Key Takeaways
- The pharma marketing industry is transforming, focusing on patient-centricity, digitization, data, and AI, especially post COVID-19.
- Challenges in implementing innovative strategies can be addressed by fostering creativity, talent acquisition, and investing in DEI.
- Patient-centric campaigns and HCP personalization are key trends.
- Social media—including platforms like TikTok and YouTube—has become vital, with health care influencer marketing gaining traction.
- Encouraging a creative culture and offering mentorship programs can help overcome internal barriers and enhance team collaboration.
Pharma marketing has, largely since COVID-19, been undergoing a transformation—one driven by innovative strategies like patient-centricity, digitization, data, and most recently, AI.
But even as companies tout their ongoing “transformations,” many Marketing Teams may find themselves lagging when it comes to actually implementing the digital, data, and analytics, and AI / machine learning capabilities they say are the future.
Amid the ongoing transformations, how can pharma marketing executives spur creativity on their teams to fuel innovation—ultimately leading to breakthrough marketing campaigns? Here are some key innovative strategies that the industry has started to embrace, as well as tips that can help teams become more creative.
Has the pharma marketing industry truly been ‘innovative'?
When thinking about recent innovations in pharma marketing, AI may come to the forefront as a disruptor that has the potential to transform the way marketers do their work. But innovation has been happening across several different areas in marketing beyond AI—including in an increased focus on centering patients, HCP personalization, social media and influencer marketing, and omnichannel.
Patient-centricity
In the midst of the pharma marketing industry's ongoing transformation, there's been an increased push to focusing more on the patient in campaigns, known as patient-centricity. Engaging patients in a personalized manner and centering the campaign around their needs can help create more trusting brand relationships and improve health outcomes as well as adherence to pharma products.
One example of an innovative campaign that centers the patient: Bayer's “The Gut Gap,” for MiraLAX, brought on Broad City stars Ilana Glazer and Abbi Jacobson to break down the stigma around having conversations about constipation and gut health for women.
In addition, there's an ever-growing need for data-driven marketing more than in the past. Vast amounts of data can be powerful in pharma marketing and can lead to hyper-personalized campaigns through the use of real-time data and predictive analytics.
Some of the ways data is being used in innovative ways include the integration of real-world evidence, patient-reported outcomes, micro-segmentation, and content optimization.
HCP personalization
But patients aren't the only ones to whom marketers need to personalize marketing campaigns. Marketers are increasingly personalizing their approach to health care professionals (HCPs) rather than treating them as a monolithic group. By tailoring their strategies to individual HCPs, marketers enhance the likelihood of capturing their attention and encouraging them to prescribe the marketed drugs. This shift is supported by a growing reliance on data-driven and digital methods to reach HCPs, moving away from traditional in-person sales representatives.
Social
Social media has also changed immensely since COVID-19, as social media behemoths like TikTok and YouTube (the leaders of short-form video) are becoming crucial for pharma marketers to tap into.
One way the industry is dipping its toes into innovative social media strategies is by adopting health care influencer marketing practices. Pharma marketers can become trusted voices on social media by partnering with health care creators, from TikTok doctors to patient influencers. This is a growing area of innovation, with many Marketing Teams now creating new “Influencer Marketing Teams” and positions that focus entirely on this aspect of social.
Omnichannel, AI, and others
The growth of omnichannel, as well as AI and machine learning, also continue to take the industry by storm. Finally, pharma marketers are increasingly paying attention to value-based care and a focus on health outcomes as goals of their campaigns.
Actionable strategies to spark creativity and fuel innovation
Pharma telehealth opens doors to more direct communication.
Insights & Trends • Marketing & Creative
While there's been plenty of innovation in the industry, it will still take some time for pharma marketers to be up to speed on all these strategies. It's crucial for marketing executives to think about how to spark creativity internally in order to drive this innovation further.
How can you internally foster creativity to drive innovation, while still complying with industry regulations and privacy standards? Here's an overview of actionable strategies that can help spur creativity—and ultimately lead your teams to create breakthrough marketing campaigns.
Cultivate a culture of creativity internally
With all the regulatory frameworks in place in pharma marketing—as well as the need to adhere to strict scientific standards—it may not always leave the most space for experimentation.
Still, it's important to allow your teams to experiment and brainstorm in a “safe space,” where team members can ideate freely. Allow for time and space to have open communication and dialogue between team members. By removing the notion of “failure” from these spaces, team members may feel more inspired to work on ideas outside of the box before honing them into campaigns.
Part of that involves challenging the team to set ambitious goals, even if they don't seem possible in the current health care and pharma landscape.
Companies can also invest in mentorship and pairing junior marketers with C-suite leaders to help break down silos in the organization and encourage organic collaborations.
Talent acquisition
A big part of fostering that internal creativity is bringing in the right talent. In recent years, talent acquisition in the pharma marketing world has made its way to being one of the top challenges executives frequently cite. From the ups and downs of the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent “Great Resignation” of 2022, pharma marketing executives have had to rethink how they attract talent and ultimately retain it.
Pharma marketing executives can optimize talent acquisition by working with experienced partners that specialize in pharma marketing talent, like Aquent Talent, to help tailor their approach.
They can also highlight that the pharma marketing industry of 2024 is no longer just pushing out the same traditional pharma ads of the past. Increasingly, there's potential for changing lives and health outcomes in pharma marketing work.
Leaders can also personalize candidate journeys during the recruitment process, tailoring messaging that can resonate with each candidate's goals and inspirations. They can also use data and analytics to analyze candidate preferences to find patterns that illuminate what is most likely to attract talent versus push them away, and leverage those insights to change their processes.
Continued investment in DEI and diversity across teams
A big part of successful talent acquisition is a continued push for DEI in the process, even as the pharma industry has gotten more quiet about DEI since its “reckoning” in 2020.
In 2024 and beyond, the pharma marketing industry will have to shift from its 2020 statements of commitment to tangible DEI strategies that ensure progress continues to be made, rather than letting the issue fall to the wayside. Pharma marketers can begin doing so by collaborating with strategic partners to help them reach their DEI goals, such as Aquent's Diversity Plus solution, for example.
DEI is also especially important when it comes to fueling personalized HCP and patient campaigns. Having team members that understand an underserved demographic allows for more flexible, creative, and accurate messaging that reaches them in the right ways.
One example of a recent campaign that was both innovative and driven by a deep understanding of a marginalized group is “The Name Confusion,” done by Republica Havas for The Fight Against Alzheimer's Association and Latin American soccer club Racing Club. The campaign sought to raise awareness about confusing people's names—a common early symptom of Alzheimer's—by swapping the jerseys and names of soccer players on game day to a crowd of 40,000 people. The audience's confusion, and subsequent explanation, helped raise awareness about the disease among Latinos, who have a higher risk of developing the disease than white people.
Meeting the patient and empathy mapping
More than ever before, the pharma marketer is relying on direct input and feedback from patients at the grassroots level to design campaigns. Developing a strategy for empathy mapping—or gaining understanding of patient journeys and unmet needs for various therapeutic areas—can help spur creativity and drive campaigns that make a tangible difference on patient outcomes.
One example is Eurofarma and Dentsu Creative's campaign, “Scrolling Therapy,” which involved designing a new digital app that allows people with Parkinson's to control their social media through facial expressions. Because people with Parkinson's slowly lose the ability to control muscles in their facial expressions, the tool allows them to practice movements to help regain smiling and frowning. The goal, the campaign quipped, was to “turn your scrolling habit into a life-changing routine.”
Post-campaign analysis
Learning from each creative brainstorming session is one thing, but learning from the post-campaign metrics brings a whole new level of enlightenment around the impact. Setting up post-campaign analysis on your teams to identify what worked and didn't work—and what can be changed for the better in the future—can help tailor some of these innovative approaches to become more effective.
Conclusion
The boom in transformative technologies is here to stay, which means it's all the more important to stay committed to developing an environment that fosters creativity and innovation in this highly regulated industry.
As pharma marketers take on the latest technologies, staying at the forefront of talent acquisition, DEI, and patient-tricity—as well as cultivating an internal culture that supports creativity—will help their teams drive home breakthrough campaigns.
