Meet our guest:
Philip Pisa, a seasoned pharmaceutical industry veteran, has a proven track record in driving innovation and digital transformation. With a background spanning global roles at Roche, including Director of Digital, Marketing, and Innovation, Philip is passionate about leveraging technology to improve patient outcomes.
His experience extends beyond traditional pharmaceutical roles. As the founder of Yumee, a health-tech startup, Philip has firsthand experience in the intersection of science, technology, and healthcare. He’s also contributed to global initiatives like the World Health Organization’s CHOICE program, demonstrating his commitment to making healthcare more accessible and effective.
With a deep understanding of digital strategies, portfolio management, and business planning, Philip brings valuable insights to the discussion of “selling vs. partnering” in the pharmaceutical industry. His expertise will provide listeners with a unique perspective on how patient-centric innovation can drive the future of healthcare.Learn more about Philip on his Linkedin Profile
My learnings from the episode:
- The Evolving Landscape of Healthcare Marketing: Traditional sales tactics are no longer effective in healthcare. Roche Pharma is leading the way by shifting towards a more collaborative and patient-centric approach. This involves building trust, understanding patient pain points, and focusing on partnerships rather than simply pushing products.
- Leveraging Digital Behavior Insights: Utilizing digital tools to gather insights from actual behaviors is becoming increasingly critical in healthcare marketing. This helps to better understand customers and avoid biases, providing a clearer picture of what truly interests and concerns healthcare professionals and patients.
- Effective Communication with Healthcare Providers: Consistent communication is key to building relationships with healthcare providers. Understanding their pain points and providing tailored solutions is essential. Creating a strong partnership with providers can lead to better patient outcomes.
Looking to share your experiences?
We’re always looking for guests! If interested, email us at podcast@diacreative.com
Read while you listen:
[00:00:00] Philip Pisa: what we are focusing on now is much more truly listening and understanding to what the pain points are out in the ecosystem, focusing on the customer journeys and the patient journeys. And when we hear the pain points that the customers and the patients have along the journeys. We explore those and we try and find solutions together again, really around removing obstacles for the best patient decision or the best treatment decisions for patients.
[00:00:30] Andreea Borcea: Welcome to Pioneering Perspectives, a Dia creative podcast, where we explore marketing insights from regulated industries. Join me as we chat with real professionals navigating these complexities today, uncovering their stories and their savvy strategies for marketing success.
[00:00:48] Andreea Borcea: Hi everyone. And welcome to another episode of I’m your host, Andreea Borchia, CMO at Dia Creative Digital Marketing Agency. And today I have with us Philip Piza, who’s the director of [00:01:00] digital marketing and innovation at Roche Pharma of the Czech Republic. Philip, thank you so much for being here.
[00:01:06] Philip Pisa: Thank you, Andreea.
[00:01:06] Philip Pisa: It’s a pleasure to be here.
[00:01:08] Andreea Borcea: I am excited to hear about the things that are changing at Roche. I hear you’ve been doing a lot of innovation, so can you kind of give us a overall what has Roche Pharma been doing historically, what are you doing now, and where are you thinking it’s going to head?
[00:01:25] Philip Pisa: Absolutely. I think to take a step back just to introduce Roche for the listeners who don’t know we are a global pharma and Diagnosis company. We are world leaders in both. And I work specifically in pharma, as you mentioned where we have a very broad portfolio. We operate in oncology, neurology, ophthalmology, and many other areas.
[00:01:42] Philip Pisa: The innovation and transformation that you have, you mentioned, Andreea, is It’s really exciting because how we see it is that we have, we are moving towards a more partnering approach with our ecosystem and moving away from kind of the old tell and tell, but we have now patient journey partners [00:02:00] instead of sales reps.
[00:02:01] Philip Pisa: And our focus is really to enable appropriate use of our medicine. And that is because if you look at our annual report, we have been investing more and more in R& D. And when we have the most innovative medicine in our hands it’s all around removing those obstacles to make sure that the best decisions can be made for the patients and provide the most patient outcome.
[00:02:22] Philip Pisa: And That’s what we’ve been focusing on to really switch over to that partnering approach.
[00:02:26] Andreea Borcea: So what does that change really mean? So traditional sale sell and tell, like you were saying, traditional sales. Can you explain what that was really like and what it looks like now with this patient partnering program?
[00:02:38] Philip Pisa: Of course it’s much broader than a patient partnering program, right? In the past oftentimes we had sales reps going out in the field. They had sales goals, and quotas that they should reach. And it was a lot about visiting as many customers as you could sharing as much information as you could, then the messaging was kind of created centrally.
[00:02:58] Philip Pisa: And then you went [00:03:00] out and you. Hold your messages to the world what we are focusing on now is much more truly listening and understanding to what the pain points are out in the ecosystem, focusing on the customer journeys and the patient journeys. And when we hear the pain points that the customers and the patients have along the journeys.
[00:03:21] Philip Pisa: We explore those and we try and find solutions together again, really around removing obstacles for the best patient decision or the best treatment decisions for patients.
[00:03:33] Andreea Borcea: With that patient journey, how are you gathering that data? How are you ensuring that you have the right insights to make this work?
[00:03:41] Philip Pisa: That’s a great question, Andreea. And We collect that information and have those conversations with our customers in several different ways. Of course, traditionally in healthcare and in pharma, we’re out with our customers. It’s a very relationship based industry. Beyond that, we have to keep in mind that specifically [00:04:00] pharma operates in quite a unique industry where we have the physician, which is the decision maker often for a product that is different from the payer, which is usually at least in Europe a government agency or some other public body.
[00:04:13] Philip Pisa: And then we have the user of our product, which is the patient that is not always the decision maker, so to speak. And of course that changes very much due to regulation that we follow how we collect information and what type of information we can collect. But beyond those. Relational collection points.
[00:04:30] Philip Pisa: We, we do of course, market research which can be survey based. But what I find even more exciting now recently is really looking at behaviors, which kind of comes in through digital it’s. You avoid the survey bias that you usually have, you avoid that people might answer something differently when you ask them about it specifically.
[00:04:50] Philip Pisa: And you can observe behaviors in how they interact with you digitally. And that can be things like what is the top article that pops up that is really interesting [00:05:00] for physicians to read? Then that tells you something. And then, of course, that is something that we can bring into our discussions with our customers too.
[00:05:08] Philip Pisa: dig a bit deeper and understand this and more.
[00:05:11] Andreea Borcea: I think that’s really interesting. I hate to say it, but it’s so true in marketing. You just can’t trust people. So you have to follow their behaviors. You have to see what they actually do. It’s the same thing. Anytime we design a new website, no one ever interacts with it the way you were expecting them to ever.
[00:05:26] Andreea Borcea: So, so you actually have to see the real behavior. So I can see that being 100 percent true for patients, but you were talking about this trifecta. Are you also looking at government body behaviors and physician behaviors when you’re thinking through of the data and the marketing and where you’re going to head
[00:05:44] Philip Pisa: within marketing?
[00:05:45] Philip Pisa: It’s Not one of our main focus areas our focus areas in marketing is, of course, mostly the the patient and the physician and other healthcare professionals. We have colleagues that focus specifically on, on government and partner with those we [00:06:00] call the market access. Right within or medical, for example, as well depending on what the question is and what the need is.
[00:06:06] Philip Pisa: But I think there’s one part which in, which is, which in within marketing, excuse me is that marketeers, they’re really the integrators within the team. So we put together teams around a, Product or about around the disease area specifically and we have, colleagues from all these different departments and within that space the marketeer is really almost like the spider in the web that brings people together helps with focus but also feedback, context and insights from connecting the dots and analytics and the strategy that usually sits within the marketeer to help people.
[00:06:44] Philip Pisa: the colleagues to have the right focus and do the best work that they can do.
[00:06:50] Andreea Borcea: I love that they’re there. They’re the integrator. They’re the ones that bring it all together and process it so people can understand. So as you’re building out this marketing, [00:07:00] I’m sure a big part of what you’re trying to get across is impact, like impact to the end patient.
[00:07:05] Andreea Borcea: How have you found a great way to communicate it or like really have people feel the impact, I think is the hard part with marketing. Where like, how do you make words feel?
[00:07:15] Philip Pisa: Ultimately for a patient marketing is not what impacts them necessarily. It’s the therapy that they’re on and their outcome that they, they live through.
[00:07:24] Philip Pisa: I think that it’s an important part to also kind of be, be a realistic what, what the impact marketing has. Marketing is incredibly important to remove the obstacles from the path or the journey that a patient or a customer takes to get to the right treatment decision that then ultimately creates the right patient outcome or the best patient outcome possible.
[00:07:47] Philip Pisa: Within marketing to kind of measure impact this is, it’s an interesting one because there are so many different ways you can do it. There’s so many different numbers you can look at NPS scores, you can look at, [00:08:00] partner evaluation. You can do huge researches on, but ultimately what, what, What matters, right, is those patient outcomes.
[00:08:07] Philip Pisa: And it’s it’s, we have to balance a bit the stories that we hear, the reactions that we hear from our customers, specifically when they say this really helped that matters. And that is the feedback that we need to, we need to listen to and then, then build on further. And then, of course, in the end, Roche is a for profit company so we also see the impact in our top line and how that grows and what happens there, right?
[00:08:32] Andreea Borcea: Yeah, that’s really powerful, though, when you, when you have those stories coming back from patients, like, this really helped my life. changed and improved and, and spreading that. I think that’s impressive. Now, now shifting away from patients to doctors and admins and hospitals how have you had to shift the communication, marketing concepts, tactics there to really get their interest and attention?
[00:08:57] Philip Pisa: With that, with our focus on [00:09:00] their pain points on the patient pain points, which is really what brings us together, right? There are, of course, parts how we bring them with us is through consistency, authenticity focusing on truly listening and understanding their point of view going in with an open mind and not kind of assumptions.
[00:09:19] Philip Pisa: Be And I’m truly trying to put ourselves in their feet. And then finding areas where it’s also clear why we’re cooperating. How will this be helping both of us? Because that is also part of the trust piece that that you need in this this partnership, of course, on the other side, they also need to understand why are you doing this with us?
[00:09:43] Philip Pisa: And I think that part, you also need to communicate. But ultimately, you know, this is. That is a little bit of an ideal world set up. And there are, of course, going to be individual in the ecosystem and out there that are just not interested in partnering. They are, they might have issues. They might not [00:10:00] see it.
[00:10:00] Philip Pisa: They might not want to. And for those, I think there’s, that’s a, you can’t ignore them. You should still stay in touch with them, but ultimately. the focus should be on the ones that want to partner with you. And I like to say, you know, you want, you want to make them rock stars and hopefully then the rest will follow.
[00:10:19] Philip Pisa: Because if if we keep focus on driving patient outcomes, and then you should focus the majority of the time on the people that are with you and are creating those patient outcomes. And then. You will try to keep the other ones with you, you can share with you the successes but you shouldn’t get lost in trying to convince people that don’t necessarily want to be convinced.
[00:10:42] Philip Pisa: Because ultimately, I don’t, I believe that every person needs to make the decisions themselves, you can’t make another person make the decision. So you work with the ones you have. You drive as much patient impact as you can and then you hope that the rest will follow.
[00:10:56] Andreea Borcea: I like that you’re pointing out that you’re creating almost these champions, [00:11:00] right?
[00:11:00] Andreea Borcea: Because the ones that you make into rock stars, suddenly the ones that didn’t want to talk to you do want to start talking to you. Have you seen that happen before?
[00:11:08] Philip Pisa: I think within, within our industry, it’s it’s very scientifically based. So it’s, I’m not, it’s perfectly natural that there are, there is a broad spectrum of individuals and professionals that some require a lot of evidence to try something new and, rightfully so because ultimately we are talking about patient theorem and lives and health and so you shouldn’t be running after every new shiny thing.
[00:11:33] Philip Pisa: But then of course there are also professionals that are more geared towards and excited about innovation. And, and certainly, I mean, there are, there are examples when you come out with something that is hugely successful. And then that that changes people’s minds and get get people with you that maybe in the beginning, weren’t that interested.
[00:11:52] Philip Pisa: And Yeah,
[00:11:53] Andreea Borcea: absolutely. So As you already seen marketing evolve from the like we’ve been [00:12:00] talking about marketing is can going to continue to change. So I’d love to hear from you. Where do you think the future of marketing is heading, especially in the health and wellness space?
[00:12:09] Philip Pisa: I have two thoughts on it.
[00:12:10] Philip Pisa: And I think first, I think there’s going to be more and more of two way engagement and actually back and forth communication. I think we are we have and you can see that in many other industries. Thank you Healthcare is usually a lagging industry compared to many other other industries. But you can see the two way engagement where there is a, it’s not anymore about just pushing out messages.
[00:12:33] Philip Pisa: It’s a lot about having Dialogue and creating those Dialogue. And then the second part is actually, I would even make it a call out to the listeners because it’s something that I’ve been thinking about a lot. I think everyone has seen chat GPT and the GPT 3 models. Yeah. And if you haven’t, played with it or tried it out, you should because it’s really mind blowing.
[00:12:55] Philip Pisa: And something that I don’t have an answer to yet, but I keep thinking about a lot is [00:13:00] looking at where that is going, where deep learning world algorithms are going where even in healthcare, we’re seeing more and more clinical decision support and tools that help. right now help physicians make decisions and in the future probably even some of the simpler decisions might even be made by algorithms.
[00:13:19] Philip Pisa: Then the question that I keep coming back to, what is the role of marketing in that future? Because ultimately marketing is about supporting or influencing decision making. And if the decision is made, Ultimately, purely on data that goes into an algorithm. How will marketing continually need to continue to evolve to exist in that space?
[00:13:43] Philip Pisa: If anyone has any thoughts on that, I would love to continue the discussion or hear the ideas.
[00:13:49] Andreea Borcea: That’s a super interesting question because yes, I think it’s all evolving, but I also don’t know that humans are ever going to be taken out of the equation. And so with humans, there’s always [00:14:00] emotion.
[00:14:00] Andreea Borcea: Data decisions get made, but humans are always going to, nope, blue appeals to me more than red and it’s just the way it is. Especially in health, because the one reason. I really love and wanted to run this podcast is because I think health marketing in particular is unique because it’s so emotional, right?
[00:14:18] Andreea Borcea: It’s my private information. It makes me feel vulnerable or scared or empowered, or, it’s not like buying sunglasses or shoes or something. And so along those same lines, as these healthcare decisions keep evolving and people are getting a better ownership of their own health, With this future of marketing, how does that evolve?
[00:14:39] Andreea Borcea: Do people really want to get more database? Are we still going to have to, or we do still have to lean on the stories of what it means for, you know, Roche Pharma to impact my life and help me with my chronic condition or acute condition or whatever. That’s where I think it’s super interesting for where we’re headed.
[00:14:56] Philip Pisa: I agree with you. And I also personally, my [00:15:00] personal opinion is that I also, don’t believe the human will ever be brought out of the equation. I think I fully agree with you there. There was something I I can’t remember exactly who it was now, but their idea was basically, they came from tech and their idea was that, or hypothesis, was that one of the biggest issues that healthcare have right now is that it has been created based on a service model and services are not scalable and that it should actually look at health from a product point of view.
[00:15:25] Philip Pisa: perspective because products are infinitely scalable or software in that sense. And, and that I thought was very interesting because it’s, In that collision between tech and healthcare, which I think we are seeing and everyone is seeing I, I wonder just like which assumptions will be on, turn out to be true in 10 years time and which one we will look back at and say, oh, okay, that That didn’t really work out the way we thought it would.
[00:15:51] Andreea Borcea: That’s how it always happens, isn’t it? We all make assumptions and we’re all wrong. Well, perfect. Thank you so much for being [00:16:00] here today, Philip. How, what’s the best way for people to learn more about your specific department in Roche and to learn more about you and reach out to continue the conversation?
[00:16:09] Philip Pisa: Roche has our websites, roche. com intracapublic roche. cz. Also we have social, we are on all social meDia channels. And for the question around the future of marketing feel free to also reach out to me on LinkedIn.
[00:16:22] Andreea Borcea: Beautiful. Thank you so much for being here, Philip. And once again, I’m your host, Andreea Borccia.
[00:16:28] Andreea Borcea: Thank you. On this podcast, we talk to professionals in the medical marketing space, from brand new startups to centuries old global conglomerates. There’s something to learn in each episode. So because of that, I like to recap my key takeaways. In my conversation with Philip, I think the first thing that stood out to me was his transitioning from sales reps to patient journey partners.
[00:16:48] Andreea Borcea: The traditional sales tactics and healthcare marketing are evolving towards a more customer collaborative and patient centric approach, I’d say, and Roche Pharma is moving away from that conventional sell and tell model, focusing [00:17:00] instead on understanding and addressing pain points along the patient journey.
[00:17:03] Andreea Borcea: In every episode, we’ve talked more and more about how important that trust is. And I think this shift really emphasizes building partnerships with healthcare providers and patients rather than merely pushing products, which just isn’t going to work anymore. We can further see how Roche is supporting this by increasing their investment in R& D to try to remove obstacles and ensure the best patient outcome.
[00:17:25] Andreea Borcea: My second takeaway was how they were leveraging digital behavior insights. Not just digital data, but actual digital behavior. Utilizing their digital tools to gather insights from actual behaviors, rather than relying solely on traditional surveys, is becoming more and more critical in healthcare marketing.
[00:17:41] Andreea Borcea: How do you better understand your customer? How do you better visualize and understand the person that you’re trying to reach? Avoiding biases and providing a clearer picture of what truly interests and concerns the healthcare professionals and patients you’re trying to talk to. My third takeaway really leaned into how Roche is trying to better [00:18:00] connect with healthcare practitioners.
[00:18:01] Andreea Borcea: We often talk about the three P’s, payers, providers, and patients. In this episode, it was really nice to dig into how they connect better with providers. Roche focuses on listening to and understanding the pain points of these individual providers, maintaining that authenticity, and ensuring consistent communication.
[00:18:19] Andreea Borcea: I think it’s the consistency that’s really critical when you’re dealing with a professional in their own space. So unlike other B2B sales tactics in other industries, specifically with healthcare providers, that consistent communication I think really becomes critical to build that relationship and keep you top of mind.
[00:18:35] Andreea Borcea: What’s unique about healthcare marketing, when you have a provider that needs to prescribe your product or service is that you have this almost B2B to C marketing stance. So I think building that more robust communication strategy so that you’re talking to providers and patients and you’re talking to providers in a way that they can talk to patients is really the main focus when you’re trying to build out that larger communication strategy.
[00:18:59] Andreea Borcea: And I think [00:19:00] Roche really prioritizes that communication by understanding the concerns and needs of the healthcare providers, creating that better, stronger partnership that will lead to the better patient outcomes that is really the end goal. What really stood out to me in this conversation with Philip is that Roche is amplifying this healthcare professional relationship by creating this social proof dynamic and making certain partners rock stars, showcasing their success, encouraging others to join in their collaborative efforts.
[00:19:29] Andreea Borcea: In our next episode, I talk to Dave King, a brand strategist with over 20 years experience branding, rebranding, and merging brands in the medical space. If you’re curious how brand actually fits into your larger marketing strategy, this is the episode to listen to. Well, that’s the end of our episode for today.
[00:19:47] Andreea Borcea: If you work in a regulated field like medical, legal, or finance, and want to share your own marketing And if you’re looking for marketing support, well, that’s exactly what we do visit Diacreative. com D I A [00:20:00] creative. com. Any other info you might need will be in the show notes, including all links mentioned in this episode.
[00:20:08] Andreea Borcea: Thanks for listening.
