INTERVIEW: The future of pharma marketing

45 minutes with Timmo is like 45 minutes with your head out the window when Max Verstappen is driving. The plan was to talk future trends in marketing, but as you can see, Timmo reframed the conversation from minute one.

Here are the 8 things I learned:

1.
The marketing function is dead
At least in the way we know it today… Marketing has traditionally had a focus on the HCPs – but they are losing decision-making power, so marketing teams must find new ways to stay relevant.

2.
Decisions are made by payers
This is nothing new – we have talked about it for years now. But with the volume of data that is now available to payers it is more visible than ever, and they can now make better decisions for the benefit of patients and society – in real time.

3.
Patients continue to take matters into their own hands
Patients can access some of the same data that payers rely on, which gives them more muscle. And the playing field is wide open – especially in the US – where HCPs are more afraid than ever of making mistakes, and are consequently leaving more decisions to empowered patients.

4.
Pharma knows patients better than ever
We are now better at mapping and understanding patient needs than ever before, which allows us to finally unleash the patient-centricity strategies we have been imagining for years. We can start building communities and preparing patients years before an actual launch.

5.
Is it finally time for the adherence projects we have failed at for so many years?
The technology is available and can automatically track so many metrics. It is cheaper than ever. And it is easier to use than ever. Perhaps now is the right time to build the adherence programs and adherence apps that really work?

6.
The division between medical affairs and marketing may be outdated – part 1
In the future everyone in the pharma team should be working on the brands. Marketing should be in on every stage of the product life cycle – not only post-launch – because today there is so much more that we can do for patients – and who is better at telling that story than marketing?

7.
The division between medical affairs and marketing may be outdated – part 2
And because we learn so much about patients and we learn it in real-time, we need medical affairs to be ever present to help pivot when new insights call for new strategies.

8.
What are we going to do with all that data?
We must work on being better at combining the data we collect from research, clinical trials and commercialization. Layering all that data lifts our knowledge base to a completely new level.

Some of these things really blow my mind. It’s clear that if we run our business based on how the world looked three years ago, we will lose. Tech is changing the landscape of healthcare systems and how prescribers and decision-makers work. These changes deeply affect how pharma companies should approach their customers, and they also change how an agency like Gesundheit should approach pharma companies.