The PharmaBrands Podcast
The healthcare marketing industry is full of personal, impactful, and fascinating stories. The PharmaBrands Podcast is proud to celebrate these stories from people, brands, organizations and businesses who are making a difference.
For more PharmaBrands content and experiences visit PharmaBrands.ca
The PharmaBrands Podcast
Paul Tunnah, Author of Prescription for Success, on Why Outstanding CX is Good for Your Brand, Your Business and Your Customers
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Everyone who listens to this show knows that outstanding customer experience is hard to achieve in healthcare—no matter who your customer is. Paul Tunnah's new book is a practical guide for improving customer experience and in this episode we dive deep into the tools and techniques he recommends for improving trust, adherence and outcomes.
Prescription for Success is now available for purchase on Amazon: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Prescription-Success-Delivering-Exceptional-Pharmaceutical-ebook/dp/B0FD7858V8
Our host is Neil Follett, Co-Founder of PharmaBrands and our Producer is Darryl Webster with Chess Originals.
Introduction to Prescriptions for Success
Speaker 1Paul , thank you for joining us today . Pleasure . We're here today to talk about the book that you guys are about to publish , you and your co-author .
Speaker 2Indeed .
Speaker 1It is called Prescriptions for Success Delivering Exceptional Customer Experience in the Pharmaceutical Industry a Practical Guide for All Customer-Facing Roles , brand and Above Brand . What was the impetus , what was the motivator to say I'm going to sit down and get started on the book ? Was there a moment , or was it a whole bunch of moments ?
Speaker 2I think the moment I have to give credit here to my co-author , a chap called Faisal Ahmed , who's currently working within a pharma company but has spent all of his career prior to that sitting on the agency side . This is actually the second book that we've done together . We did another one about gosh 12 , 13 years ago called Digital Farmer Unlocked , and then Faisal reached out to me and said hey , I still think we need to sort of tell some element of this story . We need to remind people what good customer experience is . Let's do another book . And I said great , let's go .
Speaker 1So what is good customer experience ? I know there's a definition in the book around CX , but how would you describe CX ?
Speaker 2So it's a really overused term . I think it's become one of those buzzwords and , like any buzzword , that comes with a danger of everybody talks about it but nobody understands it and people want to try and overcomplicate it . But it's really simple . It's about reducing friction and making things easy with every interaction you have with customers and I use customers in the broadest sense in our field . That can be doctors , it can also be patients , payers , all those different stakeholders just making things easy .
Speaker 1And for those listening , the book does cover all of those different stakeholder groups , so it kind of pivots around between HCP engagements and patient experiences . So here's maybe this is a bit of a loaded question for early in our conversation . But why is it so hard for pharma to get this right , Like you wrote the book ? Because there is a tremendous amount of friction in almost every aspect in pharma . Why is it so hard for pharma to get this rate ?
Speaker 2So I don't think it's just hard for pharma . I think a lot of industries struggle with this and I think the bigger the company , the more they tend to struggle with this . But I think pharma has this additional layer of we're a very regulated industry . We have to be compliant in how we communicate about prescription medicines and I think the risk with that is it makes the focus become very internal within these big companies or very internal alongside their agencies , rather than really thinking about what the customer needs . I think sometimes it just gets lost in the noise you kind of you can you kind of a bit detached from the customer needs .
Speaker 2I think sometimes it just gets lost in the noise you kind of you can you come a little bit detached from the customer . Then you have the added complication of again , because we're talking about prescription medicines you have different types of customer . You know you're often putting your product in front of doctors and trying to get them to prescribe , but you have to be cognizant of what the patient needs and what they want .
Defining Customer Experience in Pharma
Speaker 2You have to also think about the payers and what they're looking for . So there are multiple different stakeholders to please and they all are looking for maybe slightly different experiences . So it is complex , but the key message is keep the focus externally on those customers . Don't get lost in the internal noise .
Speaker 1Depending on the regulatory environment . You're in the UK and we're here in Canada . Pharma is , at the same time , a B2B enterprise . Right , You're selling to physicians not directly to the end consumer but you are also engaging with a lot of different tactics and strategies with the patient , and those are very different hats to wear . So for someone to switch gears and think about , what is an amazing sales experience for a physician and not for the brand , what's an amazing sales experience for the physician ? And then there's a whole bunch of operational stuff that happens . So how do you reduce friction in getting samples , for example ? And then on the patient side , what is their experience like ? How do you reduce friction in terms of access to information or the patient journey ? It's such an interesting environment because it is B2B , it's B2C , it's operational . It's all of those things wrapped up in one .
Speaker 2Yeah , I completely agree and I think so . Yes , it is primarily B2B pharma companies promoting medicines to doctors . But there are heavy elements of B2C , and that's not just in the US where you can do direct to patient , advertising prescription medicines to patients , because you're not allowed to . But of course , those patients are going to their doctors . Having Googled these medicines , they are increasingly empowered , they have their own opinions and for them it's not just about the medicines . This is where it gets really interesting .
Speaker 2You know health and treating disease . Part of that is about medicines , part of that is about everything else they do their lifestyle , their diet , all those kind of things , how they're being encouraged to keep using their medicines . So I think it's critically important that pharma at least understands all of those dynamics , understands what the patient is looking for or what different types of patient are looking for , doesn't just get that information from the doctor , because the doctors don't always look at things the same way as patients . They all want to make people better , but they're coming from slightly different angles . And when you understand all of that deeply , then you can think about what you need to do as a pharma company , not just in terms of how you position your medicine . But where should you go further beyond the medicine to make sure that is a good experience and actually patients get the benefit from the medicine that they should do ?
Speaker 1Well , it's interesting . You say physicians want to make people better , which is true . The challenge , though , I think , is that in between that desire and delivering on that desire , there are just so many points of complication , some of them completely outside of the control of pharma , but some of them actually created by pharma . So , in a strange way , actually reducing the friction is allowing the physician to get closer to that promise of making people better .
Speaker 2And you said it , physicians want to make people better . I mean in a nice way . They don't want to see patients , because if they're not seeing patients , patients are well or the disease is being managed , and that's all good . But you know , we also need to understand and there are numerous studies showing this physicians are under incredible pressure in every market and I live in the UK . You look in particular at the NHS they're under incredible pressure . They are so short of resources , they're so short of time , they are incredibly compromised in terms of delivering the care they want to patients , and so that means they just do not have time for experiences that don't add value to what they're doing . And that means for a pharma company , if you're promoting a product and you're not doing it in the right way and the content isn't right , they've got no tolerance , they've got no time for that . So things just need to be really , really simple and easy for them .
Speaker 1So helping patients and driving positive outcomes . Obviously that's the kind of banner goal , but the context here is that it's also a business and there was interesting stats in the book around actually the business like the downstream business impact of positive CX .
Speaker 2Yeah , 100% , and I mean , obviously the stats . We quote some stats from Forrester around the impact across numerous industries on revenue , and people often reference things like the Amazon experience , and Jeff Bezos is famous for his absolute obsession with customer experience . Now , I know people can argue the pros and cons of Amazon , but I have to say I still use it . I use it because it's really easy . If I want something , you go on there , you order it . You get it the next day , sometimes potentially sooner . So I think there's a lot that we can learn from that .
Speaker 2Now , at the same time , people can argue within the world of pharmaceuticals that actually it should all be about the clinical data . You know these are medicines that have gone through trials . There should be no emotion involved in that process of buying medicines and choosing what to prescribe . That's not the real world . Actually , there's still that element of trust that comes into this . Does the doctor trust the pharma company ? Do they therefore trust the data that's being presented to them ? That is less of an issue , I think , on the patient side , but you are starting to see some of those pharma companies build their reputation directly with the patient and build that trust so that patients with particular diseases go right . You know , I recognize that pharma company is in my space . They're trying to help and there's actually quite a lot of that in the medical device space as well in areas like diabetes .
Speaker 1There's a bit of an equation in that book . You know that trust leads to adherence and adherence leads to outcomes . Can you maybe give us some examples of where there is a common , maybe process or system or tactic that is just kind of like ripe for improvement and what improvement might look like ?
Speaker 2So I think it starts right at the beginning and you see , within the book we talk through the different chapters of to begin with , it's all about understanding , and I think that's where very often this process falls down , which it sounds ridiculous because , as an industry , pharmaceuticals spend so much money on market research and insights and all those kind of things . But I don't know that it's always done at the level of really understanding that customer experience . A lot of it is around understanding disease areas and the challenges and how you position products and all those kind of things . True customer experience insights come from simple things like observational studies , you know , as we note in the book .
Speaker 2You know doing an observational study on a patient or a doctor , not just focused on your medicine , but what is going on in their lives , what are the challenges they face every day . And it's about then standing back and not just about asking people what the problems are , because they will tell you but of course there'll be some problems they're not even aware of . So really deeply understanding the situation that your customers are in through a variety of techniques doctors and patients then standing back and thinking what does that actually mean ? Where can we see the gaps in that process . How does that fit with our , in the case of a pharma company medicines and how can we make things easier ? And again I just come back to where I started .
Understanding Patient and HCP Perspectives
Speaker 2It stops and starts with that . If we get that piece right and we really deeply understand what's going on , that sets the tone for getting customer experience right .
Speaker 1The research part of it . It struck me . I was in the agency world for a really long time and so many of my clients spent a lot of energy and a lot of attention and a lot of dollars on research . But so much of that research was HCP related and it makes me think of years ago . We were building an app for a client .
Speaker 1It was a derm condition . We had convened a bunch of panels of patients and one of the things that came up was something that we never would have considered and it was primarily mums . It was a derm condition . Their kids would experience these flares and by the time they sort of got to the doctor it was in the US , so there was some friction in terms of even getting to the physician . The flare had gone and again and again these moms said they were sort of treated like they were overreacting , hyperprotective , and one of the features that we built into this app so you know it was a long time ago because we were building an app for a pharma company One of the features that we built in was a photo diary so instead of having to scroll through their pictures , their personal pictures , on their phone , they could open up the app and they could access a photo diary where they could take photos of their kids' flare-ups and sort of bring proof , as it were , to the physician the most used function of that app something that we never would have considered had it not be sitting with those patients , and that's always stuck with me .
Speaker 1So when you talk about research , maybe give some examples , because the book really is a practical guide . So talk to me about research and some of the methodologies that you suggest and where you found that the right research can be really pivotal .
Speaker 2Yeah , and you're right . First of all , we've tried to keep the book very , very practical , because this is not about the theory of customer experience . This is about things that you can do right now . That will get you going . But before I dive into that , just on the research topic , there's a couple of points I want to make .
Speaker 2There are a couple of challenges with research . One of those is this obsession with big data . You know , we live in an age where everybody talks about big data and AI is driven by big data and everything's about how much data you've got . That's great , but actually you can get lost in big data , and the point of the way you intro this question can sometimes , by sitting down with a patient and having a conversation one-to-one , discover something that all the reams of big data will never tell you . So don't ever let big data and big research studies replace those conversations .
Speaker 2The other point I think is really important to note about research is be aware of bias , and bias exists on both sides . Bias can exist in terms of not having the right people take part in the research . So , for example , if you are understanding the patient experience by getting that information from doctors , you've already got bias . That is the doctor's perspective on the patient experience . Not the patient experience , but also if you don't have the right representation . So very often companies will engage with empowered patients who are wonderfully , you know , knowledgeable about their therapeutic area , but they are as the name describes . They're empowered patients . Their health literacy is off the scale . They're not necessarily representative of all of the patients in that group .
Speaker 2So be aware of that bias in the data , but also , critically , be aware of the bias internally yourself as well , because too often I see research being done which includes big research studies speaking to patients , speaking to doctors , and the company commissioning it already knows what they want that data to tell them . And if you know what you want the answer to be , you can find that answer in any amount of data . You can build a story that fits that narrative . So I think you have to go in and try and park your bias to one side and really look at what the data is telling you and then , if you're doing that , as we talk about in the book , the practical methods of things like day in the life studies you know really standing back and understanding what's going on , then you can start to uncover some real nuggets .
Speaker 1It's interesting that you mentioned that you know highly empowered patient , because I think that an analog to that is the highly empowered HCP where I'm sure you've seen it so many times as well is that you get a rep who is working closely with a very , very high prescribing HCP and that HCP says , well , you really need to do X right . And then all of a sudden X becomes the thing that everybody needs to do , and I used to sort of joke that that was the small data issue . It's like one data point , but that becomes the proof point for everything .
Speaker 2So it's a bit of a Goldilocks kind of situation 100% and again , as an industry , as a pharmaceutical industry , we're very used to the term KOL key opinion leader and some pharma companies have slightly different terms . But these are typically the mega experienced , influential doctors who are experts in a particular field and they're often individuals who are not sure to putting forward opinions and what's going on in their field . They may be involved in making guidelines etc . But again , they don't speak for every doctor . There is diversity of opinion within any particular disease area . So you know it's important for companies to engage with those folks . They do have a mass of knowledge but they don't always have necessarily all the answers or the right answers .
Speaker 1And with their degree of experience , they've often found ways to work around the friction or they might get different . Like , a traveler who has elite status with the airline has a very different experience than a traveler who's a traveling coach Exactly right , and I think that that's you know .
Speaker 2To take that analogy , that's the message to pharma companies is , you know , don't always sit at the front of the plane , Take a moment to walk down the back and see what's going on there , because there's all different types of doctors , there are all different types of patients . It's actually one of my bugbears . We talk about patient engagement and I think some companies do it very well , Some companies don't do it so well , but we still tend to talk about the patient as a single persona and that's just so far from reality . You have all different types of patients . In some disease areas it's more about the carers or the caregivers , and I think recognizing that again as a starting point is really important .
Speaker 1Well , that leads us beautifully into the next section of the book , which is analysis , where you do talk about personas . So let's talk about you've done a whole bunch of your research . Where do you go from there ? What's the next step ? What does analysis look like ?
Speaker 2so it's standing back and sort of taking time to again put your bias to one side and start to look at what this research is telling you , and this is where it's really critical to get a bunch of people within the pharma company , for example , looking at this , because people will come with different perspectives .
Speaker 2You can then start to spot particular trends within that data and really what you're trying to do is prioritize where are the ? So you kind of go through organizing the data , start to prioritize where the pain points are and prioritizing those for different personas . So you start off with okay , here , at a high level of the pain points that we're seeing now , let's build some personas . Put ourselves in those shoes , think about the journey each of those personas go through and start to refine what those pain
Trust and Business Impact of Good CX
Speaker 2points look like for each of those , and the book talks you through there's a number of methodologies you can do for devising a persona and how you can walk through that process , but it's trying to make it really tangible and putting it in the context of real doctors or real patients .
Speaker 1And there's a section on journey mapping in analysis . Maybe talk about that a little bit .
Speaker 2Yeah , so again , it's just trying to look at this from a multifaceted perspective . So we're very interested in the medicine and the prescribing experience and maybe the diagnosis , but there's a lot more going on . So it's about saying you know what is everything else that's going on with that doctor or with that patient , where diagnosis , treatment , is part of that . But even like personal details , you know , as you build these personas , what are these people doing outside of their work and what's the impact of that when it comes to their job and how they engage ?
Speaker 1I love journey mapping . It's an opportunity for people to really put themselves in the shoes of the customers . We had a medical device client and we said to the client have you ever done an unboxing Like , have you ever just gone to the pharmacy , purchased this because you didn't need a script , or just purchased one ? What is that like ? Yep , take it home , open it like , put it on your counter at home , open it up and see what that's like . And also , you've got all of these digital assets . See if , with a fresh set of eyes , these digital assets are promoted , if anybody can find them . And it was astounding , I mean , the short answer was like not good .
Speaker 2Well , and so one of the other pieces that we talk about in the book that links into that is the idea of empathy maps . And an empathy map is really understanding what your customers say , what they think , what they do and what they feel . And actually , when you look at classical research , it tends to focus on the overt , external things what are customers saying and what are they doing . But actually if you don't really understand what they're thinking , you know what are their beliefs , what motivates them and what they're feeling as they go through that journey that's really critical to understanding how you drive change or you can end up going down some very , very odd routes . And it makes me think of a story this is aging myself going back a few years , but when the novel oral anticoagulants came through . So blood thinning pills in theory much , much simpler .
Speaker 2Previously the standard of care was warfarin , which is basically rat poison , but it's very carefully hydrated to make sure you thin the blood , you reduce the risk of stroke , et cetera , et cetera . So you bring these pills that come in , you pop a pill , very simple . Who's not going to do that ? And actually one of the pharma companies found that a lot of patients didn't like it , and the reason why they didn't like it was they wanted to go to the warfarin clinic , where they get their titration , because they'd meet up with other patients there , or they wanted to have a chat with their doctor . They were often quite elderly patients . They wanted some of that interaction , and that's a really good example of stuff that you won't pick up just by looking at what they say and do .
Speaker 1Well , and it makes me think about the spectrum of filled with friction on one end and then pure delight on the other . And again , I mean obviously in pharma there are a lot of situations where delight is not an option . But I think sometimes this CX conversation is about it being less bad , where the goal is almost hey , if this is a benign experience , that's way better than it used to be , because it used to kind of suck . But I also think that pinning you mentioned Amazon like pinning the goal as how can this almost be delightful in its simplicity or in its degree of support ? And I think delight really goes back to that sense of empathy . What is that individual experiencing ? And then how do we make that something that is as positive as possible ?
Speaker 2Yeah , I agree , and this concept of delight , you're right , it's an interesting one in the world of pharmaceuticals because even terms like patient experience I know a lot of patients that really hate that term because if you're dying of cancer or something like that , that's not an experience , that's not a journey , that's a , that's a real problem in your life and it causes enormous emotional distress . So I think , you know , delight for patients is very often not being reminded of their disease , dealing with it in a simpler way as possible . The less time consumed on it the better , and the same thing , by the way , is also true for the doctors possible . The less time consumed on it the better , and the same thing , by the way , is also true for the doctors . You know they want to be able to help these patients as efficiently as possible and minimize the impact of their disease , whether it's something long-term , acute or , you know , in the extreme example I just quoted where you've got somebody with terminal cancer , it's about living your life despite the disease rather than having to focus on it .
Speaker 1So we've done some research , we've done some analysis . What comes next ?
Speaker 2Then you're into design , and design is a kind of oft misunderstood term because and Faisal and I were talking about this when we did the book whenever you talk about design , people immediately move and leap into aha . We're designing apps , or we're designing websites , or we're designing digital
Research Methods That Reveal True Insights
Speaker 2things or you things . That is a form of design and it's important that you get those pieces right . But we're talking here about the design of the experience , looking at that journey and thinking about what can we do at various points in that journey to make things easier for people or nudge them in the right direction . And we talk in the book about the concept of nudging , and there's some wonderful models that talk about how you nudge people to drive behavior change . The Combee model that we reference is one of the most famous ones , but this is often the way that our lives happen in the modern times is that they're not big changes . We need to look at the experience , think about how we can nudge people in the right direction and keep nudging and moving them along .
Speaker 1So that concept of nudging is very reminiscent of the foundation of a lot of digital products like apps , the Combi framework . I had had an asterisk around that because I thought that was really interesting .
Speaker 2So give us a little bit more around that framework if you think that that's one of the most interesting in the design section Capability , opportunity and motivation to drive a behavior change , and we often tend to focus on the overt , so we look at what's the capability to drive change rather than where is the opportunity and , critically , what is the motivation to drive change .
Speaker 2That's a key , key piece . Look at something like adherence in medicines . We all know what a massive , massive problem that is , and there's been so much money poured into things like apps to try and tell patients to take their medicines and all that kind of stuff . The simple reality is , if the motivation is not there because there's not been a shared discussion with the doctor about the medicine , why it's important they take it , what the side effects are as well as the benefits , you're then fighting a losing battle and it's hard for those conversations to take place . It goes back to what I said before about doctors not having time , but understanding people's motivators is absolutely critical . If you don't address that and that's a critical element to con B then probably you're going to fail .
Speaker 1I had a note in the book around this point near the end of design , where I wrote down whose responsibility is this . And it wasn't about design necessarily . It was about really applying some of these key methodologies and looking at things differently . As a lifelong agency guy , I read this as a call to action for agencies to guide their brand relationships differently . I think probably if I was a brand manager , I would read this as a call to action to be understanding some of these methodologies a little bit differently and then maybe pushing my agency to lean in on them . I'm going to guess the answer is a little bit of both , but whose responsibility is this ? Who should be driving some of this thinking ?
Speaker 2It does primarily sit with those delivering the product or the website , wherever it might be , and that's a combination typically , as you say , of the pharma company and their agency . But it's also really important at this design stage to get input from the customers . The term co-creation again is overused and I don't think it's always done to the level it should do . Co-creation is not just about bouncing something off a few people and saying do you like this ? Yes , no , whatever . It's about involving doctors , patients in that process throughout the journey , gathering their feedback again , being aware of their bias . They're all coming from different perspectives and making sure you factor that in . But it's also about recognizing the more time you spend on the analysis and design stages , really thinking through what you're trying to do to get it right . The rest of it will flow . I think very often we're very keen to jump into doing let's get the campaign out there or let's build this application or whatever it might be , and if we haven't spent enough time really understanding , pulling the design apart , you're heading for problems .
Speaker 1I think about context a lot when I was reading the book and I remember when we were starting to do IVAs or digital detail aids with clients , you know we'd have these meetings with clients and we'd present creative or present the experience much like you would anything else which is on a giant screen in the boardroom , so everybody would be around the table .
Speaker 2I could see where you're going with this .
Speaker 1Yes , and then I got to this point where I was like no one experiences this product on a giant screen . No one's actually going to have this product explained to them , and so from then on , every presentation was we would load either a wireframe or a mock-up or the beta onto an iPad and we would hand it to the client . We wouldn't explain anything , we wouldn't walk them through it , and it was obvious and it was also transformative . And so I think context and that sort of customer centricity it doesn't need to be a better website . It can be an email , like have you looked at this email on your phone in the middle of your busy day ? Because that's how your customer is going to experience it .
Speaker 2Oh , my goodness , yeah , what are your thoughts about that ? It's such a great point . So I mean two things there . One is to what you said at the end there be aware of your own bias People get wedded to . We need to build a website . Or you know , back in the day , going back 10 or 12 years , I get a load of pharma clients coming to me , going we need to launch a Twitter channel . And you go well , why ? Why do you need to launch a Twitter channel ? I'm happy to help you do that , but tell me why . So yeah , you need to look agnostically at the problem and what might be the right solution . It might not be anything technological , it might be something very simple , but it also makes me think of and you probably heard this that wonderful quote from Mark Twain , who said if I'd had more time , I would have written you a shorter letter .
Speaker 2I love that and that is that is true in everything we do in the world of pharmaceuticals , whether it's , you know , detailing aids or campaigns or whatever it might be . They often start out quite complicated and it takes time to then simplify things and go we don't need this , we don't need that . Let's simplify down . It's something that you know . The great tech leaders , like Steve Jobs , talk about a lot . You know , getting simplicity takes a lot of time and thinking and it doesn't happen overnight . That's the other element with design is the greatest tech products . Keep on innovating all the time , keep on refining . The same is true in the world of pharmaceuticals , whether it's tech or whether it's campaigns . You don't do something and then stop . You need to make it as simple as possible and then continually evaluate and see how you can continue to simplify and adapt the experience .
Speaker 1Which is a really , really hard thing to do . I think subtracting is often more challenging than adding . I think you mentioned Steve Jobs . He had a quote , something along the lines of determining what not to do is important as determining what to do , which is a bit of a variant on Dieter Rams' design philosophy , but that's a lot right .
Speaker 1There's almost a degree of bravery in saying we're not going to include that , because people often sort of catch less flack for just adding a bunch of stuff in and having every stakeholder's every wish represented in the final product versus no , we've actually been really disciplined and we didn't include those things .
Speaker 2Yeah , I agree , and I think there's another dimension as well , which is true for many industries , but I think is particularly acute within the world of pharmaceuticals right now , which is the degree to which people within these big companies move around . We are in a phase at the moment where it feels like every pharma company is going through a reorganization and , of course , course , when that happens , people move around roles within companies , they inherit other people's projects and people feel like they need to prove themselves , and very rarely is it . Somebody goes . Actually , what I've come into here , this is all great , we're just going to keep refining this . They want to do something new and prove themselves . So you tend to find you have these two , three year cycles of campaigns or websites , whatever it might be , and then things get reinvented , and sometimes it just needs to be refined , not reinvented .
Speaker 1And , interestingly , those people who are reinventing if they're good , they're often moved around , like you say , every couple of years . Correct , yeah , and in that experience they also then haven't had the benefit of multiple sort of generations of a strategy or a tactic , because they've moved on to a new role before they were even able to necessarily get the full benefit of understanding that the longer term , even the midterm impact of something that they launched in a previous role term , even the midterm impact of something that they launched in a previous role .
Speaker 2Yeah , and that trend is . I think it's very different to where we were 20 years ago , and I'm not going to say this is right or wrong , because each side has benefits , but the current phase that we're in , there's a lot more mobility within pharma companies and that's just not people moving between different therapeutic areas , but moving between different functions . It's generally perceived that the broader your experience , the better you'll be as a senior leader , and I think
Building Personas and Journey Mapping
Speaker 2that's true to some degree . But of course , if you've worked in one particular therapeutic area for a few years , you've built a massive knowledge and understanding from all the conversations you've had and all the work you've done that suddenly you're back to square one when somebody new is .
Speaker 1I used to say to my pharma clients you know , outside of pharma , if you're a really good marketer , you are promoted to be a more senior marketer . Inside of pharma , if you're a really good marketer , you're promoted , and now you're ahead of sales region . It's like your reward for being great at your job is that you get moved to a different job , which which , again to your point , it's phenomenal from a breadth of experience standpoint , but it does potentially compromise that kind of multiple generational cycles of a tactic .
Speaker 2Yeah , and it kind of goes back to where I started , which is that tension between internal and external focus . So being skilled across a lot of different areas is great for you with an internal focus at setting yourself into the next role . It's not so good when it comes to delivering good customer experience .
Speaker 1Moving through the book , we're getting near the end . Where does the book end off ?
Speaker 2So it comes back to what I was just describing about this never-ending journey . So , yes , you need to go through the research , the analysis , the design , but at some point you need to accept you've got everything . You need to launch a new campaign , a new product , a new service , whatever it may be . But then it's absolutely critical that you launch and learn . Don't launch and leave . And this , again , is something that I see too often happening is we see these things as projects . We've done the project , great , we move on on .
Speaker 2That's not the reality of good customer experience , because nothing will ever be perfect . At the point at which you launch it , you then need to be listening to your customers . You need to be continuing that feedback . I mean , it's a bit the analogy is a bit like a phase four observational study with a drug . You've got all this wealth of clinical data , you know it's safe , you know it's effective , you approved Off , you go , but you still want to see how that's performing and you may need to make some adjustments . So that's kind of where we head to with the book is launch , learn , think about how you scale . Sometimes you need to know when not to scale . Sometimes you need to know when something isn't working and you need to move in a different direction , but don't ever stop thinking about customer experience and don't ever think it's done because nothing is ever done .
Speaker 1I love alliteration , so the launch and learn , don't launch and leave . That just warms my heart right there .
Speaker 2I just made that up . By the way , that just came to my head .
Speaker 1That was amazing . That might be the clip that we open this podcast with . I think that that's so interesting and I just I , you know one fantastic that you just came up with it . And let's stick there for a second , because I'm going to go back to the question that I had asked before about kind of whose responsibility is this ?
Speaker 1And I think that sometimes when you're busy busy brand manager , busy account person , busy agency , whatever that is there is a bit of a natural inclination to launch and leave , because you're like okay , we're onto the next thing , like go , like you know , what do we have to get done this quarter ? And I think it takes some discipline to hit pause for a second and say , okay , those things that we did last month , last year , last quarter , last season , how are they doing ? Now that we're out of the project cycle ? Let's print them off and put them on the table , even internally , without even a lot of data . How have those assets or that campaign , how has that held up ? How does that look to us now when we're out of the cycle of getting that thing out in market ? And I think that you know one it takes time , right , and that is the scarcest resource , I think in pharma marketing right now .
Speaker 1But two , it's not always going to be pretty Like you're going to launch and learn that maybe that wasn't the best thing to do which again I sort of use this word again but that it takes some bravery to be looking at that tactic both on the agency and the brand manager side and go . I don't know .
Speaker 2Yeah Well , the concept of fail better is one that people have talked about for a long time the idea that failure to some degree is good because you learn from it , and I completely agree with that . A lot of my career has been entrepreneurial . You have to learn to deal with failure because you're going to fail a lot and you are going to learn from it . But I still think there's a reluctance within big companies this is not just pharma , this is all big companies to accept when something has failed and , more critically , to learn from it .
Speaker 2I've had conversations with so many pharma companies about how you share innovation and how you scale innovation , and there's been some really good initiatives where pharma companies have looked at , maybe , what one particular country is doing and gone . That's really cool . Let's take that , let's scale it across all of these regions . Some of that is starting to happen . What I don't see happening and I'd love to see companies doing more is sharing what has failed and sharing why things have failed , because
Design Principles and Behavior Change
Speaker 2I do see too often companies doing things that even that same company has done before and it's failed , but it's been buried away because they don't want to share it . I'm not saying we should all celebrate failures day in , day out , because that wouldn't be a very effective company , but you need to share them and understand what you can learn from them .
Speaker 1Because 99.9% of failures started out with really good intentions and somewhere along the way between those really good intentions and the decision to allocate scarce resources , time and dollars and creative energy against that good intention , between there and the final execution or the implementation , something went wrong and I think that it is really helpful to shine a light on that through the lens of . There was no malintent here . Someone wasn't trying to abscond with the budget . But that reflection , I think , is really important and when I think , as you know , as we sort of come to the end of the conversation , I think so much of the book and so many components of so many of the steps in the book you know the research and analytics and design is it's really about being reflective and being honest and being curious , is it not ?
Speaker 2Yeah , absolutely , and don't be afraid to try different stuff . But I think the key thing for me you talked about there's no malintent , and that's absolutely true . No one sets out to do something that doesn't work or a drug that doesn't work , whatever it might be . But I actually think one of the wonderful things about working in pharma is it's exactly the opposite . I mean , it's been all of my career .
Speaker 2I can't say I've got deep experience in other industries , but the people in pharma whether you're inside a pharma company or an agency , whatever it may be are incredibly driven . Incredibly driven to make a difference to patients' lives . And actually the way to do that is to make sure you've got the right medicines , you communicate them effectively , so the doctors prescribe them in the right way and then patients take them as they should do . That's it . It's not about I'm going to launch a website or I need to do this campaign . All of that stuff feeds into that . But if you keep your guiding light on those fundamental endpoints , this is why we do what we do which is easy to forget sometimes in big companies .
Speaker 2Then everything else flows from there , and customer experience is a critical component of that . Get doctors prescribing medicines the right way . They need to understand what they do . Prescribe them in the right way . Patients use them as intended .
Speaker 1Well , once again , you've made my job incredibly easy , because that was a fantastic wrap up . Thank you , paul , for joining me today . Where can people find the book ? My copy was a bit of a pre-press . When is it launching ? Where can people find it ?
Speaker 2It's going to be launching on Amazon imminently . I think it's been uploaded just yesterday . I think it takes a bit of time to go through the system , but any day now it should be available on Amazon .
Speaker 1Amazing . It's almost like we planned that .
Speaker 2Almost like the timing was arranged . Yeah , yeah .
Speaker 1Thank you so much , Paul . This has been an amazing conversation and really insightful and I will say I really really enjoyed the book . It was a very practical guide and it got me excited about the possibilities , so thank you .
Speaker 2Thank you and obviously I hope it makes some small difference , but again really enjoyed the conversation . It's been great chatting with you today .