10 years of ‘Be Kind, Don’t Suck’ in PR and digital marketing

[00:01] I think data is great. I mean that’s obviously why my first investment higher was someone who was a data geek but you know, I think it’s really important that data is married with storytelling because what makes consumers and HCPs loyal to a brand isn’t just data alone. [00:26] Hello, and welcome to the MM+M Podcast. My name is Jack O’Brien. I’m the senior editor at MM+M. Please be joined today by a very special guest. My name is Megan Driscoll, and I’m the CEO and founder of EvolveMKD. [00:46] I appreciate you being on the show here Megan always interesting to talk to CEO-founders given the various journeys and unique experiences that leaders have in terms of setting up their own companies talk to me about the origins of the beginnings of your firm where it all come from. [01:05] September is our 10 year anniversary. So we’re in celebration mode and I had been on the agency side my entire career and basically in 2014. I was a partner at another agency and sometimes you know, like [01:22] Like personal marriages sometimes business marriages don’t work out. And so while that process was happening, it actually forced me to look at myself. Look at what I wanted to do and also take a look around the industry and see what what vacuums might potentially exist and from there evolved MPD was born on my couch. And before we get into the kind of the evolution of the company over the past decade talk a little bit about its initial focus and really what EvolveMKD is all about in terms of medical marketing sure. So our initial I mean my background is really in the earned Media or public relations space. So I would say the majority of our initial work started in that area. We’ve since over the past decade really expanded our offering we have a resolution analytics team. We do a little bit of professional relations and HCP Outreach and we have an entire digital marketing team that handles everything from Paid media digital creative to social media, and of course earned and [02:22] paid influencers [02:23] and can you talk a little bit about that evolution in 2014 feels like it was so long ago for so many different reasons. But what were some of the factors that really drove that Evolution that you’ve seen in the brand is it kind of the evolving media landscape consumption? You know, what what has been the driving force there? Yeah, I would say if you think have really kind of driven change. [02:44] Say, you know one what clients are asking for and I think you know what their needs are. I think we’re seeing clients are getting like all of us are in our jobs clients are getting pulled in so many different directions and I think sometimes there’s not always the same level of clarity in the ask or what success looks like because now there are so many different people involved and everyone’s answering to so many different Masters. So I think kind of that has changed our approach to client service and all so kind of force our offering to evolve so we could kind of be the agency the clients go to regardless of their needs like you mentioned the media landscape has changed dramatically not only from an earned perspective, but you know from a data perspective in terms of how we can see consumer consumption patterns, even how we’re seeing hcp’s show up in the space and what they’re doing From influencer perspective and you know that has really kind of forced our recommendations. [03:44] To change, you know, I think now clients can’t just do like one thing or focus on one channel and expect it to work. They really need, you know, an ecosystem of marketing efforts to be able to reach their and goal. [03:59] And what does that required from you as a leader? You know, it’s interesting to talk to somebody who is a CEO founder because there’s a lot of firms that we talk to and it’s like oh if you’re the founder like eventually at some point you hand it off to you know, the CEO that’s supposed to run things, but still holding those titles. What is that required from you on a leadership perspective? [04:18] question, you know, I’m a control freak that [04:21] I probably [04:25] help requires an ability to come part mentalize because obviously what is right for the client in some instances is not always aligned with what’s right for my company. So, you know, I take a lot of pride in the fact that we’re able to make kind of Client First recommendations, even if it you know harms our bottom line and then secondly, it really involves me staying up to date and being current, you know, that’s part of the reason I named the company evolved. [04:55] Was that I had worked for so many wonderful people in the past, but also a lot of folks that I saw that kind of got stuck in a certain decade or in a certain moment in time and then couldn’t or wouldn’t kind of adapt to changing environments around them and things change so quickly now and so that was kind of a challenge to myself and my staff with naming the company of all is that you know, we force ourselves. [05:18] To continue to evolve and then lastly it’s really important, you know kind of as a player coach. [05:25] A little bit. It’s important to also have a good team around you. Right and we take a lot of Pride and who we hire so we definitely take time and we hire slowly but that’s because one you know, we want to preserve our culture but two everyone at the agency including myself is very active in the business. So it’s really important to get that right skill and culture fit. [05:49] And you talk about all these different Evolutions in terms of kind of the macro economic landscape and and all sorts of different stuff like that. I think if we had this conversation a back a decade ago would have really centered around. It’s the era of Big Data you have to have data to make your business go and obviously that’s not to say it’s not as important now but it’s it’s been augmented in a different way and obviously the the soup du jour for us is AI and what machine learning can do for medical marketing. What do you make of these kind of Evolutions that we’ve seen in the industry and how is that impacted your firm going forward too or it’s like, okay. Maybe we’re not in the Big Data era but people are all talking about the chat GTS of it all. I mean, I think you know to on your first point with data I think data is great. I mean why my first investment higher was someone who was a data geek but you know, I think it’s really important that data is married with storytelling because what makes consumers nhp’s loyal to a brand isn’t just data alone. There was a really interesting article in bloom. [06:48] Recently about actually how Nike has kind of lost its magic like they’re so focused on where the consumer is right now. They’re not focused on doing some of that Visionary thinking about leading the consumer to where they want the consumer to go. So I’m hoping we kind of start to like level out like as you’re saying with it’s not only data. It’s kind of all these other things combined, you know, and I think with AI like what I’m most excited about is the efficiency it can bring, you know, I think when you own a small business you are very aware of waste right like money that you’re wasting things that don’t pan out and what I’m hopeful for for, you know, not only my own business, but for the clients that we work on is that I can really help us to not lose some of the accuracy and some of the due diligence but can help us with the efficiency. So what we are spending money on we get more out of it. [07:43] It kind of reminds me of that quote that they always attribute to Wayne Gretzky where it’s not you’re not skating where the puck is but where you expecting the puck to be exactly on that point. I’m curious about that because you talked about like, you know, a company should be kind of leading consumers into what that next era or expectation should be the same. I imagined applies with the clients that you work with. How is that changed in terms of maybe what clients are looking for the metrics? They’re following. What how is that relationship changed over the years? Yeah. I mean always you know, and I think the folks listening who are in public relations. This is like a very familiar conversation for them is Roi like, how are we tying this back to the bottom line? How are we trying this back to our business? I think that’s something when those conversations happen with our clients, but I can bring a unique perspective to because I I understand what it feels like to spend money on something and want to know what you’re getting back for it, but I think the biggest things that have changed for clients over the last decade is they still do want to understand the ROI, but everything is happening much faster. [08:42] So, you know everyone’s timeline is condensed. Like I mentioned earlier there are a lot more stakeholders in kind of every decision and sometimes it’s a little hard to decipher, you know, a client might be saying to you, you know, it’s bottom line bottom line bottom line, but then you find out that the CEO. [09:01] Really likes like shiny toys. So I think one of the things that have no Roi, so I think one of the things that my firm is very good at and I think that’s [09:09] partially because we’re all so, you know involved in every piece of business is being able to decipher what the ask really is and also come up with an execution and a recommendation that can have a measurable Roi but also have something in it to hit those intangibles that senior level Executives often are looking for as well. [09:31] I like that use of the word intangibles there because it’s so right. It’s it’s not only the stuff that shows up on the bottom line, but all the other stuff that you can really say. This is what we’re bringing to the table on that note talk to us a little bit about brand wave what that is the rollout of it. I really want our audience to understand that fully. Yeah. So we have done this is our third year of doing proprietary research typically [09:54] Your team and I we take a look at the landscape and think about questions that we want answers to that are interesting to us in 2021 was our first one and we focused on mental health and Communications and kind of how that evolved during covid last year. We focused on the perception of media. So we did a survey comparing media’s perception of itself and then consumers perception of media, which is really interesting. And then this year as you said as brand wave we were talking a lot about you know, the marketing funnel and it’s something that obviously when we’re putting together recommendations where we’re in strategic branding sessions with our clients it comes up, you know, what part of the following are we looking to focus on and when we were kind of brainstorming ideating we realized that the marketing funnel is over 100 years old and really hasn’t been updated. [10:46] To take into account what we’re dealing with today that is not really a linear Journey for a consumer. Right? It’s a little bit more zagged. So the team that are proprietary survey where we looked at 50 different brands and we identified their different ways. So where they high awareness low [11:08] You know reputational to try to contextualize. Okay, if someone has a lot of noise is it noise? It’s really making a business impact or is it just noise and through these waves we’re able to pinpoint better what areas, you know of the old school traditional funnel can customers really be focused on to reach their own consumer. [11:30] It’s interesting here. You talk about that and ultimately how it like you said goes to the consumer at the end of the day. It’s it’s not so much. It’s like the oh it’s it’s all about the clients. It’s it’s truly again on patient outcomes and improving that I’m curious. Are there any sorts of you know metrics or any sort of takeaways from Brand wave this year that leads you to believe like. Oh, yeah. That’s the success or this is how we define success with brand waves anything stand out. We just launched it in May. So we’re still you know in process with doing it for a lot of our clients, but I think what we’re really seeing and these conversations is like a lot more about quality of the noise, right? So I think some of clients like want to be everywhere they want to be doing everything and we’ve intuitively in the past kind of known, you know, less deeper is more but the brand we have actually gives us data to show them that that right. That’s sometimes like having such a wide umbrella of noise and attention, like maybe isn’t the right place for your brand if it’s not really getting through to the consumer. [12:30] That you wanted to and maybe focusing, you know on a different part of the wave for Brands is actually could be more impactful. [12:38] I know most of the conversation that we’ve had those far as been kind of looking at the past and the present and all the sorts of different trends that have evolved over that period time looking to the Future what stands out to you as it relates to Medical marketers, which they became their eyes out for both in terms of opportunities, but also potential obstacles, too. [12:56] I mean, I think you know you mentioned AI everyone is talking about that. I just want to a conference last week and we were joking that we should have like a drinking game to see how many times people mention AI but in the influencer space, I think what’s going to be really interesting with AI is virtual influencers Instagram is about to launch their creator AI which will allow some influencers to Pilot, you know, chatbots responding to comments and set of an actual person doing it and I think for medical marketers that’s going to present an interesting challenge for those of us who do paid influencer campaigns because how do we handle Adverse Events reporting? How do we make sure the chatbot doesn’t hallucinate and say something like totally crazy. So I think that’s gonna be that’s I think a very specific thing. I’m watching for my business. How does that evolve? How does it look? What do we recommend clients? [13:49] Think of you know not how does that impact to each for influencers, you know larger scale. I’m always interested in keeping an eye on how kind of the larger agency networks are fairing versus the smaller, you know independent ones like myself because I think we all go through phases where companies [14:10] They want big networks and they’re like no. I want to be the big fish in the small planet and we seem to I think be entering an interesting era where clients are looking for a mix of both because we’re seeing more and more clients kind of partner with bigger agencies and US simultaneously, so I think kind of exploring that connection with how kind of the industry symbiotically like starts maybe working together thinking through different business models. I think, you know, I’m pretty interested in and over the next couple years and what does that mean? Because it doesn’t sound like you’re you’re pessimistic on the future of these kind of smaller independent agencies, you know, there’s always a conversation about what consolidation means for the industry. If it’s just going to be more big holding companies or more private Equity backed firms. It doesn’t sound like you’re that worried that you’re gonna get, you know elbowed out. So to speak in terms of these kind of larger forces that play I’m not I mean, I also come from a place generally of abundance like I think there is enough business for everyone. [15:10] Regardless of size specialty. I also think in terms of client businesses. They’re always a different stages of their own Evolution and different needs and I I think there are some things that smaller independent agencies just do better. [15:25] And there are things that smaller agencies can’t do the bigger agencies are better equipped to so I think there’s a need for both. You know, I’m always optimistic because I feel like when you focus on the quality of your work and the quality of your client relationships, everything else takes care of itself. [15:42] No, I think that’s a very apt takeaway there and one that I think our audience will take to heart. Is there anything else that medical marketers need to keep in mind? Obviously, they’ve seen your journey over the past year 10 years and I’m sure they’re looking ahead to what the next 10 years have in store for you. But is there anything else that they need to keep in mind or maybe best practices that they should consider implementing in their own organizations? [16:07] There’s usually a mix of like client and kind of agency Folks at all the M&M events and everything. We love working with you guys. You know, I would say to any of the clients listening. I think any Clarity you can give your agency you’ll get better work from them that I would say is the biggest thing. I’ve noticed since covid is, you know, I think obviously everyone’s still recovering everyone’s not necessarily the best self, but I think the more we can of the agency client teams eliminate vagueness. [16:37] From our conversations with each other. I think the better the work will be on both sides. [16:42] Clarity is always the best policy. So I’m with the the less vague the better trained if we can get that going here, but it’s for some reason unbelievably not common. Yeah, I mean, that’s just that’s just common sense across not only here but so many other Industries too, which is a separate podcast, but Megan really appreciate you being on the show here congrats on the 10 years best of luck going forward and hopefully we can have you back on the show to talk about, you know, in 2034 or any of the other major developments with your form. Thank you so much. [17:11] that