Secrets to Biopharma Brand Content that Cuts Through the Clutter

[00:00:14.570] – Frank F Dolan

Well, welcome, everybody, to another LinkedIn Live as well as broadcasting medicine to market.com member sites. Great to see everybody. Today we’re talking about something that is very important to anyone who makes a living living working on a brand, trying to connect with various audiences. And now that we’ve moved everything digital, it’s like, what are the real secrets to Biopharma brands kind of breaking through the clutter and really engaging with those key audiences. There are some brands out there and they’re just playing a volume game. And does volume necessarily work like high volume? Is that a bigger chance to have people unsubscribe, or is an opportunity to be standing there in plain sight when folks need it? Or should we go for a lot of this micro content, just small snackable type things, or should we go for longer form? I know that a lot of our peers in bio Pharma and Med tech are talking about this right now. They’re looking for key solutions. So we’re going to talk today about how to reach some of these hard to reach audiences. We’re going to talk about data and the power of analytics, how we can integrate these things together, merging the various data sets.

[00:01:26.710] – Frank F Dolan

If there’s anything that we know about this industry is that we often feel like we’re data rich but knowledge poor, well, how do we leverage those data sets and get some real insights? And also we can’t have a conversation about digital engagement, breaking declutter, and not talk about social media. So we’ve got some great guests here today. I want you to help me welcome them. First of all, I want to welcome Julie Granberry from Relevate Health. Julie leads Relevate Health Insights and strategy division. She’s got over twelve years of agency, brand marketing and category experience. She spent time at UCB. She’s a great peer of ours. Julie, welcome.

[00:02:01.850] – Julie Granberry

Hi, Frank. Thanks so much for having me today. I appreciate that.

[00:02:04.990] – Frank F Dolan

Well, it’s so good to see you again. We’re all glad to have you back. Is there anything else about your background you want to make sure everybody’s familiar with before we have some fun today?

[00:02:16.110] – Julie Granberry

Honestly, I think one of the things that was really big for me is getting a taste of what it’s like to have the client’s shoes on. So as you mentioned earlier, I was at Relevate Health for eight years, then joined up with UCB Pharma for four years and really loved that experience of understanding what it’s like to try to break through that brand clutter using the budgets that we have, especially the smaller to mid size Pharma, and then really have that passion to go back into client services and make a difference in an impact. So here I am back at Relevant Health.

[00:02:50.490] – Frank F Dolan

That is super helpful. It’s great to have you here. Let’s welcome Bob to the broadcast as well. Bob Brooks is VP of sales and marketing at Relevate Health. He’s got 25 plus years you’d never know it. You’d never know it. These are facts I can’t verify. But over 25 years of digital marketing experience, he’s been in the client supplier side. In fact, he also led digital strategy at GSK. Bob, great to see you once again. Welcome.

[00:03:16.650] – Bob Brooks

Thanks for having us, Frank. Great to be here.

[00:03:20.070] – Frank F Dolan

So is there any fun facts or other background that you want to share with everybody? Let’s do some reveal here before we get rolling.

[00:03:27.650] – Bob Brooks

Other than being a passionate salsa dancer, so that usually meant salsa dancing at live events, which that hasn’t happened for a couple of years. The other fun fact is that I started in television film production, and it was an event that happened at an operating room in Beth Israel Hospital in Boston that changed my life. I jumped in when a camera person fainted and jumped in to take their place, and I’ve never looked back. I’ve stayed in healthcare communications ever since.

[00:03:58.950] – Frank F Dolan

All right. Now those are some fun facts. You’re raising the bar. So what we’re going to have to do is for the next broadcast, Bob, we’re going to ship you a webcam that has a nice Zoom out. That way you can see the salt of dancing and verify that I need a partner. Good stuff. All right, next up, let’s welcome Hans Casper Set. He’s the chief innovation officer at Relevate Health, a thought leader in the industry, has been speaking on so many topics for so many years, lots of experience to bring to the table, and a good friend of the broadcast. So, Hans, great to see you again.

[00:04:38.960] – Hans Kaspersetz

Hey, Frank, thanks for having me. And it’s good to be on with everybody.

[00:04:42.140] – Frank F Dolan

It’s great to have you. Now, Hans. Bob’s, raising the bar on us with this fun fact stuff. Anything you can share today?

[00:04:48.670] – Hans Kaspersetz

Yeah, I will. On March 18, I’ll be flying down to Chiapas, Mexico, where we will be hiking up into the high mountains and exploring vertical caves about 600 meters deep on single rope. So I’ll send back some photos, but going to do a little bit of cave exploration, check out a river, that’s giant waterfall falling into this cave, and just enjoy that experience.

[00:05:13.930] – Frank F Dolan

Very cool. Well, the spirit of adventure calls us today as we talk a bit about breaking through the clutter. So, Julie, I think we brought you up first. Maybe we’ll ask you a question first around this topic. So just to make sure everyone’s level set, knowing our audience from Biopharma and medtech, but across the organizations, we want them to feel like they can really contribute in these brand team meetings, our brand friends know exactly what we’re talking about. But if you were to educate everyone when brand teams ask questions about cutting through the clutter, what are you telling them about?

[00:05:50.230] – Julie Granberry

Yeah, there is so much clutter these days. So I really think that we have our task out in front of us. For me, it’s all about striking a chord. I think that cord can be many different ways, whether it’s making it super personable. So personalizing information is really, really important, whether that be through making something meaningful from your local geography or if it’s from hearing from someone that you respect and trust. And it doesn’t have to necessarily be someone that’s the heavy hitter at the national space. But who do I look to and trust for information and then striking an emotional cord, really, especially in this day and age, trying to find an emotional connection. We all know that type of thing really helps with recall and resonance. So finding something that is meaningful to our audience. Now, I get that those three things are really, really personal. So trying to find ways to do that at scale can be challenging, but it can be done quite effectively, both costs and timeline wise.

[00:06:52.150] – Frank F Dolan

Outstanding. So let’s build on this. How should marketers best identify and reach the right people to maximize their share of voice and brand impact?

[00:07:01.160] – Julie Granberry

Yeah. So I think, again, there’s a lot of different ways to do it, Frank. But really, if you think about ways in which we’re all trying to target many of the same individuals but really piecemealing those different target lists and audience members and understanding who is connected to who. So playing that game of understanding relationships and digging into that further, thinking beyond the traditional suspect target list and really understanding the different spheres of influence and levels of influence on a patient or a clinician’s journey in prescribing or a patient’s journey in getting treatment or seeking treatment. So who’s the full care team and who all is involved? There can be some really interesting ways. And I think we as a healthcare community have made great strides in that space to really have a lot more voices elevated than the traditional voices of just the clinician target list. So I’m really thinking through awareness, through conversion and every single different intersection point along the way. Customizing that and finding ways to uniquely reach this audience, I think is really empowering. I think, like I said, we’ve seen a lot of different strides in that space recently.

[00:08:16.270] – Frank F Dolan

So building on that, the audience piece here, there are a lot of brands that are operating in very unique spaces. And I think a lot of these folks would say that their audience is very hard to reach. So tell me a little bit and running insights and strategy at Relevate Health, Julie, telling us a little bit more about how do you guys go about helping these brands connect and engage and identify these hard to reach audiences?

[00:08:44.380] – Julie Granberry

Yeah, there’s a lot of different ways. One, obviously you’re going to leverage your boots on the ground, right? You’re going to leverage that field force because they have those connections and those relationships. Another really leveraging the data that we either have a little bit help has some access to some fantastic data that we can also offset with our clients and our partners as well. But segmenting that data and really understanding who is connected to who, whether it be they went to a Congress together, whether it be that they’re in some similar social forums together, really understanding that, I think, is a great way, Frank, for us to be able to provide some personalization in ways that strike much more of that meaningful chord than has been done traditionally in the past.

[00:09:31.030] – Frank F Dolan

I like it. So you use the word personalization. I’d like to build on that a bit, because one of the most popular topics we’re hearing with our community right now are really from our folks in the field, both on the medical side and on the sales side, and then feeling like there’s all of these efforts going on with the brand. But I’m not sure if I understand where my customer is in the journey, if they’re being exposed to these things. So maybe help us understand how do we engage the field when it comes to some of these insights and analytics?

[00:10:01.180] – Julie Granberry

Yes. So I am a very big believer in putting my brand marketing hat back on that you have to make sure that the field is aware of all of your efforts. It’s a joint. It’s a partnership from marketing at headquarters and your field. So really taking Intel, I’ve been a big part of having field input groups and understanding their perspective of their targets and their clinicians and helping weigh that into the decisions that are made and also helping them understand when touch points are made on their behalf from headquarters or from your agency partners. I think it’s really critical doing that, especially with the way in which now we’re able to do near personal video details. That’s a great way to also help augment Salesforce efforts and almost view it as a lead generation. They can really prioritize their next efforts with clinicians and their target list of knowing who is really having receptivity to them, who’s looking at their emails. I think it’s a great way to partner hand in Hans, with the field.

[00:11:01.390] – Frank F Dolan

You mentioned something about near something details. What was that?

[00:11:05.510] – Julie Granberry

Near personal? It’s a new spin on NPP, but near personal.

[00:11:08.610] – Frank F Dolan

Tell us more about that.

[00:11:09.900] – Julie Granberry

Yeah. Another phrase that I have learned from a girl named Maggie. She calls it mass intimacy. I’m like, how do you do mass intimacy? But really is finding ways just like right now, Frank, I feel personally connected to you, even though we’re States away. So finding ways to customize and create that personal connection through content, whether it be through video, whether it be through, again, understanding these key points of influence that would drive somebody’s attention and create connection. But in a way, it’s not just one to one to one and feeling as if you can’t get scaled. So finding these, like, groups of information and cascading in a way that’s really scalable that is really cool.

[00:11:54.100] – Frank F Dolan

Julie, thank you for that. Maybe we should bring Bob into the conversation here and talk about a little bit about the patient. Let’s build on the patient piece. What about the patient? How do marketers kind of cut through the clutter with brand messaging? Especially when I think about a patient that at some point, hopefully it’s only once a year with a physical like we’re all patients and I know all the inbound advertising. I’m getting there’s a lot of clutter. So, Bob, how do we do that with a patient here?

[00:12:21.380] – Bob Brooks

Absolutely. Well, it gets down to, as you know, messaging and the channel and the timing. So the brand teams that understand, truly understand the patient, the journey they’re moving through, the trigger points, those key educational opportunities to introduce either a new concept or potentially a new treatment or a treatment that’s unknown by the patient, knowing the channels which they reside or the channels that are going to be most popular in that therapeutic area and understanding the messaging and that will trigger motivation and mobilize the patient. And then the timing of all of this is critical. And so being able to take big data and identify any of those, whether it’s the messaging and what words, what Lexicon is most likely going to resonate with that patient, those channels. I remember working on a lung cancer program, and we identified that over two thirds of the population patients with lung cancer or caregivers interested resided in one community in one place. So knowing where patients go for information and then understanding when they go and why they’re going there is critical to breaking through the car.

[00:13:45.430] – Frank F Dolan

I appreciate that very much. The patient is such an important part of the story here. So what is relevant health doing more or less to kind of use data to map and prioritize the touch points so we can have the right message at the right time with the right patient in this case.

[00:14:03.590] – Bob Brooks

Right. So we’re using data to identify in what regions are going to be the most critical for the brand team to ensure that we’re tackling those variations in the region. And when it comes to language, we have a really powerful tool. And it’s called Lex Edge, but basically it’s commercial Lexical analysis. It’s Gartner identified as providing value to the life science industry. And what we’re doing with Lexedge and Julie and Hans could speak to this as well is we’re scraping the Internet, the unstructured data, competitor websites, white papers, anything that could be of value to a potential patient or Hcp audience. And then we’re scraping all that and doing analysis around what are the noun clusters? What are the themes that really need to be part of a brand content strategy? And when we’ve presented the findings to brand teams, what they start to realize is that what they do is they see new opportunities, new content, that is, to either specific types of audiences or at certain times in the patient journey when they need to serve up information that will mobilize the patient.

[00:15:28.750] – Frank F Dolan

That’s very interesting. I want to move towards social media a bit because it is such a popular topic with phones.

[00:15:37.270] – Bob Brooks

Sure.

[00:15:37.730] – Frank F Dolan

And let me set the table here with the social media piece, which is throughout the pandemic. Many brand leaders have shared with us that they have tried lots of things. It’s been two years of piloting stuff in the social media world, the ROI Hans been harder than ever to go ahead and measure for a lot of these life science brands. So talk about data, insights and building an effective social media campaign.

[00:16:06.340] – Bob Brooks

Great. First of all, the only good idea is the one that’s executed, and the only idea that will be executed is one that’s in partnership with the MLR team. So you need to start there. You need to start by embracing the policies of the MLR team and identifying what are the KPIs, how will we measure? I believe that’s where it starts. And then in the measurement of those programs, we know that in the social media space. In my experience, working with patient influencers, we know that those programs can be measured and should be measured, whether it’s via a landing page or a specific piece of content. But giving patient influencers, content that’s been approved, content they can share or assets, resources, materials, tools that can be shared with their constituents inevitably is going to mean more to those constituents because it’s coming from a trusted source, or at least a trusted source is pointing to that pharmaceutical resource or those materials and that combination of working with the MLR team to ensure that the execution and the risk is being managed, knowing how to report AES, of course, and things like that, but then also making sure that the measurement is in place before program execution is critical.

[00:17:28.810] – Frank F Dolan

Excellent. Those internal insights and helping to assuage the concerns of someone who’s inside a brand right now thinking like, how do I approach this? My organization is not used to doing this. We have a lot of heritage thinking in our industry. We love it. So, but we’re breaking through new ground. So, Julie or Hans, did you want to build on any of those points that Bob just brought forward?

[00:17:52.330] – Hans Kaspersetz

Julie, you want to start as a brand person, then I’ll talk from an enterprise architecture perspective.

[00:17:57.850] – Julie Granberry

I’m smirking, Frank, because I know exactly where you’re coming from. And sometimes it feels like it’s all about risk, right. And risk acceptance and risk mitigation. But we also have to realize where we are right now and we are in a digital era. So really being able to reach our clinicians and reach our patients and consumers where they are, wherever they are in their journey is really, really important. So I couldn’t agree more with what Bob has shared earlier about meeting with your medical, your legal regulatory and compliance early and often and really understanding what is that level and how can we ensure that we are being compliant in our ways of working and communicating, but still really pushing to meet our patients where they are. And actually, I think Hans had some really good examples that he’s shared with me and the organization of some of the steps he’s taken in that space on the agency side.

[00:18:50.360] – Hans Kaspersetz

Yeah. Thanks, Julie. So I want to answer in a couple of different ways, Frank, we were talking about near personal outreach earlier and how do we enable reps and how do we do these things that appear unscalable at scale? And Relevate Health is really fortunate in that we’ve acquired and developed a lot of technology, particularly natural language processing and artificial intelligence technology, in order to do these things at scale. And so one of our products called Repcast Studio, actually allows reps to record live video. And then we use natural language processing to validate and certify that the video track that the rep has presented meets the criteria that MLR has provided the guardrails, as well as the word for word matching. And when the rep does sort of share video content or create video content that doesn’t match it, it flags it back. And then we have an escalation path to either ask that rep to rerecord it using the teleprompter, or we can then decide with the client whether or not this meets what is ML approved. Right. And that’s one way of using technology to do these things at scale, and that’s the tactical day to day execution.

[00:20:06.500] – Hans Kaspersetz

Right. And with social media, you really have to divide social media into two buckets. There’s organic social media, which is where the brand is posting or where influencers are posting, or we’re listening. And that’s a content play, and that needs to be managed in concert with MLR very closely under a really clear and accepted set of guidelines. And then there’s paid social, particularly advertising and promoted social, and that runs much more like a media channel and understanding which social media platform to use when and why. How is it measurable? How do we manage risk? There is something that we’ve developed over a number of years of experience. The part that I think sort of creates challenges for new entrants is how to go through the process of establishing the internal governance framework so that the agency, the brand team, the medical legal regulatory team all have a shared set of understandings around what’s approvable, what’s not approvable. And at Relevate Health, we’ve had the good fortune of doing this multiple times. At Seljean, we worked with their digital son of excellence, with their enterprise architecture team, and went through the policy setting procedure and actually helped them craft and draft all their policies around this stuff.

[00:21:36.560] – Hans Kaspersetz

I can think of one Boston based, small and mid sized Pharma where we help them establish all of their SEO guidelines right? How are they going to use Schema? How are they going to do black box meta content? Or I think we call it box warning, meta content. Now, I apologize. And this process, this iterative process of working with medical, legal, regulatory team, doing the analysis of what everybody else is doing in the industry. In the cases that I just talked about, we actually ran a study. We looked at the top 25 manufacturers. We looked at all of their brands that are in the Neurospace, all the brands that had box warnings, and then analyzed everything that they were doing in order to come up with what would be a comparable set of behaviors that our clients could engage in that would be unlikely to trigger any kind of risk or sort of crossreporting self reporting from a competitor in the business. Right. And that’s what we’ve been doing for a long time. And as digital natives, it enables us to help guide our clients through this process. And then more broadly speaking, we have relationships with organizations like yours and others that allow us to develop and execute one day conferences where we might bring in experts from Facebook, from Google, from Twitter, from the other platforms, from Instagram to sit down and workshop how this organization can engage on social media, how it can reach positions, how it can reach https, how it can reach non prescribing, hard to reach audiences as well as patients.

[00:23:15.030] – Hans Kaspersetz

And so I think as a partner and as an organization that’s been doing digital since 1999, there are a number of ways that we can really facilitate that piece. And if it’s not us, there are other work that can do the same for you.

[00:23:29.890] – Frank F Dolan

That’s helpful, Hans, when I think about the challenges that many of us have faced running brands, sometimes it’s hard to even get to the point where, like, should I seek out a partner? And what does a good partner look like? Because I don’t know if I have organizational support to go ahead and storm the Castle when it comes to this opportunity. So can you maybe give us some tips or some help? Because I know that you’ve worked with a lot of people on this to help build organizational momentum and credibility about this concept. So then we can seek out partners who can help us practically plan and implement a successful strategy.

[00:24:10.930] – Hans Kaspersetz

Well, it really starts with trust and communication. A client asked me the other day what was most important to me, and I said, really clear and open, two way communication that is at the foundation of this. Right. All of the folks who are involved in mitigating risk want to be able to trust what you’re telling them. And they need to rely on people who are experts and who can demonstrate expertise and experience in this particular area or whatever area we’re trying to build policy and governance around. So oftentimes it starts with a concept review and we’re all familiar with these, right? We put together the deck. We go in front of the MLR team, we presented to them, and we asked them for their feedback. Where do you see the risk if we do this? What does the letter from FDA look like? Tell me, what are they actually writing in it? Because it’s in that bounding process where we bound the risk, and we really start to think about where it could go off the rails. And Alternatively, what’s the ROI? Why would we engage in this behavior? How are we going to change the behaviors of our target audiences?

[00:25:26.210] – Hans Kaspersetz

What’s the return on investment?

[00:25:27.710] – Frank F Dolan

Right.

[00:25:27.950] – Hans Kaspersetz

So that we can really do that sort of risk reward analysis and we can pair it up. But it really starts with that concept review, getting their feedback, understanding what does the letter look like? What’s the risk? We’re trying to hedge bounding that risk and then building a set of policies and behaviors and procedures that address those risks while still achieving the strategic imperatives of the brand.

[00:25:53.830] – Frank F Dolan

I love it. That’s really helpful because I think many of us are worried about that red light thinking that sometimes exists above us on the or chart when it comes to some of these new things. If you allow me to get a little bit more insight on how you’re helping, because I feel like our audience is struggling with getting internal momentum with some of these things, never mind deriving the insights, which we need to talk about a little bit more. But where I want to go with that is, do you find that you and your team are doing a fair amount of coaching and supporting to get rid of that red light thinking as we start to head towards a plan? What does that look like? Because I think that supportive partners, not just execution partners, seems to be the trend that our audience feels like they want to go in moving forward.

[00:26:45.670] – Bob Brooks

Could they grab that and maybe Hans and Julia pick up? That’d be great. So it really depends on the client. Some of our clients are coming to us and saying, hey, we want to engage the digital opinion leaders in the physicians or Hcp space. So there are a few chapters ahead of other clients who are asking, how do I execute social and integrate it into my overall marketing plan? So it really depends on the brand team and then the organization. Do they have guidelines, et cetera? And then that exercise of the not a post mortem, but a premortem. So that actually going through the process of identifying what the risks are, what are the imaginable horribles. And how do we avoid those can be a therapeutic exercise for the MLR team. Believe me, I’ve done it many times. And what you start to see is those check boxes, like, okay, you’re concerned about this. Well, this is how we’ll manage that. You’re concerned about AES this is how we’ll manage this. And what’s been really interesting is to help the MLR team see that they can execute every organization starts with, I don’t think we can do that here or we can’t do that here.

[00:28:04.410] – Bob Brooks

But given time, given planning, given that miscotigation and identifying the benefits and why it’s worth taking on that risk of every single time I’ve seen the organizations and breaks and then launch those social media programs that they want to execute.

[00:28:23.710] – Frank F Dolan

That’s helpful, Bob. Thank you for that. Look back at my career in seven different bio pharmas. There’s a few universals, but here are two. The first universal truth is that this quarter is the most important quarter ever. The second universal truth is we are the most compliant company in the industry. How can this quarter always be the most important? How can we all be just that? So we’ll honor that. We’ll appreciate that. But that’s helpful for us to think about how we calibrate with those teams so we can go ahead and break down that red light thinking and get some stuff done. Hans, do you want to build on that at all?

[00:29:13.240] – Hans Kaspersetz

Do you want to go first?

[00:29:15.430] – Julie Granberry

Yeah. I was just going to say, on top of what Bob was sharing, is that one of the things that inside the bio Pharma walls, like the onus, is obviously on the marketing team in partnership with MLRC medical legal, regulatory compliance. Every company calls it something different. But to understand the levels of risk. Right. But as your agency partners being back on the agency side now, it’s our obligation responsibility to continue to help you guys compliantly, push the envelope and bring that outside in perspective to the different providers. And what I mean by that is sometimes you can be at a company for quite a few years and you kind of forget what that outside in perspective is. So really lean into your agency partners, ask what they’re seeing in different Therapeutics areas across the industry so that we are able to bring that novelty or that newness that maybe might not be so new anymore to your company to ensure that we’re ultimately helping support patients on their journey.

[00:30:20.350] – Frank F Dolan

Thank you for that, Hans.

[00:30:22.190] – Hans Kaspersetz

So, Frank, you asked, what are the questions that the brand manager or the decision maker or the influencer can ask, like, how do you vet and qualify? Who’s going to lead you through this? Or at least be your guide or be your partner through it? I can tell you what I’ve done personally in order to put myself in a position to help my clients and my friends and my partners. I attend, I don’t know, ten digital marketing conferences per year. I go to dinner with other leaders. I’m on advisory boards. I judge the Mm awards. I do a lot in order to be of value to our clients. Chief innovation officer means I need to be able to speak to what is the industry norm. What are your competitors doing? What are your competitors who are a couple of steps down the road actively doing? And to be quite Frank, when we’re not exactly sure what to do, I pick up the phone and I call one of my friends at one of the other companies and say, hey, how did you guys handle this? Right. I think that for the most part everybody has an interest in advancing our industry’s capabilities and ability to connect with our audiences.

[00:31:42.530] – Hans Kaspersetz

Generally we recognize that we are far behind the consumer marketing and consumer packaged goods world and certainly entertainment, spirits, apparel, luxury, leisure. And so there are a number of ways that we can look outside the walls and start to adapt for ourselves the practices that are compliant. And so oftentimes it comes down to doing the research, building the plan, and then really being able to tie the execution on whatever innovation tactic or channel it is back into the strategic imperatives and tie it back to revenue. If I can’t tie it back to revenue in some sort of way, if I can’t tie it directly back to a strategic imperative, then it’s innovation for Innovation’s sake and it’s probably wasteful. And so it’s really important to be able to make the business case for that particular brand at that particular manufacturer with that particular team. So what’s the risk tolerance of the brand team? What’s the risk tolerance of management? What does the forecast suggest we should be doing? Right. So part of this is about achieving organizational alignment between the agency and the manufacturer and sort of aligning the objectives there as well as brand level alignment.

[00:33:09.260] – Hans Kaspersetz

And so that comes down to having regular governance meetings with senior leadership, talking about those KPIs, talking about the successes and the challenges we faced in the last six months, four months, right. Talking about where we think we can innovate together and how we can mutually invest in each other’s businesses in order to accelerate them and achieve the growth objectives of both of them. Every client that we work with has products in the pipeline. Nobody is standing still. We know every product will eventually well, almost every product will eventually hit Loe. And so we’re constantly in this creative destructive cycle where we’re creating and destroying and creating and destroying so that we can advance forward. But the questions I’d ask is, hey, when did you guys do that leadership work on this? How often are you out in the field looking at what my competitors are doing, my comparables are doing? How do you bring innovation in your organization? How do you interact with organizations like Arsenal, Advisors and some of the other great thought leadership organizations? How do you actually help us to set policy governance and then how do we enforce that? In the case of relevant we identified this fact that we have 500 film crews spread out all over the US.

[00:34:24.770] – Hans Kaspersetz

How are we going to scale the production of personalized patient education materials when we might be doing 1000 practices in a year for a client? Right. We need technology. We need a partner. We need a way to validate and certify that that content meets what’s been approved because you don’t want to run 1000 videos through MLR, that’s for sure. You are not going to be popular. Nobody’s going to invite you to dinner if you submit that right into Viva. So it really does come down to being an advanced tech and database organization that leads with experience, leads with innovation, and is able to transform or at least be a partner in the catalyst of transformation within our manufacturing partners. And I’ve been very fortunate. Bob, Julie, all of us have been doing that for I’ve been doing it for 20 years. I think Julie Hans only been doing it for five or ten. But joking aside, I think that having that experience and proven track record of being able to innovate and be able to really drive that innovation and catalyzing it and making it manageable and managing that risk is truly critical.

[00:35:38.030] – Frank F Dolan

Excellent. I want to keep going on that, but I want to just a quick digression. You said something about 1000 patient education videos across the country. What was that all about? Can you tell us more?

[00:35:50.750] – Hans Kaspersetz

Yeah. There was a large oncology brand from a large manufacturer in New Jersey, and they retained us to actually execute a tactic that we call My Doc. And what My Doc is is a set of patient education materials that are personalized to the practice. And so the practice and the doctor star in the patient education materials. They star in a printed magazine. They star in a microsite. We produce all of those assets at scale using our local film crews. And this is one of those things that helps us get the reps back in the door and really start to recreate those relationships because it’s truly valuable to the practice because we know patients forget between 80 and 86% of what they’re told at the point of care and diagnosis. We also know that physicians keep repeating themselves over and over and over. Right. And so there’s drift in the messaging just because I would hate to repeat myself all the time. And so we developed this product called My Doc. We’re able to go out into the field. And Interestingly enough, in year one on that particular deployment, we generated about a 15 to one ROI for that client, which is pretty remarkable.

[00:37:11.050] – Hans Kaspersetz

And over the course of three years, we generated an ROI, which we don’t talk about publicly, but it was big enough that they brought in a third party to validate, which they did. And then that large manufacturer then took that program and expanded it to 14 other brands outside their oncology portfolio because they found it that effective. And this goes back to what Julie was talking about it’s like, how do you create a near personal product? In this particular case, you’re using the practice to star in the patient education materials. The practice is much more likely to use those materials, much more likely to distribute them. And it creates a positive feedback loop between the brand, the rep, and the practice and the Hcp.

[00:37:55.550] – Frank F Dolan

Well, that is really powerful because we’re seeing a trend in some areas, in particular in some of the device spaces where there are these virtual telehealth, like companies that are working specifically for a brand, excuse me, to support patients, especially in difficulty, either understand or calibrate devices, but even to some degree, some drugs. But I know that there continues to be a sensitivity that’s carried over from years past, which is if it feels branded or sponsored by a drug company in some way. And I’m an Hcp, you’re immediately eliminating a good percentage of the audience who don’t want to necessarily propel a brand funded educational source for. But if the Hcp at that office is the star, I would talk about hyper use versus selective use. That’s really cool. That’s different. I love it. Yeah.

[00:38:52.080] – Hans Kaspersetz

And it’s really remarkable because it’s OIG certified. So we had an ex OIG Inspector general validate that it’s not patient practice building. They did a full analysis of the entire product suite. And so that remember we were talking about how do we head risk and how do we make MLR compliant comfortable, and how do we make the compliance folks comfortable? Right. You do that third party analysis. You bring in that voice, that neutral voice to certify what you’re doing, making the practice lead. And all of the practice members, the nurses are involved, the NPS, the Pas, a lot of different folks are involved. And what’s interesting is this particular patient support patient education piece is only distributed by the physician after they’ve made the treatment decision. Right. And so it just saves the doctor a lot of effort. And then there’s a QR code and a microsite, and then there’s a video presentation, as well as the printed presentation. It is very sexy. And you can’t often times call pharmaceutical marketing tactics sexy, but this one.

[00:40:05.190] – Frank F Dolan

We’Re bringing sexy back.

[00:40:08.190] – Hans Kaspersetz

David.

[00:40:11.530] – Frank F Dolan

All right. Good stuff. So I think I want to bring us home with two core questions, and I want the team to come forward with these two. I really hope people and brands appreciate that there is a real opportunity on the other side of getting this stuff right. Breaking through that clutter. If you do that, great things will happen. What we’ve seen with several launches across the industry, they’ve been varied from publicly traded companies. With the Q four earnings kind of coming in recently, there’s been some disappointments. And so some of the things that perhaps we over indexed on that we relied on and were waiting to come back to us to help us drive that brand. Those wishes don’t seem to be coming true. What’s the pot of gold? Why is it worth getting this internal alignment, seeing the opportunity, and then putting together and implementing and operationalizing a strategy to break through the clutter and to get this engagement, those patient audiences. What’s the upside?

[00:41:12.230] – Bob Brooks

The upside is tremendous, right? There’s two parts to this. One is what you’re doing now is that an investment really driving the ROI you’re looking for or expecting? And so having the wrong messages on the wrong channel at the wrong time clearly is not helping a brand team, but identifying the right messages in the right channel at the right time. You’re going to drive that ROI, and that combination is critical. One of the things that another item that’s worth mentioning is no one cares about through the roof ROI if the program is small. So a pilot that delivers a 20 to one ROI, fantastic. But if the investment is too small, what good is it? And so the pilots need to be scaled quickly and those plans need to be in place before execution. It shouldn’t be execution. And then let’s see how it does. And then we’ll scale it. The scaling plan should be in place. And when the Mark is crossed, you scale as long as all the checkpoints are there for what we talked about before around implementation and optimization around the program.

[00:42:34.530] – Frank F Dolan

When I think about what you folks have been sharing with us and Julie, maybe you want to speak to this. And I’m not here to spend the brand’s money, but I do remember every year it’s like be efficient with the funds. Oh, by the way, don’t spend more than 5% plus or minus of your budget. So you got to put that money to work. So that being said, though, but when we think about where things are going, like hyper local, hyper personalized, it’s almost like every market is its own pilot. So how do you just try something in Cincinnati and assume it’s going to work in La? Any thoughts on that, Julie?

[00:43:11.370] – Julie Granberry

I think it’s all about doing the analysis in advance to try to find where we think it’s going to work and being very open to quick optimization. So we can really dial up and dial down at a moment’s notice when things are working really well or if things aren’t going as planned for us to be able to pivot. One of the things that I was going to add onto earlier, Frank, was I think for the past two years, we’ve all been hurry up and wait and hurry up and wait, trying to wait for these perfect moments. But that’s what optimization is for. To get something out there in the market and then adjust along the way is my best advice because I think I was waiting for the perfect moment to launch a tactic and that moment never came. So really getting it out there in market and then optimizing along the way. I think it’s a key in using data and leading indicators, lagging indicators to really, really know how the brand is performing. Hans, anything to add on your lens.

[00:44:06.870] – Hans Kaspersetz

There’S always more value to be added. I think there’s a couple of things. First, I can think in terms of relevant and what is relevant. We have our own data science team, we have our own data engineering team, and we’re really close to the data. And one of the benefits of being an expert in doing local marketing and doing this near personal marketing is it very naturally sets up test and control markets right from the start. And that’s one of the reasons we love to measure ROI unlike almost every other agency in the world. Right. We want to know right away and we want to be able to call BS when the thing isn’t working. And we have a track record of saying, hey, this isn’t working. We might want to pivot now on the other side of that, it also allows us to get close enough to the data. Right now, we worked in collaboration with the internal data teams and analytics teams, but we still want to be ahead of them because oftentimes they’re resource constrained. They have a lot of different priorities. There’s a natural data lag coming out of the prescribing data.

[00:45:09.730] – Hans Kaspersetz

There’s a natural lag coming out of the diagnosis data. The census data is lagged. Right. So we’re already dealing with some of that naturally in the market. And so the faster we can run the analysis in house and then have the in house team validate it, the faster we can scale those programs and generate the results that our clients are looking for in this quarter or in the next quarter, which are the most important quarters to go back to that team. And partly the technology is manifold. Right. We have a million and a half prescribers NPIs in our database. We have about a billion and a half rows of data on them. We have our own in house data team and all the tactics that we’re running, whether it’s practice, share field, share speaker, share, repcast rowcast studio, my Doc, or the services we’re delivering through our agency record all depend on that insight and that strategy so that we can drive through to enabling the reps with data and technology. One of the things that reps need to know is what have we communicated with the docs? And more importantly, can we enable those reps to do a better job with reptiled email?

[00:46:24.860] – Hans Kaspersetz

Can we help them build a relationship with those docs using video instead of just communication we’re talking about? How do we break through the clutter? How do we get the reps back in the office? Well, we can use data, we can use technology, and we can create really rich Immersive experiences for the reps to use with the Hcp so that we create a new kind of value proposition where the rep is more like an MC. Right. They’re creating this rich experience for the Doc rather than standing in the corner in the waiting room in a little tape box talking about safety and efficacy and those boring same four or five things we’ve been talking about for 20 years. Right. I think leading that peer to peer engagement, being able to deliver that additional value, really being able to drive patient education, making the physician’s life easier, more convenient, so that they can really focus on their patient rather than some of the other challenges that come along with delivering health care is important. And I’m really proud to say our team has the capabilities to do that, and I think everybody should be looking for that.

[00:47:29.130] – Hans Kaspersetz

Excellent.

[00:47:30.350] – Frank F Dolan

So as we head towards a wrap, Bob Julie, then Hine. When we think about helping our brand kind of break through the clutter, a Sage piece of advice, a quote to bring the next brand team meeting, something that’s just a real knowledge bomb that you want to drop here. As we wrap up, what would that piece of advice? What would that knowledge bomb?

[00:47:53.070] – Bob Brooks

It would be back to something mentioned earlier, which is the only good idea is the one that’s executed. You need to prepare internally. What are the KPIs? How will you manage risk? How do you partner with the medical legal regulatory compliance teams and ensuring that they’re satisfied with how the program will be measured, especially an innovative program and how it will be managed overall? And then because the only good idea is the one that’s executed, making sure that you can scale quickly when that innovative idea shows a benefit or pivot if there’s something that’s uncovered during the pilot, that is great.

[00:48:40.880] – Frank F Dolan

Thank you for that, Bob. Julie. All right.

[00:48:43.760] – Julie Granberry

So I’m going to build on that. And I’m just going to say lean into your agencies that you’re always wanting to give that innovative idea. I love the show Shark Tank, given their Shark Tank moments, because then with the idea worth executing, you, as the brand market are going to have the opportunity to give those respectful pushbacks of if and what you know to be true is your level of risk, but really leading to the innovation that your agency partners can bring you.

[00:49:13.350] – Frank F Dolan

Thank you for that. And Hans.

[00:49:20.530] – Hans Kaspersetz

I think because of the amount of data we have and our ability to slice and dice that data, we can look for audiences that are hard to reach, that are going to be really impactful and we may have overlooked historically or sort of underrepresented in our segmentation. So when I’m thinking about that, I’m thinking about how do we do your personal how do we break through the clutter? One of the things that we’ve worked on for years is how do we do local marketing?

[00:49:49.370] – Julie Granberry

Right?

[00:49:49.710] – Hans Kaspersetz

How do we take the national campaign, pick up the local data, identify who those local KOLs are or who are the influencers that are sort of touching the patients or touching the physicians and then how do we connect with them? I think the data, Hans, sort of progressed to the point where we have a much better capability to get to those audiences that we may have found inaccessible historically. And so I think reconsidering our audience segmentation and figuring out strategies to reach those really hard to reach audiences, to ignite sales is really important.

[00:50:26.170] – Frank F Dolan

Well, great advice from all three of you. So, Bob, thank you, Hans. Thank you, Julie. Thank you so much for joining us today. We really appreciate it. Thanks, Bob. Thanks, Frank.

[00:50:38.720]

Frank.

[00:50:39.250] – Hans Kaspersetz

Thanks, Julie.

[00:50:40.360] – Frank F Dolan

All right, guys. So on that note, it’s clearly an opportunity for all of our brands to be able to go ahead and make a difference, to break through and help serve these audiences. That means so much of us. You know, our corporate statements are all about delivering value, expanding, improving, extending patients lives. So when it comes to breaking through the clutter, yes, there may be a lot of noise out there. We’re not just competing against our competitors. We’re competing against every interest that’s going after the audience. But just remember your higher calling when it comes to this is that we’re trying to compete for awareness that could affect the health and the better outcome of a patient. So these efforts are worth pursuing. Let’s put that effort to work for sure. So until next time, I’m Frank, Dolan we’ll see you guys soon.