In this discussion, Steve Carickhoff, President of BioPharm Communications, a company specializing in third-party, omnichannel promotion, discusses some of the challenges and opportunities facing pharma marketing clients today. Our conversation covers the significance of data in achieving connected activation, the challenge of data silos among partners, and the need to break down these barriers for more effective marketing strategies.
He also discusses a critical, but often overlooked component of omnichannel marketing, depth of content. With limited assets, content fatigue is rampant, driving down marketing performance. Hear him talk about the importance of leveraging unique platforms and methods designed to create content efficiently and at scale to ensure the appropriate amount of “fuel” is available to run an omnichannel engine.
Listen to the full interview or read the transcript to learn more.
Michelle Benz: Hi, my name's Michelle Benz, content director here at Fierce Pharma. I'm here with Steve Carickhoff of BioPharm Communications. Thank you for joining me today.
Steve Carickhoff: Sure, Michelle. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.
Michelle Benz: Can you tell me a little bit about your company and your role
Steve Carickhoff: Yeah. Sure, Michelle. So thanks for having me. I am president of BioPharm Communications. We've been in business for knocking on the door of 20 years now. We focus on third party, non-personal promotion, orchestrated in an omnichannel way. We have three key pillars to our portfolio. One we call Always ON MD, which is our quick to market solution, which helps clients leverage content in a unique way. We have what we call Moments, which is our automated trigger solutions, which allow our customers to be in front of physicians at point of decision. And then the third pillar, which is our longest standing pillar, is what we call our deep education, which is our KOL and peer-based programs that we run.
Michelle Benz: What are the most exciting opportunities for pharma marketers today?
Steve Carickhoff: I think opportunities abound. But when I think about what we're trying to accomplish from a technology and a digital perspective, I really want to anchor on what opportunities are in front of our clients to take advantage of in terms of data. And data continues to be a challenge for a lot of our customers, right? It lives in silos, partners don't always have data to share, or they don't share it in a timely way so that it's meaningful and we can take action on it. The data really fuels what we call connected activation. So connected activation is making sure that we're pushing assets into market that are connected, that are modular, that as a user is responding to one asset, we know what to do with the next. But because of the data silos, that makes that a real challenge. So that's a big opportunity that we have in the marketplace now. And my sentiment on that is I think some partners do it really well, a lot of partners do it really well within themselves. But industry-wide, breaking down those silos between partners is something that's a real true opportunity. But again, we're still a way aways from that.
I think if you're thinking near term about opportunities that are in front of our clients, if you think about what everybody's calling omnichannel, we call precision marketing, really the key to omnichannel and having an omnichannel car on the road is the fuel in the engine. And the fuel in the engine is your content. And a lot of times what we see is that clients struggle with depth of content, right? You're working with a client, they have three or four emails that they're giving to eight different partners, and every partner is sending the same three or four emails. So you see fatigue happen very, very quickly with those. So I think one of the biggest opportunities near term that our clients can take advantage of is coming up with a way to be able to utilize their content effectively and at scale. So how can you create content at scale without the additional dollars required that you would typically pay to create content?
One of the things that we've been able to do at BioPharm is work with clients who want to take a video first approach to content marketing. We've developed a series of what we call KOL avatars where we take KOLs into a studio, we record avatars, and then that allows us to create video at scale. So if a client comes to us, we can create short form video, long form video, video banner ads, conference material, video that can go into the interactive visual aid. And we can do that in a matter of weeks instead of months, and we can do it at a fraction of the cost. And the great news is because it's AI based and it's avatar based, if there's any changes that need to happen to that content, we can make those changes in weeks instead of months. So I think as agencies, having a mindset of helping our clients create content at scale, leveraging content and unique ways, because content also sits in silos, working with our clients to leverage content in unique ways, can help them really put fuel in the omnichannel tank.
Michelle Benz: In what ways are the digital capabilities enabling pharma companies to personalize and impact the customer experience?
Steve Carickhoff: Yeah. So I think that's a great question. And when I think about digital capabilities, I don't necessarily think about assets that we put in market or how we create assets. I think of that from a technology standpoint and data, right? I think data has been something that we've been talking about as an industry for a really long time. What data allows us to do is be really great marketers, right? And I think that that's something that's starting to emerge in pharma right now. Data allows us to have a really deep understanding of our customer, their consumption patterns, their behaviors, how they respond to specific promotion. And as you're thinking about how we want to engage with our customers and what good marketing really looks like, good marketing is about being in front of your customer at point of decision. And that's ultimately what some of these digital technologies and digital transformations allow us to do.
At BioPharm, we call these unmissable moments, or Moments, where a decision's being made and we have the ability to be in proximity to that decision, right? And when you think about marketing technology and decision and next best action, that's not always necessarily about, "Did my doctor open up an email?" "Did my doctor click on a banner ad?" No, it's about, "Is my doctor writing a prescription for the very first time? What do I need to support his or her decision?" "Is my doctor writing a competitive prescription for the very first time? How do I respond to that in the marketplace?" "Has my doctor ordered a lab value or has a lab test come back?" And we have anonymized patient data that allows us to see what those lab results are.
So I know that that physician is in a point of time in the patient treatment pathway where they have to make a decision, and we have the ability to be there at that point in time or proximity to that point in time. And I think that's one of the things that we're seeing in the marketplace right now that will really allow us to impact not only physician's behavior, but the outcome for patients in really unique ways, which is really why we're all here, right? So I'm really excited about some of the digital technologies that we're seeing really anchored on the concept of data, and how that integrates with our ability to market more effectively to our customers.
Michelle Benz: So what are some of the challenges or limitations that marketers face when executing campaigns across channels or partners?
Steve Carickhoff: Yeah, I think that's another great question, and we talked a little bit about it in our first answer. I think one of the biggest things that we see from a challenge standpoint that our customers have is really around the depth of content and the fatigue of content. That's a real challenge. We talked about, earlier, how a brand may have three or four emails, or maybe even half a dozen emails, but when you're distributing that to partners across the consideration set and they're using the same core content repeatedly, you see fatigue on that content very, very rapidly.
I think one of the areas that we can really take a look at helping our customers with those challenges is helping them understand how to use their content differently and better, right? So when you have clients who are creating content, a couple of emails, but they also have a speaker deck, one or two KOL videos that they've created, they have patient profiles on their website, they do have content in different places, but it's a function of how we help them do an audit of that content, understand how that content can be utilized and mixed and matched with existing content, so you're pairing existing content with existing content to give you extended life in the marketplace.
So if you have an efficacy email that's going out the door and you have five partners sending out that same efficacy email, how do you change that slightly to make sure that you're not feeling the impact of fatigue on that content within the first three months of it in market? And that's something that we've really focused on within the context of what we call Always ON MD, which allows us to take a look at that content and create variable sections of it so that when it arrives in an ACPs inbox, it looks and feels a little bit different from what everybody else is sending out, and it's not just the logo at the top of the partner that sent it. So that's one thing that we've really been focused on. It's helping our clients really maximize what they already have, because we know that budgets aren't necessarily getting bigger, right? Pressures are growing, and everybody needs to deliver better returns for less. So how can we help our clients put those puzzle pieces together? That's something we've been really focused on.
Michelle Benz: It's been great speaking with you today. Thank you so much for taking your time and sharing your perspective.