Matt Barry
Associate Director, Urology Marketing
Astellas Pharma US, Inc.
Shaping the Live Conference Experience
If you’ve been to one medical conference, you have been to them all. The speakers and topics may change—but it is still hard to shake that feeling of déjà vu. It is this feeling that Matt Barry is striving to dispel. For years, pharmaceutical marketers have struggled to make a big impression at live conferences, but Matt’s new strategies reinvigorate the conference experience and transform the landscape of live conference marketing.
Last year, Astellas had the busiest and most innovative booth at the American Urological Association conference thanks to a tablet-enabled Leaderboard Challenge golf game. It got a lot of interest. In fact, 550 physicians spent on average over five minutes playing the interactive, educational game. Afterwards, about 50% of them opted in to receive regular email updates from Astellas. The result at the booth and beyond: Strong brand awareness, engagement and ongoing education/communication.
This year, Matt is stepping things up even more. He is incorporating Oculus Rift virtual reality technology with a competitive racing game to tap into the popularity of iRacing at the booth. The game aims to engage and educate physicians through an integrated product quiz and leaderboard to drive even more booth traffic and brand/product awareness.
His contributions to live industry conferences is not the only area in which Matt is making advancements. Charged with leading the development of Astellas’ new customer-centric educational resource portal, Matt is ensuring that Astellas provides urology patients and HCPs with the most up-to-date, on-demand, customizable and downloadable urology resources. Only two months into the program, the portal is already proving to be extremely valuable. The site has received three times the number of registrants than the average unbranded site—and visitors are digesting twice the amount of content than the industry average.
Throughout his career—from starting as a field sales employee, to sales training manager, and now associate director—Matt has proven he has the ability to deliver strategic marketing tools and programs that innovate and surpass expectations.
