B2B Inspired
B2B Inspired, the podcast by BlueOcean - The B2B Agency, is all about exploring the ins, outs, ups and downs of B2B Marketing here in Aotearoa, New Zealand. We'll uncover emerging trends and thinking while sharing inspiring real-world stories from B2B Marketers here in New Zealand. With the goal of supporting New Zealand’s B2B Marketing community in becoming one of the best and brightest anywhere in the world, let’s roll up our sleeves and take on tomorrow together.
B2B Inspired
What Does it Take to Win? Lessons from Two Legends
🎙 Uncover the Secrets of Award-Winning B2B Marketing! 🎙
Tune in to the latest episode of We Do B2B as we chat with Bhavi Ogra and Julian Liew-Young from Fisher & Paykel Healthcare. Together, they unpack the strategic thinking and real-world tactics behind the Evora Full CPAP Face Mask launch, a campaign that not only revolutionised its market but also took home awards.
This episode, recorded live in Auckland, covers everything from aligning product development with marketing to building trust and training sales teams to become brand champions. For New Zealand’s B2B marketers, it’s a goldmine of insights into creating compelling campaigns, addressing scepticism, and proving product value in complex industries.
Don’t miss this chance to elevate your skills with insights from some of the best minds in B2B marketing!
Connect with Bhavi on Linkedin:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/bhavi-ogra-9b1aa648/
Connect with Julian on Linkedin:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/julian-liew-young-70314a12a/
For more B2B insights, ideas and opportunities, head to www.blueoceanagency.co.nz
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Let’s roll up our sleeves and take on tomorrow together.
Kia ora and welcome back to We Do B2B, the podcast by Blue Ocean, where we unpick the ins outs, ups and downs of B2B marketing here in Aotearoa, New Zealand. I'm your host, D ale Koerner, and I'm a B2B marketer like you. From emerging trends and thinking to inspiring real world stories from smart, good people here in New Zealand, we are here to help the New Zealand B2B marketing community to become one of the best and brightest anywhere in the world. If, like me, you're a B2B marketer looking for a place to connect, learn and be inspired, you have come to the right place. I'm joined on this episode by Bhavi Ogra and Julian Liew-Young from Fisher and Paykel Healthcare. This episode was recorded as a live conversation in front of an audience in Auckland where we dig into some of the fascinating details behind their successful launch of the Evora Full CPAP Face Mask. It's a broad ranging conversation that covers everything from aligning product development with marketing to mobilizing a sales force, to planning and executing a go-to-market plan. That won them countless awards at the Marketing Awards this year and last year. It's a fantastic conversation hosted live at the Marketing Association. So sit back, relax, grab a cup of tea if you will and enjoy.
Dale Koerner:I was sat last week with one of New Zealand's leading thinkers in marketing effectiveness and creativity and I asked him the question that I ask a lot of people Do you have a good example of B2B work that you think represents excellent marketing creativity and effectiveness? Now, the answer that I got back was one that I have heard I'm going to say close to a hundred times and fair enough, it's a good piece of work. The reference was the Jean-Claude Van Damme perfect split Volvo campaign. Now, look, it's a great piece of work, but it happened 10 years ago and it came out of Sweden and it got me thinking. With so much marketing and B2B creativity and great work in our country, why the fuck does no one say something from New Zealand? So that's really what tonight is all about. While we don't have the budget for Britain that our B2C counterparts have, we don't have the big billboard toting TVC creds that they do the work that comes out of the B2C counterparts have, we don't have the big billboard toting TVC creds that they do. The work that comes out of the B2B marketing community in New Zealand is world class and it deserves to be celebrated. So that's what we're here to do tonight.
Dale Koerner:So joining me from Fisher Paykel Healthcare are Bhavi Ogra and Julian Liew-Young and they will be taking us through their journey in launching the Evora Full CPAP mask. That's what we're here to talk about today. So it's a great case study. We're going to get right into the depths of how it came to market and what the thinking was that put it to market and why they won all the awards that they won last week, last two weeks at the marketing awards. Barbie, could you set the scene for us? What is sleep apnoea? How does it relate to Fisher and Paykel and what was the strategic backdrop for the Evora Full launch and campaign?
Bhavi Ogra:Yeah. So, as everyone can appreciate, it's a complex world, so I'm going to try and break it down and make it really simple for you to understand. Obstructive sleep apnoea is a disorder that affects around about a billion people worldwide, and it's a sleep disorder. So it happens when you're asleep at night, and basically what happens is when people are asleep, the airways either completely collapse or they partially collapse and that limits the airflow into the lungs. And then what happens is that there is almost like a signal that's sent to the brain to tell the patient hey, I'm not getting enough air into my system, you need to wake up. So the patient wakes up and they take this big old gasp, get some air into them, and then they go back off to sleep. Now, this occurrence can actually happen multiple times an hour. So you can imagine this person is not getting a very restful night's sleep. They're getting the disturbed sleep, but not only themselves, maybe even their bed partner. So the bed partner struggling the next day, tired, as well as the patient themselves. So the gold standard treatment for obstructive sleep apnoea is something called CPAP we love acronyms in our world and CPAP stands for continuous positive airway pressure. So this pressure is made in the device and it's delivered to the patient via this tube and the mask. So the mask you see on the image there is the Evora Full mask. It's a full face mask that covers the nose and the mask. So the mask you see on the image there is the Evora Full mask. It's a full face mask that covers the nose and the mouth and it delivers that pressurized air from the device into the lungs.
Bhavi Ogra:And in our CPAP therapy space at Fisher and Paykel Healthcare we like to focus on the mask. We've got this philosophy where we believe the mask matters most and it's our mission to enable great sleep with masks that people love. And it's that word love. That's, I think, the difficulty in the quest that we're trying to, you know, conquer. People don't wake up in the morning and go oh, today I'm going to go out there and buy a mask. It's typically a grudge purchase and the CPAP treatment is something that they use for the rest of their life. So it's something that you've really got this battle with constantly. You don't want to be constantly tethered to a device while you sleep. You want to try and get back to that natural sleep environment that you had before you had been diagnosed with sleep apnoea.
Bhavi Ogra:So why masks? It's part of the CPAP therapy system that we believe patients intimately connect with on a regular basis. So each night they wear it. Hopefully you and I sleep for roughly around seven to nine hours every night. I know some nights we get there, some nights we don't. We've got a bit of a deficit and we try and make up that, that deficit, in the weekends.
Bhavi Ogra:But our patients who are using these masks on their face it provides that seal and that pressure into their lungs. They're using that for, you know, seven to nine hours. So they're wearing it during the night they're tossing and turning their bed. Partner's experiencing it with them. So with CPAP, if you wear it it works. It's gold standard, like I said.
Bhavi Ogra:But it's a treatment, not a cure. So you've gotta use it for the rest of your lives, and so these patients wear it for during the night. But when they wake up in the morning you've got to do something with it wash it, clean it and get rid of all those oils that build up overnight. You know they've got to ensure that they put it somewhere so that it dries and that it's ready for use when they get back home from work or whatever they do during the day and put it on so they can have a nice restful sleep the next night. So it's something that you know, it's that treatment you want to try and have, something that is really easily integrated into your lifestyle, and we tried to come up with so many analogies that would be closely, that would closely relate to something like our world In terms of B2B.
Bhavi Ogra:Who is our customer? So our customer is someone that we call DME again another acronym Durable Medical Equipment Provider. These are customers primarily up in the US, sell things like braces, wheelchairs, beds, and then you throw in CPAP therapy. So it's kind of like a pharmacy, but without the medication. You've got all these big big tools that they offer. And in the healthcare industry I just kind of want to preface we're all about changing clinical practice. It takes a long time, which is why we have a really long adoption curve, and you'll kind of hear through the story tonight what that adoption curve looks like.
Bhavi Ogra:Our patients go through quite a process to getting diagnosed. You know you don't kind of go to the doctor and know that you've got obstructive sleep apnoea. Usually it's your bed partner that drags you into the GP and you go through a number of appointments. There might be some misdiagnoses along the way, and then finally the GP is like yep, okay, I think you need to go see a sleep specialist, and then there'll be some testing involved and of course, you don't sleep. You don't test for sleep apnoea during the day, it's something that happens at night. So you've got overnight testing and then, of course, the treatment of sleep ap comes into play and it's up to these durable medical equipment providers to ensure patients stay on the treatment plan for the long term. So adherence is key.
Bhavi Ogra:Trying to keep somebody on therapy is really key in our industry. So we were developing Evora Full, which is an undernose full face mask. Traditional masks fit over the nose, so they're quite big and bulky. A lot of the times we kind of hear people say, oh, it's like a Darth Vader mask, and so we already had others in the market who had introduced an under the nose full face mask. But our customers around the world told us that there were still some unmet needs that they weren't currently getting from the masks that were already launched in this category. So we knew we had to take the time to get it right if we really wanted to be successful in this category and really ensure that quality and performance that Fisher Paykel Healthcare is known for is really set.
Dale Koerner:So what I hear in that is just this unbelievably complex web of things that have to go right before that patient ends up with A knowing that they need the mask, but then also having access to one, buying one and being recommended one. Um, so if we dial that back a little bit from the strategic standpoint, in your camp, what was the direction that was set? What was, what were what? What triggered the journey here from from your side?
Bhavi Ogra:yeah, that's that's a really great question. Um, so, I guess in our business, uh, there's one of our fundamentals that we're kind of guided by, and that's really to embrace difficult challenges. We believe solving complex problems simply leads to innovation and leads to meeting unmet needs that our customers and our patients have in our market, and that's the differentiation that we need to have in our market and that's the differentiation that we need to bring to the market. And also, I guess, to be a leader in mask innovation, we constantly need to be thinking about what we can differentiate through products, but also the services that we offer. Nobody wants bulky masks.
Bhavi Ogra:People, like I said, refer to looking like Darth Vader and it's something that we wanted to reduce from previous models that were existing in this category. I think it's with everything. We're kind of in a world where we're going to this whole miniaturization and how things integrate into our lifestyle, but we couldn't take so much out there that it wasn't functional at the end of the day. And so what? What we kind of came to was we knew there was a market opportunity. We knew we had to take the time to get it right. There was still some unmet uh needs that we weren't addressing and we went back and forwards and back and forwards and it was a pretty rough journey before it became smooth. And that was all in the quest to ensure that patients could get a really great night's sleep. And it comes back to that mission constantly.
Dale Koerner:It's a really noble cause. I have to say. It's a wonderful thing to actually understand the heart and soul that goes into developing something like this. Now, Julian, the approach here hinged on one really, really deep insight and that was, as I understand it, that the whole market had very low trust in the category, whether that was, whether it was reps, whether it was clinicians. The whole concept of a full face under nose mask wasn't believed in. It wasn't trusted, and you hinged the campaign in the go to market around that. Now, how did you get to that insight?
Julian Liew-Young:yeah, the insight is really about scepticism, right, people didn't really trust this category, and I think it basically just comes down to the basic law of customer satisfaction what do people expect and what are they actually getting? What's that perceived performance? And, in terms of that expectation, people wanted a mask that was really small and comfortable and wasn't going to interfere with your sleep, but our research showed us that they weren't quite getting that. So how did we uncover that research? Well, first of all, in terms quite getting that. So how did we uncover that research? Well, first of all, in terms of getting that expectation.
Julian Liew-Young:We use a framework called jobs to be done. Has everybody heard of jobs to be done? Okay, if you're great, I get a few, a few fans out here. Um, basically, uh, it's this idea of trying to identify what your customers needs are and figuring out you know, if you provide this product to them, what problem in their life are they trying to solve? How will it make their life better? And the secret to this is well, a benefit to this is you can rank all these different needs and then figure out if I fit, if I fix different needs, how much more satisfied will that make my customers?
Julian Liew-Young:So this framework is really great to show us what do people actually want right there, and they and it showed that they wanted something Small and light and compact, but also high-performing. They wanted their cake and to be able to eat it too, but in terms of their expectations, you know, we really need to get out in the market and, being in little old New Zealand, unfortunately, we need to travel around the world and go to the US and Europe and Australia. It's a terrible life, but you know how many of you guys go out and visit your customers, how many would like to, and do more of it. Right, it's kind of really busy, but at the same time, you know there's just things that they say in their words that suddenly turn a light bulb on in your head and you and you fully understand exactly what they mean, and so it's our responsibility to figure out. Uh, you know, what did they want and were they getting it or not?
Julian Liew-Young:And Bhavi touched on this great idea about. You know difficult problems lead to opportunities and basically the expectation was here, but maybe the product performance was here, and somewhere in the middle there's a gap that we could come in and fill. So it's basically looking at those two things the expectation versus the performance and that's where the insight of scepticism came from. People wanted a mask, but then these things, but they weren't sure if the whole category could provide this, because previous entrants weren't working so well, according to them now I find it really interesting that the the driving insight there is based around the end user.
Dale Koerner:It's come from the patient's perspective, but there are a whole lot of links in the chain before you even get close to them, right, which are your B2B channels. So how did you approach this go-to-market, how did you approach the launch of this, recognizing that you had to align a whole lot of people on that B2b journey before you even got close to the patient?
Julian Liew-Young:yeah, that planning part is really a big part of what we try and do, at Fisher and Paykel healthcare. We take this framework of diagnosis strategy and tactics and that's it. That sounds like a mark ritson thing, I know I there's nothing original about me, really. I basically just rip off everyone smarter than me. But the fundamental part here is that you try and figure out what the problem is and once you know the problem, you know a strategy to approach that with and then you finally figure out the tactics to actually approach that.
Julian Liew-Young:I think as marketers, we see a problem and we jump to action and that's you know. We default to action. But sometimes we need to take a step back and figure out well, why is this problem there in the first place? So if scepticism is the problem, then trust and proof is the solution. So in everything that we did, we tried to offer that proof and that trust. So so when it came to our messaging, we had a tagline of performance made comfort this idea that we could do both of those things, and we knew that we really had to convince our stakeholders and our patients and our DMEs that we really took the time to get it right. We may not be the first, but hopefully we're the best here and we also knew that we needed to provide really unbiased sources of information and make it as transparent as possible. So that's the messaging side.
Julian Liew-Young:In terms of the product side, Bhavi said said, we really had to make sure that we got the product right, and I think this is where it's so crucial that our marketing teams and our product teams are really well aligned and as well as the whole company philosophy is aligned. I see some nods going on and sometimes, as marketers, product can be a part that we ignore, but product is one of the four Ps right, and it should be something that we really feed into as well. So we knew that we had to show people why it was so hard to create a mask like this Nerd discussion sidebar here. Making a mask that fits underneath the nose is a lot more complicated than one that fits over the nose, just because the individual geometries of all the different people is very different underneath your nose compared to over the top. So we had to make sure that we understood that product message.
Julian Liew-Young:Um, and in terms of our training, we also had to get our sales team on board. Um, who of you has a sales team who you have to communicate with you and get out there right. Um, our sales teams for us, are a fundamental part of who we are. They're like the external embodiments of our culture, and sales teams function on confidence. They need to sell what they know and we had to treat them as another customer group. We had to make sure that we marketed well to them so that they could take our message out there confidently into the world. And lastly, we knew we had to get our logistics right. You know, there's nothing worse than a great idea that's let down by poor execution right. So we had to make sure that all of our planning and all of our stock and all of our timings worked really well to create this great wave of momentum that would enable people to buy this product eventually. So that's sort of the planning that went behind all that.
Dale Koerner:It's a fantastic level of understanding and thinking that's been put into that, I have to say. So what then were the tactical pieces? What were the building blocks of the actual go-to-market tactical component?
Julian Liew-Young:Yeah, yeah. Well, in terms of our messaging and brand style, we talked about that performance made compact, and saying that we needed to provide that proof. So some of the proof points that we had was around our clinical trials. We test all these products and we had to get the stats out there and show people that this mask had 90 plus percent for performance, 90 plus percent for comfort, 90 plus percent for being easy to use, so really being objective about it rather than just saying, you know, trust me, because I said so. Right, we also created a design story video that gave people a behind-the-scenes look at how we made this mask and the stars of this. Unfortunately, we're not the sales marketing team above you and myself. They were the engineers and the clinical people who research this, and so that gave extra credibility to what we're saying, because we're actually giving people access to the ones who made this product.
Dale Koerner:I've watched that video and I have to say it gives a really good look under the hood of all of the things that went on in the development phase to get to this point. And one of the things that we talk about quite often is these three building blocks of trust making sure that you've got clarity of the value that you deliver, showcasing that the organization is united to deliver, and then making sure that you've got the proof that you've done it before you can do it again and what that. What that design journey video piece has done is really showed the alignment all the way through, from the research insights to how you then, you know, use carbon fiber here and design there, and it's a it's. It's a really solid exemplar of um showcasing that alignment piece yeah, thanks, I think that's what we wanted to get across.
Julian Liew-Young:You know, this um substantiation of why this mask worked and why ours was different. What were those individual little innovations that were unique to us, that no one else had?
Bhavi Ogra:I'm just going to add there. So you met. You said that the marketing people weren't the stars of the of the design story video. But I have to kind of preface. You know, we are the voice of the customer and it's really important for us to ensure that throughout the development journey that we're constantly feeding in what those patients are asking us for, ensuring that their unmet needs are catered throughout that journey so that when that product does come to market there's a really good product market fit and, let's be honest, things take a really long time to get to market. So what we're doing now is going to hopefully be out in the market in the next five to 10 years.
Dale Koerner:Don't drink your own Kool-Aid. Yeah, I love that approach of making sure that you are the voice of the customer and that interplay between the marketing insight from the customer camp and then feeding that back into product development. I think that rings just as true for software as a service as it does for the space that you guys operate in Totally, totally, and a lot of this, I think, can feel quite overwhelming to a lot of our different healthcare professionals.
Julian Liew-Young:You know Bhavi's got some great anecdotes around. You know how the market was feeling post-COVID coming out of this environment. So another thing that we tried to do was try and make all of our material as beautiful and attractive as possible. I mean, we're B2B but we're still humans, right, we still love to see beautiful things. So we wanted to make this as engaging and easy and attractive. And hopefully people who are tired from dealing with all these COVID issues sees this bright, shiny bauble over there and go, ooh, that's cool. What's this new mask? So we're trying to get their attention there.
Dale Koerner:I mean hats off for launching a mask off the back of COVID. I don't know about you, but I was sick of the things and there was obviously a timing piece there that had to fall into place and I imagine a fair amount of communication that had to happen to try and build a little bit more faith and confidence and not just another mask.
Bhavi Ogra:Yeah for sure. I mean, establishing ourselves in this kind of prickly category was something that we knew we needed to do, like we did with all of our previous products, did with all of our previous products. We also knew we had this really busy, overwhelmed healthcare industry in terms of the people and just the resources, the infrastructure that was out there supporting these patients throughout their COVID journeys. And we also knew we had to elevate the Fisher Paykel mask brand that existed in the market with this product that came through. And, of course, our ultimate goal is to provide a great night's sleep to the millions and millions of patients that we aim to give that gift through our products and services.
Dale Koerner:Now, you talked earlier on about jobs to be done and getting under the hood of what motivates and drives that patient base. But, recognising that, you said as well that your sales team are an internal customer. They're a vital link in that chain, as they are for all of us. How did you surface insights around what their pains were and what their gains were through, actually, you know, trying to take a product to market, and how did you then go about addressing them? Because, you said, trust was low, scepticism was there in the category, and trying to get a salesperson to sell something they don't believe in is like trying to push a car up a hill, right, how did you overcome that?
Julian Liew-Young:First of all, we talked to our sales team and our sales managers. We've got a really open dialogue with them and a really collaborative dialogue. I don't know how you guys feel and whether any of your organisations feel a bit combative sometimes between different departments. I'm happy to say that we don't really have that. We can rely on what they say and have a really open conversation, and so one of the things that we really try to do was ahead of our launch or we had a whole bunch of e-commerce and pre launch activity going on that I can share talk about later but we got all of our US sales reps together and had a couple of days of training at the national sales meeting and we got all of our or a bunch of engineers to go up there to be very transparent and provide answers to all their key prickly questions, and so they received this great training, really fell in love with the mask.
Julian Liew-Young:Then, as they went back home on the weekend, we had all of the launch material sent around to their house, so their samples, their posters, their brochures, all their launch material and then on that Monday we officially launched the product with email campaigns and a bunch of other activity, and so for them, you know, there was this really great groundswell of momentum because you know they just saw how great it was. They had a chance to ask all their questions. They believed in this product and now, come Monday, they could go out there, talk to all their customers with confidence, but also knowing that our marketing team was supporting them in market with great marketing to to try and open up doors and access for them there's a convenience factor in, but I also like the intentional striking while the iron is hot, you know, getting the sales team really, really on board, excited, and hey, guess what?
Dale Koerner:You can sell it for Monday and it's all at home, ready for you to go out and actually take to market. It's a really well coordinated piece of that. So you took a challenger product to a category that was unloved, right off the back of a very, very difficult time in the medical industry, and you won. So, Bhavi, take us through the performance. How did the thing go?
Bhavi Ogra:Yeah, so absolutely, look, I think we establish ourselves in that category. Evora Full Mask very quickly became the go-to mask in that category for our customers. We had unprecedented pre-launch demand with the first time these dealers calling our reps to say "'Hey, when are you coming in to in-services product for us'. And that very quickly made our reps lives so easy. You know they already had a cool plan. They could meet the customer's expectations and go around and you know, in service this fabulous product that people wanted before they had to go knocking on their doors can we just do a wee medical jargon buster there about what in servicing is?
Bhavi Ogra:yeah. So in servicing is when you go in and you demonstrate what your product is, how you fit it on patients, how to set it up for success, all the different types of models that are available and just really give them the ins and outs of that product.
Dale Koerner:Cool, thank you.
Bhavi Ogra:So from a US sales rep survey that we conducted our rep, so I'd love to give some objective data as well, with some of the softer stuff. 97% of our reps rated this launch better than previous launches and 79% of them said that the launch and the training really helped them to sell. So, again, it instilled that confidence in them to go out to their customers. 72% of them said that it helped them gain access to customers as well. And I think this is all that digital marketing that was driving that demand, that the hype was being created in the market, and this is certainly something that we've seen done well and we've kind of and this is certainly something that we've seen done well and we've kind of bought into other mask launches that we've done recently as well. So that's something that we've taken the success of that and really rolled it out through to other products. We wanted to grow the volume without cannibalising our previous full face masks in that category, and really ensure that we took that portfolio of masks along the journey with Evora Full and we could certainly see Evora Full pulling all of our other products through as well, so it really had gained that trusted brand that Fisher Paykel Healthcare masks were known for along that journey with the success of Evora Full.
Bhavi Ogra:Our home care division is made up of devices and systems used to treat sleep apnea, but also home respiratory support, and so this kind of home care group is made up of CPAPs, osa masks, flow generators, as well as interfaces and the year ending FY24 so March 31 this year we, the home care division, made up of 37% of the Fisher Paykel healthcare business, and there was a staggering 18% of revenue that came just from OSA, maas. So that was pretty phenomenal growth and, as I kind of explained earlier, we've got a really long adoption curve. This was two years after we launched into the US, and so you know the fruits of the labor. I guess paid off, you know, two years, but also ongoing as well. So that was really really awesome to see and, yeah, just ensuring that we could get the product out there, we could build our brand, you brand really be that trusted advisor.
Dale Koerner:With such a long adoption curve, because I think a lot of us will be familiar with long sales cycles and a deal taking 12 to 18 months to close how did you sustain that communication piece, the awareness piece, the consideration, throughout that duration, because a two-year adoption curve, like you said, it's a pretty long time yes, yeah, no, it is.
Bhavi Ogra:And so what do we do for? So it wasn't just the two years, you know. We started thinking about how we can better support our sales reps in the market. We ran various different campaigns. So we we kind of identified, you know, raising that awareness amongst healthcare professionals, those are the customers that we really wanted to build campaign. So we we kind of identified, you know, raising that awareness amongst healthcare professionals, those are the customers that we really wanted to build that trust with, raise the awareness that we were in this prickly category with a product that they could really be successful with. And so we ran a six-month campaign targeted just at healthcare professionals, and it was very much linkedin based. We had testimonials from other customers giving their reviews.
Dale Koerner:So kind of peer-to-peer education is something that we believe gets a lot of success in our industry as well yeah, I mean, we've touched on the medical industry ourselves a few times and, like you said, that sense of okay. Well, who are you working with? What are you using? What are you learning from? Definitely is a. I can see that being a big driver working with, what are you using? What are you learning from it? Definitely is a I can see that being a big driver. So let's ask the hindsight question. I'm gonna point this one at you, julian. It's been a fair journey. I'm sure I had its downs as well as its ups, and what would have been your biggest learnings from, from the? From the Evora full launch?
Julian Liew-Young:one of the things that worked really well was our digital campaigns and trying to generate pre-launch demand. So probably about three weeks before our launch, we put out a teaser video and it was all dark and mysterious oh, there's something cool coming along here, right? So it starts to get people's attention and starts to get a little bit of mystery and curiosity out there in the market. Then, two weeks before launch, we offered exclusive pre-launch access to our e-commerce dealers so only they could sell the product, and what that did was A it sort of acted like a free source of advertising to the market, because they're saying, well, I've got this great opportunity here and I can sell it. And they're doing a lot of that pre-launch demand generation for us.
Julian Liew-Young:But it also helped our bricks and mortar customers to see oh, there's something new there, what's happening? Can you come in and and and sell me this mask? I've seen it online. How come I don't have it either? Um, and then finally on uh, launch day, we've got that launch email. But All of that demand is being created so that our sales reps can go in and activate all the sales on that pre-launch demand that was generated. So probably that integration across different media was something that worked really well that we're going to use going forward, and I like that you speak about things like mystery and intrigue.
Dale Koerner:You're selling to healthcare professionals, but the fact that you've got those emotional drivers that actually still matter because, guess what, they're still humans um, good on you for leading into that. And and how about you, bubby? What was some of your takeaways?
Bhavi Ogra:so I'm going to bring it back to our people. So I think we've discussed tonight that. You know, fish and pike is all about innovation and coming up with, you know, differentiation through our products and services. Really, I think it's also about our marketing team and ensuring that. You know we were in COVID, we were in lockdown, I don't know.
Bhavi Ogra:Cast your minds back to that time where you're trying to do workshops online, you know brainstorming and you're trying to add your two cents worth. You know it was really a time where we tried really hard to make sure that our marketing teams could also try and get a really deep understanding, and that was challenging. You know we couldn't just jump on a plane and get to the market you know that's something that we do regularly with Julian and I to the market. You know that's something that we do regularly with Julian and I and the rest of our teams, which is, you know, a really cool part of the role. So we needed to get them invigorated, because it's not just about, you know, having innovative products and services that we provide to the market, but we needed the marketing to be up at that same level of products that are, you know, that are innovative, and I guess it was also ensuring that we brought the various different stakeholders along that journey.
Bhavi Ogra:You know we can't just expect marketing to have a seat at the table. You know we've got to, we've got to earn earn that respect and earn that, earn that seat. So it was all about having that constant check-in with the right stakeholders along that journey and making sure that what we were doing, you know it, resonated with them as well, and I always think you know people always add a diversity of thought at every stage of that process. So, yeah, I think it was certainly the challenge of getting everybody on board and you know we had this great idea and tactics in mind, but it was ensuring we took that senior executive and other stakeholders along that journey with us and any tips on doing that, on getting that sort of getting the buy-in, getting everyone socialized around the the plan that you're looking to put to market.
Dale Koerner:Um, how have you, how have you approached that and what's made it successful because obviously it's worked?
Julian Liew-Young:part of that is culture. Create an open culture. We can talk to people openly. You can share what's going right, what's not going right. Um, that's one thing. Probably thinking deeply so you really understand your strategy and what the problem is. I think a lot of senior management are probably more interested to know you know, are you going in the right direction? Rather than you, you know all the individual little details about whether your SEO keywords are right, you know. So, thinking deeply about this problem so that you can explain it to people why your solution is right. And once you get that buy-in, then people tend to trust you. So trust culture. Thinking deeply, I think culture, thinking deeply.
Bhavi Ogra:I think, and I guess it's also coming back to you know, making sure you, you know, test it amongst your audience and feed that back to your senior executives, because I think they need to know that you've also tested it amongst you know, your, your customers, your patients, so that you know you've done a bit of research behind the scenes. You're not just saying something because it may or may not have worked in the past.
Dale Koerner:I'm a firm believer that that access to the customer, whether it's through sales, whether it's through customer service, whether it's through your distribution channels I genuinely feel like that's one of the B2B marketer's superpowers the fact that we can actually get a customer in a room and have an engaged and invested conversation. Where they are giving feedback, they're sharing their opinions, you can actually have a conversation with them. That's something that we have almost as an unfair advantage over our BTC counterparts. Right, we could just hop on the phone and have those calls. So I think great to hear that you've brought that into your process and into the journey. We're gonna switch into Q&A mode. So the question, if I understand rightly there is how did you make sure that your distribution channels were aligned with what you were doing and how did they contribute to the effort?
Julian Liew-Young:You know that B2C marketing piece is something that the whole medical industry is growing into. You know how many of you guys have used Dr Google to figure out why you've got that rash, and you know if that is life-threatening or not, right? So we're all doing some more of that. And in the medical world, you can't just go around making any claims like this mask is going to save your life. You have to make sure that they say the right things.
Julian Liew-Young:So we do a few things. We write word descriptions, which is pre-approved content that we can give to them so they can throw it up on their website. It makes it super easy for them, right? Because to them, so they can throw it up on their website. It makes it super easy for them, right? Because they don't have to think about am I saying the right things? Um, so word description is one thing. We give them a suite of photography, videos, content to allow them to put that up on their website. We give them pre-designed templated emails. Also social media headlines and content that they can put up on their own social channels, and some of them do it better than others. But yeah, it's really making their job easier as well and trying to make sure that we all align to say the right thing what is an example of a challenge or a setback?
Dale Koerner:how did you overcome it and how could how can that apply to other b2b marketers?
Bhavi Ogra:I guess, when we launch our products. So us is kind of the big market for us and where you don't really want to learn new things. So we tend to launch our products into smaller markets. And you know, we we get a lot of product feedback. We're closer in terms of access to that market and the customers there as well, and so what we do is we use that as a kind of a rapid response learning process. We take on all the feedback and then we see what kind of changes we might need to make with product or even strategies that we deploy.
Bhavi Ogra:And by the time we get to the US, you know, we will have ironed out all of those kinks along the way. And so with Evora Full we did. We had an issue where the swivel at the bottom of the mass kept falling off, and so we, you know we had to really get behind that, explore it. You couldn't have that swivel falling off because then that would mean patients were not getting the therapy during the night, and so we made sure we really um, you know, got in there, got the design sorted and ensured before we got to the us and our bigger markets that that wasn't a problem anymore, you know how do you go about competitor analysis and research and how do you keep ahead of, uh, what they're doing and on the pulse of what's coming next from the competition set?
Bhavi Ogra:And I'm going to bring this back to our customers. We've got some really strong relationships with our customers and access to our customers. They're pretty honest and they'll tell us when things aren't working out what areas that are not being met. But also they've got those relationships with our reps, and our reps are our. You know they're our biggest marketing asset that we have in field. You know that all the strategies or the tactics and stuff we deploy is really to augment their success and so it's really key our reps have great relationships through them so that we can kind of hear through the grapevine. Back to fmp, um, in terms of what's kind of happening on the ground, um, there's also lots of, you know, social monitoring kind of uh technology that's out there, um, and so, yeah, we try and have the finger on the pulse from both aspects our reps but also, you know, what's kind of happening in the ether the origin story question how did you get in and what do you love?
Julian Liew-Young:I started working in market research, uh, for kantar and then tra, and so most of what I've been doing to some extent has been working with other businesses.
Julian Liew-Young:Um, I also worked for another appliance company, um, doing product management there. Um, one of the things that I do love about b2b is something that Dale talked about, saying that you can talk to a customer and get really great knowledge, like if you're selling potato chips, you talk to one person. That's gonna be like zero, zero, zero, point, zero, one percent of the population. You talk to one customer b2b. You could have 20% of the market view right there and then and you can actually develop those really strong relationships. I think b2b can also be hugely strategic as well really understanding the big challenges that people are facing and it's not always, you know, based around advertising and doing some great social promotion, but you can really get to the real crux of the problem and have a real ability to change your customer's life with really small actions or big actions, but you can work directly with them and have a lot ability to change your customer's life with really small actions or big actions, but you can work directly with them and have a lot of impact quite quickly.
Dale Koerner:So how early was marketing involved, and are you marketing led or product led?
Julian Liew-Young:Well, the textbook answer is you should be customer led and market led. Did I get that right, dale? Do I get a point for that? Everyone leads in a different way as well. You've all got your different areas that you contribute to, and you should be soliciting feedback from everyone from different areas, because they all provide a different perspective. But this is one area in which our department has grown into more.
Julian Liew-Young:Previously, the product people did their thing, then they handed over a final product and then we went off and marketed it.
Julian Liew-Young:But if we're supposed to be the voice of the customer, then we should be feeding in to the development and the insights about what do people actually want in a product, in a product, and so we've changed the structure of our team to have an upstream product management team and a downstream team that works on collateral messaging and sales enablement and sell-through.
Julian Liew-Young:That's where I work, but we also have another fine group of people who are working upstream to identify market opportunities, commercial insights, but also all that job speed done, research and feeding and saying, hey, you're designing the product this way, but actually people want something more easier to put on. It's really small, but it's really complicated. Can we go in a different direction. So marketing is getting more and more, uh, involved in the product um, in the product direction um, and in our sales team. I think sales and marketing usually have quite a good tight fit there, um, and so we've always been somewhat, you know, bound at the hip in all of our activities, um and so, but, but we often do a lot of training and ongoing education with them as well. We're also doing campaigns to try and make their job easier. They're also researching the market and providing feedback to us. So hopefully it's quite symbiotic and we're all in each other's business.
Dale Koerner:Thank you so much, both of you. It's been a really, really engaging conversation. I've certainly really really enjoyed it, taken a lot out of it. And as a final thought from me, just referring back to that intro piece around, when someone asks you what is B2B done? Well, I hope that this evening has given us an opportunity to not talk about Jean-Claude Van Damme, but to actually talk about the good work Bhavi and Julian and the team at Fisher Paykel Healthcare. So a round of applause for our guests, thank you. That's that. Thanks for listening to.
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