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The PharmaBrands Podcast
Dorothy Czylyski, Partner & President NFA Health Shares Her Perspective on Strategy, Craft and What's Key for 2025
Leading a health-focused agency has never been easy, but the current competitive landscape, technology shifts and an evolving market makes it more complicated than ever. In today's episode Dorothy shares her perspective on leading NFA Health, being a part of a larger agency network, the importance of strategy and insights and what she's thinking about as we head into 2025.
Our Producer is Darryl Webster with Chess Originals.
Sure, so I'm Dorothy Chilisky, the president and partner at no Fixed Address. Health.
Speaker 2:Awesome Dorothy. Thank you for joining us on this beautiful but chilly January day.
Speaker 1:Thank you, I've been looking forward to chatting with you.
Speaker 2:I want to start off with a really big thank you, because you and NFA Health have been an awesome partner. You brought us this season of the podcast, but you've been involved in every event that we've done. You've been super supportive and have been a great sounding board. So I want to start with a big thank you.
Speaker 1:No problem, our pleasure and happy to be involved. Certainly, what you're doing, neil, is very relevant to what we do and the pharma industry here in Canada, so it just makes sense.
Speaker 2:Let's start with NFA Health and talk to me a bit about NFA Health position, NFA Health in the kind of maybe agency framework and bring us up to speed on what the agency is all about.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's a big question. I feel like I can talk for an hour, but you've probably got lots of time.
Speaker 1:Well, I think, to give context into who we are and no Fixed Address Health and why we're even called this name, no Fixed Address Health we're part of no Fixed Address Inc, which is a consumer agency here in Toronto, and that's been around a little bit longer than us. It started in 2016. A private, independent company that was founded by Dave LaFond and Serge Rancourt. They were in the consumer space, working at agencies like Publicis, cassette, bbdo, and they opened the agency in 2016. So that's how it was born and how it was started, and I used to work at Publicis Health in the early 2000s, which is how I know Serge Rancourt. He was the CEO there at the time, and so I've been following his career. We certainly kept in touch, and when no Fixed Address Inc opened, he invited me to come in and see the agency talk about the agency, was interested in what I was doing. I have spent my entire career in the health space, working in health care agencies, so I came in and chatted with him. He, of course, was telling me all about this new consumer agency that was just born. It was probably two years in at the time already, and they were already close to about 100 people, so I thought, well, obviously, whatever you guys are doing is working. So I was very interested in what the philosophy was at the time, the kinds of clients they were working with, the kind of work that they were doing obviously not in the healthcare space, this was in consumer. But as we started chatting, a lot of the things in the philosophy that he told me, very much aligned with a lot of the things that I've been thinking about in terms of what the healthcare space in Canada needs At the time I was probably working in agencies like 15 years now, so you kind of evolve a thinking in terms of what's needed, what the gaps are. And that's when a bit of a light bulb went off in my head and I thought this thinking and this philosophy and approach that you guys have in the consumer space, what if we can take that into the healthcare space? That was relevant is some of the things that I was thinking about is that we needed to take a much more consumer approach into the healthcare and pharma space, the very insight first, strategy based, and again why that was important.
Speaker 1:In my experience working in agencies, it's very execution focused. We were asked by clients you know I need this thing thing and I need that thing and a lot of materials and right. We're often wondering why are we doing this right? Kind of coming back to the clients and saying, like, what's the what's the strategy or what's the insight that is driving the need for this particular initiative, tool, material, whatever it was? And so that philosophy very much appealed to me. It was aligned with what I thought was needed at the time in the healthcare space, and this was a conversation I was having with Surgeon late 2018. I think he got excited too, because he said you know, sure, that sounds great, let's open this up into the healthcare space. And that's kind of how it started. Literally, he handed me a laptop and said let's see what happens.
Speaker 2:And one of the questions that I had in my mind coming into this conversation was around NFA health as part of a larger ecosystem, because kind of, one of these things is not like the other one. When you've got a health agency and a consumer agency or multiple consumer agencies in the network, how do you connect? Or do you connect with NFA proper, share resources and maybe where is that an accelerant and where have you had moments of okay, I need to take a step back and really bring those folks who aren't in health along a little bit so that they get it. Help me understand your place in that whole ecosystem.
Speaker 1:Great question. Well, first thing, I think what I did here with health is not new. So this does exist in the agency space and I'm sure you're familiar as well. We I'm going to give some examples we have ogilvy, we have ogilvy health, we have, you know, agencies like fcb, big consumer, but then there's fcb health, there are other other fuse, and then there's fuse health, like. There's many examples.
Speaker 1:So, again, I was not the first to do this, I was aware of these other examples and part of one of the reasons that I thought this could be possible. So you know, first thing, nothing in a way earth shattering done before, but what I did know and just knowing the industry and people who work, whether it's in the consumer agency or in the healthcare, that I think what you're alluding to, as well as very different, obviously very different clients, approaches, regulations, and those two entities don't really work together really ever. It's like we're, you know, this consumer agency, healthcare agency, but we're really separate. So that was one thing that I thought would be beneficial, because bringing the kind of consumer a little bit more into the healthcare space, which I thought was very important to do and certainly that's a very big part of our philosophy, and partnering with a consumer agency is exactly so that we could be part of a greater whole and share ideas and share resources, because the consumer world does things you know, often very differently, I would say. In terms of marketing, they're quite a bit ahead of the initiatives and materials, digital initiatives that they do, and what we have been doing and have always tried to do is to bring those two things together.
Speaker 1:And also because NFA, we're all in the same space Queen and Broadview in downtown Toronto, we're all sharing the same space. It's same floor. Even it's easy to have that cross collaboration with the different agency folks. So, whereas, yes, we have the understanding of the healthcare space, understanding of the pharmaceutical industry, we bring people in from the consumer space, whether it's digital or strategists, creatives, people like that, just to have different thinking and a different kind of expertise. That, then, we have found, enriches a lot of what we have been able to do.
Speaker 2:Which I think is unique One, the sort of co-location of the different divisions or branches. Proximity, I think, is really important. You mentioned getting signals from outside of health. I think that that's incredibly important and more important today than it's ever been. And some of those other agencies that you mentioned that have mainline agency with kind of health tacked on, they often operate very much in isolation from the rest of the agency and some of the ones on those lists when they're US-based you also have a complicating factor of you're a bit isolated. Then you're also isolated in Canada and there's a tension there, I think, of where's the revenue going to get recognized, who manages the clients, et cetera, et cetera. So the fact that you're Canadian-based, you're co-located, and from the get-go there was a philosophy of let's make sure that these two things aren't connected in name only feels like you were coming from a different starting point than other agency organizations that have kind of a similar structure.
Speaker 1:Exactly, and it has certainly helped us because we've learned from each other right Some initiatives or even ideas that we've had. We would or often you see, like what's no Fixed Address Inc. Doing for some consumer clients, and you kind of take those ideas and think, oh hey, that's really cool, could we do that in the healthcare space? And then several examples where we look to. You know, here's something you've done in the consumer space, let's bring it together. Here's things we can and can't do in the healthcare or pharmaceutical space. How can we bring it together to make it work?
Speaker 2:Yeah, a version of it. Right, often you can't do a straight lift of. This is a program for Kentucky Fried Chicken and now it's going to work for Wagovi. Right, they don't necessarily transfer, but the spirit of consumer campaigns can live in healthcare campaigns and not just DTC campaigns. Can you give an example of something, if you've got something kind of top of mind, where you guys were inspired or informed by something the rest of the agency was doing?
Speaker 1:Or the other way around. We had an idea we were launching a drug in multiple myeloma right so complicated space oncology, right so complicated space oncology and an idea that we had after participating in meetings with physicians, advisory boards which is something that you know a health care agency would typically do of a guide to help these hematology oncologists know how to integrate this new drug intoa treatment algorithm, which, in multiple myeloma, is very complex. There's over 20 different drug combinations that can be used, and what we discovered when meeting with physicians is physicians in different provinces were doing completely different things. Even within a province, different hospitals had different protocols and were doing different things. So, knowing that it was really difficult to then, you know, let's say, put out a piece of material that say you know, use this drug in this way. Well, great, it might apply to this hospital or this physician, but then it doesn't work for anybody else.
Speaker 2:No, and this hospital, this physician in this province only Exactly so.
Speaker 1:Could you know what could we do that would apply to everybody, right? Some something that that would, you know, in a way, be a good investment too for the client? Um had an idea to come up with a guide that was digital, and the idea was, when you go and book a vacation on Expedia, you log on to, you know Expediaca, and you're like I want to go to an all-inclusive resort in the Caribbean from this date and it has to be four star and it has to have a casino, whatever right it allows you to make those choices. Then Expedia will spit out for you here are the resorts that match your criteria.
Speaker 1:And we thought could we do that in multiple myeloma, like, could we make something like this for physicians? That would be this kind of guide. We've never done anything like this before and, in my experience too, haven't built anything like this before. But went to the no Fixed Address Inc digital team and they have digital and dev and UX people and kind of presented this idea and they looked at us and said, yeah, that's no problem, it's not hard, really, yeah.
Speaker 2:Compared to some of the other stuff we've done for our consumer clients.
Speaker 1:Exactly. Well, there's a great example of. So we sat together, brainstormed together what that would look like and built it so and obviously different way, that we had to do it in the healthcare space. We got together a group of physicians because you know what would those options be? We can't just make those up, we're not doctors ourselves, so we needed guidance from them would select this is the type of patient with multiple myeloma that I have in front of me, with all of the different criteria they're maybe young, old or eligible for transplant, not eligible for transplant, they have cardiovascular risk factor, they don't have cardiovascular risk factor, whatever those were. We obviously had to define that and then they would select.
Speaker 1:So it was a digital tool. They would select on the left and on the right. The algorithm that we built as well, also with no Fixed Address Inc. Would then spit out options for what was most relevant or recommended treatment for that particular patient and maybe you know worthwhile to consider, not worthwhile to consider, et cetera. And then we built in the kind of clinical data that would support what the decision is. That also within the tool, the physician could click on, read and have that information. And it was very successful read and have that information, and it was very successful and this tool has been running. I mean, it's been open to Canadian hemonts for over three years now. We built it in such a way that you can keep adding clinical information and keep adding, you know, other options or changing options, depending on you know market conditions, and so that was a really neat tool and very successful, very valuable for the doctors.
Speaker 2:So let's go back. I started with NFA, but let's talk, dorothy, a little bit. Obviously, when you walked into Serge's office and started chatting, that wasn't your first conversation in the industry. Talk a little bit about what you were up to before you started NFA. What did you do before you took over and led this business?
Speaker 1:So I studied pharmacology and really, really loved that discipline. So pharmacology is not pharmacy. It often gets confused with that. So I was never taught how to dispense drugs. I never went to pharmacy school.
Speaker 1:But I have a pharmacology degree from U of T and that's when you learn about, you know all the various types of drugs and the diseases and why. You know drugs work for certain diseases or how they work, what the mechanisms are, etc. Etc. So that is my, that is my degree and I loved it so much that I did a master's in that. So I have a master's of science in pharmacology and I would say that's what brought me into the space. And because it was pharmacology and I was very familiar with the pharmaceutical industry obviously that's where the drugs were coming from and that's I set my sights on that I thought I'll go work for a pharmaceutical company. Also, at the time when I was a student that's all I knew. To tell you the truth I had no idea that something like a agency or a healthcare agency even existed. It's not something they tell us. And so I explored looking into working for a pharmaceutical company and I wanted to get into marketing right away. Um, right after, with my master's, I thought I'm going to be a marketer and market these products. Well, can't really do that coming out of school. It's not really an entry-level position. So I was offered to be a sales rep as an entry-level position and it is not something that I imagined for myself and I didn't really understand it in terms of what I would be doing, you know, driving in a car and seeing a doctor and trying to sell drugs, that with a bag. That's how I saw it. It's funny because now, looking back, I think it would have been. It would have been an excellent starting position for me and I totally, if I could go back, I think I would have taken it. I would have done it because it teaches you so much. I just didn't know enough about it at the time and didn't imagine myself in a sales role. So I thought, wow, well, that door is closed to me in a way to get into the pharmaceutical industry.
Speaker 1:And then kind of other things in pharma didn't really interest me as much. There was the clinical side, there was the regulatory side, which, again, I didn't know that much about. I was mostly interested in marketing. And then I came across a friend of mine who was doing some work with pharmaceutical companies. She was actually running advisory boards for them, so I connected with her. She put me in touch with a recruiter who presented an option of working for a healthcare agency. I remember no idea who it was, what they do, how they partner with pharmaceutical companies, but I decided to give it a shot and go for an interview, which I remember at the time was three hours long. Oh, wow, Okay, I think they carted me around.
Speaker 1:I talked to so many different people within that healthcare agency and it just it sounded amazing, really interesting in terms of that. I would have the opportunity to work with different pharmaceutical companies and therefore in different therapeutic areas, with different brands, producing materials right like writing things and participating in meetings. Obviously it was a junior position. The role at the time was a medical writer. That's how I started. Okay, so I had a master's of science, so I understood the science, I could read a paper, I can get my thoughts down. But because I was interested in marketing and also really good in like English and creative, I thought, you know, that was a great way to bring it together. And so they hired me as a medical writer in a healthcare agency and I was working with US pharma companies at the time, developing materials, writing things like patient brochures and case reports, and attending conferences and advisory board meetings and I ate it up. I absolutely loved it.
Speaker 2:I was going to say that sounds like a really great way to enter the industry If you're interested in marketing and you have the kind of background that you did probably a more exciting way I know you mentioned hey, if I could go back maybe I would have taken that rep role. But being a medical writer is a really interesting starting point into the industry because you also then get to see probably lots of different projects and you're in this kind of central sort of position across a whole bunch of different projects and brands.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, and I really like that exposure to be able to work across different brands and different kinds of projects and attend meetings and attend conferences. So I think that gave me really good exposure to the industry as a whole, but also to what a healthcare agency does and how a healthcare agency can support marketing within a pharmaceutical company.
Speaker 2:And then you obviously moved on from medical writer. Where did you go from there? How did you end up in a leadership position?
Speaker 1:Great question and I would answer that. That is probably the craziest part of my story, so, happy to tell it, I was a medical writer, and, you know, at different levels, over probably the first like seven years. So I was in that first agency five years. Then I went to another agency actually where I met search analysis. Um, it was medicus, life brands at the time that was under analysis. So I was at medicus and went there now as like a associate director of clinical communication, something like that at the time, but already already, you know, have five or six years of experience, and so I did that, starting off with Medicus and Publicis. But so this was like mid late 2000s, about late 2000s, and I was the only person at the agency who had a science background.
Speaker 2:Wow.
Speaker 1:Which now I think we see like wow, that's wild because lots of people is, but it was not common back then.
Speaker 2:So you were for sure, like the resident expert.
Speaker 1:Exactly, and that's the key. So, even though I was writing, I'd be brought in by other teams, other account directors, or when we were doing, you know, new business presentations, things like that. I'd be brought in as the resident expert to. You know, can you teach us about this brand, can you tell us about this therapeutic area, like, how does this work? Or can you talk to this doctor, because you know you will probably understand what they're saying back to you, you know? So I did a lot of. I did a lot of that in my time when I was working at Medicus and so, you know, really enjoyed that. But then also, because of that, got exposure to working directly with clients, because as a medical writer you don't really, you know, have client interactions.
Speaker 2:No, no, no, or they're fairly focused and quite tightly controlled by the account person.
Speaker 1:Exactly Right, you're not the account person, you're not. But being kind of that resident expert did give me exposure because then they started bringing me to meetings or they would bring me to like a new business pitch where you know I would present here's our knowledge of the therapeutic area and etc. And that gave me a flavor for that client interaction and the conversations that are happening between clients and the account team, let's say, or, you know, the agency team. So started thinking I thought, oh, maybe maybe I can do that. You know, maybe maybe I could be the person who can have those conversations. But obviously I didn't have the experience I was a medical writer. But I did open up that idea a little bit to the managing director at the time seemed a bit radical and wild because it's just not the path that you know I came up through.
Speaker 1:And then a funny thing happened and it's again an example of being in the right place at the right time. One of an account director at Medicus resigned. So there was now an opening and the managing director, instead of going to find a new person to fill the role, instead of going to find a new person to fill the role, walked into my office and let me know and said would you like to take this role, would you like to be an account director? I thought, wow, you know I would. I would love that. That's amazing. What a great opportunity.
Speaker 1:And that's how it happened. I became an account director, you know, overnight, from being a medical writer obviously having now, you know, probably seven years of experience, I think, at the time working in an agency, but again did not come up through the ranks of being an account person. I just materialized into an account director and that was a great role for me. It was, you know, yet again something that I really enjoyed and flourished in. Kind of took the bull by the horns and had a team all of a sudden and having conversations with clients and started working with them and was really successful in that. So kind of started as an account director because of that and moved on from there.
Speaker 2:Kind of started as an account director because of that and moved on from there. In what ways did that make you a different type of an account person, given where you came up from? Because most of the account people that I've known in my career did not start off as craft people. Right, if I think of writing as a craft, usually someone who is focused on a craft will become more focused on that craft or more senior in that craft and then manage folks in a department in that craft. They typically don't jump over into the account role, so usually account folks are more generalists and don't have a specialist background or business-minded people. Yeah, and so to be an account person who also has seven years of writing under their belt and now in your role as president and partner, having spent a bunch of time with your fingers on the keyboard in a very different way, what has that done for your perspective? How has it changed your perspective compared to maybe some folks who just never had that time focused specifically on a craft in the healthcare space?
Speaker 1:I think because it gave me a really good understanding of the space, right Like I knew exactly. You know what I was working on, what we were doing. I understood the brand, I understood the therapeutic area. I could you know if we were, if a creative person was doing we were making an ad or writing a patient brochure, like that could all as an account person of course, you review those things before it goes to a client.
Speaker 1:So, because I had the experience creating that thing that then was going to the client, of course, all of a sudden now I'm not creating those materials, but I'm looking at them, I'm reviewing them, I'm writing the brief for you know what needs to be done. So because, again, I had that experience, I understood very well what the requirement was. You know what we needed to say, again, based on the data, maybe that this brand had, or I just had that entire context where I think, yes to your point, if you don't have, maybe, a science background, you know you need to pick that up and you need to learn it. If you didn't have experience working in the craft, then I think you wouldn't have the same context and, of course, clients loved it and I think it was also helped me part of that success because I could speak their language.
Speaker 2:Oh for sure, In those early days was it hard not to rewrite the copy that came across your desk when you're an account director.
Speaker 1:Well, you know, it's not rewriting but I think, as part of your role as an account director is to review, because you have to review then what's going to the client, right?
Speaker 1:Start with a brief here's what we're looking for. Then it goes to the team. The team then would come back to you and say, okay, you know some sort of an internal meeting review, et cetera. Here's what's going to go back to the client and it just, I think, also helped not to rewrite but provide really good feedback back to the team. And again, you know, we could have like a rich discussion, for you know, is it meeting the brief? Is it meeting what the client is looking for? Is it scientifically accurate? Do we have the right reference? Are we positioning it the right way? Right, it's like a good rich discussion just to be able to provide feedback so that what then I was sending back to the client was something that I knew they'd be happy with.
Speaker 2:I think a knowledgeable, conscientious account person can make a huge difference in a client's life because it just it helps to bring that anxiety level down. So if you're someone who in those days as an account director and now as president, can sit across from a client and really understand their business and they can feel like there's someone who gets it maybe not as much because you're not living the brand as much as they are, but someone who gets it that is hugely helpful, I think, in terms of kind of reducing the stress and increasing the connection between a client and an account person or client and an agency.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, because it allows you, as the account director, to guide right, Be a bit of that guide, have a back and forth with a client that you know is kind of on a similar level, and absolutely it's hugely valuable.
Speaker 2:I'm going to switch gears back to NFA Health, because we're talking about clients and agencies and it's exciting for an agency when there's a combination of we need to get this stuff done, but we also need to get it done, you know, right and strategically and a little bit differently. But sometimes it's a combination of we need to get this stuff done, but we also need to get it done right and strategically and a little bit differently. But sometimes it's a bit challenging to bring a client along when they come to the table with a. We need to get X done and X is sort of completing the deliverable as opposed to maybe a business objective or doing something a little bit differently maybe a business objective or doing something a little bit differently. How do you manage, or how does your team manage, to move clients along that kind of execution to strategy spectrum? How do you guys handle those conversations where you hear a request that is grounded in execution and you want to try to bring it up to be a bit more strategic?
Speaker 1:Perfect question. And now, maybe before I answer that, I'll bring it back a little bit to why insight-based and why the philosophy aligned Kind of my second aha moment. So from working in accounts I moved actually to a company called Fresh Squeezed Ideas, which is a market research company. They did market research in both healthcare, pharmaceuticals as well as consumer and never done anything like that before. So this was like four years before I started NFA Health. That was the big aha moment for me and I'll tell you why. So until then I was working in probably three different agencies at that time before I moved to fresh squeezed ideas, which again very execution focused.
Speaker 1:One thing that I could never really figure out when I was, you know, in at that time in agencies was, of course, clients would always come. They want new ideas, innovative thinking. They would say, you know, come to us with something different that we haven't done before, that wasn't in last year's brand plan, something innovative. That was always something clients, you know, challenge the agency teams to do, continue to do to this day, of course, right, they want new thinking, fresh thinking. Yeah's not easy, because ideas don't fall from the sky. We don't sit around a table and, oh, we think we should do this. Well, based on what? Because you did it before and it worked. So that was always something that I always had a hard time with. How do you come up with these amazing, innovative, new, different ideas? Honestly, it is something that I and the agencies I work with struggled with coming up with new thinking, and it's only until I went to Fresh Squeezed Ideas, where I spent four years in market research.
Speaker 1:I was eventually president there at Fresh Squeezedideas, which we don't do any execution At the company. We were doing only insight and strategies. So the strategists, you know, were the ones speaking to patients and speaking to doctors, learning about therapeutic areas, learning about brands, learning about you know their experiences with illness and you know their journeys and et cetera, et cetera. And then you know, we would package that together into you know, based on all of these either qualitative or quantitative interviews that we would do with patients or physicians, figure out what the need was in the market, what they're looking for, you know what they desire and then, of course, make then recommendation to the client. For you know, based on this, based on what we learned, based on what we heard, this is the need, or this is the requirement, or these are the gaps. I mean, you know what a market research debrief looks like, and then that was it right, that's what we would deliver, that was our deliverable, and then usually that our reports would go then to the agency to execute, right. So there is this really big divide and gap between insight strategy, gap execution. Why? Because you have completely different partners doing that work.
Speaker 1:What I found as well working at Fresh Squeezed Ideas is then those recommendations would go to the client, it would go to the agency and then we would see something out in the world that didn't really quite fit or wasn't really the recommendation or because, of course, the agency or the client. You know things change when you involve a new partner and I would always think, oh, I wish, because I came from that world, I wish we could just, we could just continue. And you know from that insight and strategy that we know so well because we just immersed ourselves in it for like three or four months at a time If we can just keep going and and execute, or, you know, action on those recommendations. And of course we were not an agency, we did not have those capabilities to be able to create campaigns, materials etc. And that was the aha. I thought that's how you come up with new ideas, that's how you come up with innovative thinking, that's how you come up with the best execution.
Speaker 1:You have to understand what the strategy is.
Speaker 1:And where does the strategy come from? Well, it comes from the market. You have to, you have to talk to patients and physicians and understand what the need is, the barriers, et cetera. And in the consumer world again, I've never worked in a consumer agency, but I understand that's a really big part of what they do this kind of you know, insight-based strategy and like really, really heavy on market research before they go into execution.
Speaker 1:So I thought, you know, that is exactly what we need to do in the healthcare space to bring all of those components together. We need to start at insight that then gives us the strategy and recommendations for execution so that we can produce you know what patients, what physicians, want or need or are looking for. Right, I think that's what everybody wants at the end of the day. So that was the philosophy and that's how we started. It was, you know, insight. First, the first people that I hired when kind of growing NFA health were strategists, because it was people who could do that kind of work. So even now, six years later, we have, you know, separate strategy team within NFA Health and in-house market research. So the kind of market research that a client would hire a market research company to do, we have that in-house. So again, it's to be able to bring the insight, strategy and execution all together.
Speaker 2:There's so much that goes into saying I think this is the direction that we should go. That having the team or the people or the individual that comes up with that insight be proximal to the team who's then going to be looking at bringing that insight to life, I think is incredibly important Because if you're just given a report, that report doesn't contain all the things that were edited out and doesn't necessarily contain all the pattern recognition, and so for the person who's absorbed all of that to be sitting close to or across the table from the creative director or the copywriter or the art director or the account person, I think having that team as a key part of the nucleus within NFA Health is really important.
Speaker 1:And often the strategy team and the strategists again, depending on the initiative, will write the brief because the brief has to come from that understanding, right? So, and again we're used to, because the brief has to come from that understanding, right? So, and again we're used to, it's like the account person writes the brief. Sure, for you know lots of things, but you know if we're doing a campaign for example, we produced a campaign in prostate cancer a couple of years ago, to give you an example and you know if you're producing something that ultimately needs to reach patients, you know it's like where does the campaign idea come from? Like what is it that we're going to show in the market? How are we going to engage these patients in this campaign?
Speaker 1:And we started by market research with patients with prostate cancer that we started by doing focus groups with them, talking to them. You know what, what are they missing? What are their challenges? What would resonate with them? What's relevant, what would speak to them? We needed to learn from them in order to understand, or, you know, get to that idea. For what do we need to then create in a campaign that would be relevant and resonate? So, from that research, the strategy team, they were the ones that wrote the brief and then they brief the creative team Right With that deep insight, rich understanding. Of course, you know the creative team has now that information and like really rich but focused brief in terms of where and how they need to ideate, and I think that's also where kind of you know the best ideas come, because it's very grounded in you know what we know patients or physicians are looking for.
Speaker 2:Well, this conversation started or this part of the conversation started when I was asking about how do you move a client along from sort of an execution focus to a strategy focus. And just reflecting on what you were just saying there around bringing patient insights to clients. You know my experience, you know clients spend so much more time with healthcare professionals than they do with patients and they get their patient insights sort of filtered through the lens of the HCP. And so, even just as an agency partner, to bring more unadulterated or unedited patient insights to the table is going to help elevate what you ultimately do execute, because it brings another dimension, I think, to the conversation yes, and it's specific to what we're trying to do.
Speaker 1:So of course clients do a lot of market research and they have a lot of that work, whether it's canadian, global etc. But often it's very broad, right. It gives kind of a broad general understanding of you know either the brand or where it would fit, or the therapeutic area or experience. It's we're not you know here, I think the way we do it it's just very specific to the task at hand. You know the challenges create, let's say, a direct to patient campaign in prostate cancer, right? So the way we would go about, you know, talking to patients and interviewing them would be very different than you know the market research that you know talking to patients and interviewing them would be very different than you know the market research that you know a client would have about a brand or that therapeutic area. I mean, it helps us.
Speaker 1:We often, of course, ask the client to send us that information, but we do our own and doesn't have to be big or long or expensive, and I think that's part of how we kind of get clients to buy into that process. I would say right, because you know how do we know what the idea is or what the need is, you know without having that understanding. So we'll always ask, like, let's start here. It is, you know, certainly part of the process that we showcase in terms of how we bring clients along in, how we develop a campaign, and clients who are used to working with us kind of now know this is how we do it, this is the process, and they know that. You know what they're going to get out of it is is is going to land because it's it's going to fit the strategy and it's going to fit the need in the market, because we didn't just make it up right. It's based on informed insight that we got from the market.
Speaker 2:We're talking at the very beginning of 2025, running an agency, as you well know, especially starting, I think you said 2019, very soon you're into the pandemic and it's not been an uncomplicated five years, and I don't think there's ever an uncomplicated five years running an agency, as we're here in the beginning of 2025, what keeps you up at night? What are the things that you're really thinking about as we kick off 2025? And then the other side of that question is what gets you up in the morning? What are you really excited about as we get into 2025?
Speaker 1:Great question. So what keeps me up at night but also what gets me up in the morning, I would say is the people. And an agency is only as good as its people. Right, that's ultimately what it is. It's a collection of people who work together and collaborate in service of clients. So that's always, for me, top of mind. It keeps me up at night because I want to make sure that you know people are collaborating well, that they're getting what they need, that they're growing in the way that they need to grow. You know that they're getting what they need and want from the role.
Speaker 1:So people and culture is a really big part of my day, important to me. I mean, if you don't have good people, if you don't have a good team, you can't really be successful, because you know I'm not the one who is going to go do all this work and produce everything. So that's always top of mind. And then that's also what gets me up in the morning because over, you know, the course of the six years now have built a really great team, because culture is really important, it's top of mind. The team does work very well together and kind of really proud to say like haven't really had a lot of people who have left to go to another agency. So that's also a bit of a yardstick that I like to measure team and you know the team culture by, because you know, often if people are leaving to go to another agency, it's there's obviously something that you know we're not doing or needing or providing for them, but you know, that's one thing. And then just making sure how to motivate them, how to make sure they're constantly learning and growing. That's how people become better.
Speaker 1:And then a really big part of 2025 for us as well, and obviously started last year, in 2024 as well, and I'm going to say it's like the big buzzword and I know, you know what I'm going to say.
Speaker 1:It's like AI, of course, but it is obviously really important because it's become such a big part of, like you know, every industry pretty much and and in you know, in how people are thinking of how they work. And we have certainly started to play with it last year, even at the end of the like, I would say even in the last quarter of last year and even now have integrated it into how we work and have found that it can help us in strategy, it can help us in, you know, project management. It can help us in creative, so just that allows us to be more efficient, to be faster at things, and then you know, if you can do certain things quicker or more efficiently with AI, then it kind of frees people up to do, you know, deeper, different kind of thinking, which always in an agency thinking which always in an agency, that's, you know, you're working on so many things for so many different clients on so many different projects. What you know, myself included you always hear from people's like I don't have time to think.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I don't have to think because I'm just just go go. I'm answering this email, I'm on this call, I'm on this meeting. It's just do, do, do, do, do and task, next task, next task, and you can, you can spend your days and your months just kind of going through tasks. So then, where? Where is the opportunity to sit down and think through things and and and? That's been kind of the angle where we've looked at AI and tried to apply it. You know, have it do those tasks that it can do, but that takes you a lot of time, so that you know you can have the time to think and, you know, maybe even produce something better as a result.
Speaker 2:So, really looking at, how do you take some of the more time intensive but lower value tasks off the team so that they have more time to do the higher value task, which is often reflecting and having the space for insights to creep in? That's exactly it, Dorothy. I really appreciate we could have there's about four different chapters in today's conversation that we could have kept on going on, but in the interest of time I'm going to say thank you so much for joining me today. Thank you so much for being a huge part of the first year of Pharma Brands and hopefully a big part of year two, so I really appreciate the time.
Speaker 1:Thank you for having me and look forward to collaborating this year.