Marketing to healthcare professionals: leveraging journals, associations, and social media

Stewart Gandolf

Hello, everyone. Welcome to our podcast. Again today. And today I am welcoming Walt Steenburgen. He is President of CWG, Inc. And I'm excited to talk with Walt today about marketing, to doctors specifically how to market, to HCPs through publications—they still exist—and associations welcome, Walt.

Walt Steenbergen

Hi, thank you so much. Glad to be here.

Stewart Gandolf

So well, this is, you know. We've gotten to know each other the last few years, and this is a pretty specialized area. Our agency, of course, works in this category of marketing the HCPs as well. But for you, since you guys are really focused on this category. I thought it'd be a good adjunct to what we do, and certainly, when they needed to be appropriate, we would be reaching out to you for this highly specialized expertise you bring to the table. So, respect what you do. I'm excited to dig into this, so we'll just go ahead and get started. When we're thinking about peer reviewed journal like, what is the role today? I mean, we've you know, I've been around this, by the way, for a couple almost 3 decades. And you know, I remember, controlled circulation publications. And you know those are, I'm not sure they even exist anymore. So, let's just talk today about peer reviewed journals. You know, what's happening in the space. And maybe and I think a little bit of context, for how things have evolved might be good too.

Walt Steenbergen

Sure, sure, happy to do it. I can tell you that journals are actually alive and well, although in a different form as we've seen with all mainstream media these days the role of the printed journals which were actually mailed out to doctors, offices, and sometimes their homes, which was the case a lot during Covid have continued to decline that being said, the digital versions of those journals, in fact, also email programs, e-table of contents, and so on and so forth, actually continue to play a very huge role in our in our journey of trying to market to HCPs.

Stewart Gandolf

So, when we're talking about HCPs or healthcare professionals, the that, of course, includes doctors, nurse practitioners, PAs, and other professionals that you're trying to reach, when you're reaching out to them on or when we're trying to reach them. What is your common audience? Is it almost always pharmaceutical? Or who are the kinds of clients or their agencies that represent them. But tell me about your audience, and some of the reasons why peer-reviewed journals are so important compared to other options.

Walt Steenbergen

Yeah, it's really a, it's really about the credibility that the peer-reviewed journals bring to the space. The majority of clients that we have our pharmaceutical companies. We do work across medical device a little bit, although we find journals have a little bit less of a of a lever, if you will, with that particular audience with orthopedic surgeons, for example, if you're talking about knee and hip replacements. But when it comes to pharma and specifically very new treatments and specialties. Journals are still tremendously important. It is the rankings that we pull quite frequently from Kantar. We have several layers of that and many other different research tools as well, will consistently show that the journals are up there always within the top 5 of places where HCPs go specifically to look for new treatment options, but also variations, new indications on existing drugs, and anything that works in that ecosphere, specifically around a particular specialty like, say, oncology or ophthalmology.

Stewart Gandolf

Okay, that's an interesting thought, so just backing up for a moment, you're saying that it's going to be usually new drugs would be the primary advertisers for this particular medium. Is that true? Where they're trying to get the word out about either launching or have launched, or, you know…expand upon that a little bit for me.

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Walt Steenbergen

Sure, absolutely. Yeah. New drug launches make up off the top of my head. I would say about 70% of the journal advertising that we place digitally or even endemically. There also, of course, is new indications with some of the new oncology drugs. There. It seems almost like they're getting a new cancer indication almost by the month, and so to get out there in front of the oncologist and let them know. Hey, you know, Keytruda is now also approved for yet another indication, or another specific type of cancer becomes very important.

Stewart Gandolf

Okay. And then, in terms of peer-reviewed journals versus other publications that are doctor-specific. What are some of the nuances there? So, I'm assuming you get the call, because a lot of times when we've worked with either pharma or other kinds of businesses, they want to reach every oncologist, for example, like they really want to be thorough. And they're looking for multiple impressions. So are there other publications that are not peer-reviewed. They're still wanting to reach? Or is it really? Peer-reviewed is certainly the gold standard. How would it? Give me a little sense of that?

Walt Steenbergen

Sure, peer-reviewed is still the gold standard and the feeling amongst Pharma, and with us as well, quite honestly, is, especially if you have a brand new mechanism of action that is coming into the marketplace. Maybe it's a specific modality. We're working a lot, for example, right now in radioligand therapy which has been around for a little bit. But the way that they're able to target the cancer cells for that is brand new and the efficacy that it brings with the better side effect profile makes it really important to be in amongst that content. And really what we like a lot about journals specifically, is that and HCPs, specifically, they're in that journal. They're learning. So, their mindset is, I'm reading this journal, whether it be online through their iPad or whatever other a channel that they're using to reach. To get this information, they are actively seeking out what's going on in the marketplace, and what the latest research is coming out. So, to have an advertisement. And sometimes it is simple as a DSE or a disease state education ad there, in the case where we're doing market-shaping really just hits them at a time when they are very, very receptive to that advertising as opposed to being attached to a rerun of I love, Lucy, that you're streaming on one of Hulu, or one of the other platforms that are there.

Stewart Gandolf

That totally makes sense, that receptivity. It's funny, the just in our own podcast. And are the content we publish that is read by both executives, marketing people, and doctors. I find that it's been really interesting, and we're going to talk about social media in just a moment here, the our newsletter was for by far our biggest driver, our email, I should say, distributing our blog was by far the most important thing. But now social media, particularly. LinkedIn has really changed things for us for our promotion, and I think it is because of receptivity. People are going when they're in LinkedIn. If they're a LinkedIn user. They're going there to eat the feed. They were looking for content, whereas email could be doing anything. And it's kind of a distraction. So that's the receptivity totally makes sense to me that if that's the journals would be okay. I'm here to learn. I'm here to get caught up, and it's like that would be the prime time to do that. So, speaking of social media, tell us about how social media has become more important in conjunction with the things we're talking about today.

Walt Steenbergen

Absolutely we've seen, especially since Covid, when we pull our rankers for where this is almost across the board, there are certainly subtleties and differences between the channels that specialties will seek out. But very often these days YouTube shows up as a as a channel that an HCP will go to seek out information. And we actually went back. And we had some very deep meetings with Kantar and our representatives that were pulling this going. Yeah, we understand HCPs are on YouTube, everybody's on YouTube, but how do we know specifically that they are engaging with these particular platforms and searching for that content? And of course, they are tracking what the searches come up for so very often we'll have—we'll stick with oncology just because it's such a huge category—very often we'll have, maybe it's a Cesare syndrome search or a rare disease search or symptoms that look like X,Y, and Z. From HCPs, and we can target them through their NPI numbers. And so, we do indeed know that they are doctors that are searching for these particular topics. And the engagement rates typically with video, not surprisingly, this is really just, again, I think the HCP universe really has a tendency to mirror the general audience which we're all looking at shorter form videos these days so much more than reading a newspaper, or even just reading an online newspaper. They are looking for that engagement that happens with the video, and we often recommend it for our agency partners, simply because if you especially if you have something like a new mechanism of action to actually have an animation of how that molecule interacts with, say, a cancer cell is tremendously powerful, and the engagement rates are huge for that type of advertising.

Stewart Gandolf

But yeah, for sure, and sounds like some of the things we're looking at. The let's talk about the other consumer media. So, YouTube is again, it's a search medium, right? People are searching, often looking for answers, and I often watch my own behavior. There are times that almost always my wife goes to sleep. I'm either just sort of trolling around on things that interest me, or I'm like purposeful. It's a different kind of viewpoint, or I'm just checking out Jimmy Kimmel. You know, it's like, it's a very different, the same medium, I'm interacting with differently. Any other comments on, you know. For example, LinkedIn or Meta, Facebook, Instagram, or any of the others in addition to. And we'll talk about some more professional stuff in a moment. Just curious about to compare notes, I guess, on the consumer social media.

Walt Steenbergen

Yeah, absolutely. And you know, fantastic point. Yes, LinkedIn continues to be a growing platform for us, and all of the things that we do are very databased. And so, we like the fact that you can target specialties. You can target even individual HCPs on LinkedIn. Meta is a moving target. As you know, the engagement rates are tremendous. They continue to crawl up the rankings as far as media that HCPs will use to learn about new things. The algorithms change. The Geotargeting rules change constantly. So, there's a lot of different things. You have to be absolutely aware of all the time before we dig in. But it is a pretty common channel for us. Paid social has absolutely become a much larger piece of what we do for our clients.

Stewart Gandolf

Yeah, we agree. Well, like, people are shocked when we talk about. And the just the very fact. We have a little bit different audience, sometimes in terms of the prospects for working with as clients. But the, a lot of people are shocked that you can target on one-to-one basis. That's the that's the magic right? You're not just reaching out trying to find somebody interested in medicine on Facebook. You're targeting on a one-to-one basis. That's the magic there. And it can be a very powerful tool. So, let's talk about Doximity, because I've actually been interviewed by Doximity on their podcast a few times. And you know, Doximity back in the old days. Well, it's funny they wouldn't return our calls. It was really funny. When I first started. I don't know if it was hubris or what but they're obviously a major player. Tell us about the role of Doximity, you know. When is that appropriate? And then also there's various, you know, other platforms out there like that. So, the category, I think, would be helpful.

Walt Steenbergen

Sure. Yeah. So, we sort of, there's two things that we sort of put Doximity under. There's two channels. One would be peer-to-peer, and the second would be endemic social. Because it really kind of plays across both platforms, depending on what you're trying to do. So, there are several different platforms out there. Doximity is certainly the largest one. But there's Sermo, Skipta was around for a little while. I think they've actually been absorbed by another one right now. They all have their strengths in their in their weaknesses as to what they do. Really, the largest challenge we have with Doximity, and we do place a fair amount of business with them is their minimum spends they can be rather large. And so, everybody we hear this from clients all the time where they come on. And they're like, Yeah, we really want to do a fast 5 quiz or something on Doximity and Medscape. And some of these other platforms. You're absolutely going to be able to do that, but not with the budget that you have. In fact, we would not recommend spending all of your money there, because it's just truly not a an omnichannel place to have it happen.

Stewart Gandolf

Yeah.

Walt Steenbergen

That being said, those spends are those spends are high dollar typically, and we we're talking high dollar to a small to mid-size Pharma, right? Not high dollar to one of the legacy Pharma’s, or a Novartis, or a Pfizer, or anything, but their engagement rates are good their physician-level data can get really granular and you can really see the engagements, and how long an HCP has gone and engaged with a particular post, or looked at content, and really interacted with it, and asked questions and talked to other peers about particular treatment options. So, it is tremendously effective.

Stewart Gandolf

Yeah, the cost always comes up. It just does. You know it's funny because they I don't know how much they're doing this now in the hospital side, but it's just the anybody else but Pharma. Nobody's used to these prices. They just. It's like, fall out of your chair pricing. So, it's like, it's just a thing. So, but it is a very powerful tool. So, let's talk about how, how are reimbursements making, you know, nurse practitioners, PAs more important in the care journey, and that's kind of a broader topic. But I think it is relevant in this discussion about, you know, we talked about this before. This isn't just no longer marketing the doctors. It's marketing to HCPs, so I'd love to know more a little bit more about that.

Walt Steenbergen

Yes, absolutely. It's not really a secret that well, the insurance industry is under a lot of pressure and also scrutiny along with the PBMs or pharmacy benefits managers. From not only the general public, but also Congress, and so on, and so forth. And so, there's constant pressure to lower that pricing. A lot of that comes down to lower reimbursement rates, especially in the Medicare space and the Medicaid space for a particular doctor to see a patient. So, we see more and more of this recently, where a doctor obviously runs a practice. But he brings in nurse practitioners and physicians, assistants who are very capable of seeing a patient diagnosing that patient, and in some case even writing scripts, which they are allowed to do because of their training. So, the doctor oversees sometimes a series of 9 or 10 different PAs or NPs, and so the doctor can bill for all those different patients without actually physically having to be in the room with them at the same time. So, the slightly lower pay that an NP and PA get speakers into the economic model for a doctor's office, especially a midsize one.

Stewart Gandolf

So, it's interesting like we talked about this offline a little bit, too. This weekend I was out trail running and really dumb at the end when I was on the flat part, not the scary part. That's when I decided to fall and I had stitches this weekend. So, my experience in healthcare is fresh, right? And the, I saw, you know medical assistant, and I saw a PA. I never saw a doctor, and I was just fine with that, and I think beyond the cost factor, it's just access, right like there's not enough family doctors to go work urgent cares often, or there might be one there with a bunch of MPs or PAs, and you know these were, you know, this is stitches on the bottom of my arm like. I don't need a plastic surgeon for that, you know, it's like, so the idea of having, you know it's just, it's the only practical way to go. And of course, people now are there a lot of times. These other healthcare professionals are making decisions just like the doctors are. And so, it's certainly important. And so, it's not surprising that your focus has moved much broader. And this has happened over time. But, I'm sure that's just now. It's completely as important as marketing the doctors themselves. So, let's talk about. Let's flip a conversation a little bit. Congresses, and certainly, or association meetings. These are big events. You know, the companies that are exhibiting there have lots of money oftentimes, especially Pharma, are investing a lot right? These are big boosts with big staffs and big expense, and you know every possible sort of marketing gimmick sometimes. Talk about where that's going, and in terms of the you know, role in the education and marketing to HCPs as well.

Walt Steenbergen

Yeah. Congresses, I will say, continue to be super super important. But there was it was very interesting to watch when Covid happened, and a lot of these conferences went virtual, tons of pharma clients that we have in their agency partners were like, well we're just going to do a virtual congress. It's going to be just as good as an actual live Congress and getting those doctors in the room. In fact, it'll be better because we can get doctors from all over the world to attend our congresses, and they can attend different sessions, and some of them, I think, did a really great job of like setting up different tracks, like, if you're looking for new treatments or new indications, or whatever it happened to be and the attendance initially was good, but then we, as the years went on, it just kept dropping lower and lower and lower, even though the I think the Pharma industry was declaring that congresses were dead, and that was it. They're not coming back much like, you know, returning to the office. Never gonna happen. It's over. And yet as soon as they were able to open up again—and I attended a number of them myself, including Bio, immediately after Covid, was kind of on its tail end—and you know everybody required a negative covid test to get in, and so on and so forth. I think there was 45,000 people at that first bio Congress in 2022, I think that was. In San Diego, and the numbers have only gone up. And really, yes, the ability to get the information out there is tremendously important. But as with everything, the networking part of it, and just being around people who are also seeking the information, and there is the social part of it. Right? Doctors are people as well they so a lot of them work in many, many hours. They spend a ton of time trying to get new info. They like to be in there with their peers. They like to be kind of just working alongside them if you will. And what really surprised me and one channel that we really started working in was gamification of clinical data. And when we, the 1st booth that we ever were involved in, where doctors were required to put their names into a leaderboard. I said, there's no way HCPs are going to do that, because who wants to put their name on a leaderboard? Oh, wait! When you get a bunch of orthopedic surgeons in a conference and one of the MCPs will walk by and make sure that their name is still up there. If it's not, you could hear them say things like, Oh, that guy. I know that guy. I hate that guy. I'm going to beat him. And then I'm coming back, and they would just keep playing over and over and over and over to get to the top of the leaderboard at a congress which you know has no professional implications for anybody. It was simply the social aspect of being involved in the category.

Stewart Gandolf

That's really funny. And, by the way, orthopedic surgeons, that does not surprise me at all. So, having worked with thousands of HCPs over the years, and different of all specialties. Orthopedic surgeons just tend to be the most competitive. If I had to pick one who's the poster child for being competitive would be orthopedic surgeons. That's awesome about that, I have. Fun fact, this is not my quote. This is from an orthopedic surgeon. I was at a conference. He tells the audience, “you know what's different between God and orthopedic surgeon?” Everybody goes what! He said, “Well, God does not think that he's an orthopedic surgeon. And that's okay.” So that wasn't my joke. That was his. So definitely a competitive group compared to some of the other specialties. It really is funny how the culture is different and based on specialty. It just.

Walt Steenbergen

There it is!

Stewart Gandolf

For sure, so the congresses haven't gone away, and it's not surprising to me at all. I was. I remember being in Covid. I was like everybody else, right? Nobody knew what was going to happen, and I was wondering, will people still shake hands, although I was just in a business meeting the other day where somebody didn't shake hands. That's the 1st I've in a while. But we did the elbow thing, but, broadly speaking, most people shake hands again. Most people go to Congresses again. These are just sort of deep seated human responses that you mentioned. People like to be there. There's something about. You know, also just engagement. I tried some of those virtual conferences as a user. And you know, I find myself drifting and doing email and double and double checking. And you know, it's the same thing. It's really hard to engage sitting behind your computer. So that's not surprising at all. And so that so you're doing a lot with both. Then the peer reviewed journals and the congresses like, I would imagine, and the any special sort of promotional tips of things you just like doing when you get involved with the Congresses, besides just having a big booth things like, do you like door hangers or anything else special, you think is important.

Walt Steenbergen

I'm actually a big fan. So as for the audiences that don't understand Congresses. And this actually just came up about 6 weeks ago. We have an oncology client who said, We want to do a 20,000 square foot booth at ASCO, and I said, Great! What year. And they said, 2026. And I said, Okay, we work with them a lot. There's gonna be a waiting list. Let's find out where you're gonna be. And they just were dumbfounded. They're like, do you know how much it costs to get a booth there? I'm like, yes. And do you know how many people will still pay all of that money to be in that particular booth. So, sure enough. There's a waiting list for a booth space at ASCO 2026, not surprising it in my mind, but it is surprising for pharmas, especially new ones, that are coming in, but as far as the there is all of the quote unquote, typical stuff that you do a lot of it we like we love the Wi-Fi sponsoring when you have to log into the Wi-Fi the conference, and there's an ad there we have done door hangers. We do columns, we do elevator wraps, but really, truly in the States where it's still allowed. We love geotargeting around a particular conference, and in some cases we could do that by NPI. In some cases, we can do that by specialty. So, at Ash, for example a couple of years ago, we did a geotargeting where we knew that an HCP was going into the building at down in Orlando, and so we were able to actually serve them up with an ad and then follow them right? So, that's part of the retargeting that goes so it shows up on their laptop and on their iPad, and so on, and so forth. So those are just great things depending on your messaging, of course, in in a lot of cases. If you're trying to drive to booth then that's a great way to do it if you are just. In fact, if you don't have a booth, but you're still trying to make a splash. We like that the out of home, which a lot of people probably don't realize is there's 1-2 year waiting list to sponsor the trains that come in from both O'Hare and Midway Airport into ASCO the taxis are often sold out completely there. The signs that you see the airport as you come in it is really a long term vision, with a significant amount of spend behind it. If that's what you're going to do.

Stewart Gandolf

Yeah, for sure. And yeah, geofencing is our friend. So, that can be powerful. The so the you know, without getting too political. Here there is a change in our government and administration in terms of, you know, like what's happening with, you know, the most respected, you know healthcare journals and other, and so forth. It doesn't have the same. How do I say this? There's.

Walt Steenbergen

Cache maybe.

Stewart Gandolf

Yeah, cache. Maybe like, is that impacting this at all? Or is it or is it the source of truth? Or is, for example, pharma racing to this, because to find a source of truth, what's happening there.

Walt Steenbergen

You know, it's interesting. We haven't seen it as of yet with the with the HCPs. I think we certainly, because of the upheaval that happened during covid. The general public trusts their HCPs much less, they trust government messaging much less than they did and obviously their own doctors. So many people did not get vaccines against the advice of their own HCPs, who are managing their health. So, we've seen that fallout go into this administration a little bit, and it's bled over into journals. And certainly, as is the case with anything where you have hundreds and hundreds of thousands of articles published, there have been some flawed studies that have been published out of the hundreds of thousands. But, of course, the spotlight was put on those that well, see this one study was erroneous, and how they did their data, so therefore, all journal data is bad which is simply, you know, just not the case. The HCPs that we talked to still are looking to that two journals and the associations as a source of truth. The issue becomes, I think, when patients start going in, and as we saw, with the rise and well, perhaps the near almost demise of direct to consumer advertising that may be around the corner where patients have seen something that a TikTok influencer has said is absolutely something that's going to cure their particular condition, and there is no journal study to back it up it from the patient's viewpoint, gives them a bit of a Aha! See? You guys don't know about this, and you know the HCPs will push back with, Oh, yeah, we do know about it, but we haven't had 10,000 people get studied in a double blinded placebo study to prove that it actually does work. In fact, here's the potential harm. But there is that there is that pushback that is being supported somewhat by the administration as to the legitimacy, I guess, of the data that's in medical journals. So far from what we're seeing, the HCPs have not shied away from it—nor has pharma knowing what goes into actually getting published.

Stewart Gandolf

So, it's really funny. I never thought of this but one of my big jokes, and we'll have to have a glass of wine next time we get together for we'll do, we'll do Happy Hour instead of lunch next time. But the, you know, sometimes I think about just even choosing a marketing agency. It's like, well, you could trust the national expert. You could talk to some guy you just met in the bowling alley. So, it has an equal vote. And that's kind of like thinking about that as the same thing. You could trust a doctor with science behind it, and data, or you could trust some guy or gal on Facebook or TikTok, or whatever, and that is exasperating, it just is. And so that's we'll see how that evolves over time, for sure. Pivoting over a little bit. And this is something else, I think is great. You know I think when we met at lunch the 1st time you know I talked about, you know sort of my background, and how we got here with Healthcare Success. And back in the day before I founded this company, and we really did work with, like, you know, spoke with and interact with thousands of doctors. So, I really learned like, how they think it's like, it's 1 thing to talk about. This is one actually to actually work with doctors. And I don't. I know back. This is back before, you know, I was broadly thinking of personas, but they're definitely sort of types, and it can help. Instead of just saying, I'm going to market to orthopedic surgeons, to break that down. So, let's talk about personas from your point of view. And how does that help bring insights rather than just going after broadly oncologist or rheumatologist, or whomever, how do you work with personas?

Walt Steenbergen

Sure. Well, to our earlier point, right about orthopedic surgeons being tremendously competitive. That's a great personality insight to have right? So, it becomes, how do you leverage that aspect of a typical? And again, nobody is exactly the same. There's no cookie cutters right? But you. You do have certain things that we know. So, we pull, for example, again, we'll stick with oncology. But we know that the average oncologist in the United States is over 50 years old. They are overwhelmingly male. They have a Southern United States geographic skew. We know that they typically do their research between 7 and 9 PM. On a daily basis, they'll spend an hour roughly catching up with the latest trends that are happening. And there's about 50 other data points that we have about oncologists based on med surgery, you know, surveys real world experience, what we see with reporting and engagements across some of our digital platforms. Even something as simple as QR codes sometimes old school to go back that way. But all those things really help you put together all right. So, if you don't have a national physician identifier or NPI number. Then what do you have that allows you to work with these guys? So, for example, when we are doing an email campaign that's working with journals. We like them to go out at specific times. Specifically coming from a journal. Maybe it's a e-table of content that is, got some new things in it. We would know that would be great for it to go out between 7 and 9 PM, because that's when the HCPs are on their on their computers and increasingly, not surprisingly, on their tablets and even on their phones. Catching up with their emails. And then there is something that fits right into what they're doing during that particular time period.

Stewart Gandolf

That's excellent, that really totally makes sense. So, we also talked a little bit before about endemic versus non-endemic platforms. Any comments there.

Walt Steenbergen

Yeah, absolutely. So, our, I, I think we work. Typically, we like to work with endemic platforms for all the reasons we already talked about where the HCPs are in there. They're getting their information. They're looking up things. They're in case of a of a Sermo Doximity. Perhaps they're conversing with other doctors online about, you know particular cases and the treatments that they put them on. But again, you know, doctors are also consumers as well. And so, with the targeting that that we can do, it can get pretty granular. And you can also NPI target through a number of different channels including programmatic across consumer channels or connected TV as opposed to the linear. And it definitely has its place. But it always starts with what goal are you trying to get to. Are you trying to write scripts? Are you trying to raise awareness? Are you trying to block out a competitor? Are you trying to, you know, whatever the KPI happens to be for that particular case. So, you have to individually look at every single one and figure out the best channels based on experience and data to actually target them and get a reaction.

Stewart Gandolf

So, let's talk about the journey. Because obviously, when there's Pharma's launching a new drug, there's a life cycle that's going to happen there from the very beginning to the very end. So perhaps talk about some of the touch points, and maybe some of the media that you know you're integrating at various stages.

Walt Steenbergen

Sure, great, great question. And this really points out, I think, some of the most I guess the starkest differences between how you would launch. That really depends on the pharma. Right? So, when you're doing a portfolio launch, for example, for Novartis the HCPs. Are already very familiar with Novartis. You don't need to tell them that Novartis is just getting into the oncology space. Thanks. It's a total.

Stewart Gandolf

That would be a little a little naive, Walt.

Walt Steenbergen

Yeah, exactly. So you know, in those cases we work a lot. We do work with some of the legacy guys, the big guys. But most of the ones that we work with are smaller to mid-size. And we actually have an oncology company right now that has been working in the diagnostic side of oncology for years and years and years. They're super well known in labs and in diagnostic settings. But they're not known in the therapeutic setting. And so, we actually have to. We're putting together a market shaping campaign for them, which is literally simply getting out there. That, hey? This company is moving. They've got some great new therapies coming in. You've never heard of them as a medical oncologist, because that's not the side of the business that you've worked on. So, there's a market shaping piece that goes on with that. If it's a particularly brand new MOA, then you start talking about this mechanism of action is superior to the standard of care or SOC, because X,Y, and Z. Maybe it's a side effect profile, whatever it happens to be. And all of those things affect the channels that you pick before you get there a lot of times, especially in these cases. We'll do a coming soon, you know, you'll start with a maybe it's a branding, then a DSE - disease state education - which talks about a particular condition, then a coming soon, that there is something in this and in all of these things, because you haven't had PDUFA yet, or official approval. You cannot talk about indications. You can't talk about side effects. You can't talk about any of those things. It's very strictly regulated, but with good reason, but you are still sort of greasing the skids if you will get ready when it's coming, and then there's the now approved messaging, and then, of course, there's the ramp up. Time between now approved and now available, because you have to start manufacturing, and you need to have that period of time that comes along as well. We do spend. We have probably 10 or 15% of our clients are actually on the other end of their patent protection. Typically, 10 years right? Unless they've gotten a pediatric exemption for a few more years if they've done something for a rare pediatric condition. I hear that's going away, though I don't know that for sure. But in a lot of cases what they're trying to do. And we did work at the end of Lipitor’s, for example, which has been generic for a long time. Everybody knew it was going to be generic, but what they really tried to do was get as many people on therapy as they possibly could before the generic started launching because of the inertia effect, where they would just keep renewing the script rather than changing it and putting them onto a generic version of the same drug.

Stewart Gandolf

Yeah, that totally makes sense. Finally, as we're wrapping up here, the, you know that we mentioned, you know, upstart and smaller pharmaceuticals that it's funny we just got referred to another one yesterday. One of our happier clients referred us, and then.

Walt Steenbergen

That's good for you.

Stewart Gandolf
And referred us to one of their sister companies. And that's challenging. There's legacy. We were actually, it's funny you bring this question we had talked about before, looking at the competitors like, oh, that's a little daunting. So, what are the some of the tactics you like when you've got? You know a brand that's trying to challenge legacy brands like Novartis, and they don't have the same budgets. They don't have the same credibility. What are you know, without sharing everything, you know. Maybe a couple of tactics you like.

Walt Steenbergen

Well again. And yeah, this is such a common thing. I mean, we have, I think, 4 or 5 different clients right now that are in the oncology, space and part, you know, partly one of the largest challenges that you often get A not only can you not get into ASCO, but in some cases you can't even get into doctor's offices because they have blocked it out right. This 1st right of refusal that you know, they will simply just buy all the inventory and go. Yeah, we're just gonna own it for the next year and a half. We know there's a competitor coming in that has better data, but we're not gonna allow them to get into any of the platforms that we you might traditionally use, little bit less of that now, but because of the breadth of different channels that are there. But we love endemic programmatic for that. Just because, you know, again, it's served up in the endemic setting. But it's not necessarily the direct-to-pub pricing that you get, and you know you lose some benefits, you know from that as well. But that's a great one that we like. We often actually pick smaller conferences. And we're recommending this for a couple of our brands that are launching. We've got 3 or 4 coming up this fall where there might be, instead of 120,000 oncologists from all over the world. There may be 6 or 7 oncologists, but they're in a very, very particular specialty, might be, you know, gastro-urinary, for example. So those conferences have a tendency to be much smaller, and you can make a much bigger splash at that conference. And again, you're trying to drop those seeds right where the doctors that are at that conference now know about your brand. They know about your treatment options or MOA. And then, doctors being the guys that they are. They always want to talk to other doctors about you know, on other platforms like Doximity Sermo, it's a way to kind of get that information in there without actually paying for Doximity to do promotional types of advertisements on that platform.

Stewart Gandolf

So, it's yeah. It's really interesting. You mentioned ASCO. And it's funny we've done projects around community oncology alliance, which is a different kind of show, and we've had the, but it's always a key part of the strategy, at least on our side when we're working with somebody to have this is the conference. This is ours. And you know you mentioned also the again, engagement. It's funny, just from our own experience. So, sometimes the really big ones. It's just hard to get traction with people. If it's smaller, people seem to interact more. I don't know if that's been your experience with doing that as well, but it's like a lot more. You can walk away with more sort of leads or inquiries, or engagement with a small show in our experience, at least, than you can in a big one, because you're just one in the crowd to see. Do you have any experience with that as well, because it's like beyond the numbers you would think. Well, it's bigger. You're going to reach more people, but there's certainly a lot of engagement this morning any other comments before we wrap up on that.

Walt Steenbergen

Sure, no, absolutely true, and especially in the case. And I would say, probably about 50% of our profile is rare disease, right? So, it could be rare disease oncology. So, you're not necessarily going to get diagnosed by 80 to 90% of the oncologist out there. And while it's splashy and sexy to be at ASCO. It may not. You're going for such a small subset of oncologists who are actually going to learn about this condition or know about it already, and they're looking for new treatment options. You absolutely should be at the smaller conferences, and for that, for all the same reasons we talked about with journals, to begin with, to kind of bring it around. It is really the credibility part of it. Where you are, there you're presenting data in a lot of cases. If they have it to present, it's a great place to do it. Do the poster presentations, do the tabletop sponsor, 1:1 public speaking engagements and particular rooms about your particular things. It's such an important way to get that message out to the people that are most likely to actually start using your product.

Stewart Gandolf

Great. Well, well, again, I appreciate your time today. I've been a pleasure getting to know you over the recent years. And yeah, if you have questions for Walt, we'll, we'll put your profile up on our podcast. And obviously, your president of CWG, so Walt, I appreciate your time today. Any website or someplace people should go just your main website to find.

Walt Steenbergen

Yeah, the main website is cwgmarketing.com. And you'll see a lot of the different things that we do there. My LinkedIn profile has attended to be fairly active as well. Most people, especially after conferences end up connecting with me there, which is great, so I love, that please reach out to me on LinkedIn, and even if it is not a business opportunity, I am very much a science geek, and so I will listen to the newest therapies that are coming out. I'm absolutely fascinated by it, so I love to just chat about what's out there and what's coming down the pike.

Stewart Gandolf

Great. Alright. Well, Walt, let's work together on some projects in the future. And it's been great talking to you today.

Walt Steenbergen

Stuart, thanks so much, really appreciate the opportunity to be here.

Stewart Gandolf

Alright! Thanks.

Walt Steenbergen
Alright, take care!