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Career highs and lows sometimes feel random: We often call a success “lucky” and a setback “unfortunate.” In biopharma, we may think of a drug launch that turns out to be a blockbuster as such a lucky break. But possible setbacks lurk all along the drug life cycle: The molecule might not meet its endpoints, or we might hit a snag with approvals or with payer formularies, or the market might be much tougher to penetrate than anticipated. Our minds don’t need to wander all the way to the spectacular ethical and legal failures of the Sacklers, Shkrelis, and Holmeses of the world to understand that, in our industry, you can find boom as well as bust.

However, here’s the truth: Even if you can’t control your successes and setbacks completely, they’re not entirely random either. Our careers have higher peaks and flatter valleys if we pay attention to certain seemingly minor details that could blow up to become major problems. The fear of becoming the next Purdue or the next Turing can sometimes cause some degree of paralysis. But it would be foolish to try and solve business problems by refraining from doing business. More often than not, it’s the omission of regulatory and ethical precautions, rather than the actual conduct of marketing, that’s the problem.

Working with the Consumer

Take patient engagement, for example. It’s a crucial part of any medical marketing plan, and not only because the other strategies are becoming harder to execute—we all know that pharma reps have a harder time getting in front of doctors. But more profoundly, the empowerment of patients in their healthcare decisions has revolutionized the way pharmaceutical companies approach the market. It’s not just about keeping pace with industry trends, it’s about leading the charge in a healthcare environment that increasingly values personalized care. In today’s digital age, patients have access to a wealth of information and a voice through social media platforms, patient forums, and advocacy groups. They are well-informed advocates for their health, often arriving at the doctor’s office armed with research and questions about their treatment options. This shift requires pharma marketers to engage in two-way conversations, where listening becomes as crucial as informing. In this environment, the role of the marketer evolves to that of an educator and facilitator, providing the tools and information necessary for patients to make informed decisions about their care. If you’re a pharma marketer in 2024, whatever you do, don’t ignore the consumer.

But not everybody seems to understand that working with consumers in the pharma industry differs from working with consumers in other industries in important ways. If you let inexperienced marketers implement strategies that might work in other industries, you can expect FDA warning letters, or worse, to land on your desk. Does this mean patient engagement is dangerous or a bad thing for companies or patients? Of course not! What it means is that biopharma marketing requires an approach, expertise, and infrastructure that are specialized. A Patient Ambassador^® Program is not like running any other speaker bureau. A patient video is unlike a consumer review, and a patient advisory board is unlike conventional market research. To a layperson, the difference may not be instantly apparent, but regulators can tell what is what and will enforce their rules.

Efficient Compliance

First, the agency handling patient engagement must be familiar with the regulatory rules and obligations that apply. This starts with thorough training. From adverse event reporting to privacy protections, from fair balance to approval processes and honoraria, teams can only be successful in this if everyone receives training on how to handle any given situation. This requirement extends to all members of the organization, not just those directly interacting with patients. These trainings also need to be regularly updated and refreshed annually.

Second, your patient engagement agency also needs to invest in the technical infrastructure that enables team members to efficiently fulfill or even automate their regulatory duties. It can’t work if, for every adverse event, the exact reporting procedure has to be reinvented or rediscovered by someone who hasn’t submitted a report before. It also won’t work if compliance with GDPR is left to individual team members to sort out which piece of data needs to be purged on any given day.

An Authentic Perspective

Third, beyond the rigidity of regulatory compliance, your agency must also understand the softer, yet equally vital, nuances that come into play when working with patients. Your initiative must emphasize authenticity over brand promise. With consumer goods, it’s commonplace to market with a brand promise that’s aspirational and exaggerated: By buying this or that beverage, car, or vacation, you hope to get closer to—or become a little bit more like—the person you see in the commercial. Drugs are no status symbols, and nobody wishes to become a little bit more like a sick person. You’re not interested in being enticed by someone who doesn’t know anything about your condition, no matter how good-looking or otherwise admirable they may be. The perspective that counts is that of people who know what you’re going through. Most of the time that will be other patients or caregivers. Actors and models have no place in this unless they also happen to be real patients.

Finally, the team you put together must treat patients like the human beings they are. This includes being realistic in expectations and anticipating limits of any kind: Mobility, cognition, fatigue, dietary restrictions, vision, hearing, and emotional trauma are some of the factors that commonly play a role. If you expect a patient or caregiver to open their heart (or home) to your team, make sure you enter with respect and leave things the way they were. You don’t want to roll up with a crew truck and run over the patient’s manicured garden (figuratively or literally). You also don’t want to rush patients along or disrespect them with insensitive lines of questioning. You’re not dealing with career talent but with individuals who can provide tremendous value if you allow them to show their true selves.

Setting a Standard

Companies and executives find themselves in very uncomfortable positions if their teams and vendors neglect to take care of important steps like these that keep the organization safe. Incidentally, by safeguarding their reputations and legal compliance, biopharma teams also happen to serve and protect patients’ interests, so it’s a win-win. Nobody wants to be on the front page of the Wall Street Journal for the wrong reasons. Companies that manage to strike the delicate balance between assertive market presence and steadfast legal and ethical adherence do not just avoid the ignominy of negative press—they set a standard for the industry. By fostering a culture of compliance, championing patient-centric approaches, and continuously innovating on engagement strategies, biopharma entities not only propel their brands to the forefront but also underwrite the narrative of their own integrity.

Walking the tightrope of biopharma marketing requires a blend of agility, foresight, and unwavering ethical commitment. Compliance and patient satisfaction aren’t lofty goals, they’re the foundations of success, the cornerstones of marketing excellence. That’s how pharma marketers extend career highs and mitigate any potential lows.

Welcome to the cookieless era, pharmaceutical marketers! The digital landscape is changing, and it’s time to adapt. With the phasing out of third-party cookies, we are entering a new age of direct-to-consumer advertising. This shift presents both challenges and opportunities for pharmaceutical marketers. Let’s explore how to navigate this change successfully.

Understanding the Cookieless Landscape

Why are cookies becoming a thing of the past? Privacy concerns and user consent are driving this change. As third-party cookies crumble, marketers must find new ways to gather insights and engage consumers.

Innovative Data Collection Strategies

How can we collect data without cookies? It’s all about first-party data. This means direct interactions with your audience. Think surveys, newsletters, and loyalty programs. These methods provide valuable insights while respecting user privacy.

Creating Personalized Experiences

How do we personalize without cookies? It’s time to get creative! Use the data you have to tailor content and offers. Remember, relevance is key to engagement.

Leveraging New Technologies

What technologies can aid this transition? Artificial intelligence and machine learning are game-changers. They can analyze large datasets and predict consumer behavior. This tech makes targeted marketing possible, even without cookies.

Building Strong Customer Relationships

How do we build trust? Transparency and communication are crucial. Be clear about how you use data. Build a brand that consumers can trust.

Adapting to Regulatory Changes

How do we stay compliant? Keep up with changing regulations. This ensures your marketing strategies are both effective and lawful.

The cookieless future is not just a challenge; it’s an opportunity. It’s a chance to innovate, build trust, and create more meaningful consumer connections. As pharmaceutical marketers, you can lead this change. Embrace it, and you will thrive!

Brace yourselves for another year of rapid evolution across the digital landscape. That’s the takeaway from talks with eight industry leaders, who see advances in artificial intelligence, personalized messaging and channel optimization shaping direct-to-consumer (DTC) communications in 2024.

Predictions about new and intensifying trends are an annual tradition, but the changes in store for 2024 look more significant than usual to experienced leaders who have seen and driven the transformation of healthcare over the past decade. In the Phreesia report, Industry voices: Trends to watch in 2024, Pallavi Garg, Head of Global Oncology Products and Pipeline Strategy at Takeda, says now is perhaps “one of the most exciting times to work in our industry.”

Indeed, Cassandra Sinclair, a senior health and wellness advertising executive and board advisor, foresees the intersection of science and personalized storytelling fundamentally changing how teams engage consumers, patients and caregivers in 2024.

Brands have the tools to deliver messages at every point in the healthcare journey, from screening through treatment. They also have the power to personalize those messages, particularly at the point of care. As Roz Silbershatz Tomás, who leads the Global Libtayo Core Brand Team at Regeneron, explains, the point of care provides more opportunities for personalization and specificity than other channels, making it a key enabler of tailored, one-to-one campaigns.

“Point of care is a critical space to give the patient precise education on their disease state, knowing that they’re sitting in the doctor’s office, potentially about to make a decision on their healthcare and treatment,” she says.

The proliferation of options and embrace of omnichannel is driving companies to look at the role of each channel “with much more scrutiny,” says Alison Tapia, Senior Director, Performance Marketing and Digital Innovation at Dermavant Sciences.

“Brands are asking more questions to understand whether their strategy is working,” Tapia says. “Some of these critical considerations include: Are we reaching the right people? Are we showing up with appropriate messaging for that channel? Is it impactful? And can we compliantly message in that channel?”

Arielle Chavkin, Group Director of Digital Partnerships at Initiative, anticipates that teams will expand their communication toolkits in greater recognition of the needs and priorities of various patient subpopulations. That awareness makes it important to “truly embrace and plan campaigns based on how the same disease can impact different communities,” Chavkin says.

Social media also can help reach specific communities, but success requires an understanding of the nuances of each platform. Juli LeDoux, Director, Marketing–Patient at ImmunoGen, uses TikTok as an example. “Elaborating on disease states relevant to younger audiences or disease states that might not be considered as highly emotional, such as neurology or dermatology, is key for reaching the largest audience” on the popular short-form video app, she says.

Longer-term trends are building beneath the fast, continual shifts in where people meet online and within the communities they are building. Those long-term trends indicate that patients are, in the words of Meredith Odell, Senior Marketing Director at AstraZeneca, “choosing to share more, learn more and to be their own advocate.”

Artificial intelligence (AI) cuts across all of these trends, and teams are assessing its potential to do more for them operationally, from reviewing content to conducting market research. Over the past year, access to AI tools has become more democratized, observes Alexandra Beneville, Vice President of Content Strategy at Phreesia, and with those tools now more widely available to teams, she foresees 2024 as the year of AI adoption and application.

Digital disruption is forcing a reevaluation of how to connect with patients. Responding to a series of major events—from upheaval at Twitter to the phasing out of third-party cookies—brands are adopting nimbler, more data-driven models that empower them to quickly switch tactics as the operating environment changes and they learn which approaches work best.

Amy Patel, Phreesia’s Director of Analytics, discussed this transforming landscape on a Digital Pharma East 2023 panel that weighed the best ways to reach patients in a world that is “increasingly complex, ever-changing and full of more and more obstacles and challenges,” as she described it.

The phasing out of third-party cookies was a major panel focus. Deprived of a resource that has long been a cornerstone of online engagement, teams now are putting more emphasis on collecting first-party data with consent. Lisa Frankina, Director of Digital Marketing for VIVITROL® at Alkermes, explained how her company works to build trust so that patients feel comfortable sharing their data.

“You want to connect with your audience and emotionally connect with patients,” Frankina said. “What we try to do is amplify the patient voice with first-hand testimonials—a video of someone who has actually been in that position—so that the content is relatable in order to make that authentic connection.”

In the previous, cookie-enabled world, brands could put their materials in front of patients no matter where they were on the internet. Lacking that option today, Natalie Wills, Associate Director of Marketing at Blueprint Medicines, is rethinking how Blueprint can ensure that patients see its content. Some of the new questions her team is asking include: “Where are patients looking for information? Are there ways we can reach patients outside of relying on cookies and data? Where we can put articles out there in the world where patients can find us and come to us?” Wills said.

Brands need a range of ways to connect with patients—and be willing to activate, optimize and switch tactics mid-campaign, the panel agreed. Grace Rodriguez, Head of DTC Portfolio Marketing, iPVU at UCB, described how those necessities manifest at her company.

“Having that nimbleness to really ensure that we are optimizing our spend and reaching those patients, while getting all of the data that we can to really tell that story, is pretty much No. 1 for us,” Rodriguez said. “What are those KPIs per channel, per tactic, per partner? If we’re not delivering on that, then you optimize or you move on.”

The capacity to pivot quickly is reshaping the media-planning cycle, too. The panelists explained that they now continually monitor how different aspects of a campaign are performing and adjust their approach as necessary throughout the year.

“We’ve built more flexibility into our media plans this year than in any year I ever have worked in this space,” said Jack Vance, Managing Director of Data and Activation at SOLVE(D), An IPG Health Company. “Every one of these media plans has a bucket of dollars, and we say ‘We’re going to decide where these go later in the year; we’re going to pick whichever platforms are working really well.’ ”

As Vance explained, a wait-and-see spending model requires brands to frame their definition of success at the start of a campaign, measure how its results compare to that agreed-upon definition and take action if performance falls short of expectations.