Alex has worked in pharma now for 15 years. This has meant he has experience in a wide range of roles and responsibilities including market access, communications and marketing. Although always focussed on innovation, he is best known for spear-heading digital technology and communications within pharma, he became the first Digital Strategy & Social Media Manager, and developed some of the first digital only marketing campaigns, utilising social media for communications and patient support, and developed the earliest mobile health applications in pharmaceuticals. He finished my client side-career having responsibility for marketing communications for Johnson & Johnson across Europe, Middle East and Africa, with a particular remit on the development of new models of engagement and innovation strategy.
AH: Tell us a bit about your company and what you are doing now
AB: The EarthWorks is a marketing communications agency with digital at its core. The EarthWorks is part of the OPEN Health group of companies that includes specialist companies providing marketing, advertising, PR, data, market access and patient services to heathcare companies. We are a strategically-led business that aims to help people build relationships, rather than just digital assets, and redefine what digital can deliver in marketing communications. We concentrate on delivering the highest standard in digital design and production with a group of talented people from within and outside of healthcare, bringing the best of digital from across industries into our business. We also pride ourselves on marrying academic and scientific knowledge with the latest technology to provide clinically relevant solutions in mobile health; in many ways we are already more of a healthcare technology business than anything else.
AH: Tell us about a piece of recent work that you are proud of?
AB: I don’t talk specifically about our work with clients, however I am really proud to be working on the projects we currently are, with the clients we currently have.
AH: Are there any projects you are working on that we should keep an eye out for in the coming months?
As a new digital agency you expect to be given smaller projects at first; the opposite has been the case for The EarthWorks! We will be delivering some large, exciting projects this year, ranging from AB: designing true consumer standard web presences for big pharma, through to the most exciting work in mobile health that I think is currently not being done anywhere else in the pharmaceutical sector, possibly even in mobile health full stop.
AH: If you could win any award for your work this year what would it be and why?
AB: It is unlikely we will enter any awards this year, but I am excited about the work we are currently producing, which we will enter for awards next year if it is strategically relevant for our clients.
AH: Do we really need award shows? What value do you see them offering?
AB: I have nothing against award shows, and it would be a bit churlish to complain about them having won quite a few as a client over the years. I think they probably do influence clients with regard to the reputation of an agency, but they can be a bit of game however; I knew of “award winning” websites that nobody ever visited. In healthcare we should all be looking for a higher reward than a glass trophy and a certificate.
AH: How would you see the work other agencies are making if award shows didn’t exist?
AB: In honesty, I prefer not to focus on what other agencies are producing. I am more interested in work I am doing with Wharton University on The Future of Advertising, or UCL’s work in digital healthcare, the Mobile Health Alliance and PCORI in Washington. Instead I prefer to look to technology companies and academic institutions for inspiration.
AH: Do you think Digital work often struggles to be recognised in the big award shows? Is there a need for specific digital awards with digital specialist judges.
AB: Within 5 years we could have the capacity to use a smartphone to read a persons microbiome and provide an accurate diagnosis of illness. Combine this with an AI interface that will provide higher standards of diagnosis than a doctor and integrate with a bespoke personalised patient support program, and we could be dramatically impacting some of the key health challenges across Europe and the globe (such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cancer and COPD). I think if someone is actually worried about the rights or wrongs of big award shows they should be marketing fizzy sugared water of some kind or another, not working in healthcare.
AH: Should healthcare advertising still be regarded as separate from the wider Advertising community?
AB: All specialist sectors of marketing work in some ways with in their own culture and microenvironment. I co-chair the Digital Innovation Group across the CHIME group, which works across sports, technology and consumer marketing, working with some of the biggest brands in the world. I don’t recognise the obsession with healthcare marketing being separate or not. Instead we are trying to put the best minds to work in the healthcare sector, where we have the opportunity to impact people’s lives in a way other sectors cannot.
AH: Do you consider yourself as someone who works more in advertising of more in pharma?
AB: I see myself as a marketing communications professional who works in health technology. I would always say I work in pharma however; I am proud of the industry.
AH: Do you think we sometimes use regulation an excuse to make work that doesn’t live up to standard consumer advertising?
AB: Regulation should never be what shapes innovation, they form an ethical and moral foundation for the work we do. I can’t think of one occasion when the regulations have stopped me doing anything, including the very early days of social media and pharma when we were communicating with patients on platforms such as facebook for the first time. If more people in agencies actually read the code we would be in better shape. The idea that consumer advertising is un-regulated is ridiculous; that could only be something someone with no consumer marketing experience would say. On top of this there is a very strong argument that many industries are at least if not more highly regulated than pharma, these would include financial services, telecoms, aerospace, postal services to name only a few.
AH: Where do you look for inspiration?
AB: I look to the brilliant work in mobile health and patient support being undertaken in academic institutions around the world. I am also really interested in working with medical institutions to develop the future of digital clinical support tools. I love the ‘can do’ attitude of Silicon Valley, and try to instil that attitude myself with The EarthWorks. I am inspired by people who try to solve real problems in the world within the perfect storm of social, economic and technological pressures in which we live in 2014. Creativity in health for the 21st century, from my perspective, is about social communications and human centred engineering, not strap-lines and photo-shoots.
AH: How do you compare the quality of creative work in healthcare Advertising vs Consumer advertising?
AB: The quality of work is varied across all sectors. What differentiates a great company in the 21st Century is communications strategy in a socialised world, applied content strategy, an understanding of a new marketing environment based on shared value, and a recognition that this world is now entirely mobile-first driven by tools and services. We are at a time when hard choices need to be made, although the last 20 years have been incredible with regard to technological advancement, the next 20 years will probably make them pale in comparison. All the key services we use, either online or offline, are going to get rebuilt with people at their centre. A good agency in health or consumer is one that is prepared to tell the truth about what we need to do to be relevant in the 21st Century; there are probably more agencies working in consumer who are prepared to do that.
AH: What one thing would you want to say to someone new to the industry? That you wish someone has said to you when you started?
AB: I would say to be brave, don’t get distracted by the nonsense and concentrate on creating things that change people’s lives. Always be honest with yourself and if you don’t love what you are doing, get out and do something else. Finally, you get the clients you deserve.
AH: Who do you look up to and why?
AB: There are a number of people who inspire me, some of whom include Ginni Rometty (Chair and CEO at IBM) she is the first woman to lead IBM and has worked her way up to the top since 1991. The work they are doing with big data and AI with Watson for health is astonishing, already tackling the big challenges such as cancer and they are about to democratise health by placing knowledge and understanding in the hands of everyone. I look up to Steve Jobs, not from an Apple fan-boy perspective but the unrelenting drive to keep humanity at the heart of technology. I would also include people such as Clay Shirky and Ray Kurzweil, whose restless genius always makes me think. With my own career Jane Kidd from J&J has been very important to me, helping form my focus on always doing the right thing, no matter what the pressure to bend or soften my principles.
AH: Thanks!
Download Alex’s latest Podcast from Digitally Sick now
