared capabilities across our global network so that our customers receive more localized access to our broad range of technologies and services. This includes initiatives currently underway to expand our capabilities in spray-dried dispersion, micro-dosing and specialty polymers across multiple product development sites.
Q2 What are some of the trends driving drug development in general and the role that CDMOs like Capsugel will play in the pharma industry?
The biopharmaceutical industry is continually challenged to accelerate the pace of discovering and developing novel products that will help improve people’s lives. That’s why our customers are looking to partner with companies such as Capsugel that possess a fundamental understanding of APIs that comes from advancing thousands of drug compounds, predictive models and expert systems for selecting optimal enabling technologies.
Another important challenge is lifecycle management, and we are working with a growing number of generic and specialty companies, as well as larger companies, who are seeking line extensions or product enhancements. This has led to several formulation-driven innovations that are enabling our customers’ products to better serve the needs of patients and consumers.
And of course, we continue to see a shift away from blockbuster drugs toward specialized products with smaller volumes and more complex formulations. These innovations require seamless integration from early development to commercial supply.
Q3 What can you tell us about the new corporate brand campaign that Capsugel has launched?d
That’s Nice and the Capsugel team spent several months gathering insights from customers and partners to better understand their needs and the ways in which they perceive Capsugel as standing apart from other CDMOs. We found that while the Capsugel brand was very strongly associated with capsules, as well as with deep scientific knowledge and product engineering know-how, customers were not always aware of our expanding number of offerings and capabilities in other drugdelivery technologies.
Based on these insights, we recently launched our new brand campaign centered on the theme of “Engineering Medicines to Life.” The campaign is designed to amplify Capsugel’s position as a differentiated, specialty CDMO partner with the ingenuity, credibility and flexibility to tackle any product delivery challenge in collaboration with our customers. It also brings all parts of our organization under one name, and allows us to use the Capsugel brand to represent our full, integrated offering.
About the Panelist
Having joined the company in 1983 and serving as President since 2001, Mr. Driesen has led Capsugel through an exciting transformation since becoming its President and CEO, following KKR’s acquisition of the company from Pfizer in 2011. His three-plus decades of experience in the pharmaceutical industry includes various leadership roles spanning Operations, Quality, Country GM and Regional VP. He holds a master’s degree in engineering from the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium, and a bachelor’s degree in economics.
CAPSUGEL – EVOLVING A STRONG BRAND
Capsugel is the type of brand that is not to be trifled with. The company has been around in some shape or form for almost a century. Over the last 30 years, it didn’t just become the leader in capsules and encapsulation – it became the leader by some considerable margin. It was owned by Pfizer, and has gone from strength to strength since spinning off five years ago. It manufactures 200 billion capsules a year and serves over 4,000 customers. The majority of people that make or fill capsules do so with Capsugel products on Capsugel equipment. It is respected. To reiterate — it is a powerful brand and changing it should be done lightly.
Therein lies the challenge. Capsugel itself had been visionary and recognized that while its capsule and encapsulation engineering expertise had carved out a very strong business, future opportunities lay in integrating that know-how and the company DNA with formulation services and the ability to design, develop and manufacture dosage forms. A series of acquisitions between 2013 and 2016 provided technology assets and complementary expertise that provided this capability, with strong positions to tackle bioavailability enhancement and targeted delivery.
Market Research
An extensive research project was undertaken — involving internal stakeholders worldwide, customers, and a target audience across the spectrum of traditional and new services — to measure the equity found in perceptions of the Capsugel name, identity, brand associations and acquired brands. The decision was made to stick with the Capsugel name but to develop a strategy to migrate perceptions of the business with new visuals and messaging. When a brand is so strong and so heavily associated with one historical service line, it can require a shock strategy to initially elicit recognition that there’s change – before messaging drives absorption of the new positioning.
Strategy
While we saw the need for a quantum shift in perception, we also recognized that messaging had to clarify that Capsugel’s expanded offering still embodied the company DNA — science and engineering expertise, ingenuity, credibility and flexibility. We had to be careful with the messaging. So we devised the idea to do the attention-grabbing with evolution in the visual side of the brand.
Bringing It To Life
Conceptually, we had explored the idea of interpretations of incredible engineering in nature. Visuals explored the natural engineering that gives a hummingbird its unique characteristics. This became key art, with the engineered bird emerging from a matrix made up of fragmented chemistry symbols. The tagline, Engineering Medicines To Life, conveys the position of being able to design today’s personalized medicines to meet target profiles, while also complementing the image in conveying actually bringing them into existence for the people that need them.
Following rollout into the public domain just prior to and during CPhI 2016, the careful but impactful evolution of the brand continues. There’s a new logo and colors, although both show respect for the legacy. Website updates, advertising, booth presence, video, literature, sales presentations and PR all contributed to its launch. This will extend to full implementation — including building signage, packaging and all global marketing — within a year.