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Andreea: 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. Welcome back to another episode of Pioneering Perspectives.
I’m excited to be here with Kelly Fidler, Senior Director of Global Brand and Marketing Operations at Edwards Life Sciences. And as a reminder, I’m your host, Andrea Borcha, the founder and CMO of the digital marketing agency, Dia Creative. Kelly, thank you so much for being here. for having me. And I’d love to start a little bit with your background.
So you are one of the rare individuals that hit diagnostics, devices, and pharma, and that’s not very typical. So talk to me a bit about how you managed to hit all those different sectors of health, wellness, and medical.
Kelly Fidler: Yeah. Um, I actually started in diagnostics, but on the customer side and not on the industry [00:01:00] side.
So I worked for a handful of years in hospital laboratories. That’s what I went to school for was lab medicine. And I interacted with many, many vendor partners in those years that I was there and got exposed to the people who train and service equipment and also sell obviously. And in spending the time in the hospital, which I loved, because obviously patients are kind of.
What gets me out of bed every day? Um, I got to see a different side of what you could do with your career, and so I very specifically set my sights on working at J& J on their diagnostic side, because one, that was who I was familiar with, but also because everyone that I’d interacted with at that company was fantastic and I thought, that can’t be a coincidence that that many fantastic people people work for the same company.
So I waited for many years to have an opportunity to get into a sales position, um, in J& J and was very fortunate to, to get placed in the city where I lived and start my career in sales there. And so it was comfortable because I of course was familiar with the [00:02:00] product and with the, area of lab medicine.
And so every change that I ever made had of a three legged stool, at least one or two of the legs covered in experience. And then something was going to be new that I was going to learn. So I’d never been in sales. I think you were always in sales. We’re selling something no matter if that’s our job or not.
Um, but it was new, a new skill for me to learn. So I did that for a handful of years and then progressed in ortho doing other types of sales specialty roles or business solutions, types, roles, as we saw opportunities within the structure of our organization to support the team more. Um, and then it came to this time where I’d been there for almost a decade.
And, and, you know, you kind of know what you’re doing. And I thought, okay, I’ve been in sales. It’s time to learn marketing. So I think I really need to get in the, inside the mechanism of the machine and figure out, you know, how do you motivate from the inside? Um, I loved it at J and [00:03:00] J. And so I wanted to, to take that time in marketing within J and J.
I had the opportunity to stay within the company that I was in and do a marketing role. So I would learn those new skills. And then I also had an opportunity to, to, to come out of that and work in the surgical space. So now I would be in the med device space of J and J. And quite honestly, the thing that let me make the decision was.
Choosing the role that made me feel scared so I couldn’t do the, I could do the diagnostics marketing role. Probably there’d be skills obviously I needed to learn as a marketer, but I knew the customers and the product and the field and all that stuff. And I thought, why don’t I try something that I don’t know how to do?
Can I be successful in a new division, in a new sector and marketing as, as something new? So I just looked at it and said, Okay, this makes me nervous. That’s the one I’m going to take. And so I moved over to at the con, which was on the diagnosis or sorry on the [00:04:00] device side of the house and was fortunate to take on a hernia portfolio, which in the Scale of J and J businesses was one of the smaller portfolios.
And what that afforded me was a lot of latitude to try new things, which was probably some of the best years of my, my career doing those. When you have leaders who are like, whatever you want to try, you go ahead and try it. So I got to try new things and, and having come from sales, I knew that what I needed to do.
to be successful as a marketer was to make them successful in sales. So what did I need to give to them that would make them successful? So that was an anchoring belief that I had that I knew I could bring into marketing. So I spent time in doing that. It was a fantastic experience. We did really well.
so much. And then I came to this 10 year mark at J and J. And so it was time to look at what’s next. And what was next was people leadership for me. And so that was going to be the leg of the stool that I didn’t have. So [00:05:00] what could I do within, ideally within Ethicon? But at the time there was some changes within the organization.
They were consolidating business units and the opportunity where I lived didn’t exist. My kids were young. We were doing a lot of travel at home to various sporting events for my boys. So the opportunity to move wasn’t really there for me. So I said, okay, this is an opportunity for me maybe to leave this warm, comfortable J and J umbrella that I’ve been under for a decade and see if I could take a different leg on a different stool and experience sales management or marketing management, whatever that might be somewhere else.
So that was the leap that I took, but I came back into diagnostics. So I moved to Roche because I didn’t know Roche, but I did know diagnostics. I didn’t know sales leadership, but I did know sales. So I was like, okay, I feel pretty good that I can learn the skills and fall back on some skills at the same time.
So I was back in diagnostics, but learning a new [00:06:00] business and a new set of. Um, diagnostic tools that I didn’t use to work with when I was in the hospital. So that was really good. And I was building my experience as a manager. So I did that along the way, you make a network of colleagues that become friends or mentors.
And I had an opportunity to leave Roche and to go to a company I’d never heard of in a sector I’d never played in. And that was cardiology at Edwards. And I, but the thing that I had was a leader friend who I valued her opinion and what she did and she was a great mentor and I knew that I could lean on her to learn the things I didn’t know.
And so I ended up leaving Roche to join Edwards in Canada where I’m from and run a business in cardiology. I had never set foot in a cardiac case, the only time I’d been in surgery was either as a patient or in hernias. I remember one of my reps. So I was in the process of specialist asking me how was I going to run [00:07:00] the business of of trans catheter heart valves if I’ve never I didn’t know any physicians and I never done cardiology.
But at that point for me, my role was really to move the barriers out of the way for the sales teams to do what they needed to do. So I didn’t need to be an expert in the product and the procedure right away. I knew that I was really good at moving things out of the way in the system. So that’s where I came and that’s what I did.
So now I’ve kind of covered diagnostics and various parts of medical device. Um, and then I had an opportunity that is probably a unicorn. It does not come often. I loved my job, um, in the transcatheter heart valve business, but my very best friend in the world had an opportunity to bring a new product into market in Canada, in pharmaceuticals, I had never been in pharmaceuticals.
And I think in med device diagnostics and pharma, we stay in our lanes. We’re like, Your diagnostics, you don’t know that med [00:08:00] device, your pharma, you know, no, you know, so this was an opportunity to bring a startup, which I’d never done into a country in a category that didn’t exist with my very best friend, whoever gets to do that.
And it happened to be. for low libido in women. So, basically, could I go into pharma and talk about sex with my best friend and build a business in Canada? That felt like an opportunity that I didn’t want to give up. Um, and so, I, I left the job that I love and I went into, I went into that pharma space.
And it was so great. For me to have, again, I had lots of healthcare experience in Canada. I understood each of the provinces and what the health system challenges were, but the pharma piece was new. Um, but I had my friend who had decades of experience in pharma, and then I got to learn pricing reviews and advertising rules.
And, and, and I learned my, I, as a woman, my eyes were open to so many biases that [00:09:00] exist against us in healthcare and medicine, and that passion starts to come from that. So that was kind of the trifecta of those things, but what I will say that I didn’t, I wouldn’t have been able to have predicted.
Pharmaceuticals, though fabulous, are a little bit more removed from the patient than I expected, right? You, you work with the physicians, of course, but the impact is not immediate or, or, you know, you’re speaking about a single thing. You’re not impacting a big chain of events for the patient, at least in my experience.
And so. I missed the firefighting that happens in MedDevice. When you are implanting something, when you were, you were part of a team that saves someone’s life immediately, there’s probably a little bit of ego that’s in there. It’s probably why I worked in the hospital. You know, you take call, you go to emerge.
It’s part of who you are. I miss that. So I had an opportunity to come back to Edwards because, you know, [00:10:00] kudos to them for remembering me and, and, and trusting me. And I had an opportunity to move out of the country and move to the U S. where the corporate head office is. So back in, in cardiology, great, comfortable, but I’d never worked outside of the Canadian health system.
I, my whole life had been in the Canadian health system, but there are no perfect health systems, but they’re all a little bit similar here and there. So it was just learning, how could I adapt what I knew working in a system like Canada and how could I apply it, um, in around the world. So that’s kind of how I got into a global role and how I ended up here in sunny California.
I probably, I, I will visit the snow. I don’t know that I need to live in the snow, but each of those moves were, intentional in that I wanted to understand what would I learn next? What do I have in my back pocket that I can lean into as far as expertise and feeling like, okay, I know what I’m doing, but then what are the things that make me nervous?
What scares me a little [00:11:00] bit? So I could say, okay, I think I can try. And I think if you can prove that You are successful in one area and you can replicate the skill somewhere else. It is a confidence builder to say, okay, I haven’t done this before, but I can. I never snowboarded before, but I can. Right. So you, you learn.
So that’s kind of how a very long version of how I ended up with three pieces of the pie that, that do make me, I think, yeah, a bit unique, but it, it’s been great and intentional, which I think if you looked at my CV, maybe you’d say, But, you know, wow, she really moved around. No, those were intentional moves for sure.
Andreea: I, I love that. I, I, I love that you looked at your career as a, as a growth mindset opportunity, right? Is like, how, how can I continue to push myself? Cause I think one thing that we find in marketing and sales is whatever you did last week doesn’t work this week. Yeah. No matter where you are. So if you’re not constantly challenging yourself and exploring these different arenas, then you probably get stagnant and then things start falling apart.
But not only did [00:12:00] you go across these three different dimensions, you also went massive companies like J and J to tiny, tiny startup pre revenue, I’m sure, you know, so, so even that it, it feels like. You know, what would you say talking about team dynamics in these different arenas from like talking about, you know, sexual health with your best friend to being in a, you know, global corporate behemoth?
Kelly Fidler: Is there
Andreea: any nuances with how you communicate even internally in these different scenarios?
Kelly Fidler: It’s a great question. I think there’s comfort in the layers of a big corporation because there are processes, there’s, you know, SOPs and things that you know that you can fall back on. But those things can also be burdensome because you might have great ideas, but you have to go through all the layers to make things happen.
So I think there’s good and bad to both sides. I really appreciate my early years. Being in the big corporations that taught me all of those skills. It’s a little bit like being in school, right? [00:13:00] Do we ever use the algebra we learned in school? N no. But you know, am I grateful that I have it? ’cause the theory and the and the practice are very valuable.
For sure. Um, what I appreciate about the lack of complexity or the reduced complexity of a smaller environment when you’re in a team is that that then gives more autonomy and and sort of strategic thinking ability back into the team. So I think you you become a better Corporate citizen eventually, when you’ve learned how to bootstrap it yourself.
So it can somewhat be limiting when you come back into corporate and say, well, you can’t do that because that’s this role or whatever, but at least it gives you those skills. And so as a leader, I’m kind of like, Hey, here’s where we need to go. No wrong answers. Tell me what you’re thinking, right? In a, in a corporate environment where maybe there are layers, I would say the exact same thing.
Here’s where we need to go. What are your [00:14:00] ideas? And then when we have the ideas, we should say, okay, what are the things that might be in the way of us achieving those? Or what might we need to propose as a pilot because we want to test and learn or something like that. So the environment might change how we adapt this, the scenario or rather the solution, but it doesn’t usually adapt, change my approach.
I, I, you know, I’m just one person. Okay. At home and at work, and sometimes maybe that’s good, and sometimes maybe it’s not, but it’s always the, the, the same approach I take, but it’s different. Yeah, you’re,
Andreea: you’re, you’re pushing for a little bit more structure in the startup, but you’re pushing for a little bit more autonomy in the corporate.
Yeah,
Kelly Fidler: for sure. Exactly, exactly.
Andreea: One thing that I pulled out of, of your career path was, was really interesting to me is you started talking about marketing messaging, but specifically with the sales team in mind. And I don’t think we’ve, we’ve heard that before. Every conversation that we’ve had on this podcast [00:15:00] about messaging always has to do with the end consumer customer trying to hit one of the three P’s provider, patient, you know, um, payer, but that’s not even on this list.
So, so. Talk to me a little bit about why you even considered the sales team when you’re talking about messaging.
Kelly Fidler: Yeah, that’s a, it’s a really great question. I, you know, we definitely as marketers have multiple customers. And we will always orient ourselves to the patient. That is why we’re in healthcare, right?
We are definitely all playing for the same goal and that’s the patient Our customer is also often the physician or the payer as you mentioned, but as a marketer My other customer is the sales team because they’re the, with the exception of non personal promotion where obviously we’re not working with them directly, everywhere there is an interaction between either that patient or that physician, it is not being handled by me as a marketer.
They’re the conduit. They’re the channel. And so they’re my customer [00:16:00] too. And so oftentimes I think that we get into a place where we fall in love with our initiatives and marketing. And we, we’ve looked at it for hours and it’s like, this is amazing. This is the greatest thing ever. And we never really thought ahead of how are they going to use this?
So where I am now, and I, and I really credit the years that I was in sales as, as the, Sort of the skill that is in my pocket to be able to bring it back out. And it probably started in my first marketing role when I knew I had a mentor who I still talk to today, who said, Kelly, the best way for you to do this is to make their job easier.
So what do you need to do? Those reps at that time had multiple things that they could pull out of their bag and talk about. I mentioned it was a small part of J and J that I covered. So I’m probably the least financially lucrative thing for them to talk about. So I needed to give them a reason to want to talk about it.
Right. And so I think about that even today, where I say, okay, this is a [00:17:00] super cool thing we’re developing. So I say, before you even show it to me, talk me through, where am I staying? I’m the rep, where am I having this conversation? Where am I standing? Who am I talking to? What’s in my hand? Oh, okay. And so this is the start.
Okay. Am I doing this at, do I have a lot, do I have to book this as a lunch? Do I need 30 minutes to walk through this or is this a 30 second hallway conversation between patients or between cases? And I’m, I’m dropping it and it’s a single leave behind key message or whatever. Like what’s the intention of this piece?
What do I want that? customer. Usually in our case, it’s often physicians. What do I want them to remember about this? Because if I nail that as a marketer, then the likelihood of a rep pulling it out of their bag and using it and doing it correctly and messaging it correctly is far higher. So that’s kind of where I [00:18:00] get to with the team.
It doesn’t always work. We don’t always get it correct. I’m not sure I ever in A decade plus of being in the field as either a rep or a manager looked at a marketing piece that I was like, this is the best thing I’ve ever seen in my life. I think there’s always some scrutiny and like, why did you guys do this?
You kind of accept that and, you know, try to figure out how to do it better. But I do start with their, you know, mechanism in mind and saying, okay, how are they going to use this first?
Andreea: Did, did you find that it was Um, there was resistance in connecting marketing and the sales team closer together when you were working through this?
Kelly Fidler: I have never, in all the companies, I don’t know that I’ve ever found one that has that perfect magical, we’re the best of friends and everything you do is great and everything you do is great. I think we’re always going to look on either side and go, why did you do that? Why can’t you get that right?
What, you know, I, I think there are varying degrees of how well it works, but I’m, I’ve [00:19:00] not yet. found one that just works perfectly well. Now, I think there are opportunities that you should make happen to hear from them and hear with an open mind. And I will say that in both directions, right? Like as a salesperson, really listen to why there is this particular part in your piece or why we have to anchor it in this, right?
because they know something you don’t know. Maybe it’s about future pipeline products, or maybe it’s about, um, you know, competitors that aren’t in your country, but they’re in another country and you need to understand the nuance of saying something like this. Um, but on the flip side in marketing, same thing, right?
Like the customer is the physician or the patient or whomever. Is going to be sitting across the table from the rep not you So you have to be ready to give them and listen when they say hey, this is not working Like they ask me every single time. Well, why this? And so you need to [00:20:00] be able to assist them because they’re the one having the tough conversation Not you sitting in the office as a marketer.
Andreea: Absolutely. Yeah, I think that’s always been my It’s so funny with marketing You rarely are directly touching the customer, like the sales team and the service team. Um, and yet I find so many times they’re siloed, they’re, they’re in their own little bubble. Um, so building those relationships ends up becoming so critical because they’re the person actually sitting in the hallway, you’re right, rushing next to a physician, trying to, to like, get their attention with the flyer you made.
Kelly Fidler: Right. And then you often, you know, I, as a marketer, I think that the number one thing that I probably spent the most of my time in my first couple of years doing was actually getting in the field. Because you actually should go see what that interaction looks like. Be that product expert, but not the sales expert.
Like be the one who can ask the questions. Why do you suture that there? Why, why is it the like, be that expert? Cause you need to bring value to the rep. If you’re going in front of their customer, for sure. But it’s so [00:21:00] valuable when you see the actual real world experience of, Oh, you literally do have 20 seconds as they’re running between exam rooms.
to talk to a patient. Oh I see why I should just have a single, very bold take away on this document. Or three snappy little things that a rep can just, you know, say off the top of their head to counter something the physician is going to say five times out of ten.
Andreea: Yeah, and then I really like something else that you said about, You know understanding how the physicians are using or what their world is because When you are when you do only have 20 seconds if you’re saying something that’s irrelevant to them You’ve instantly disqualified yourself for sure.
You are not, you know, you don’t know your product well enough you don’t know their problem well enough to know that you can solve it and especially physicians with the The egos that they tend to have We’ll just instantly discount you move on. Yeah
Kelly Fidler: And I, and I think even, and this is a skill, certainly that the sales teams have more [00:22:00] opportunities to leverage, but even the marketing teams should find an opportunity to leverage is the listening to understand from the physician or help me understand how is this working, where are you getting stuck?
Why is, why is this difficult? Like, help me understand what you need to do your job better. And because, you know, we have. We have field advisory boards where we, we have that mechanism via the sales leadership team to be able to come in and say, Hey, here’s what’s happening. Not necessarily, Hey, that two piece brochure, you said it doesn’t work.
We never get to page two. It’s not that it’s like, Hey, this is what’s happening in the hospital right now. You know, it could be, sometimes we’ve found when we’ve gone out and you listen, you find out that it’s not even the department that you are selling into that has a bottleneck. It’s somewhere else in the pathway of the patient.
And it’s like, Oh, okay, well, that’s something we can figure out a way [00:23:00] to, to help alleviate maybe, or maybe we can’t sometimes just even listening is is half of a win, right? When the physician understands that you actually are listening to what is the reality. I’m not trying to push a product. Help me understand how can I get more patients to the treatment that we want them to get to what’s in the way.
Andreea: Yeah, especially with diagnostics and devices. I think like you, you, you, you’re talking about that immediate solution versus the pharma. Um, so, so leaning into the farmer side of things, how did you have to kind of shift your mentality of how you work with the market directly, especially because it was smaller and messaging shift as well, because now I’m, I’m, I’m assuming you’re talking a lot more directly to the end consumer rather than multiple layers like you’ve had to do in the past.
Kelly Fidler: I would say in this particular scenario, we didn’t really engage with patients much because, because again, I was only there for a couple of years. So we were building from zero. So we were building from scratch and you’re [00:24:00] starting with educating the physicians, right? Because you’re, it’s a brand new drug.
And so you’re doing a lot of education versus actually going to the patient directly, however, non personally. So in a digital medium, we did go to the patient. Um, so I think in that world, which was, somewhat surprising, but quite often a parallel to here. It was, help me understand why you wouldn’t be doing like, why are we in this, in this particular example, if we talk about women’s libido.
We’re both women. Have you ever been asked about your libido? Probably not. Why? Why have we never been asked? So how do you tackle that with a physician? Is that because I asked my own physician. So I’m fortunate to have a family physician who was female, but also had known me for decades. And so she just followed my career and she would know, you know, what I was working on.
So when I was moving over, I said, I think you might be excited to hear about, you know, where I’m moving. [00:25:00] And she’d heard about the drug and she was, so I said, you’ve never asked me, not once. And at that point in time, I was, you know, past having kids and well into a place where libido was probably an issue.
Um, I said, how come you’ve never asked me, we’ve never talked about this. And she said, Kelly, I don’t ask you because there isn’t an answer. So I don’t want to open up that, you know, kettle of fish if I don’t have a solution for you. And so I’m like, okay, that’s fair. So you start to have those conversations.
Why aren’t you talking about it? But you will unearth a lot of things that you didn’t expect. Some of it is gender specific where you have a male physician who’s not comfortable asking a female or a female patient who is of a Of a nationality or a religious belief where you would never have that conversation So there’s a lot of times where there are these hurdles to the conversation that aren’t even Consciously aware of but on either side of the the table, right?
So I think that was for me [00:26:00] Interesting, I think in the on the flip side in devices if I tell you you have a disease in your heart, you’re going to be intently listening to me. When I say, here are all the things we need to think about. If I say, I think maybe you may have a problem with your libido. I might not even, thanks doc.
I reserved that conversation for my best girlfriend’s after three glasses of wine. Right? So it was very interesting to me because the topic of conversation was more of the hurdle than the The treatment option was really, so it was fascinating.
Andreea: So, did you find that when you were talking to these physicians, now that you did offer them a solution, that they were more likely to have that conversation, or still there was a resistance because it’s like, well, we, we just don’t do it that way?
Kelly Fidler: I think in this particular situation, some of it is also, behind the newness of the therapy. So anything that they may have [00:27:00] been doing before was off label. And so if they found it was working, they may have said, well, I have a bit of a solution. It’s kind of nice to have one that’s on label. So yeah, I’m open to trying it out.
Um, but it was finding the majority of the physicians. finding the ones who weren’t talking about it at all and didn’t do anything off label. Now we had a brand, brand new product, really though well studied a brand new product on the market. And then you’re going to have some early adopters, but you’re going to have the vast majority in that bell curve.
We’re going to take a wait and see. So. It was such an interesting dynamic to not get as a, as a female, to not get a little fired up about that and say, well, why, why wait and see? So then you do say, okay, well now I do need to educate patients. I need a woman to be sitting there saying, wait a second, this is, this isn’t right.
I should have, you know, an opportunity, but at the same time, I, and I saw even within my own friends who obviously were. Intently [00:28:00] listening to how it was going, who would say, okay, I’m going to talk to my GP or my OB GYN. And, and, and they would say, oh, you know, they said, no, they’ve never used it. They don’t want to try it or it won’t work.
And so that that’s, they’re dead in the water at that point. And they’re not going to come back with the physician saying no. So you say, okay, now we need to, you know, how do we get over this hurdle because if there’s somebody in the middle, who is causing a bottleneck, then I need to be able to make sure that the two people, if I’ve gotten a patient fired up to take action, that they have an open receptive mind when they come with the problem.
So, and that’s true of libido. That’s true of, you know, heart disease and tons of things. We, you have to be able to go to all these channels to get the barriers out of the which makes marketing super busy all the time.
Andreea: Yeah. And and always changing. Yeah, I do find that that there is more of a light being shined on on the differences between [00:29:00] between health care for women versus men and the questions being asked and, you know, there’s studies now about, you know, pain being basically written off, uh, or complaints being written off.
Um, how are you finding it from, from your side and from your career being on that marketing messaging side? Do you feel like there is more room to message to specific complaints that women have with their health? Or do you feel like you still need to take this roundabout approach that we’ve done historically?
Kelly Fidler: It’s a great question. I think there’s probably There is an opportunity to address health access equity in general. Women are part of that, but they’re not all of it, right? There’s socioeconomics, there’s rural versus urban. There’s just all sorts of that. That’s true in every country. I don’t think there’s any country that’s nailed it.
It’s even true in clinical trials, right? Like now, mind you, those are fed by the people who are, who are, you know, ruling in or out patients who come to see them. So [00:30:00] it’s a bit of a chicken or the egg. So I think I definitely think in women, we should, we should be advocating for ourselves and asking more questions and we should have physicians who get more training when they’re in school on the differences, even a simple difference, like a presentation of myocardial infarct in a woman versus a man, right?
Or how quickly we get treated for an MI and eMERGE versus a man, right? Like those are definitely some of the things that should just be addressed, but there is a bigger. Health access equity thing. So if we had to choose, you know, or I shouldn’t even say, wait, if I had to choose, I would say, okay, let’s, let’s have tackled that one.
Cause there’s. There’s this element of the tide floats all boats, right? So if I can just address this inequity, my hope would be that each of those specific areas would say, Well, maybe what’s my inequity? Oh, shoot. You know, 85 percent of our treated population is men. We should probably do something about that.
But over here it might [00:31:00] be, Hey, we only treat patients within a 40 mile radius of our hospital. We should do something about that. So I think that if you can tackle that, if you can look and say, what is the equity situation happening for all access, then you’re going to tackle, you know, the ones that are not meeting the standard, like quick in quick out, always get treatment.
So for marketing, that’s just a bigger bite of the apple, right? For sure. But I do think that you’re probably going to Get a little bit more, um, access, which is really what you want to do, right? You want to be able to get more people to get what they need.
Andreea: Yeah, absolutely. There was one other thing that stuck out to me that you were saying and I’m wondering if this is a Canadian versus US thing but you’ve had the same doctor for most of your life.
And I can tell you I’ve bounced around every time my insurance changes. on the US side. So I have not had consistent medical history. [00:32:00] And I’m wondering, have you had to work with that challenge at all? Or is that just not an issue in Canada?
Kelly Fidler: Well, no, it’s definitely an issue. I will say I have two of my children are still in Canada and one of them changed provinces and still doesn’t have a family doctor, which hurts my soul.
Um, so that’s definitely still a problem. Um, but. You know, for me, I was very fortunate to be located in the same location and keep my family doctor who didn’t retire. She, you know, she was young enough that she was there for a good portion of my adult years, which is great, but I did move to the US, so I did lose her.
So I would say the two. Probably most painful things about leaving the country was losing my general practitioner and my hairstylist. I’m not going to lie. Those two things. I was like, Oh dear God, what do I do now? Um, so I do have the last, you know, almost five years now experience here in the U S health system.
And I can see how that’s a challenge. My insurance company hasn’t changed. So fortunately I haven’t, but yes, I would definitely be [00:33:00] in your same shoes if that were true. Um, I would. But what hasn’t changed is it’s still me. I will tooth and nail fight for what I need. And so I’m going to find it for my children.
You know, my one son who doesn’t have a family physician, um, you know, his, his girlfriend had some allergy issues. And she’s, she didn’t have a family physician either. And I said, well, hey, here’s the thing. I know there are telemedicine platforms in Canada now. Get on it. Like you need to. Or, I need, you, you, she happens to work in, in healthcare as well.
I said, I need you to go network. Go find somebody who knows an ENT and see if you can get a name. You have to go fight. Similar to jobs and, and everything. Advocate. My own mom, you know, back in Canada, she’s, she’s of the age where she listens to her physician and whatever the doctor says is, is the truth and, and, and they know best.
And so I’ll sit and wait and I have to be that vocal advocate for her. She’s [00:34:00] fortunately been very healthy, but when she’s had issues, I will, I have sat in her, in her hospital room waiting for her physician. And I’m going to ask a hundred really pointed questions, not because I don’t believe that you’re doing what’s best, but I say to my mom, If you find out something down the road that you wish you knew earlier, you don’t get the time back, right?
You don’t get to go, Damn, I should have really fought for that appointment. I should have really fought for a second opinion. So you have to be that person regardless of where you live. And I do realize in many cases, it’s just not available, which is heartbreaking. But yeah, you just have to advocate. And that I.
I have the good fortune of working across all health systems now, and there’s not a magic bullet. I haven’t seen any, some have been better than others, but nobody’s got it right. So you kind of have to look at it and say, okay, what’s in my way? What’s in my path? What do I need to do to get stuff out of the way?
Andreea: Yeah, [00:35:00] absolutely. Feeling, feeling comfortable being your own advocate, I think. Especially, I’d love to see younger people feeling more comfortable being their own advocate. I feel like that’s something that comes with age when you, I don’t know, lost patience with the system.
Kelly Fidler: For sure. And I think that there’s some complexity to what they’re being, I have an 18 year old daughter and so she’s, Either going to take what she heard on TikTok or she’s going to take what she heard from her physician.
So whether she finds this fortunate or not, she has a mom who’s going to ask a whole lot more questions. And so I’ll just say to her, like, you need to do more. You have to ask more, tell them this, this, and this. Have you asked them this, this, and this? So, maybe as much as I said earlier, physicians need more training in females and, and as part of their, you know, fellowships.
We probably need better training as patients, how to be better patients, right? We, we’re not great at saying what our symptoms are, we’re really good at pretending it’s something else or [00:36:00] chalking it up to age or whatever, but I’m sure there’s probably lessons that we could learn on both sides.
Andreea: Yeah. Yeah.
I’m sure doctors hate it when we come in and say, uh, no, I, I read, I, I heard this on Tik Tok, so I’m sure this is what I have. I saw it on Google.
Kelly Fidler: I Googled that.
Andreea: Google MD, right? Now it’s Tik Tok.
Kelly Fidler: I do. My daughter will say, well, I researched this and I’m like, okay, well, seven Tik Tok videos don’t count. So we’re, we need a PubMed article.
This is what I want to know. Yeah. Yeah.
Andreea: That’s a different level. So, uh, looking back at, at your career, um, and all the different avenues that you went down. Do you feel like that you, you have any advice for anyone when they’re first starting their medical marketing career or anything in the space to, to know which direction to point in and where to go?
Kelly Fidler: Yeah, I mean, I obviously get the opportunity to do that a lot in my job here, and I’m also part of our network of women here. So I get to do [00:37:00] it as part of that. Um, and really, for me, that’s just paying it forward because I had the good fortune of having that afforded to me. Um, so I think my advice is do what makes you nervous.
And that’s true at work and everywhere else. I mean, podcasting, I think I’ve had a million friends who said, you should do a podcast. Um, and then when, when you asked me to participate, I was like, yeah, I don’t know why I wouldn’t do this. Like, so do the things that make you uncomfortable or make you nervous.
Um, find out what it is that really, what is the thing that you lose track of time when you’re doing it? Yeah. That flow that you get into is probably the thing that really fuels you to do. And you may not be doing it in your job, but find the thing and say, Oh, okay. Well, when I’m planning a birthday party at home and I have all of my spreadsheets out and I’m mapping out all of the opportunities, you know, the Yelp reviews and all this, you’re probably going to love to be in a place where you’re doing analytics or say, you know, like try to find the [00:38:00] thing that really feeds you.
Feed your fire. For me, I know that healthcare is where I feel like what I’m doing makes the biggest impact. I think if I left it, I, I think I could do fun, cool things for sure and learn new things. But I know that that Standing in an operating room and watching a patient take big deep breaths after heart surgery, you know, things like that where you’re like, wow, being on call and emerge and telling somebody that they don’t have meningitis, you know, those things that I’ve done.
It’s like, okay, yeah, that’s actually what really gets me out of it. So ask yourself the foundational question and then you say, okay, don’t think about where you want to end up in 20 years. I can’t even answer that now. Think about what do I want to learn today? What do I need? What am I doing today that I’m good at?
What do I, what do I want to learn? And, and is it the thing in the place that fuels my soul? It’s, it’s fun to have, I have two sons who are 25 and they’re working in their first few years, [00:39:00] um, post degree and they’re, they’re trying things that they are learning. I don’t like this. I, you know. I have one son who went into healthcare and med device sales and he didn’t love it.
He’s like, mom, I don’t love this. It’s, you know, it’s doctors are not always friendly. And I’m like, could have told you that, but you know, so you’re kind of learning. He’s like, okay, well I like these things, but I didn’t like those things. So go try that. And then I think the other piece is like fail. What’s the worst that yes, you might.
lose some money for sure, or I hope you can still pay your rent. But that’s not a failure on you. It’s like, okay, I learned something here. Let me try something else. And just be honest with yourself. If you’re in something that, okay, this isn’t fueling me or do a, do a sanity check. How much of the day am I doing things that I really love and how much of the day am I not?
Some things are necessary. You have to pay rent. Nobody loves that. You have to do the dishes. Nobody loves that. In your job, it’s the same. But, make sure that it [00:40:00] is predominantly the things that you’re like, I can get behind that. I think that’s really all the advice that I have, and maybe ask yourself why you think it.
In the younger generation, I would definitely say, you see this, like, I gotta change something every year, every two years. I need a promotion. I need to move up. Why? What is it you’re trying to learn What do you, what do you want to learn from this? What’s your hurry? Like, why does it need to be two years?
What’s going to change? I, people leadership is a great example. I want to be a people leader. Why? It’s hard to be a people leader. And that’s probably the best and the worst part of your day are the people. Right? Because you’re, you get to, you know, Do things with them and see them blossom. And that’s amazing.
But then it’s also like there’s a lot of politics and a lot of other things in minutia that that are hard. So why do you want to be people leader? What is it that you’re really hoping to get out of it? And if you’re really jazzed by the tactical execution, the further up the food chain you go, the less of that you do, the more of [00:41:00] the strategy you do.
So if you love grinding out an event and curating this amazing experience and being hands on and doing all of that, then being the leader, leader, leader of that, you’re not going to get to do those things. You won’t make the decisions. You’ll be at the event. And you will ooh and ah at the awesomeness of the team that you helped get there.
But you won’t be googling Yelp reviews, and you won’t be doing that stuff that might be what really fuels you. So, I think that’s probably the best advice that I can give, and it’s probably what drove me to make the choices that I made.
Andreea: Yeah, I I really appreciate you calling that out because I feel like way too often.
Um, and I know we’re a little off topic now, but like with career progression, there, there’s this, this expectation of certain milestones I have to hit. And regardless, you always have to move up because if you’re not moving up, you’re staying stagnant. But I actually feel like there’s, it’s really important to acknowledge that you might actually be very [00:42:00] happy as a manager.
And that might be That, for that, for the rest of your life would actually make you very happy and you’d be miserable as a VP. And, and that’s okay, but how, yeah, you know, I just feel like not enough people feel that’s okay. That, that message just isn’t getting across to people starting their careers.
Kelly Fidler: For sure.
And I think the price tag that goes with all of this is, is sometimes what people are motivated by. Well, but if I do that thing and I keep promoting, I’ll make more and make more and make more. And certainly when you’re in the thick of paying student loans and doing all of that, you don’t want to hear anybody tell you that.
Tell you don’t worry about that. It’ll all work out. I say that to our boys, right? Like you got so many years. Don’t worry I realized I was there too and freaking out about making rent payments, but that can’t be the only thing right? You have to be am I doing things that tap into the very best parts of me?
Yes, I am. Am I happy when I’m doing these things? Yes, I am. Okay, great. [00:43:00] Why do you need to do something more? You may want to say, I’d like to see if I could do that over here, or I’d like to do this other thing where I still get to leverage those skills, but in a different way. That would make complete sense to me.
But if you’re like, but if I do these things, but now I’m director of super awesome thing, then everything will be better. Maybe not. And, and it’s okay to be like the 50 percent of people who are amazingly grinding out their work every day. We need all of those doers who are happy doing the doing. And I, and I don’t know that it, it’s certainly not gotten better in the generations that follow.
We, everything is more and more and more. So it’s pressure that you’re putting on yourself, I think.
Andreea: Yeah, and there’s a lot of satisfaction being the doer. I can’t tell you how much I love crossing off something on my to do list.
Kelly Fidler: Oh, I put things on. That are already done, so that I can strike them out.
Andreea: I love that.
So, [00:44:00] as we’re looking to the future, marketing is obviously changing, AI is now here, well, generative AI anyway, other forms of AI have already been around for a while, but everyone’s very excited about this. Um, how do you see marketing, especially in the medical space? I do also think there’s a lot of things changing, like EHRs are changing, regulations are changing.
Um, so how do you see the future of marketing in this space?
Kelly Fidler: I think really, again, it is always going to come back to how do I help more people get to the treatment or therapy or whatever it is that they need, what’s in the way. So, AI in any form could be helpful, EHR is an excellent example. You know, if we had integrated medical records across the U. S., across Canada, those two countries are deeply involved and neither one of them have it, right?
But if we could integrate that, so whether I’m here or I’m [00:45:00] 200 miles away or I’m back in Canada. Yeah. something pops up and tells you exactly what I’ve been experiencing for the last three years. That would really help facilitate me getting whatever treatment I need to be in that moment that I am there for.
So there’s things like that, where as marketers, that might not be the space that I market it. But if I can understand what is in the way of the patient that I am trying to get access to treatment for, then I can say, Oh gosh, This is what the problem is. Okay. Can I, is there a strategic partnership in a, you know, in a complimentary area that I could at least collaborate with?
Can I facilitate that with a physician? Can I engage the physician to say, Hey, this is what I figured out. How might we, right? Can we, um, those kinds of things. It’s so consultative, um, and it’s not quick fixes, but I think those are the things, if it’s always like this journey is too difficult, it shouldn’t be this [00:46:00] difficult.
What’s in the way. Geography biases, you know, technology, whatever it is. What do you, what do we need to get out of the way? And then. Go there. So I think that, you know, and it might be simple things, AI and supply chain or, you know, there may be things like that that we can help or even, you know, Medical legal reviews, getting that through, that would be amazing actually.
That would make a marketer’s job much easier. But you know, those kinds of things, I think, um, we just have to think about what do we need to get out of the way.
Andreea: I love that. And it feels like, you know, not forgetting about the people. As, as we move forward, you still need to talk to the people. You still need to connect with people.
Kelly Fidler: Yes, for sure. Because that is, in every healthcare, there’s a person at the end of whatever it is we’re doing, for sure.
Andreea: Well, Kelly, thank you so much. This has been an amazing conversation. I know we meandered all over the place, but I think it was really, really helpful.
Kelly Fidler: Thank you very much.
Andreea: Yeah. So, uh, once again, my guest today was Kelly Fidler, Senior Director of Global Brand and Marketing Operations at Edwards [00:47:00] Life Sciences.
Uh, where can they learn more about you?
Kelly Fidler: You can look me up, I guess, on LinkedIn. That’s probably the safest place to look. I’ll leave it there.
Andreea: Awesome. Thank you so much for being a guest. Thank you. My conversation with Kelly was insightful, interesting, and we covered so much ground. I like to end each episode with the things that stuck out in my mind best so that I can apply them to my own professional career.
My first takeaway from my conversation with Kelly Fidler was about intentionally pushing past comfort zones. Kelly shared how each role she took in diagnostics, medical devices, and pharmaceuticals required her to take risks and learn something new. By choosing positions that challenged her, intentionally, Kelly built a well rounded career.
For those of us in healthcare marketing, that’s Are we actively seeking roles that encourage us to grow? My second takeaway is about Kelly’s fresh perspective on [00:48:00] identifying a new target customer within your own organization. Kelly emphasized viewing the sales team as a primary audience for your own marketing initiatives, crafting messaging that’s practical and easy for them to communicate.
This approach not only strengthens the connection between marketing and sales, which we all know we need more of, but it makes marketing materials more impactful in the field. Making your marketing more effective. How is your team supporting sales with tools that are useful and relevant? The third thing I’d like to pull out of my conversation was our discussion about advocating for healthcare access and equity.
Kelly’s experience highlighted how gender biases and healthcare inequities impact women and underrepresented groups. She encourages us to consider these barriers when crafting healthcare messaging, ensuring patients feel heard and respected in your marketing efforts. Are you considering all of your audiences when addressing patient needs?
In our next episode, we pivot to a new [00:49:00] startup in oral health, bristle. We talked to Brian Mauer about the often overlooked connection between oral health and systemic wellness, and how exactly you go about marketing the oral microbiome. Well, that’s the end of our episode for today. If you work in a regulated field like medical, legal, or finance and wanna share your own marketing insights, email us at podcast@diacreative.com.
And if you’re looking for marketing support, well that’s exactly what we do. Visit dia creative.com. Dia a creative dot. Any other info you might need will be in the show notes, including all links mentioned in this episode. Thanks for listening.