Corrections or additions?
This article by Barbara Fox was prepared for the January 7, 2004
issue of U.S. 1 Newspaper. All rights reserved.
When Smaller is Better: Biovid
Strictly speaking, Andrew Aprill didn’t land on his feet
from a
downsizing – he walked away from a big company while it was still
doing well. But he had always planned on running his own shop.
Now the 40-year-old Aprill is president of Biovid, a four-year-old
boutique pharmaceutical service firm at 5 Vaughn Drive. Recently
expanding to 4,500 square feet, he has 10 full-time employees,
including three other principals, and he expects to grow to 14 people
by the end of the year. Though he has doubled in growth every year,
getting very big is not his goal.
“Growth is market validation. It tells us we are on the right path,”
says Aprill. “The challenge is not to let the growth be the driving
principle. Our goal is to be the most sought after and not the
largest.”
Consolidation of larger firms, he believes, has created an opportunity
for the smaller boutique firm. “We consider ourselves to be Ferrari
and not GM,” says Aprill. “No one ever questions whether Ferrari can
build a better sports car.”
Comparing his company to Total Research and Migliara Kaplan, he says
he has a slightly different approach because he puts senior level
people on every phase of the project.
If too-big can be at a disadvantage, so can a too-small company. “We
don’t ever want to have our clients see our size as a disadvantage,”
says Aprill. He is taking steps to eliminate the perception of Biovid
as being too small:
Investing in “a world class infrastructure,” such as the$20,000 web-based project management tool that lets team members inPrinceton and Turkey work, literally, on the same page. “If yourstrategic decision is not to be the largest, you need to be sure thatyour infrastructure has as much weight as the bigger companies.”Set up a superior advisory board. “Ours is exceptional foran organization of this size,” claims Aprill. It includes Robert F.Bernstock, who is president of Scott’s Company (the lawn care firm);Maxine Champion, formerly vice president of government andinternational relations at Nestle International; Roger W. Davis,formerly senior vice president of global marketing at CIGNACorporation; and Thomas Maeder, senior advisor for scientificstrategies at the Georgetown University School of Medicine.Commission high-end graphics design. For his new logo andbrochure, Aprill chose Robin Nally because he liked the advertisementsshe ran for her own company. His nifty brochure, with wrapped O-ringbound cover on heavy stock, has quotes ranging from John Lennon toCarl Sagan and Albert von Szent-Gyorgyi, and it features intriguingtabbed pullouts for the team bios, board bios, and case histories.”Andrew wanted something completely different so that when peoplereceived this piece they would take the time to look at it,” saysNally. “He gave us creative license. I believe that Andrew’s thinkingis outside of the box and this piece represents that.”Aprill’s grandfather was a farmer, and his father had a sandblastingbusiness that required the family to move frequently, but he went tohigh school and college in Nebraska, graduating from Kearney State in1985. He earned his PhD in social psychology and statistics fromTemple at the Institute of Survey Research and has taught marketresearch in China and Spain. He and his wife, Tricia, who formerlyworked at Wyeth, live in Bucks County with their 2 1/2 year olddaughter and 10-week-old son.Aprill’s first jobs in the pharmaceutical industry were with smallfirms, including Data Tactic, which surveys doctors and patients, andthen he spent three years at a very large company, the NOP division ofMarket Measures in Livingston. “I was recruited by a new CEO, ElaineRiddell, as a change agent, part of a team formed to reposition thecompany,” he says.Another of Biovid’s founders, Douglas Moore, was Aprill’s PhD advisor,but Moore has also been a shipyard welder and diver in Seattle and abusiness journalist in London. The other principals are Julie Leberman(a Temple classmate of Aprill’s who had been at Total Research, nowHarris Interactive) and Joel Schindler (a molecular biologist withmarket research experience). Anil Anand, the CFO, is an MBA from NewYork University.The five had their picture taken under a piece of conference room artcalled “The Boardroom,” which shows one man strongarming another.”We’re a bunch of PhDs who take what we do very seriously,” saysAprill. “It reminds us to have fun. To provide the greatest value, wehave to be very creative.”Leberman, an expert in projective techniques, handles the “soft” orqualitative surveys. For a project on smoking she had consumers createcollages on what it felt like to be a smoker and how it would feel toquit smoking. “People aren’t always able to articulate how they feelabout being treated for that condition,” says Aprill. “Ournon-standard technique is helping to develop messaging – what are thekey themes to use when talking to patients.”Then she had physicians do the same task to find out if there was adisconnect between how a physician thinks about the treatment and howthe consumer thinks. “This has to be addressed for the communicationto be effective,” he says.Marianne Yeager, a new hire who heads the quantitative methods team,does forecasting of how many dollars a market is worth on a globalbasis. “She is finishing an 11-country study and is going to do a12-country study of both consumers and patients,” says Aprill, whopoints out that the methodology they use depends on the country. “InTurkey, they fill out questionnaires en masse in an auditorium. InJapan we do it with them one on one.”As a small firm, they farm out the in-country surveys to theirpartners, but Aprill hastens to add “We are there in the auditorium inTurkey. That is a `value added’ on our global work, that we get on aplane and go to a location. There is no substitute for having feet onthe ground.”It is a challenge for Aprill to balance his personal life with theneed to travel and still be a rainmaker for his young company. Aprillstarted the firm in 1999, moved to Vaughn Drive in June, 1999, tookmore space last October, and is hiring.One way he tries to help himself and others balance their lives is bymaking the workplace convenient (next to the Princeton Junction trainstation) and comfortable. He hired a designer and bought high-endHerman Miller wrap-around desks. Dotting the walls are black and whitephotographs of exotic locales, taken by Aprill when he was on businesstrips. The boardroom converts to a small focus group room, completewith one-way window.All this expense is more for the workers than the clients, who rarelyvisit here. “We spent some attention on what kind of look and feel wewanted for the office,” says Aprill. “We spend more time at work thanat home, and I wanted to focus on making the workplace mean somethingto people. When it comes right down to it, we are in competition fortalent, not for clients. If we build the right team, clients come tous. Everyone here is part of creating a culture that the best and thebrightest want to come to.”One big danger for a small company is the temptation to grow too bigtoo fast. “We must be careful in the amount of work we take on,” saysAprill. “It is seductive when clients ask more and more of your time,and you run a risk of failing to deliver the expectation of theclient.”Aprill says what he learned from his grandfather, a farmer, that ifsomething is worth doing, it is worth doing right, and that the bestreward for a full day’s work is looking back over your shoulder to seewhat you have done. “I have been in companies where they lost sight ofthat,” he says. “If you have very talented, creative people and youdon’t let them do a job at the level they can do it – they are notproud of that. It’s the individual that drives the business.”Biovid Corp., 5 Vaughn Drive, Suite 111, Princeton08540-6313. Andrew D. Aprill, president. 609-750-1400; fax,609-750-1466. Home page: www.biovid.comTop Of PageIndustry TrendsNew technologies will cause major evolutionary shift in marketingmodels, predicts Andrew Aprill, president of the expanding BiovidCorp. “Everyone’s talking about advances of genome based science. andthough it represents ultimate promise, individualized medicine is along way off. But diagnostic technologies will change in the nearfuture.” Take pain medication. One patient may react well to brand Abut not Brand B. “Patients can have idiosyncratic responses totherapy,” he says, and these side effects can be serious.”Genome-based medicine will make it easier to predict who will sufferthe side effects:More drugs may be made available. If a drug has a serious butrare side effect, it might not get approved. “But if the drug comeswith a diagnostic with predictive abilities, you can make that drugavailable.”Marketing models will change. “No longer do we have amonolithic market. Instead we have fractionated and splinter markets,and this will change the promotional approach for products.”Insurance coverage will change “Doctors and insurers willhave a better idea of what drugs will work with what patient types.”For instance, some rheumatoid arthritis patients thrive only with themost expensive medication. “Instead of holding drugs back and tryingless expensive therapies first, there will be a mandate to use themfor that patient type,” says Aprill. “In certain categories this willhappen sooner, conditions with a narrow therapeutic window such asoncology, where there is significant downside risk to delayingappropriate therapy.””Some research is going on now but it will be widespread in fiveyears, and it will have an impact on how our clients market tophysicians,” says Aprill.Often the doctor must choose between ibuprofen or a brand name drug.If a physician gives a test and says the generic won’t work, it’s aquadruple win – for the patient, the doctor, the insurer, and themanufacturer. The patient improves rapidly, the doctor gets the creditfor it, the insurance company is not required to spend resource ontherapies that don’t work, and the pharmaceutical company proves thatits therapy does work.How will the pharmaceutical industry respond? “That will be achallenge,” says Aprill. “We are thinking about how to best make thattransition when it happens. We need to rethink how to define markets.”Next StoryCorrections or additions?This page is published by PrincetonInfo.com— the web site for U.S. 1 Newspaper in Princeton, New Jersey.
