Increasing health literacy, quality of patient-physician relationships, and ultimately patient health and wellness outcomes is the goal of Wills Robbins, Founder and CEO of Constant Media. Constant Media is a leading provider of innovative, award-winning point-of-care media programs used by a wide range of pharmaceutical companies for patient outreach.
Robbins met with Fierce Pharma’s Rebecca Willumson to discuss marketing challenges and Constant Media’s approach for improving pharmaceutical brand and product awareness by engaging patients at the point of care.
Improving and enhancing conversations between physicians and patients is one path to increased consumer awareness of different products in the pharma landscape and brings with it the added benefit of being able to provide education. Bringing branded awareness into conversations between healthcare personnel and patients seeking treatment can be a powerful marketing tool. This approach works not only to promote individual products but also serves to increase knowledge of pharmaceutical brands.
Constant Media is a Point of Care education company providing physicians with state-of-the-art relevant patient education digital platforms.
Rebecca Willumson:
Hi there. I'm Rebecca Willumson. I'm the publisher of FiercePharma, and I'm here today with Wills Robbins, CEO and founder of Constant Media. Wills, thanks for joining me today.
Wills Robbins:
Oh, thank you. My pleasure.
Rebecca Willumson:
So before we start off, do you want to tell me a little bit about your role and your background in [crosstalk 00:00:24]
Wills Robbins:
Of course, yes. Well, I founded Constant Media 10 years ago. We're a specialist in point-of-care advertising in doctor's offices, and prior to that, I had about eight or nine years' experience in the industry, mostly a sales background. And when I founded the company, we really knew that we really wanted to help improve the patient/physician dialogue, so that was our main focus of the company. I still am a little more of a Jack-of-all-trades where I work with strategy, but I still have a handful of clients that I've sold to and have worked with for at least 15, 16 years. And then I'll also have a lot of emphasis in helping recruit our doctor office and physician group practices as partners, so multifaceted.
Rebecca Willumson:
What aspect of pharma marketing is poised for the biggest disruption?
Wills Robbins:
I'm not exactly sure, to be honest with you. And see, what I've always done instead of a disruption is look for an improvement, right? And so our goal in trying to enhance that patient/physician dialogue is we've always looked at ways that we could improve the dialogue between the patient and the physician and henceforth knowing that the pharmaceutical marketers want to be a part of that dialogue. Traditionally, when I first started off in the industry, everything was pretty much static wall boards. And it went from, you gave us your print ed. We repurposed it, put it on a poster, and little by little, digital tactics came around, and that's really why I founded my company. When we worked with the other company I was working with, they weren't really interested in venturing into more digital aspects.
Wills Robbins:
When we outfit an office, we're interested in helping them find a solution to a problem. And when we look at all the RFPs that we've received from the brand, the pharmaceutical companies, a lot of them have mentioned very similar things even though they're different. You could have a, we'll call it a, chronic condition that treats 40, 50 million people, and they still have some similar problems that they're trying to deal with as opposed to we'll call it a rare disease that treats for 80,000 people. And pretty much the branded pharmaceutical companies that we're working with really want to create an awareness of their product, right, and they want to differentiate it between it and its competitors, and also educate the patient. And so, what we've tried to do is find out ways that we can improve and enhance that conversation either between different tactics that we have at the office.
Rebecca Willumson:
So tell me, what does customer engagement look like in today's world?
Wills Robbins:
Well, for us, it's a little different because we're very highly specialized in that we have, in a sense, three different customers, if you will. Number one, our goal is to outfit physician offices and give them tools and tactics to help better utilize their time with the patients. The patients obviously want to improve their health, and so if they realize that their health literacy is increasing because they're utilizing the patient education support tactics, then they're served. Then the final user, for us, would be the pharmaceutical company, which places advertising.
Wills Robbins:
What we have seen is that more patients now are actively involved, obviously, searching information from wherever they are, right? And in essence, the point of care could be anywhere, but utilizing us mostly with office-based with the physician offices. However, we have programs that can reach the patient both in their home, or also while they're at the office, in the waiting room, and then in the exam room, and with the through line all the way through.
Rebecca Willumson:
So with the increase in telehealth, other digital patient engagement, how can you develop POC content that is specific, relevant, and engaging?
Wills Robbins:
No, that's actually the best question, and the reason is, is we've seen that with telehealth, it's a different environment, right? Because in telehealth ... And we do actually have a telehealth partner and a platform that we started back last spring at the height of COVID, and we, in essence, recreated the waiting room where instead of just staring at a blank screen, we placed educational content relevant to that visit there, and then the opportunity to also have a branded ad that would sponsor that content. So we instituted that. We have probably about 30 or 40 different programs going on now, and I've always really thought that that would be maybe a disruption, going back to that question, is that that's the one thing that I think marketers could do better in that is understand.
Wills Robbins:
I know they have a lot of, we'll say, things that they have to worry about other than just our environment, but to recognize where exactly in the journey they are in talking with that patient and having the content be relevant to that conversation, and sort of like a through line of reinforcing. Maybe some more general awareness in the waiting area, but where you're in an intimate conversation in the telehealth, where there's not other people around, you might be able to be. And I've started to see that, where we do have some branded content and different versions of commercials that we've run in-office, as opposed in the waiting area, that is different than what we've either placed on telehealth, or also in our interactive digital exam room wall board, which will be able to ... very intimate in the room while you're actually with the physician, and then they can interact with it in that 10 minutes prior to engaging with the physician.
Rebecca Willumson:
That's great.
Wills Robbins:
Yeah. So, that's actually the most important thing I think is to understand what that patient's going through at the moment that they're looking at that content.
Rebecca Willumson:
So is there anything that you want to leave us with or any comments before we close out?
Wills Robbins:
The only thing I would like to say is that I think obviously the pharmaceutical marketers have a great important job, because you're saving lives and helping people further and extend their life. And actually, it's funny, because I forget which trade show it was, but it was maybe about seven or eight years ago, about a year or two into our existence as a company, I went to one of the panels. And the panel was by a doctor who had just written a book about the dialogue between the patient and the physician. And it was interesting because the doctor wrote it. He was married to a physician, and his wife unfortunately had breast cancer, so she was in the operating room having a mastectomy. And what happened was the physician who was performing the operation needed to go a little bit further than what they discussed in the mastectomy, and halted the operation, goes into the waiting area, and asks the doctor, right, what should he do? And he says, "Well, didn't you confer with my wife?" And they said "No."
Wills Robbins:
And so, he wrote a book based on the whole concept of having a better dialogue between the patient and the physician, because he was a physician, his wife was a physician, and there was a physician who was treating his wife, and they did not discuss prior to going into the operating room, what would they do if they had to be a little more aggressive in the operation and the function of her health? When I heard that story, I was like, "Wow. We're going change the focus of our company of just being out-of-home company or a media company," and our whole motto is, enhance that patient/physician dialogue.
Rebecca Willumson:
I think that's a great way to close out. Thank you so much for joining me. I appreciate it.
Wills Robbins:
Oh, my pleasure. Thank you very much. It was a pleasure meeting with you and discussing this.