THE PM360 TRAILBLAZER AWARDS 2011
MARKETER OF THE YEAR WINNER

ROB LIKOFF
CEO GROUP DCA

In 1999 Rob Likoff started his third career. In his first career, as a research biologist at Merck, he had become the only individual in history to twice win the Theobold Smith Award for best research paper at the American Society of Microbiology. In his second career, he became Vice President and Head of the largest business unit at Novartis (Cardiovascular), overseeing more than $3 billion (with a “b”) in annual sales. In 1999 he left both these careers behind. He became an entrepreneur, joining industry veteran Jack Davis to create a new interactive agency—Group DCA. Their mission was to use a “new” technology—the internet—to engage and build relationships with healthcare providers.

It wasn’t obvious in 1999 that electronic means even could accomplish an intricate and human-centered task like detailing. Early efforts made outsized claims and produced disappointing results. E-detailing was sometimes seen as “little more than a 21st century slideshow,” in the words of journalist Max Golby.

Actually Cooking
However, Rob brought a powerful new idea to the e-detailing world—“active learning.” Active learning theory recognizes that people “learn by doing.” In other words, Likoff says, “there is a big difference between reading a cookbook and actually cooking.” Group DCA’s early success was driven largely by his insistence on combining active learning with clean design to deliver e-detailing programs that make the physician an active participant rather than a passive observer. The result was greater engagement and better information retention. Moreover, a preference and behavioral profile was built for each physician by noting and storing physician preference within each interactive session. Within Group DCA, this became known as the “database of why?”

One of Rob's smartest moves was recruiting the top talent in the industry—like Ron Scalici, Chief Innovations Officer, and Russell Grimaldi, Executive Director and Head of Business Development. Their collaboration made possible the development and delivery of active learning with interactive programming, and was the origin of Group DCA’s award-winning superior user-experience.

To establish lasting relationships with customers, the team insisted on using only physicians who agreed to receive the interactive programs rather than renting contact lists. The resulting 250,000+ member physician panel became one of the company’s most critical assets.

Having thus found a way to use interactive software to mediate an ongoing conversation between clients and healthcare providers, Rob and the DCA team then developed a proprietary software program called DIAGRAM (“Dialogue, Graphics and Motion”) customized for building such software. It’s now the backbone of Group DCA’s interactive program development.

Cards and Communication
Turning his attention from physician to patient communication, Rob realized that many of the same learning theories and technique applied equal well to patients and consumers. He developed some new technology utilizing a new way of leveraging CD and DVD technology. The resulting “CUE card” was a wallet sized “card” with “extraordinary powers.” The card is coded to provide for point-of-sale pharmacy discounts, but when slipped into a computer, offers interactive multimedia patient education and refill reminders. The card’s information, which is trackable and measurable, is continually adjusted based on patient interests and medication cycle.

All this got results: Recent figures show average ROI of 677% for physician e-detailing programs. Group DCA was on Inc 5000’s list of America’s fastest growing companies for three years before being acquired last year by PDI, Inc. to complement its sales team and marketing services. Rob and PDI are currently integrating the two companies’ services into an even more powerful integrated multi-channel capability.

It’s an impressive story, about a man who understood how to harmonize the human and the digital, how to build a world-class company in a hyper-competitive market, and how to lead rather than follow an unprecedented wave of change. And who had the courage and talent to turn his vision into reality. We congratulate him.

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