CMI Media Group has a strong and lasting heritage in the United States, known for highly effective healthcare audience reach. For nearly 35 years, CMI has been the leader in the American healthcare media landscape, fully focused on delivering successful media strategies to U.S.-based clients and driving innovation to reach life sciences companies and U.S. prescribers.
As new global opportunities and queries about international campaigns began to build, CMI leveraged partnerships with trusted partners in countries like France, Germany, and the United Kingdom. As the healthcare landscape evolved worldwide, we saw an increased desire and need for what CMI achieves in the U.S. become a need in international markets. Encouraged by this and what both clients and supplier partners were telling us, we made the decision to expand globally.
In February 2023, CMI opened its London office located in WPP’s headquarters overlooking the River Thames. This location is CMI’s central hub for global HCP media planning and engagement strategy work. One year after CMI Media Group’s global expansion, we have reflected on what we have learned and our predictions for the healthcare media landscape outside of the U.S. The need for a media consolidation.
Generally speaking, healthcare media campaigns outside of the U.S. and especially in Europe fall into one of two categories: they are either above market/regional or local market/single country campaigns.
Both campaigns would benefit from pharmaceutical companies consolidating their HCP media with one agency which can manage both levels. More often than not, when we begin talking to their counterparts in neighboring countries promoting the exact same brand to the same specialist audiences, we find multiple examples of information from which both countries would benefit.
When pharmaceutical companies consolidate their media spend with CMI across a region, we’re able to identify where this is happening, and by leveraging the larger spend, CMI ensures moving overall savings across multiple countries. This is especially beneficial for markets with media budgets of a smaller scale.
Another benefit is the speed at which we can share data and best practices from one region or country to another. Acting as a central hub plugged into multiple national and regional brand teams, we have the bird’s eye view of what is working or, equally important, what isn’t working. We share those learnings immediately.
We see that when a region’s media spend is consolidated with CMI, the quality of the HCP media campaigns across all markets increases.
Increased Data Use
Most markets outside of the U.S. have much stricter rules around privacy and data collection or usage. Marketers working in healthcare advertising outside of the U.S. are especially challenged by potential penalties that result from breaking GDPR guidelines. There is often the immediate desire to edge away from the use of data for targeting HCPs in media campaigns.
In the U.S., CMI pioneered the use of 1:1 targeting for healthcare
professionals. While we know 1:1 level of targeting is not possible outside of the U.S., we absolutely can be more granular and precise in how we engage with HCPs across Europe or Canada.
CMI has developed GDPR-compliant targeting techniques which we can bring to healthcare professional media campaigns anywhere in the world. Importantly, these methods also allow us to do something which, again, is not common in European HCP campaigns: to link our media campaigns to prescriptions and show ROI.
“The importance of being able to combine both the global and local knowledge and experience cannot
be understated when developing international healthcare media campaigns.”
There was some understandable hesitancy around the use of HCP data to inform these campaigns, but we are predicting that as more brand teams see it in action, it will reshape the entire healthcare media landscape outside of the U.S.
One thing we have learned over the last year, however, is the importance of local expertise, even for global campaigns. HCPs even in neighboring countries can have vastly different media habits and consumption behaviors. For this reason, we strive to ensure that every strategist working out of our global hub understands the importance of global media tactics, coupled with local market expertise. The importance of being able to combine both the global and local knowledge and experience cannot be understated when developing international healthcare media campaigns.
