The Heart of Pharma: Building Connections for Effective Marketing with Craig Douglass, Chief Growth Officer at Digitas Health

[00:00:00] Hey everybody, Saul Marquez with the Health Matters podcast. I want to welcome you back

[00:00:15] to another episode straight from the Health 2023 Las Vegas event. Today I have the privilege

[00:00:22] of hosting Craig Douglas. He's the chief growth officer at Digitaz Health. He's a strategic

[00:00:28] and creative leader with 25 plus years of experience, driving health engagement through

[00:00:33] digital platforms and his focus on integrating creativity, media and technology has positioned

[00:00:40] him as a leader in healthcare communications. Craig, thanks for joining me. That's

[00:00:44] pleasure to be here. And so look, before we dive into the work that you and the Digitaz

[00:00:49] Health team are up to tell me a little bit more about what inspires your work in healthcare.

[00:00:53] Sure. So we see a great opportunity in the healthcare space to use marketing for good,

[00:00:59] marketing actually can have a role to play for better health outcomes. We know and we see

[00:01:05] this there's plenty of data across all the categories. The more engaged people are with their

[00:01:08] healthcare, the better the outcomes. So we try to create content, create engagement on behalf

[00:01:14] of our client brands that get people more engaged in healthcare to help them find the answers they're

[00:01:19] looking for, take the kind of actions that will ultimately lead to their outcomes. That's great.

[00:01:24] Thank you, Craig. Is Digitaz Health mainly working with providers, payers, companies? All

[00:01:30] of the above. Well, our primary clients are going to be pharmaceutical brands, but we work with some

[00:01:34] of the frankly biggest most complex brands in the world, not surprising that it's pretty complex

[00:01:38] category. It is so yeah. So the brand manager is our client more times than not. We certainly will

[00:01:45] stretch ourselves into some of the enterprise on the technology side. Obviously you need that kind

[00:01:51] of power, the data, the technology. So we'll engage with other parts of the organization, but

[00:01:56] that's always going to be driven out of the brand. Got it. Thank you. Let's get to center ourselves

[00:02:01] around sort of who to make this the most meaningful for everybody listening. What are the challenges

[00:02:06] making these things more difficult for your clients? Clearly at this moment in time, our clients

[00:02:12] are under enormous pressure. They're being called on to do more of everything. They need to be

[00:02:16] the performance, they need to increase the performance of the brands, they need to do it faster,

[00:02:20] they need to adapt, adopt, change and it's a category that is undergoing enormous change. That

[00:02:26] pressure calls for speed. I think better maybe more precisely it's about responsiveness. So that's

[00:02:33] a pretty significant challenge. How does a pharmaceutical brand inside a regulated industry,

[00:02:39] inside an organization that is well versed in tradition? How do they become more responsive?

[00:02:44] And then frankly, how do they overcome the forces of fragmentation, disconnectedness

[00:02:49] that are present really everywhere? And again, we see it. We see a lot of it in our clients'

[00:02:55] organization, how they set up and approach marketing. Lots of agencies doing lots of things

[00:03:00] differently, not terribly well connected to the data as an example. So yeah, I think they need

[00:03:05] to overcome that disconnectedness. And that's really what we're trying to do as an agency.

[00:03:10] And what's one of the things that you'd say, you help to bring them to a more connected

[00:03:16] state of being? The big one is to combine the power of branding with the performance of digital

[00:03:22] engagement. We still get calls from clients and we see RFPs where they're looking for maybe

[00:03:27] at digital agency separate from a traditional agency. And that makes no sense to us. Yeah, you've

[00:03:33] basically you're saying my lead agency, the agency responsible for formulating my brand,

[00:03:38] does not understand the environment with which my brand will live. It does not understand the

[00:03:44] lives that this brand has to live inside and ultimately help. So that disconnection is a big one.

[00:03:51] And we have worked very hard over a lot in a lot of years to build a capability where we're

[00:03:55] unapologetically brand centered, the power, the humanity, the art, the beauty that you need

[00:04:01] in a brand with digital engagement and all the complexities, sophistication, nerdy, experienced

[00:04:07] design systems, design thinking that drives that side and finding ways to bring them together,

[00:04:13] which for us means bringing people together. A lot of different capabilities have to be at the

[00:04:18] table. And so that's where we're seeing our most successful work are the brands that are performing

[00:04:24] the best in our portfolio or certainly the brands we're connecting all those things. It doesn't

[00:04:29] mean we're doing all of those things. Our partner landscapes are complex, but we partner with

[00:04:35] and still want to bring them into an established or more connected system, a marketing ecosystem

[00:04:40] for our clients to operate in to elevate them. Disconnected crazy fragmented system is not an easy

[00:04:47] thing to run. And you spend a lot of time hurting the cats, not marketing and growing your brand.

[00:04:52] Thank you Craig. Yeah, it sounds like you guys are doing a lot to to bring focus

[00:04:57] and to bring a more consolidated strategy, right? To help these brands with their messaging,

[00:05:02] their engagement. What's one thing Farma marketers could or should be doing right now that maybe

[00:05:09] they're not. It sounds so simple and it's to connect. I would encourage any brand manager who might

[00:05:14] be listening is just draw a picture either in your head or on a piece of paper of your marketing

[00:05:20] system. However sophisticated or not it is and consider the connections and maybe the lack of

[00:05:26] connections that exist and maybe find one place, one thing to focus on, one connection to make.

[00:05:33] This industry, the pharmaceutical market industry lives on a connection that happens between

[00:05:38] a physician and a patient somewhere out there. And one of the first things our clients do is they go

[00:05:43] get an agency to talk to physicians and an agency to talk to patients. And they hope that someday

[00:05:49] they'll speak the same language and have a similar conversation. So that's probably one of the

[00:05:53] most obvious places is think about the connections across the journey, the patient's journey,

[00:05:58] the physician's journey and make a new connection somewhere in your system put two things together that

[00:06:02] aren't connected yet. And then that starts to roll and it becomes exponential pretty quick.

[00:06:07] And you find yourself more responsive able to go faster, able to adapt and respond to what the

[00:06:12] date is telling you. And ultimately that's going to drive your performance. You're going to get

[00:06:17] to results a lot faster. Thank you, Craig. Yeah. That's a really kind of an easy first step

[00:06:23] that a lot of listeners can take. So give it some thought folks. What step can you take to connect

[00:06:29] two things that maybe aren't today and to begin to see that progress? There's also a lot of talk

[00:06:34] Craig around omnichannel marketing. And I feel like this is a good topic to maybe ask you about.

[00:06:40] Sure. So omnichannel marketing, I would just flip it. It's actually about marketing into omnichannel

[00:06:46] lives. It's our lives as consumers, as people to make decisions. That's the omnichannel part.

[00:06:52] Not the marketing. It's our job to build marketing that fits into those omnichannel lives.

[00:06:58] All the nooks and crannies, the differences in how you show up on TikTok is different than how you

[00:07:03] show up on Instagram. How you show up in oncology is different than how you show up in in HIV.

[00:07:09] So that's our job is to build brands that fit and can behave and be appropriate and meaningful

[00:07:16] and effective inside omnichannel lives that take on very different shapes.

[00:07:20] Love that, Craig. Thank you for that. It's just one of those things you have to talk about

[00:07:24] with pharma and marketing today. So I appreciate your insights there. It is the word

[00:07:28] de jour. Everybody's, you know, it's true. Of course, the RFPs that are coming in and looking

[00:07:33] at it's going back to that origin, you know, I don't want to call it the original,

[00:07:35] so that's terrible. But that first disconnection, oh, I need an omnichannel agency.

[00:07:40] Well, no, you need an agency that can build your brand and build omnichannel experiences

[00:07:44] the drive results. That doesn't seem that difficult. Look, I love it. Simplicity is key in a lot of

[00:07:50] these things and separating the signal from the noise is even more critical. So I thank you for

[00:07:55] the tips and tricks that you've left us with, Craig. If you had one call to action for the listeners

[00:08:01] today, what would it be? Oh boy. Yeah, I'm going to go back to the idea of make more connections

[00:08:09] either among your people, among your agencies, among your data. It really is at the end of the day

[00:08:14] to connect and maybe this is maybe a part two pursue responsiveness more than speed. If you go

[00:08:21] fast in a fragmented disconnected system, you're just going to make things worse. But pursuing

[00:08:26] the ability to respond better speed follows that. Frankly, I don't know how there's not a button I

[00:08:33] compressed that go faster, but there are a lot of things I know to do and people know to do to be

[00:08:38] more responsive and that largely is listening closer better to your customers. Love that.

[00:08:44] Craig, thank you for today. This has been a great discussion and for anybody wanting to learn

[00:08:49] more or connect with you and the team at Digitized Health, where can they do that?

[00:08:53] www.digitizedhealth.com. That was my radio voice, by the way. That would be a great place or you can

[00:08:59] find us on all of the other socials. Obviously we're trying to be everywhere. We need to be for our

[00:09:04] clients. Love that, Craig and folks. Take advantage of all the contact information inside of the

[00:09:10] show notes and connect with Craig and his team at Digitized Health. Thank you for being with us.

[00:09:16] Thank you. My pleasure.