Barry Schmader
Chief Creative Officer
Elevate Healthcare Marketing
A Creative Firepower
During his 30 years in healthcare marketing, Barry Schmader has been a vital creative force. His conceptual ability, bold style, and consumer sensibility have resulted in some of the most aggressive, focused advertising in the healthcare industry today. Throughout his years in pharmaceutical marketing and branding, he’s helped to promote blockbuster brands such as Altace, Crestor, Nexium, Percocet, and Zocor, as well as leading OTC, medical device, and diagnostic brands.
Barry brandishes the creative firepower and strategic acumen that are elevating healthcare marketing ideas, services, and products—resulting in better business for clients and better lives for physicians and their patients. And although he aims to differentiate brands—by creating stunning visuals that are supported by strong data—Barry believes in the power of simplicity.
Barry cites some of the best work as being simple, clear, and data-driven, including a congestive heart failure campaign for Altace (one of the first campaigns to use mortality data); a series of category-changing ads for Cordis stents; an unbranded campaign for Medtronic that single-handedly resulted in competitors pulling their campaigns; and a strategic approach to launch Lidoderm patches for Endo as the peripheral part of nerve pain treatment.
“As I look through medical journals or online, I can always spot a ‘Barry’ campaign because of the stopping power the concept delivered and the message conveyed,” says longtime client, Don Crouse. “As a marketing director I appreciate the consistently outstanding, impactful brand concepts developed by Barry and his team.”
Even with all his years in the business, Barry continues to relentlessly explore new ideas. He’s adapted brand development tenets to a mobile-first environment. “The icon is as important as ever in pharmaceutical advertising, but recently may have lost its way,” Barry says. “The truth is, even the most beautiful, heart-touching patient depiction can lack the power to communicate differentiation in a multichannel world. But we have the tools to fix that and make healthcare brands more relevant than ever.”
A self-proclaimed “reckless optimist,” Barry encourages colleagues to learn and to grow, inspiring them to try harder, work smarter, and continue to search for the big, media agnostic idea—never giving up on that pursuit.
