Peer-to-Peer Marketing Programs and Pharma Launches: Opportunities to Engage HCPs Using Short-Form, Trusted, Clinically Relevant Information

Episode Transcript

Bozidar Jovicevic: Hello. Welcome to new episode of Pharma Launch Secrets podcast. Today, I have a pleasure to be joined by Andrew Willmer. Andrew is currently EVP of Strategy and Innovation at Symbiotix, which is part of Havas Health & You. He has 25 years of experience in the industry, having started in the field and then have been holding various roles in branded marketing management on both pharma side and agency side. Andrew has a lot of experience in areas such as product development from commercial assessment through clinical phases, NDA filing, and the overall launch cycle. Pleasure to have you today, Andrew.

Andrew Willmer: Hello Bozi. That's a very kind history there. Thank you.

Bozidar: We have a lot to cover today. I'll start just high level which is, COVID happened two years ago, there's been a lot of shifts. On a very high level, what is in your opinion, the biggest shift that happened in the context of pharma launches and COVID?

Andrew: Bozi, I think the obvious one is that shift to digital and omnichannel as a key part of the marketing mix. For years and years, pharma had always seen the personal connection to Salesforce as being a primary in terms of their engagement with ACPs. I don't think there was a driven change, but maybe it was more an acceleration of the change towards digital and digital engagement that people recognized. I think it's critical to see as well though that since COVID as we've emerged out of COVID, there's been a reshift or rebalancing of that to recognize that an omnichannel approach is vital in ACP engagement. There is still a personal aspect to engagement but virtual is where it's at. People have shifted their approach towards learning engagement, peer-to-peer engagements, content engagement on a virtual stage.

Bozidar: Then if we zoom in a little bit more on the topic we'll we go deeper in today, which is peer-to-peer programs and in the context of all those changes on the channel. Maybe we start first by defining what are actually peer-to-peer programs, what are the examples of peer-to-peer programs and then discuss-- Let's start with that, then we'll talk about how actually the environment has changed. What are peer-to-peer programs?

Andrew: I guess fundamentally it's there in the name. It's bringing together clinical peers to talk to one another under an agenda that's built through pharma with content that maybe built through pharma. One of the critical things that I think we've seen emerging is this desired demand for expert experience, clinical experience in content that's delivered and peer-to-peer doctors, experts, clinically experienced individuals talking to their peers, other clinicians giving them advice, experience, and expertise on the clinical situation. That's the foundation of what peer-to-peer is.

A lot of it as well is reflective of the shift in pharma communications and marketing to need to deliver a more detailed and clinical background to information. Rather than traditionally, the rep delivering a single point of information, drug X is 35% better than drug Y, the need for context of that, the patient populations that affect, how that affects the real clinical situation, that's been a change in what's needed to be delivered, and that's where peer-to-peer really evolves as being the master in communications as being that clinical experience.

Bozidar: Are specific subsets of examples of peer-to-peer programs, such as speaker programs, in that bucket to peer-to-peer you'd also involve what's done in conferences. What are some of the most common buckets that in your experience when people say peer-to-peer, what are some of the things they think about? They think most of speaker programs, or they think more broadly of other forms of peer-to-peer engagement?

Andrew: I guess there's emerged to be three buckets. There's the speaker program-like event. One expert speaking to many or a group of clinical individuals that is supported through pharma, that is driven through pharma and its activities. Traditionally, that used to be the dinner speaker program. Today that's evolved, maybe to more the video presentation program or a virtual presentation program. A speaker delivering a structured presentation.

The second part of that is then the conference-led engagement. Supporting one expert or a number of experts in front of a very large group of expert is under the context of a scientific congress or other environments. The third part has more become the recorded delivery or on-demand delivery of content. Through COVID back turned into video recordings, speaker presentations, and pushing those out of content. We've moved now to a much more nuanced approach of really trying to understand how to build the right level of content, the right level of presentation for short moments of clinical insights, clinical pearls, or diagnostic pearls being delivered through video platforms or other spoken platforms, or other video-led, on-demand led activities.

That encompasses the three main groupings of peer-to-peer programs. Underpinning all of that is a lot of pharma support of building the right content, the right approach towards expert and peer engagement and candidly, as it always used to be, that financial support of helping experts speak to their clinical peers.

Bozidar: Great. Just for our listeners who are outside of United States, speaker programs typically programs delivered, either during the day, over lunch, it can be in the office, or hospital or delivered in the evening as a part of a dinner where typically one expert would talk to a group of 10 plus typically doctors. Sometimes it can be organized for patients as well, with the patient's ambassador as well, and basically sharing a mix of disease and product-related information.

As we talk about this form of rolling out peer-to-peer programs, it seems like there are three different ways that are emerging. One is in-person, which is more traditional, which was happening a lot before COVID. Then there is virtual or online which can be done in a Zoom-like environment which is real-time. Some people use the word virtual when they mean real-time. Then the other one is on-demand which is basically convenient. Those seems to be three ways to deliver whether it's conference-related or non-conference-related. In your view, how do you see those three forms of delivery evolving? Where do you see trends going?

Andrew: Gosh, it's a great question. I think even now, coming out of COVID, we haven't seen a real settlement of what's happening but there are a number of trends Bozi that we're seeing in the market space. This was reported back in tail end of 2021 by Clarivate. That has been reported on various others as we start to move out of COVIDl, of where doctors' preferences are. In COVID, obviously, there was a dramatic shift to virtual or on-demand content. Everyone was having to get their educational content, get their peer-to-peer engagement through a virtual video audio digital platform.

There's been a little bit of reaction to that. There was some level of digital fatigue as you might imagine. Pharma shifted a lot of content of just being recorded content being pushed out online. Physicians started to look for true personal engagement, they started to look for that interactive engagement as well. The nation, the world started to open up. Congresses started to open up. There was a sudden and dramatic almost oversteer into live personal engagement or demand for life personal engagement.

We saw just this year, Bozi, I think ASCO reported almost the same number of attendees live this year as they'd seen pre-COVID. A dramatic shift back to that personal engagement. However, with that, there's been a really interesting dynamic underpinning things. Physicians are looking for in-person engagement, peer-to-peer, face-to-face, flesh-to-flesh engagement with their peers to hear expert voices, to hear expert experience. The demand for that has increased. However, the demand for online, digital. virtual engagement has also increased.

The number of events that they're attending has outstripped maybe previous expectations of their virtual engagement. Part of this I believe is that a shift towards the attitudes, practicalities that they're using for learning now, CME used to be a dedicated part of the clinicians' day that they would set aside a part of their day relevant to their practice, relevant to their overall clinical responsibilities that shifted to a much later time and shifted to also different approach towards media itself.

Physicians moved from the hour-long block or two-hour-long block of dedicated learning to moments of learning, to seeking clinical pearls during the course of their clinical day seeking clinical pearls during the course of their practice with patients to really understand relevant things in the moment.

I think a number of the trends and things that we're seeing is this shift towards, es, in-person or personal contact with peers, but a drive also to video virtual or on-demand engagements, underpinning all of that is this demand for personal expert information experience. That voice of authority if you like, Bozi, that someone who knows the real clinical situation to advise peers and colleagues is a huge thing.

Bozidar: Then you mentioned also interesting trends that there are these moments of education and that now they're coming a different time of the day. If I am now a clinician and I want to maybe at 7:00 PM or 8:00 PM, just spend 5, 10 minutes engaging, it's very likely that those moments would be more on demand while some of them will stay in-person and real-time digitally.

In your view what is the future and what trends do you see when it comes to on-demand content? One of them you mentioned it's lengths of content. What are some of the other trends, whether it's different formats from video, from voice to any other form and signification, so where do you think trends are going and what are physicians demanding and how can pharma adjust to that?

Andrew: That's a really interesting question. I think maybe it falls back to some of those old principles that we always stated that maybe never really pulled through of deliver the right message, the right information at the right moment through the right medium.

Physicians are looking for clinically relevant information. They're looking for information that affects their practice and their patients more than anything else now. They're looking for what is the key part of branded information that is relevant to me right now.

They're looking for information when they want it. We've moved to an information-on-demand age and I think what has shifted with that is positions also recognizing I need information right now in the moment when I need to make a clinical decision. You look at the evolution of apps like Figure 1 as a great example, as being that social sharing of diagnostic challenges in the market space, physicians have shifted to that demand.

They're looking for both the right clinical information in the moment that they need it. That may be during the course of the clinical day, or it might be during the course of their clinical learning dedicated time. Then thirdly the right medium, they are looking for all sorts of different media. This makes a challenge for pharma, obviously, and it makes a challenge for all of us in peer-to-peer communications of what's the single right medium, where do I put my $100 investment? The answer today is there isn't an easy response to that. We have to consider a omnichannel approach to learning engagement. We have to consider multiple points of engagement across the physician community and across an individual physician.

Like you and I, they'll look at their iPad in the morning, their phone a little later on their computer during the middle of the day, iPad again then phone before their bed. Choosing the right medium and how content is delivered through that media is a critical part of that. Again, I can't overemphasize that importance of short clinical pearls being delivered to physicians with an expert voice, that expert authority, that ability to trust the voice that content's coming from is critical to it.

Whether that's across video, audio podcast, live webinar engagement, all different types of engagement that they're looking for a range of those really interesting. I was actually just reading a study about how physicians also want to be able to download information. It's a really, really-- and a challenging one for pharma. Giving physicians the ability to download information rather than being held in the compliant environment is an interesting one to consider, but there's another piece of that downloadable. I want to be able to take it with me.

Bozidar: That's very interesting one. I remember when Netflix actually added that feature and everyone was super happy because then when they travel, they can download and on an airplane, they can actually watch a movie or something or somewhere else and have it downloaded. There's a additional layer of convenience and now all of the platforms basically have it. I know I'm paying YouTube premium just so I can download videos when I'm traveling and watch them later.

What you mentioned, I love how you can summarize it, short clinical pearls coming from a trusted voice delivered in a personalized and convenient way. It really resembles how we are all living as consumers and doctors are also consumers. Like they just mentioned, we are all used to, as you say, I'm on a mobile, then I want iPad, then on phone, then I'm here, then I'm there, but those several places where I go to consume content, all know when I want to deliver delivered in a personalized way and it adjusts in the world where trust is really a big issue.

Now, one of the key challenges there is personalization, how do someone who's launching right now and thinking, "Okay, how do I deliver this personalized content? Where do I start as someone launching a product with our audience?" Is it do I start first with doing research and understanding what type of content is needed and create the library of that so that I can then start to train the algorithms on that and deliver or has someone even started to think about that?

Andrew: Oh gosh.

Bozidar: It's a big question.

Andrew: It's a huge question. I think it depends a lot on the market space that we're in. It depends on the objectives of a particular launch. Are we trying to achieve awareness? Are we trying to achieve true engagement? Are you trying to change clinical behavior? I think it depends a wee bit on that. I think at Havas Health & You, we've really identified that truly understanding your target audience is a critical part of any marketing launch, any approach toward engagement, understanding your audience on a nuance level, being able to engage with them on a personalized level is critical to that.

I think maybe American Express took it and destroyed the idea of truly personalized approach that when there is so much analytics, you can personalize approach, but make it so generic. how many letters do you get that are just titled "Dear Bozi" and they know nothing about you, but they've got your name from some email listing. I think the critical part of it is to be able to understand the individual behind the name, the individual behind the identity, to be able to target content to an individual, to be able to make relevant content for them relevant to in the HCP environment practice experience, where they are on the, on a learning journey, where they are on a clinical behavior journey as well. That to me is a, a critical balance of what needs to happen.

For the marketeer looking to launch their product, identify what your objectives are and truly understand your audience. That will help you define the level of personalization that's needed for any program.

Bozidar: Then there's also a lot of talk about when we talk about content. What's the right mix between disease-related content versus product-related content? I know you and your team also helps with product launches. How do you see the role and the balance of those two types of content playing out in what doctors want and what is the term scientific activation that I know you guys use at Symbiotix? How does that connect to this topic?

Andrew: You move straight to my heart Bozi. Let me describe scientific activation first of all, because I think that informs the first part of your question. At Symbiotix, we truly believe in that idea of scientific activation, that idea of turning the arid clinical dataset, clinical information into meaningful human data. Information that is going to help a physician to better engage with better treat their patients. Taking the small percentages that you'll see in a clinical paper about some level of efficacy or safety result and making them meaningful to each individual patient that a physician sees.

Doing that in a way that is understandable on a level of clinical practice. In the moment activity right now, what does this information mean for me treating Bozi at this real moment? That's what we believe in scientific activation. That's what we believe is the big shift that needs to happen is that both personalization and humanization of information.

In order to do that, in order to make that relevant in clinical understanding, when you look at two areas, we look at a physician's understanding of the disease state. One of the amazing challenges we've seen in medicine is a change from treating symptoms to treating disease, to really understanding the biologic, physiologic, metabolic nature of disease and be able to target specific processes in the disease-causing cycle.

Being able to deliver understanding to that to physicians, understanding a deeper layer of disease, understanding and be able to recognizing both the presence of disease and the cause of the pharmacologic cause or physiologic cause of diseases. That's one part of disease-level education that we do. Oftentimes we are seeing now in emergence in medicine of the ability to treat much more rarefied much more individualized diseases as well.

Helping a physician understand the background to a disease, the background to a specific disease-causing process is critical.

Separate but related to that is then more of the branded information. The information around a pharmaceutical product itself and what it does and better-understood disease process. Within pharma, inevitably this is something that is much more controlled in terms of communication, regulated in terms of communication.

We need to be sure that we are delivering the right and appropriate information to physicians to make good clinical decisions. What that means in peer-to-peer communications is there is almost two bandings of it. There's that level of disease where we're staying away from a drug itself that specifics of the drug itself, but really exploring the causative or impact of a disease itself.

Again, activating science we're humanizing that. Sure you can understand the lambda 3 pathway of some receptor. What does that mean to the patient themselves? What does that means to their lives? What does that mean to the continuity and enjoyment of their lives? Then second to that is that branded stuff.

Bozidar: I'm thinking one of the things when you really nicely summarize it is trust. You said trust communication. One way that that is achieved is by having peer talking to a peer, doctor trusting another doctor or Carewell. What is the position that you think pharma needs to take? Because pharma, of course, makes medicines and sells medicine, the very basic level.

How can pharma leverage also peer to peer programs to increase levels of trust but also consciously throughout the commercialization of products, also work on improving and increasing trust? Especially now with COVID you've seen increasing trust with pharma after when new vaccines were delivered, now we see decreasing trust. How do you see all this playing out with an overall goal of increasing trust?

Andrew: I think with the same principles that we all operate in life candor and honesty are two great principles of that. Sharing information and being honest about information in a way that's clinically relevant is a critical part of that. Pharma's going through an interesting time as you said.

We've seen this wave of confidence and trust coming out of vaccines that's then waned and declined a wee bit with some challenges in the pharma industry.

I think for the individual brand though, engagement with their audience with a position of honesty, supporting their audience by bringing experts with their own clinical opinions to discussion, is a critical part of that. We face, and we face every day a real challenge of, how do you bring that clinical opinion and the ability for the pharma company to support an expert and experienced individual delivering a clinical opinion with the constraints, the confinements of compliance, information delivery? That's a difficult challenge.

It's one that we have to negotiate every day, but it's one that ensuring that there are certain approaches towards communication, and at the end of it, that a physician is delivering trusted information is the best way to deliver it. Sometimes it's simply not possible to get an expert to deliver information. Those times you need to ensure that there is a level of academic support, that academic rigor to content that any individual is delivering.

Bozidar: Actually, one thing that I want to ask you about related to trust. The big part and I've seen this in a few market research papers, that ability to have Q&A as a feature, whether it's delivered virtual, real-time or on-demand, the ability to have Q&A, to have that scientific conversation, or clinical relevant conversation that is critical.

Do you think that pharma will be able to do that with all the compliance red tapes and challenges or do you just think it's basically essential, it's a must, and it's not like if there needs to be done, but it's how to be done? What do you think is the role of that?

Andrew: Q&A is critical. You look at almost any survey of congress engagement or peer-to-peer engagement, speaker engagement. The one piece that always comes back is, "I'd like to have the Ask the Expert button. I'd like to have the ability to chat and ask my questions." I don't think it's a question of, should it be done? It's a question of how it gets done.

We've been working with a number of really advancing pharma companies on bringing their regulatory into the conversation so that we can have instantaneous and inline conversations. That compliance or medical groups are reviewing questions coming from the audiences, reviewing answers that are going out to audiences to make sure that they're within a compliant framework. That then has to be the new approach to it. We have to have a more informed and dynamic approach towards making that happen.

I think with you composing, we've seen some approaches to, I don't want to call it time delay, but momentarily delayed Q&A sessions as well. Maybe at the end of a live session, there is a section dedicated towards Q&A that allows questions to come in for those to be appropriately monitored and screened in terms of both the question and the answers coming back to ensure that the right things are being put out there. It's a challenge. It's a real challenge for the live environment, it's a challenge for that involvement of pharma is going to engage experts to speak on their behalf. We have to find the right way to ensure that they're delivering compliant information for the pharma company but bringing that clinical experience with it as well.

Why engage an expert with the breadth and depth of clinical experience they have, and ask them to give a canned presentation? That piece has to be one that we've figured out. We're looking at multiple different ways of doing both streaming and online after the moment. FAQs being available as responses so that we can address many of those questions in a compliant way.

Bozidar: Definitely, we are also looking at asynchronous Q&A, which some of the doctors already used to for years, even before COVID and the virtual advisory boards. Where you have a forum like or Reddit-like questions and answers, questions being unfolded, and then people you can tag a certain person and then when they have time they answer to the question, so you have really focused conversations on specific topics.

We recently even in our own marketing, has started to test out on-demand videos, but with multiple engagement features, Q&A, polling, this and that, and then an ability to actually whenever someone is watching and asking questions, that they get an answer while they're watching us. We have a team who actually can answer while they're watching, while the content is delivered in on-demand way.

How does this all come together? For someone launching a product, and maybe best will be to ask you if you see examples, of course, I know you may not want to maybe cannot mention client names, but do you see like smaller companies in biotech first time, launchers moving faster in this space, larger companies, like some of the examples of programs being done well, or course key success factors behind the programs that actually had success.

Andrew: Great question. I think there's almost an inevitable part of some of the smaller pharma are being a little bit more being faster to adopt different approaches, but smaller biopharma and some of the specialty pharma obviously that they've got a smaller physician customer base. They're looking to educate and inform a fewer number of individuals. They can be a little bit more bespoke or personalized in their approach, but we're seeing some large brands.

I'm working on a program right now with one of the world's largest pharmas on bringing to them a platform brings physicians together to engage with each other on a case review. It's almost like a group case review approach led by and moderated by an expert to take people through a case to answer questions during the course of that case within a compliant environment, within a FAQ structured environment as well.

I think there's some changes in pharma that are starting to move towards that. Being able to get the breadth for large pharma primary care or large community medications is a challenge to it to bring out the information, but the reality is personalization. Again, I'll go back to some of the comments I made at the very beginning, that reaching the physician in his or her moment of clinical need or clinical information need reaching it.

Whether it's during the course of the clinical day or whether it's during their clinical learning, dedicated time, being able to bring the right information at that point is the critical part to it. It means with all of what we are engaging with this idea of omnichannel multichannel multiplatform approaches towards communication is critical of it is no longer that old campaign mindset of, "It's my agenda, it's my information. I'll tell you when I choose to." We have to build an environment that is our information delivered to you when you need it, provided to you so it's available when you need it when you want it.

That means giving shorter pieces of information, led information, building a linear journey that allows layering of content during the course of it. There are some great little branded approaches in technology that are emerging today. Part of the fun of what I have at Symbiotix is identifying some of those new, innovative technologies. Some are coming from larger technology companies that are deploying new approaches towards older technology to bring physicians together on one platform.

Some are bringing together expert learning society content and being able to deliver that in conjunction with pharma-branded learning. Some are looking at a much more personalized approach. I think I've used the term expert engagement or peer-to-peer expertise more often in the past couple of weeks than ever before, of bringing together almost one-to-one or one-to-very-few platforms for engagement of short moments of expert engagement with physicians to give them that personalized knowledge information.

Bozidar: Great. We covered a lot of topics today when it comes to peer-to-peer. It's very fascinating how this whole area will involve world technology, new modern personalized trusted ways of delivering content that will be challenging and will also create opportunities. As you mentioned some of the opportunities for pharma and things that are already happening. As for the very end, we love to learn a little bit more about Andrew Willmer. I'll ask you a few questions such as what's your favorite industry buzzword of the year 2022. You may have already said it at the beginning, but I want to make sure that that's your favorite one.

Andrew: My favorite word in 2022 became snackable and I used it more frequently than I chose to. That idea of short bitesize content became the word of the moment in the first half of 2022, sadly like the old Scooby snack they've moved away now snackable content has moved away more to targeted content or other but that idea of snackable to me.

Bozidar: Makes me a bit hungry when you say because I'm skipping breakfast lately, I'm intermittent fasting. Now it's been four or five hours since I woke up and haven't ate so your favorite industry buzzword definitely triggers the amygdala.

Andrew: We'll find you a snackable moment after this, Bozi.

Bozidar: There you go. Then what's the best book you read in the last 12 months?

Andrew: It's a tough one. I actually just reread-- oh my God. I can't think of how many times. Jon Krakauer's decline about some failed trips up Everest which I'm sure you've read as well. I saw The Alpinist over on Netflix just recently and that inspired me to read that once again and remind myself of the real challenges, the real considerations of thinking of a plan, sticking to a plan but having flexibility to deal with the reality of elements. Wonderful wonderful book.

Bozidar: What's your go-to song when you feel stressed out or you need some inspiration?

Andrew: This one is maybe a bit too revealing.

[laughter]

Bozidar: No worries.

Andrew: I've got a very eclectic iPhone. Now I think Pitbull I'll Feel This Moment. That's the one for me. That's the one that when I'm out on one of my runs if that one comes onto the playlist that'll always just spark the hairs on the back of my neck and make me feel good about the world. There you go.

Bozidar: Who in the world of pharma would you most likely take out for lunch?

Andrew: Oh, gosh. I guess like so many of us I'd love to sit down with Anthony Fauci and understand what really went on. His announcement of retirement and all power to him to move out from his White House and political commitment I think is admirable. To have a moment, to have some time to really spend and understand just what he went through on a personal basis through the past three years of his spot I think would be incredibly fascinating. I got to say if someone in this industry, if I took him out to lunch I'd have to invite an audience of 100 of my peers and colleagues as well to hear what he has to say. What a story.

Bozidar: Then what is one sentence advice you would give to someone who's just starting right now in pharma marketing and product launches?

Andrew: I think I'd say what I've said to many people joining and being part of this industry. It is the most fascinating, most engaging, most challenging industry to be part of. It is exciting and dynamic as pharma sits about coordination, that hub of science and medicine and politics and society and economics. Enjoy it for what it is, enjoy it the way that pharma engages with all aspects of life and society. Recognize that you're entering into a fascinating world but stay anchored to a true north. Stay anchored to what I think we all have learned in our pharma careers of--Listen, our job is to make health better, to make better medicines, make medicines better for the people that use them. I think that underpins what we do.

Bozidar: Great. That's a beautiful message and hopeful people who are just starting out will hear it out. Where can people find you online?

Andrew: Oh, goodness I don't have a huge online presence. You can find me at LinkedIn. I'm Andrew Willmer at LinkedIn. I watch but avoid Twitter at the moment so really LinkedIn is my place to find my commentary either through Symbiotix or through my own personal pages.

Bozidar: Thank you Andrew for being a guest. Thank you so much and looking forward to continue learning more about the future of peer-to-peer programs and figuring it out for everyone as well thank you.

Andrew: Bozi, it's a great pleasure. It's always a pleasure to speak to an expert like yourself. I rely on your insights and understanding in this market space as much as anybody. Thank you. Thanks for the time.