“I keep my eye on what the pharmaceutical industry has done”

Hanes Brands, Saralee’s division in charge of textile products , has invested in a new strategy. Besides providing medical detailing, the company set up a group to keep in contact with the sales reps of around two hundred surgery centers.

“It is about addtional work, which aims at taking crucial information so that all attendants get to know all Hanes Brands products, besides recommending the appropriate socks model to each consumer.”, explains Marcia Castelo Branco, public relations at Hanes Brands.

In order to talk about this and others issues, the executive received Top Team at Hotel Baden Baden, in São Paulo, where the company has trained the professionals who visited surgery centers in several states of Brazil. Follow the main parts of the interview below.

Top Team: When has Kendal started their medical detailing?
Marcia Castelo Branco: When competition gained the market, they started to do a lot of different kinds of work, like medical detailing. We have invested in this kind of strategy since then and realized that medical detailing aggregates value to the brand once it is important to keep contact with the physician. We have nearly 80% of the market share, besides, we reached our goals in 2006. In some areas we had even to stop selling as we had already sold everything we intended to.

Top Team: Was it the first time it happened throughout Hanes Brands lifetime?
Marcia: I can say that it was a huge surprise as we had a hard time selling socks due to the market stagnation and the increase in the number of competitors. However, the medical detailing worked out and, for the first time, we ran out of our warehouse products.

Top Team: Throughout the years, Hanes Brands has developed several social projects in order to help the community. Can you mention some examples?
Marcia: It is said that in the textile industry after seven years in warehouse, the product is sold at a very low price, like warehouse sale. We decided to apply some different strategies thoughout these years. We established, for instance, some partnerships with the Angiology and the Vascular Surgery Society. We donated socks to those societies which gave them to the physicians in charge of some social institutions. Besides, we donated some products to Santa Casa and we have supported the project Bom vizinho (Good neighbor) who assists the community near Hanes Brands factory.

Top Team: Concerning 2007, which are Hanes Brands goals?
Marcia: We will not change our strategy. Besides visiting the sales reps training in surgery centers, we will also instruct the professionals who work in drugstores, so the physicians can be sure that, when prescribing a Hanes Brands product, his patient will buy the appropriate pair of socks. Such work is an additional strategy to the medical detailing.

Top Team: Have you followed the pharmaceutical industry model to create such strategies?
Marcia: I keep my eye on what the pharmaceutcial industry has done. I bring all the information to Hanes Brands and I try to shape our products according to these strategies. However, it is hard to work with the physician and, at the same time, to have a product that can be sold at Lojas Americanas and Marisa. The surgical socks require medical consent, that’s why the strategies are analyzed carefully. We have advertised on TV though it damaged the prescription of socks. The physician does not like to watch commercials on surgical products on TV.

Top Team: Márcia, in your opinion, does the socks market still has a lot to grow in Brazil? How do you evaluate it?
Marcia: Absolutely. Each year there is a new competitor. It is a market that will expand intensively. In the United States and in Europe there are more than fifteen different marks of socks. In Brazil, there still a few. It happens because the European and American government give socks to their patients so that they can prevent from having any disease. Here in Brazil, the government prefers to pay for vascular surgery, spending more consequently. Prevention is the best solution.

Top Team: To wrap up, how do you evaluate the partnership between Hanes Brands and Rossetti Mk & Rent Power?
Marcia: Hanes Brands medical detailing is done through Rossetti Mk & Rent Power, which has a great structure and offers high quality work. Results are excellent and the we tend to improve every year by conquering more consumers.