We need to get creative to change a billion lives a year

It’s amazing to think it’s now one year since I joined Pfizer as the company’s first global Chief Marketing Officer, in its 175-year history.?

I’ve been lucky to work at some of the world’s most iconic brands – Disney, Coke, Google – but as proud as I am of my achievements at those companies, none could match the ambition I signed onto at Pfizer: to change a billion lives a year by 2027.?

The company was coming off historic highs. Its Light Speed Project saw the creation, manufacture, and distribution of a successful COVID-19 vaccine in record time – saving millions of lives in the process.??

What the pandemic showed us is that jaw-dropping medical breakthroughs are not enough to save lives. It took collaboration between scientists, politicians, pharmacists, retailers, technology companies and of course, the heroic contribution of doctors, nurses, emergency service workers, and other healthcare professionals to end the pandemic. Access to health services, the influence of trusted communities, accurate and reliable information, and a myriad of other social factors influence personal health. The most recent OECD numbers reveal that more than a quarter of all deaths across OECD countries could have been avoided through better prevention and healthcare interventions.??

I joined Pfizer to change how healthcare happens. With 19 new drugs entering the market over the next 18 months, Pfizer’s scientists aren’t slowing down. As marketers, we have the skills to affect the social conditions that will realize the incredible potential of those drugs.?

My motivation stems from personal experience. As a young boy I had to advocate for my mother, to help her get access to the medication she needed. I gained an MBA in Marketing and Healthcare Concentration and started my career at a leading healthcare company. Unfortunately, I discovered an industry that moved at an excruciatingly slow pace. I left, disillusioned and disappointed, and went to work at companies on the cutting edge of marketing insight.?

When I returned to healthcare and joined Pfizer last year, I found a company and an industry moving faster than the tech industry I’d just left. Pfizer’s ambition to change a billion lives a year reflects its learnings from the pandemic and a desire to affect more than medical science. The company’s marketing had traditionally centered around its highly successful medicines. During the pandemic, the company had been called upon to guide and lead the social understanding of the virus and its effects. My boss, Chief Commercial Officer Angela Hwang, and CEO Albert Bourla, had the foresight to recognize this wasn’t a one-time need and they hired me to establish a corporate brand that could lead the social revolution in healthcare.?

I came with a conviction, forged across multiple industries, that Creativity is the key to transformation. Innovation is a door to new possibilities in every industry. Creativity is the key that unlocks that door. It is the capability and the audacity to imagine not only what innovation can do, but its potential to change the social fabric.?

The work that Pfizer’s scientists are doing has the potential to lift the burden of sickness and disease from the shoulders of billions of people. But we all need the creative vision to unlock that potential.?

I had a game plan.?

We need to get personal, using data and technology to engage with and understand the people whose lives we want to change. We need to apply advanced digital retail practices to reach the right people, with the right information, how and where they want to engage.?

We need to get real. The typical drug commercials we see don’t resonate with real people. I challenged our teams to connect with people at a personal level. Regulations are important and play a vital role in the healthcare ecosystem, but regulation should be the fuel, not the foil, to creativity.??

We have to get local. Healthcare happens on the street, in homes, and in digital communities. We have to empower those communities to empower change. We would need to work together with community leaders, with local retailers, with partners, and competitors, to encourage a coalition of the willing that can drive better outcomes between doctor’s visits and facilitate better conversations in the doctor’ office.??

It's been a busy year.?

We reinvented the Pfizer brand, creating a shared language and identity for the Pfizer marketing community that would unlock our creativity. We brought in Adobe to help us rebuild the marketing tech stack and introduced cutting edge CRM practices. We took inspiration from our scientists and turbo-charged a global agency review that would typically take a year, completing the process in four months. We started testing the waters on new campaigns: working with John Legend, Martha Stewart, and other notable personalities to become ambassadors and highlight how even the most talented and successful among us struggle with debilitating diseases, like?migraine. I told my teams to get lean – to test and learn with small campaigns that would enable us to iterate and learn. Bring “real world data” into our marketing work. For example, we have to improve the diversity of our marketing. According to the 2020 US Census, more than a quarter of children in the U.S. are Latino. Campaigns for pre and post-natal care that don’t speak directly to Latinx communities, exclude the people who need our help.

There is so much more still to do and so much coming that I can’t wait to share.??

My current priority is our people: building, training, advancing, and hiring the most talented marketing team in the world. I have the benefit of the world’s most inspiring ambition to help motivate those efforts.??

Even as I pause to reflect and celebrate, I can’t slow down.??

I’ve waited 30 years for this opportunity.?

Time is life and lives are waiting to be changed.