PM360 OCTOBER 2010

FEATURE

Leading Global Teams

The drive to centralize pharmaceutical marketing continues. And it continues to shape what messages are delivered globally and locally, how those messages are delivered, and what talent and resources are needed to do so.

BY EMMA SERGEANT

The pharmaceutical industry plans, structures, and operationally delivers its business very differently than it did three to five years ago. With pressure to expedite pipeline product delivery to the market, as well as to efficiently commercialize brand opportunities, the drive to take a more centralized approach to pharmaceutical marketing has grown. In addition to these challenges, communications and media channels are changing globally and the worldwide recession drives healthcare payers to ask for greater value.

These changes are influencing not only what is delivered globally, regionally, and locally but also how it is delivered. As a result, talent and resource needs are shifting for both pharmaceutical companies and advertising/communication agencies. Brand teams are now working at more strategic global and regional levels, while the roles in the local markets are more tactical.

Compared to other industries, for example, the FMCG and financial sector, the pharmaceutical industry has traditionally been much more decentralized. As a result, global teams have been small and defined overall by brand strategy and positioning, leaving affiliate markets to develop and implement local marketing plans and campaigns. This has led to a lack of global brand alignment and inefficiencies, which in turn can impact consistency and quality of outputs.

Some pharmaceutical companies are trying to move toward global centralization across all brands in all communication disciplines. Others are maintaining structures in which the global team defines strategy, positioning, messaging, and “look and feel” for the brand, while regions decide how the campaigns are developed and deployed geographically. For the majority of markets, budgets have been cut, reducing the scope to develop very individual country-level plans. This leaves the locally based teams with activities such as local market insights, key external expert relations/ development, market access, and advocacy. The models for more streamlined marketing vary—each has pros and cons. What is clear is that it is time for a dynamic change in both the pharmaceutical industry and the agencies that work in this field.

Talent and Structure
There is an increasing need for both the industry and agencies to find people who are used to working with culturally diverse and geographically spread-out teams. On the pharma side, not only will there be a need for a high level of strategic marketing ability but also for excellent relationship management and operational skills. These are essential for gaining regional and local market “buy in” to the strategy and to demonstrate an understanding of the practical delivery needs in the markets. The industry is beginning to find it difficult to attract talent for these basic local marketing positions. There will be a need to engage people in larger matrix-type projects to help them develop skills and gain exposure to richer marketing planning processes and activities.

On the agency side, as the industry also moves to contract multiple disciplines globally or regionally, the leadership talent needs to be strong. Many of the larger agency networks are providing key pharmaceutical clients with seasoned healthcare client leads. These leads must have the ability to work at the senior decision-making level and understand the strategic therapeutic area issues for both current and pipeline products, being sensitive to immediate and future needs. There is a requirement to provide world-class brand and business advice, strategic marketing expertise, and award-winning creative solutions through leveraging their agency network. Operationally, client leads need to have the skills and oversight to ensure the quality and effectiveness of the agency’s work and the ability to measure them in terms of ROI. It is important not to have profit and loss silo reporting lines in the agency to guarantee the global client leads are able to create and deploy the right teams to meet the brand requirements. For many pharmaceutical clients, these agency client lead roles are new and therefore the need for and value of these roles is yet to be realized. Learning from other industries would indicate these roles are essential to ensure the global approach is practically successful.

Communication
There is an overarching challenge in communicating the dynamic change from decentralized marketing models to globalized cross-communication disciplines, both in the industry and across agency networks. Local markets and regional offices need to clearly understand their role, now and in the future, to be able to resource and provide the right services for the brand. If a global agency network is contracted centrally, local markets need to be able to appreciate the implications and benefits of working with a global agency structure in their market. This often fails, and smooth transition to new models becomes challenging.

The world is getting smaller as global approaches take hold. Gone are the days when an agency performed badly in one country and it had no impact on the relationship with the pharmaceutical client elsewhere. Multiple communication channels are available and global marketing should, in theory, be simple. In practice, the challenge is to keep it simple yet effective. Industry and agency global teams need to be thoughtfully led. It is important to consider the following in aiding the communication process:

• Utilize the most convenient time zone for “All Team” updates.
• Define the type and frequency of project updates, both formal and informal. The informal use of picking up the phone to deal with an immediate and urgent issue is still highly valuable and prevents fruitless and lengthy email exchanges.
• Use proper email team etiquette—the client lead should set parameters for the type of email exchanges needed and the “cc” protocol.
• Create methods for document exchange—online password-protected information management portals are ideal to prevent issues with server access in different offices and for those working from home. It is important to have an administrator to monitor file storage and access to maintain efficiency.
• Develop a digital asset library that is easy for all markets to access, with clear guidance as to what can and can’t be adapted in the local market.
• Use new technologies like video conferencing and WebEx to keep the communication as “human” as possible.
• Make templates for reports and presentations to enable cross-team consistency and easy global analysis and collation of information.
• Audit and review client/agency relationships on a regular basis at all levels of the client hierarchy—global, regional, and local.

Global Marketing Groups
Often the global core team is small yet it can face multiple issues. A good way of building global connectivity and improving the matrix is to create small cross-country groups to address specific tasks in a short time frame. For example, a global brand creative council is an effective way of getting an affiliate market buy-in to a creative approach by including certain key markets on the council.

Knowledge Sharing
Importantly, to realize the efficiencies and consistency of working globally, it is essential not to reinvent the wheel. The team leader should have responsibility for gathering and sharing best practices on a regular basis. This can be archived digitally for ongoing access.

Role Clarity and Delivery
The global team needs to define what the regional and local market roles are, what they will be responsible for delivering, to whom, and by when. A clear area for global centralization efficiency is marketing production outputs. This is an approach where we can learn from other industries that have centralized global activity for many years. While it can look attractive to outsource to one remote base, keeping alignment and accountability linked to the agency that has developed the global work can be most beneficial.

Future Vision
It will take time for the industry and agency infrastructure to adjust to the changing market landscape and to ensure the right talent is in the right place doing the right things. The pharmaceutical industry will continue to be globally driven and will begin to realize the clear benefits of this approach. However, it is important not to lose sight of the local insight, knowledge, and relationships so that global brands navigate smoothly through the difficulties of market access. Global, regional, and local teams will therefore need to work hand in hand to be successful in the future.

Emma Sergeant is Managing Director, Global Business, of Ogilvy CommonHealth Worldwide. She can be reached at Emma.Sergeant@ogilvyhealthworld.com