The Key to Successful Medical – Marketing Collaboration

High-quality medical/marketing collaboration is essential for any successful new medicine launch. On the whole, the two departments work well together. However, as they work incredibly closely, problems can quickly escalate cause long lasting damage to relationships and to critical launch activities.

Marketeers typically face the following challenges with Medical teams:

Medics consider medical activities as more valuable than marketing activities
Medical put up barriers to innovative brand ideas
There is inconsistent medical interpretation of the Code when compliance reviewing
‘Good-enough’ should be good enough, but it never is for Medical

On the flip side Medics often highlight the following challenges with Marketeers:

Doing for the sake of doing – there tends to be no consideration or reflection on why and how best to conduct an activity
Marketing see the Medical department as primarily a compliance department
Everything is needed for yesterday
Medical absorbing the pressure to take ultimate accountability for the approval of a project

When we review where these issues stem from, there are three underlying themes.

1. Conflicting strategic direction

To alleviate the issues around conflicting priorities, there needs to be one strategic plan, with the same vision and objectives for both teams.

Revisit your plan with medical and marketing teams and ensure all the tactics are prioritised together.

The plan is co-owned – not a marketing plan with a medical chapter, or vice-versa. Similarly to this, each tactic needs good project planning, including setting project roles, expectations and responsibilities.

2. Code compliance

The tension here is between adherence to the Code and getting good-quality projects off the ground. For medical teams, supporting marketing projects whilst also acting as custodians of the ABPI Code and the ones to uphold compliance, is a delicate balance.

Marketing teams who take the first step in showing Medical teams that they have considered the intent of their projects and are diligent with the Code, set themselves apart. This helps alleviate Medical teams feeling like ‘the ABPI police’ and reinforces trust.

3. A breakdown in Trust

Trust is our willingness to be vulnerable to the actions of others because we believe they have good intentions, will not abuse us, and will safeguard our interests.¹

If trust isn’t there, we become over-protective, defensive and secretive - not an exemplar model for an effective way of working.

This is a hard nut to crack quickly, as trust is built slowly – through a conscious commitment to openness and transparency. So it’s encouraging that in the last few years more organisations are prioritising organisational culture, psychological safety and embracing mistakes.

If you are in a leadership position, you can start by gauging the level of trust between teams using an anonymous survey, asking if the above statements hold true, or by requesting feedback from individuals and groups. Discussions along the journey are essential, where it could be beneficial to get external facilitation support or HR input. Implementing a team charter, which codifies team values, and ways of working can help protect individuals and hold people accountable.

By encouraging trust, medics will more likely assume marketing teams are acting with positive intent and diligence with compliance, and marketeers will more likely assume that medical colleagues are not purposefully being obstructive, but acting in the best interests of the medicine and patients.

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Are you fully aware of the issues between your Medical and Marketing departments?

At LUCENT, we have seen departments crumble and changes of success slowed due to the exacerbation of these issues. Don’t let this happen and contact us today to achieve better collaboration fast.

References:

¹ 2021 Deloitte. Accessed March 2023. https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/insights/industry/life-sciences/trust-in-biopharmaceutical-companies-covid.html