Bold | Breaking the Static in Life Science Creativity

In this SCORRCAST episode, Elizabeth Chabe of High Touch Group shares how life science brands can break free from the creative 'safe zone.' Learn how constraint drives innovation, why bold design matters, and how to turn strategy into standout storytelling.

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Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of the SCORR cast. I am your host, Alec McChesney, and I am very excited for today's episode. Before I even get into that, I just have to say I'm recording this a week or so after bio. This is coming out about three weeks post bio, and even post dia. And there was a lot of optimism on the show floor at bio. I've had a lot of outreach in the last couple of days about, you know, the industry as a whole, what we're seeing from a trends perspective, and then certainly, how does marketing play a role in that? And I know I have gone on a handful of tangents, and I might go on a tangent today as part of this podcast episode about the value proposition, about the big idea, about being able to have a clear story as part of your marketing. And so if you were at bio or you didn't end up attending the show in Boston and want to connect on the show, please reach out. I'd be happy to have that conversation. It seems like that's a show that continues to grow, and had a really nice performance in 2024 and certainly another great performance in 2025 with that being said, I am so excited for today's episode, because I have essentially become kind of like the number one fan, I think, of today's guest, who is the author of the giants ladder. And Elizabeth, I'm gonna have you introduce yourself here in a second. But I just have to say, a a couple months back, I was going through and adding a whole bunch to my to be read list, and I added a couple of ABM books, and added a couple of sales books, and then I stumbled upon the Giants ladder. Bought it about two minutes later, and then read it about 15 minutes after I got it, and was instantly consumed with the topic that you were so passionate about, and really building this playbook for science, Innovation, Science marketing, and then being able to tell this story, and then I've listened to you on a handful of podcasts, and just the way that you speak about the clarity that's needed from a Marketing and positioning and messaging standpoint, and the impact that that's going to have on your marketing. Frankly, it fires me up and has me ready to run through a brick wall. And I know that anybody that's listening to the SCORR cast and has been listening for the last year, this is what they are most interested in, as well, is how do we market really complex topics within the life sciences, and how do we do that in a way that can be effective to the shareholders, but also effective to the target audience? So thank you, Elizabeth for making time for us today. And before I start running and asking you questions, I'd love for you to just give a little background and introduction to yourself, and then we can jump in from there. Thanks, Alec, these are such nice words, and I'm incredibly flattered, and thanks so much for having me on the show. I'm excited to be here. I think probably, you know, I can start this in a lot of different ways, but I think the most succinct way to describe the work that I do and my team at high touch is that we build the strategies behind science that changes the world. So from biotech to space tech, our work involves taking the breakthroughs that others have developed that could shape the next century and making sure that they don't die in a pitch deck or a grant proposal. I run high touch group each day. And there we're really working towards engineering market dominance for serious science companies. We look for companies that have innovations that save lives, power cities, or have the potential to redefine industries. And we're here to make sure the world knows it buys it and builds on it. I love it. You said succinct, and we're going to talk about messaging and how to take that complex science and be able to boil it down. And I feel like you did just a fantastic job with high touch and your background. I am curious. I learned a little bit about this on a previous podcast of yours, and then a little bit within the Giants ladder. But can you talk a little bit on the background of the intersection of of science and marketing? I think it's a really interesting topic. And I know high touch group does a little bit outside of of the life sciences as well. So would love to hear that. But I think when I interview people on this show, it's so interesting hearing how you got your start within the life sciences. And a lot of people just kind of fell into it, and then realized, wow, there's a huge impact that can be made here. I want to stay in this industry. I want to continue to tell these stories. Is that kind of what happened with you? And can you walk us through that intersection between science and marketing here? Sure, so my certain. Sciences was at the Jackson Laboratory, which is a genetics organization that has housed the research of numerous Nobel laureates, Nobel Prize winners. They're doing such interesting work at their Bar Harbor campus in Connecticut and in Sacramento, California, and that was really my first foray into the life sciences. Prior to that, I worked primarily on the R and D program management side and the communication side of other types of science programs, specifically climate tech, some nano composites applied to structural applications and transportation, force protection, defense, aerospace, space tech and so on. So I worked closely with Office of Naval Research, NASA, Department of Transportation, Department of Energy, national labs across the country, like Sandia, PNL and so on. And so I had a lot of experience working on all of these completely different types of projects, basically from an R D perspective. And so often what I saw this was an academia by the way, I saw these incredible projects that could have turned into products die because they were too far along for additional research funding through the Office of Naval Research, for example, but they didn't really have a business plan or a funding model or any sort of commercialization strategy in place in order to spin out of academia and truly commercialize their technologies. So that was really the first time that I came face to face with, wow, so much stuff is getting patented, but those patents sit on the shelf at academic institutions and national labs around the country, around the world, really, because of that gap. So technology transfer offices exist, and I worked very closely with one, in particular at the University of Maine, to help translate some of these innovations into viable companies. Get them their first SBIR STTR funding, get their early stage funding, so maybe they're at the pre seed or the seed stage at this point, and get them out of the lab and into something, an incubator somewhere. So did that for a number of years, and loved it. Then I went to work at the Jackson Laboratory on strategic programs and helped launch the first commercial CRISPR program. This was essentially at the time. It was when there was still the IP battle going on. Who invented CRISPR? Who owned it? Right? So there was in a lot of people thought that CRISPR was just going to be a loss leader for mouse model or other in vivo model breeding services. And that was sort of what the old guard thought they were like, who, what pharma company is going to care if they can get these models sooner? And there were a couple of us who were saying, biotechs, biotechs. You know, this was 15 years ago, and biotechs were just sort of starting to be this really exciting thing that a lot of these older guard research institutions hadn't quite caught up yet. And so we had this really exciting initiative to launch this first CRISPR program commercially in the US and then later around the world. And that just brought even more clarity around this idea that it doesn't matter whether you are a scientist who was not trained on these commercialization aspects, and you might not even be thinking, oh, I need to do something with this IP nor does it matter if you are the top tier at a research organization or Research Institute. You could be lauded have all these Nobel laureates coming out and Nobel Prize winners coming out of your organization, but still not be able to successfully commercialize technology. And something clicked, really for me around that time, when it was just so clear that this was a massive problem. And so anyway, I had brought a T I had, I had had this team with me at the University of Maine, where I was doing all of this work there. I brought a good subset of that team over with me to the Jackson Laboratory, and then I brought them with me to high touch, and I said, Come on, guys, let's go. Let's, let's figure this out. And so we spent the last, yeah, I don't know, 12 years, 10 years, something like that, essentially working with a subset of companies that we typically hand pick. We're looking for that next gen technology and med tech, diagnostics, life sciences, kind of more broadly, as well as in a couple of other key areas, like next generation materials, robotics, space tech, and we've we help get them funded, we help get this IP commercialized, we help get them their first bits of traction, customers and so on, and then nurture them towards acquisition, or maybe they're at their series B or C at that stage. You know, after that point, they don't need us anymore. They should have their own internal team. Usually we help them build right but very often, you know, we're with them through Series B or big acquisition, or we work also with a lot of VCs and private equity on their portfolio management. So sometimes we're kind of in there a little longer now, but that's essentially what we do. I love it. And you talked about this in your in your initial intro to it, just in terms of the science that is at the table here. And then you have to have the story that that goes with it. And it seems like that for you is a really important piece of the puzzle. It's an important piece for us at SCORR, but something that I rant about all the time, which is, if you don't have a story that is, you know, effectively articulated in the market, you're going to lose out. And I think that one of the fun challenges that we have is that not everybody within the industry sees that as an important piece of the puzzle early on. And I, you know, I think the argument on our side is that it's a foundational element to how we strive forward. And so I think, for in your mind, when you start this out and you identify, you know, you said you hand pick a handful of these companies, how are you Where are you starting? Where do you start? In terms of, okay, we have this brilliant science, we have this innovation, we have this piece of the puzzle that that could make a really big impact, and we have to move forward. What are those absolute, you know, non negotiables, from an insight, from a planning perspective, to have that story line up with the science and then move into that commercial perspective, sure, sure. So do you know anything about how boy bands in the 90s were put together. There are so many questions I thought you were going to ask me there, and I I did not expect that, and I'm going to have to answer no. I think I might know, but like, right off the top of my head, now I'm nervous, and so I want you to just tell me, or I don't know if you have a bunch of like Gen Z listeners who are into k pop, but essentially, all of these bands, they're, they're commercial projects, right? So, and actually, when you think about any bands that is commercially famous, they are, they are businesses. You know, they are run like businesses. They have a brand. They have, you know, merch behind them. Every song is on brand, the productions on brands, right? So with these boy bands in the 90s, like Boys to Men and sing all these things, or k pop bands now, you know, music executives basically said, I see somebody with talent that's going to be the anchor star for this group of people who have come up through the ranks of, like some kids show on Disney or what have you, right? And that's essentially where I got the idea for, hey, there's all this IP on the shelf, and nobody's doing anything with it, so let's be the music executives putting together these k pop bands, right? So, so I'm going to put that kind of on the shelf for a minute, just because the way that we start with that story, when we're kind of matchmaking a little bit, is a little bit different, right? Because there we see the market, and we see we're seeking out IP that can solve a problem that we know can be commercialized with the right group of people, right? So that's one way of doing it more typically, and this is probably more aligned with a lot of agencies and, you know, internal marketing teams that are your listeners. You know you really have to have product market fit, yeah, and that can be difficult to determine the earlier a company or product is right. So if it's a very early stage company, or even a product that has sometimes gotten a lot of development in a large company without much validation, and you're nodding your head, so I know you've been through a couple of these. What happens is you might have an internal consensus on your team, this product solves a problem for somebody, I had this problem, therefore it'll solve a problem. But the reality is that very often you can ask a founder, have you spoken with any customers? And they're like, well, we don't have any customers yet. We're three years out. You know, don't worry about it. Well, right? But have you actually sat down and interviewed 10 people who would potentially buy your product, not friends, not advisors, and ask them what they're currently doing instead, what would make them switch? What would a 10x improvement actually look like? And from there you can you can start to see, okay, is this a founder I should be taking seriously, or is this a founder who has internally validated his or her own idea for a product and hasn't done this research, if they're willing to do the research. Great sometimes, though that and is that's kind of a red flag for us, and that's typically when we say, Okay, well, we'll refer you to somebody. Or here's a checklist you can use, but we're probably not the right match, but that's number one. So has what, what sort of validation has been done? And you see this often in large companies, we do a lot of work with. Strategics in the diagnostic space, and very often they're developing very expensive products, but they haven't actually said to clinicians, hey, how would this diagnosis sooner, faster, better, with more differentiation between strains or variants? Would that help you? Would that change standard of care? Would that change your next action for patient care? And very often, the answer is no. Very often, these things get developed even pretty far down R and D, without those basic questions being answered. So that validation. It doesn't need to be a $300,000 you know, product positioning market survey. It can be asking 10 viable customers a handful of questions for 15 minutes at a show. And if you, if that hasn't been done, that's very important, right? That basically validates, like, does this even make sense? And then you really get into crafting that product narrative, which I think is a little bit more aligned with your question. And one of the, one of the pushbacks we get a lot from scientists, initially, who are working with, we're often working with scientists, founders or scientific leads, maybe of commercial teams in these larger companies. They are under the impression that scientific storytelling in a marketing context is some level of dumbing it down. Right? I'm sure you see this, but it's really not about dumbing it down, right? It's about cons. It's about providing context for very specific audience segments. Because if you are selling to clinicians, for example, a diagnostic, they're really not your buyers. They might be using your product. You need to solve a problem for them. They might be advocating for your products. But there are 10 other people at that hospital or hospital system who need to be convinced. There's a payment model or reimbursement model that needs to be figured out. There are a lot of elements to that story that need to be figured out and then conceptualized, broken down into, in a in a language and a cultural context for it, for purchasing, for, you know, a blood management team at a hospital. You know, there are all of these different groups that might be important to be able to speak with. So, you know, the best narratives that I see in scientific marketing answers that. So what question, not in that dismissive way, but in that buyer focused way. Why does this matter to me right now? So it's the basics of good sales, right? It's the basics of good marketing. It's just applied to kind of complex products, right? Yeah, gosh, so much that I want to dive in on and nerd out. And we only are going to record for 45 minutes, so I have to pick and choose here. I think, just going back to the beginning here at the product market fit, one of my favorite, one of my favorite reads, is from April Dunford, just in terms of her build out of positioning and really being able to answer and ask that question, you know, if we didn't exist, what is the alternative? And I think that within this industry, more than than any any other industry that I had worked in prior to to joining about four and a half years ago, the ability to change takes time and and so being a little bit better or a little bit cheaper or a little bit different, does not move the needle. And so, like you said, you know, you don't have these customers right out of the gate. Okay, great. Well, let's go and let's go to a show and let's talk to 10 people. And I think that's something when we bring up our concept at SCORR, Voice of Customer, whether that, you know, is a lost opportunity, where or a current client or a prospective client, we're talking about a 10 minute phone call, anecdotal conversation. We are not talking about sending a mass email and running ads and, you know, a nine month affair. It is can we hear from, you know, seven really quality individuals that we know are at the right company that have the decision making prowess to be able to purchase what you are bringing to the table. And I think if you can't answer that, and I say this all the time, even for clients that are in the market right now, but are a little bit lost with their message, if you can't go through and have that conversation, or you couldn't, you know, identify that we're gonna have to take seven steps backwards. Because without that, nothing else that we're we're going to do without that position, nothing else that we're going to do from a marketing, from a messaging, from an execution standpoint, is going to be as effective as it could be. So I love, I love that you hit on on that before I even move forward to the next part, I want to make sure anything else that you would add to that piece of the puzzle with the product market fit and some of that narrative there, you know, I mean, I think that it's important that all of that gets, you know, it gets validated, it gets you start to use it, you start to have these conversations, and you're focusing in. On the specific influencers almost immediately in order to sort of hone and run messaging tests and that sort of thing. But I think it really is important for scientific founders or product leads to understand that, you know, we're not just writing about mechanisms and features. We're not, you know, dumbing down. We're contextualizing. And I think that that's really important, because, you know, so much of marketing, especially, like, Isn't people think, people out there in the world generally think that marketing is about like gloss, right? But everything you just said to me is, no, we're leading with strategy. We're asking good questions, and then we're applying those answers in a way that looks nice. Yeah, because we want to differentiate clients in the market. But it really isn't about just adding gloss over something that isn't going to work. It's about helping refine strategy, working hand in hand with these companies so well, said Alec, yeah, I love it. I have joked at length that I think that marketing needs to rebrand to sales support, or, you know, I really do if, if I use the words guy, you're the sales I know, I listen, I hear in this in this field, the word marketing often just gets looked at as it's, it's A nice to have at best, branding is even worse, in a lot of ways, in terms of, we don't really need that. We have the science, or we have that thought leader, or the CEO came from that organization, and we can compete on that and that alone. And I think that's where, you know, it's interesting, the the theory or the concept of, we're taking this really complex science and dumbing it down, it almost seems like there is this giant opening to do it right, because people either don't do it at all and they are way too scientific, they're super jargony, and they're suture they're they're super feature based, or we have The exact same seven word descriptor for 40 different companies, and, and, and they all do different things, but it's the end to end. It's the one stop shop I've I've ran on tangents about data driven lately, data driven insights has started to driven, drive me crazy, and they're all blue, right? Like, and they're all blue, they're all blue green, yes. And the font is the same, the imagery is the same. So how do you you know, without giving the secret sauce? And I am going to recommend anybody that's listening to this go read the giant slider, because there's a lot of the secret sauce in there. But what's the process in your mind to to get somebody not only to agree that, hey, we do need this, but then also, how do we find that nugget? What is that, that thing that we're going to pull out to be able to execute for that, that art of this storytelling here? Yeah, so just first on secret sauce. I give all secret sauce away, because, to be quite honest, none of us is as smart as all of us. That was, like, etched in the wall of the first I heard you say that on a recent podcast. I love that. Yeah. And so, you know, there are so many fish in the sea when it comes to clients that I think that if more marketing agencies, especially, and also, you know, these lead gen sales type agencies, you know, if we're all do, doing more to improve on the marketing efforts, then I think we'd be a lot further along than we are in terms of biotech. I don't think we'd see these big gap years in biotech funding and med tech funding like we're seeing now, like we saw in 2015 so anyway, so just a note there. I love that. Happy to talk business models all that. But, you know, I think that, I think that there are a lot of different ways that you have to sort of sell right what you're doing. I think the proof is in the pudding. If you can get that one campaign where maybe it was seen as a bit of a risk, because it's, you know, broke some traditions within a larger company in terms of marketing that can help. But I think it's also very important that agencies, especially because that's where I am. But I also did this when I was in house. You have to pick your clients carefully. It doesn't make a ton of sense. I mean, I get it. We all have to keep the lights on right. So sometimes, you know you take on a client because you know you feel like you have to for whatever reason. But I can tell you that those relationships don't work out. They just don't. You're looking for in an ideal world, somebody that your account manager, strategist, whoever can really vibe with because you're going to be in the trenches with them. If you can get a product manager at a company to really buy into the marketing strategy that you're developing for them, they're going to sell it up the chain. In for you or collaboratively with you, even better, because that one gets you brought into more projects in that organization, if it's a large one, but it also earns you and your organization more mutual trust, basically, even just within that one product line. So I think it's very important that agencies start saying no to clients. If somebody comes in and they're like, we just want a better mousetrap. Like, make us another ugly blue booth. Say no. I mean, I get it. We all have to keep the lights on like, I suck. So, you know, there are economic realities of everything, but I don't think that as marketers, we should settle for less than stellar, and we have for too long because, well, what happens if that clients that we've been pitching says, No, you know, the salesperson will get their commission, whatever, the team doesn't fill this gap in the schedule, whatever. But the alternative is that we're putting more junk out there, and I feel like especially for for agencies that want to operate in life sciences or any of these niche science areas, it's on all of our shoulders to make sure that we are doing our best work, especially now in a time when the US is seeing contraction in science funding, especially when venture markets are where they are for things like med tech and biotech, I think it's very, very important that we are picking winners and helping them win, as opposed to kind of helping these also ran companies just survive. It doesn't do anybody favors in the long run. You have surprised me twice thus far in the first 30 minutes. The first one was asking me about boys, boy bands in the 1990s and that was the second one. And I love that answer. And the reason that it fires me up and hits home right away is, you know, at SCORR, we work with companies that are pre revenue, and have three people and are trying to get help with their pitch decks to potential investors all the way up to the cdmo, that has 47 locations across the globe. And, you know,$500 million in revenue, in in in the year. And I get asked all the time, what's the through line? You know, how do you market towards that? How do you sell towards it? How do you work? And the thing that comes back to me over and over again is that they believe in marketing, they believe in storytelling, and it's really hard to, it's really hard to market towards that in terms of, you know, running a campaign on behalf of an agency, but that is a through line for all of the clients that that we work with that have positive outcomes. And, you know, I think of on the just the B to B side in general, Dave Gerhart, over at exit five, he runs, you know, a huge B to B marketing program for, you know, 2000 3000 different individuals. And they always talk about, life is way too short to work for a CEO who doesn't get marketing. And, you know, it's very similar in terms of, life is too short to work at an agency that works with companies who don't get marketing. And so it's a really interesting perspective. But when you think about it, I you know, one of the rants that I go on all the time is the connection between marketing and commercial and business development, sales and then operations. Because the story that the ops team has to be that they're telling, has to be the same as the sales, has to be the same as marketing and all the way through. And the only way you can do that is if you have buy in at the at the highest level of the organization throughout. So I love, I love that answer. Elizabeth, thank you. Anything you want to add to that? Yeah, I'm like that. Now you have me ready to go on, like a complete different tangent. So I want to get to add that. No, no, no, keep going. Keep going. These customers are great. Okay, so I do, I do want to talk a little bit about the, the ability to be creative. You said the gloss, and you said, we want it to look nice. And I think one of the things that we hear a lot of times is a company comes in and says they want, they want to be big and they want to be bold and they want to be different. And then when presented the opportunity to be big and bold and different, they choose the blue and the static and the same. And I think that there is this perception within the life sciences. Specifically, you know, as broad as it is, that being creative is really difficult, because this is serious work, and there is serious implications of the work that we do and the impact that can be made, which is completely true, but it could also look really good while we do it. It can look different. And so how do you think about that, from taking the value proposition and then being able to articulate it as part of a creative campaign, as part of this creative story that you are bringing? To the market. I love this question. So I think first of all, constraint breeds creativity. I don't think that creative team is creative when they're told, hey, it's get whatever you want, open book test, you just go for it. That doesn't usually get very good results, whether we're talking about a branding project or we're talking about a, you know, just a trade show booth, or we're talking about, you know, any particular asset or campaign as a whole. So I think that what works best, typically, is a very, very sharp, strategic brief. So let's say it's a new account, right? So you've got the account brief and fine. That's background. You've got some background information about who their customers are and what the products are like and that sort of thing. Then typically, at least at high touch, there's a strategy brief, and it's not necessarily marketing strategy, yet it's not here's the marketing plan and sort of where this campaign fits in. It's what is the business strategy that we're going to utilize to really sell this product. Let's say, you know, what's the, what's the payment, reimbursement model, what's the timeline for getting it to market? What are, you know, who are their competitors? What's the positioning, or, what are the positioning options, if we're really starting very base, very early stage, and we essentially are going to be crafting our initial creative based around that strategy brief. And this is just such an important it's where I spend a lot of my time, honestly, is doing doing deep strategy work. And I think that what that does is two things, it it gives the it gives the client a strategy that everybody's sort of agreeing to and they understand sort of the underlying, you know, you format it like it's a Harvard Business Review piece. It's very executive friendly, right? Yeah. But, you know, there's obviously a lot of work behind there in terms of market positioning, competitor analysis, so on. And what you're what you're doing is you're getting some buy in to the strategy before you've presented any visuals. And I think this is different from sort of that like Mad Men era ad agency type pitching that people in the general space, when they think of marketing, oh, that's what an agency does. They're going to pitch some amazing creative that somebody came up with. Really, that strategy brief is important that keeps everybody on the same page, and once they've agreed to that, that is, I think, more valuable to a creative team than even a brand's guide, right? Because what does it I mean? What does like a different shade of blue really inspire? But what does you know a very specific and narrow positioning statement, as well as you know, comps as well as you know, whatever, right? So then you you as the strategist paired with a creative lead in our agency, is how it works, and that's when we start kind of ideating around campaign itself and campaign strategy, or maybe we're kind of deep, diving into a particular asset or brand at this point, maybe, and that, I think those constraints giving the creative team a sandbox that is where the real creativity shines. And you know, maybe that sandbox is blue, one of my favorite clients that I work with a lot, and I work with them not because they're our largest client, not because they're but because they're my favorite, honestly, yeah, and their brand is blue. It's literally two shades of blue and, like an off white, like they just did a rebrand, and they're still, like, two shades of blue note and but you know what? They are so strategically minded, and when we are working on a stretch strategy brief, I work primarily with the Chief Commercial Officer and the chief operating officer there. You know, when we're aligned on a strategic brief, they don't even, they might have one comment on the creative, but they're, they're like, Fine, if you we buy into the strategy. If you're telling me this is the creative that aligns to that strategy. I trust you. I believe you. Let's try it. What's the pivot? If it doesn't work right, and if you don't have that trust, and if you don't have the baseline of strategy, I think it can be very difficult to sell creative, even if it's really good. So similar to IP dying on the shelf, I think I see a lot of really great creative get shelved, because very often artists designers aren't as great at selling the ideas that they're having because they don't necessarily have the right words. It's not how they communicate. They're not always business minded in the same way. And so even if you have a great creative director, it can be tough to sell creative without that strategy piece. So that would be my advice, yeah, and it's, it's fantastic advice in terms of the strategy, breeding the creative. And we've even started to just say it's, it's strategic creative, because without the strategy, I know that our team could go and create some really. Unique art and designs and brands. But if it is, if it doesn't have that strategy, it just becomes completely subjective, and you might like it you might not. And so, you know, we go through and one of the most important factors for us in identifying potential clients is, are you willing to go through that assess phase? Are you willing to go through those interviews and to be able to build that relationship and take the six weeks, or whatever it might be, in order to, like, invest that time and and get on the same page. We're gonna then walk through that strategy, brief together, and then we're walking hand in hand, and if we're walking hand in hand, the creative now, now we can actually get gage and judge it on Well, I actually like this a little bit more, or I like this piece a little bit differently, not looking at it and saying, Where did we where did we go? How did we get here? Type of approach, and so that is it's really important for for me, especially on the messaging side, because I think that's where, you know, I, as much as we talk about the color blue and a lot of the same imagery. For me, it's the messaging that really is going to be pulled through to all of the other tactics. It's going to be pulled through to your trade show, to potential speaking engagements, to those campaigns that you are running, and I know in the Giants ladder, and I've heard you talk a little bit about in terms of just the execution, and I'm going to ask you the really unfair question that I get asked all the time, which is, Alec, where should I invest my money to be the most successful in marketing? And I have to give the there's a good answer and a bad answer. And we're going to build a strategy, and we're going to build a plan how. How do you break that down from tactical execution and just kind of saying, Okay, now we have the brand, we have the story, and now we're going to go out there and we're going to do these seven or eight different things in the market to execute for marketing. Yeah, yeah. And again, I think that this is different, depending on the stage of the company and sort of how mature the leadership team is that you're working with, or whatever team you're working with is, but typically, you know, it is a hard question, but the answer really is, as you said, it's strategy first. It has to be, because, if you know, you we can test messaging, right? We can test taglines. We can test, you know, like campaign art, right? And we do, like, that's a different phase, right? But if you aren't aligned on strategy, if you're not aligned on core messaging principles, core brands and sort of how that brand is presented, you know, what are you going to actually execute in terms of tactics, right? Like, I can't just say, go to this trade show. You have to be there. It's the best one, you know. Like, that's just not ever going to be advice that anybody should be giving. There's this idea who Jason Cohen is, the guy who founded, he made WooCommerce, which is like an E commerce, WordPress thing, yeah. So he's, he's also a really prolific blogger, and I just love him, because he's very no nonsense, and he has this wonderful graphic. I'll send you the link after this, so you can put in the show notes if you want. But it's, it's essentially this, this chart where on the x axis you have talked, and on the y axis you have walked, and it's essentially in like this top quadrants, you are exaggerating, because you might say it, but you don't walk that walk as a company, right on, like, the next stage down, you can't do it. You can't walk the walk, and you never would say it, because you just would never say it as a salesperson, right? But then there's this, like, really sweet spots for trusted brands, for brands that really understand product market fit and marketing strategy, and everything that they do that the public sees or that their client base sees, falls within that quadrant. And it's this idea of you can, you can walk the walk for those customers in a world class way and it exactly aligns to your primary positioning. And that's really the sweet spot that we're always going for. That quadrant of the company can absolutely deliver on this in a world class way, and it aligns perfectly with their positioning. And it's very difficult to do that for any tactic or asset, unless you understand that strategy and everybody's aligned really clearly. So strategy is number one. In fact, if a client doesn't already come with some sort of pitch deck or like strategy document, that's number one. We do like a little mini sprint with them, essentially to get them there. So I would say that that's like the most important piece and then that. But honestly, in the life sciences, the number one client side expenditure outside of an agency retainer is probably going to be trade shows. And you know this, you just got back from shows. I just got back from shows. You know, before the. Who were talking about our crazy show schedule. And so really, I think that next piece is talking through that show schedule, because so much of a of marketing and Life Sciences is about driving around those shows like, Can we, can we isolate this product launch and do it at adlm? Can we, you know, do a Kol pre meet up at bio, or before bio, or whatever, right? And so that tends to be, like, the first big expenditure part of the marketing strategy that we're putting together, far more so than, you know, ad buys, which might be, you know, a tactic for, like, we do a lot of work in the defense industry, and, you know, there, it's a lot about media and ad buys and very niche publications, whereas life science a lot of trade shows spend, yeah, and I think then using those trade shows as pillars, like you were mentioning, for a Kol opportunity, or for, you know, piece of content that can come out of it, and being able to build around that. And I think, you know you said it as well, which is, it depends on where you're at as an organization. And a lot of times, I try to simplify this as much as possible to your audience. Has to know you first, like you second, and trust you third. And if they don't know who you are, then we have a brand awareness problem. So there's going to be some brand awareness things that are happening, and then as we move them through that funnel, that's really what we're looking at. And so love that answer. I've got one more question for you before we wrap up. We've only got a few minutes left here, and this question was not on the suggested outline, but I am curious on on your thoughts. What's the biggest hurdle that you see, just in general, life sciences and marketing, and that relationship very vague. I promise that I get to ask one bad podcast question every episode. And I'm on 60 episodes, and I've asked at least one bad podcast question every time. So this is going to be the, this is going to be the bad podcast question for this episode. What do you see as the biggest hurdle coming from inside the industry, for for scientists, for life science companies as it as it pertains to that relationship with marketing, yeah, you know, right now with federal funding for sciences, kind of across the board, but especially life sciences with cuts at any NIH and NSF, I think that is going to be a struggle. And kind of, likewise, what we're seeing kind of reverberating in private markets right now, I'll put my venture capital hat on for a moment, is sort of this reduction in VC spending in med tech, especially in a couple of core areas. And we see that in biotech as well, of course, and that gets more headlines, I think, than but yeah, both are really important. But when we look at kind of the venture model as a whole, and sort of all the money in private markets, venture and sort of what we see very often in these early stage startups, early stage companies. We're focused on venture and we're like, Oh no, venture markets contracting, or we're focused on, you know, federal funding, because that's going to affect how many of these companies can spin out of national labs and so on. But the reality is that there's a lot of money in the private markets, and one of the keys that marketing needs to be better at in order to really win, I think, both for their teams or as an agency, for their accounts, for their clients, is to really think strategically about the money. Where does the money come from? Because if the customers are broke, if the hospital systems are broke, they're not buying, you know, clinical diagnostics equipment. They're not buying, you know, they're going to put these big, you know, purchases off another year or two or three. They're certainly not looking at investing in your new, you know, hospital bed technology or whatever that you're trying to help a company sell, right? And so we have to be strategic advisors to senior level teams, and they're concerned about PNL, and we should be too. So it's not about trying to figure out the next best trade show or, you know, the next, you know, campaign or media buy for a company, or just, oh, if we were just in this one new outlet, more people would buy. It's not any of that. It really is business fundamentals and going back to them. And so what I try to urge anybody in marketing to do, and I do this both at high touch, but also, of course, when I'm talking on shows like this, is understand business strategy, understands where the money is going and where there is spend in the market, and help guide your accounts in those directions. It doesn't mean that it's always. Going to be the right fit. But if a cop, if a client, comes to you and says, Hey, nobody's going to buy our product in the US, because, you know, something just happened, right? Then help them look at other geographies. Help them look at, you know, an a non, an unregulated space, version of their products, perhaps, maybe it can work in the wellness sector, and they have a different market play, but essentially be the strategic advisor that can lead their commercial team, because that's what they typically need very rarely. I mean, AI can do so much, right if we're banking on being able to make nice looking collateral, and, you know, maybe coming up with a witty turn of phrase every now and then for a tagline. Well, that's not enough for us to keep our jobs once the AI revolution is in full swing, right? Not to mention, I really don't think it's what these companies need anyway. And then I think it's sort of, you mentioned marketing needing of rebrands. I think that marketing really is about selling to your points, but it's also about strategy. It's kind of knitting together the what can we sell, and how do we how do we help sell it right? And sometimes that means being strategic. Almost all the time, it means being a strategic advisor to C level teams, senior teams, as opposed to just kind of waiting for their request to come to you. If that makes sense, it absolutely does. I love that. I love that whole answer, and it reminds me, one of my favorite authors on the sales side is Anthony inorino, and he has a book called eat their lunch that talks about level one, level two, level three and level four partnership, and that level four partnership is where we start to be that strategic advisor, and you are that business partner. And I think one of the things that you know we talk a lot about is that revenue as a whole is a is a team game and marketing at whether that's in house or that's an agency, is responsible for that revenue growth as well, and that story is responsible for that revenue. And I think the more that we can associate marketing and branding with the commercial aspects, with being revenue drivers, rather than a spend that is very easily cut when budgets are in trouble, then we're going to be more successful. So I think that's that's fantastic. I The only other thing that I wanted to cover, which is here in the last minute or so here is just, where can people find you. I'm going to link and continue to hype up the Giants ladder and continue to promote that, and I will link it. But where can people find you shows what, how would you like them to reach out to you? I mean, I'm certainly going to be raving about this for a couple of weeks now, so if you want to give that final final close, and then I'll get you out of here. Elizabeth, yeah, sure. So you can find me probably LinkedIn. I'm not really on social media, because I just not. I know that's like a bad marketing thing to do, but you can find me on LinkedIn. If I'm anywhere, it's probably going to be on LinkedIn. I'm also elizabethshop.com I've got a team over there helping with book stuff and high touch group.com you can also, if you are a startup founder, if you are a students in the sciences and you have lost funding or you don't have funding, email inquiries@elizabethshop.com happy to send you a free PDF of the book. Somebody over there will get one back to you. And yeah, read the book if you are early stage, before you hire, before you go talk to ALEC, or before you come talk to my team, read the book or something like it, because it's really important that you get some of these basic questions answered. And if you do need guidance, there are lots of really great niche science agencies out there who can support you. So hope you guys get in touch if you have any questions. I love it well. Elizabeth, this was as as good as I expected it to be, if not better. I was looking forward to this. And again, thank you so much for taking time out of your day. And I know everybody that's listening to this just got a ton of value out of it. So if you did listen to it, please leave the SCORR cast a five star review wherever you are listening, whether you are on Spotify, YouTube, wherever you get your podcast, because somehow, someway, we are on the 60th episode of the SCORR cast, and that's pretty cool. Over the last year, we've had to do a lot of work and interview a lot of fantastic minds just like Elizabeth. So that being said, thank you so much Elizabeth and thank you to everybody for listening today's episode of the SCORR. Cast as always, thank you for tuning in to this episode of the SCORR cast brought to you by SCORR Marketing. We appreciate your time and hope you found this discussion insightful. Don't forget to subscribe and join us for our next episode. Until then, remember, marketing is supposed to be fun.