ELITE 2018 Strategist Jerrold McRae of Pfizer Inc.

Jerrold McRae

Senior Manager, U.S. Marketing

Pfizer Inc.

Re-thinking Conversations About Chronic Pain

What are your customers really thinking? It’s a question that’s difficult enough to answer when your customers are patients and HCPs. But when they’re directors of large medical networks—it’s anyone’s guess. Unless—apparently—you happen to be Jerrold McRae.

As the lead of the U.S. LYRICA® (pregabalin) marketing team for medical groups/integrated delivery networks (MG/IDNs), Jerrold understands that the key to success is identifying his customers’ needs and following through with solutions that make them eager to engage in a conversation.

In 2017, Jerrold challenged his customers to take a more comprehensive view of chronic pain in their networks. The strategy had its basis in Pfizer’s Rethink Chronic Pain approach, which is a simple, evidence-based framework developed by Pfizer to enhance the understanding, assessment, and management of chronic pain, including issues associated with opioid prescribing. It was Jerrold, however, who brought this idea to the next level. In developing his own strategy for communicating this perspective, he recognized how important national treatment guidelines are to customers and leveraged these recommendations to support the new approach.

The result went beyond a marketing strategy. It was a complete strategic framework featuring several known, but often-overlooked factors that may help clinicians better manage patients with chronic pain. Jerrold helped clinicians better understand that pain is more complex than people think and is highly prevalent, a burden to patients, and costly to society.

Furthermore, Jerrold revamped the brand’s Transition-to-Treatment approach, helping account managers have effective and compliant conversations with their customers—an audience that could be reluctant to discuss specific treatment options.

Jerrold’s strategic leadership hasn’t been lost on his colleagues. He is currently leading the 2019 Operational Planning initiative for all LYRICA teams, and in the previous year, served as the LYRICA review committee’s captain, helping to ensure that the meetings were well-organized and met business objectives while running efficiently, compliantly, and effectively.

But it all started with a simple insight about conversations. Jerrold knows that as long as we can find ways to effectively communicate solutions for HCPs and their patients, the door will always be open.

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