AstraZeneca

Luis Leon

Luis Leon is an MBA graduate specializing in marketing, management, and operations with expertise in consumer health, consumer goods, and pharmaceutical products. Before having a dual role in GSK as global brand lead and global portfolio optimization, Leon was Business Optimization Manager (Global) and Project Manager for the Asia Pacific Commercial Operations team. The ability to engage and lead cross-functional teams toward a common objective while managing stakeholder expectations and his global experience with key markets allows Leon to drive effectiveness in diverse roles.

In an interview with him, we discuss about the life sciences market and the practices that help streamline the marketing strategies.

What are some of the challenges and trends that have been impacting the life sciences marketing space lately?

When it comes to the pharmaceutical industry, the first major pain point is data. Compared to technology firms such as Amazon or Google, the pharmaceutical industry is slower regarding the right utilization of data. A significant amount of time for marketers is wasted on accumulating data from multiple scattered sources in one place and preparing them for analytics. Secondly, observing the pharmaceutical industry closely, I realized that marketers identify client personas, comprehend the customer journey, and create a map accordingly. But with everything happening in the world right now, marketers need to go beyond just marketing. This will help to have an enterprise view of the company, which encompasses not just the financial department but also the medical division and customer-facing jobs. Thirdly marketers today don’t have the ability to understand that traditional marketing was fine 23 years ago. In today’s world, we need to have a holistic of everything. We cannot simply approach customers in with the same information we use every time and expect it to be suitable for everyone. Each client has unique tastes, and they prefer to re-engage at various times with specific materials, which significantly enhances the value of their involvement.

Therefore, we must ensure that our clients have a truly individualized and seamless experience in terms of interaction, as this ultimately generates a competitive edge.

What are some of the technologies or practices that help streamline marketing strategies and processes in the marketplace today?

When it comes to technologies in the pharmaceutical industry, we often utilize a customer relationship management system called Viva. This system allows us to only understand what takes place on the ground. We also conduct another collection of data that we refer to as external data in the pharmaceutical industry. This data provides a perspective that assists us in understanding what is going on and what’s happening with competitors and our own customers.

We have established API in the pharmaceutical industry, which helps us provide a better understanding of marketing methods, content generation, segmentation, and targeting. It is capable of validating data sets from many systems and platforms, combining them as desired, and displaying the results on a very attractive dashboard. Through APIs, we can connect diverse data sources in a manner that is rational and systematic for marketers to examine. So tactically, it helps marketers really understand the customers and have a 360-degree view of them.

What would be your piece of advice for budding professionals in the field?

It is absolutely necessary for someone who is interested in a career in marketing to concentrate on the fundamentals of marketing since these are the factors that will determine how successful they will be in the field. They are required to have a profound familiarity with the customer and to make persistent efforts to comprehend the current status of the economy. Second, having a relationship with a customer in person is fine, but we need involvement across various channels (either omnichannel or multi-channel). For marketers, it is necessary to implement a multichannel strategy to achieve a competitive advantage or, at the very least, to develop a brand. Thirdly, it is important to have a holistic approach. Once you have this multi-channel or omnichannel perspective on how to engage the customer, you will have a comprehensive understanding of the business.