Jay Bolling has a salesman’s upbeat mien and smoothdelivery, befitting the head of a new national trade group for medicalmarketers, a business getting squeezed from all sides.
Bolling, president of Roska Healthcare Advertising, took thereins of the Healthcare Communication and Marketing Association (HCMA) on Jan.1. The organization brings together three regional trade groups—the HMCC in theNortheast, the Medical Marketing Association in the West and the Midwest HealthcareMarketing Association—in an effort to modernize their offering to members whoserve an increasingly global industry.
“The goal is to build off this foundation but create a neworganization to meet the needs of today’s healthcare marketing, communicationsand education professionals,” says Bolling. “So we look to provide consistenthigh-quality training and development across all levels of one’s career. Theidea of a national organization just having a big annual meeting in New Jerseyand expecting everybody to take time out and travel to it is history.”
Instead, HCMA will offer customized onsite training programsaround marketing, regulatory topics and professional development. “We can’texpect people to come to us, so we’re going to come to them, and thecustomization is critical,” Bolling says.
In addition to on-site training tailored to the needs ofpharmas and biotechs both large and small, as well as agency partners, HCMAwill offer distance learning courses online. And HCMA has partnered with fourvery prominent business schools—Dartmouth, Northwestern’s Kellogg School, UCLAand now Wharton—to extend its offerings. With Wharton, Bolling says, “We’rereally looking at providing financial ROI-based dashboard training andeducation specific to the healthcare community.”
The group’s annual conference, happening in Dallas thisyear, from June 4-6, will take a more educational tact as well, with the theme“Interacting in an interactive world.” It will carry on the MMA’s InAwe andDelta Awards programs.
With the tumult in the industry, a key objective is to helpmembers get up to speed quickly when they shift jobs between functions andsectors. Bolling says he sees marketers struggle as they shift from companiesto the agency world. “They come from this process-focused large companyenvironment to a service environment, where it’s a free-for-all,” he says.
Bolling remains bullish about the industry’s prospects. “Thetruly amazing thing about this industry is that many of us are in it to helpsave lives,” he says. “We’re not selling toilet paper.” The challenge now, hesays, is refining marketing practices and taking advantage of the technology tomake sure the right people have the right information. “We’ve got to get out ofthis trap of just raising awareness,” says Bolling.
After a brief post-collegiate career in commercial charterfishing, Bolling started out in medical marketing at FCB predecessor LewisGilman and Kynett, working on relationship marketing programs for Merckvaccines and cardiovascular brands like Mevacor and Vasotec. He then spentseveral years at Robertson Raymond, where he worked on Wyeth cough/cold andNovo Nordisk brands. There, he met Roska Direct founder Jon Roska. He joinedRoska’s agency in 1993 to build the healthcare practice and became president ofthe healthcare business in 2007.
He and his wife live in suburban Philadelphia with theirthree daughters, ages 10, 11 and 14. When they can get away, he still enjoysfishing in Nantucket, along with skiing and golf.
His proudest professional achievement, he says, is havinghelped lead the movement from a mass-market, one-size-fits-all approach to amore targeted marketing model that looks beyond awareness to engage patientsand professionals. “In ’93, we were out there talking about persistency,” saysBolling. “Now we’re talking about hybrid marketing.”
HEADLINER STATS
Jay Bolling
President, HCMA
1993-present
VP, account management to president, Roska Healthcare Advertising
1989-1993
Account director, account VP, Robertson Raymond
From the March 01, 2008 Issue of MM+M - Medical Marketing and Media
