Agency 100 Studio Session | BGB Group: Letting science lead: Data, insights, action

Jack I’ll give you a cue here. Mmm agency 100 Studio sessions bgb group. Okay, we’re rolling. Hi, this is Jack O’Brien digital editor at M&M. I’m super excited for you to plug into this episode of a 100 Studio sessions a new podcast series, which gets members of the mmm agency of 100 list and opportunity to Riff on what sets them apart. In this episode we’re speaking with Lisa bear managing director at ski mask and Michael Turner managing director at Syed both a part of bgb group. Lisa and Michael thanks for joining us today. Good morning. Thanks for having us. It’s a pleasure to be here. Thank you. Jack really looking forward to this. I’m looking forward to it as well. I know the conversation is really gonna focus a lot on the science first approach when it comes to the work at bgb, and I kind of want to start there Lisa. Maybe if you can kick us off with what the value of the science first approach is with the work that you do at bgb. Yeah. So we have a heavy focus and a significant investment into Data assets and so by leveraging the purchases of those data assets. We have a very high concentration of the scientific team on staff at bgb and that combination of the science and the data is really what we use to clean insights across our stakeholders. So I think bgb has established a medical Legacy and we have a long history of trust built into this scientific background and that really extends to schema inside and Michael. Is there anything that you want to add on to that point in terms of the science first approach absolutely science is the foundation of all parts of our Medical and Commercial strategies, which is really kind of the fundamental aspects of what created bgb group and made them successful and differentiated them and that really translated into the creation of sciat and schema and taking a science first approach. So our work is grounded in science and that’s important especially as we’re dealing with complex therapeutic areas like Hematology Oncology neurology immunology and even into cell and gene therapy. So we really try and keep that approach and it translates into much more actionable strategies for the needs of our clients and Michael. I want to go to the second question with you in terms of how you approach building a relationship with client teams early on to be able to guide the best use of pre-approval time frame. What are some of the critical intervention points that go into that. That’s a great question Jack. I think there’s two parts of that on the the relationship side. It’s really about building trust. So and it kind of stems in so starting with the science first approach. It’s engaging with clients early. So we work with them early on from when they’re looking at things from just a clinical and medical perspective and then, you know pre-commercial so they’re focuses on much more on the science. So we work with clients early to become that trusted advisor and Through a partnership with them as the either they asset or their portfolio evolves. We know how to engage with them. Whether it’s emerging Pharma clients or major pharmaceutical companies. And those critical and intervention points, I think were we really have the opportunity to differentiate and help our clients is in early asset prioritization. So early stage, where should they invest what is you know, what parts of the portfolio are higher priority than other areas Are there specific indications that they should look at and within an asset and understand how to prioritize their Investments and then again at end of phase two when they’re trying to make the decisions of should we go into phase three, what should the profile look like? How can we have something that’s not only clinically viable but commercially viable And then third intervention point would be you know competitive events. So whether it’s a new market entry a competitor coming in someone buying somebody else or just getting assets to develop faster than what you would have originally planned and then changing the the launch sequencing or timing of your competitors. At least. I’m curious if you had anything you want to add in on that point. I know Michael kind of laid out the intervention points, maybe if there’s any specifics related to the work that you do on that front that you could share with our audience. Yeah sure scheme. Obviously, we’re an extension of the full service team at bgb group, you know, we offer that pay or Market access expertise. And so we’re building upon the trusted relationships that have been built with our medcoms and agency of record teams, but from a schema perspective the early engagement with the organized customer stakeholders is a really critical Foundation to our success and securing formulary access at launch and I think legislatively with pie back in December 2022 becoming legislation it really Tells us to share clinical trial information early with those paired decision makers the value decision makers and that pre-approval time frame and those Pi Communications are iterative. We build them to share the data to get the insights from the pay our customers and use the feedback in that pre-approval time frame to really start to shape the groundwork for the development of the value proposition. So the earlier we’re brought into the conversation with the client the better we can prepare them for getting their preferred level of access at launch and to add to that. I think it’s it’s important working with these clients and and part of the benefits of having both schema and sciat is we’re we’re able to combine the intersection of the medical Communications of promo, but also the market access having that conversation earlier and one of you know, the focuses of sciat is to help coordinate that integration of helping assets to look at things not just again from a clinical perspective, but also a commercial perspective so breaking through some of the The old firewalls between medical and Commercial and helping companies to have a more coordinated plan or at least a perspective and understanding of what’s being done on both sides so that they can have a comprehensive approach and part of that is engaging with payers earlier, especially with you know, now that with pi and what Lisa’s talking about of getting getting clients to understand that they need to engage with these payers like in phase two especially in complex therapeutic areas. I did want to ask kind of a subjective question. Maybe Lisa. You can kick us off in terms of what your favorite part of the work that you do Within These capabilities is well, the pie conversations are always interesting to us because it’s a first time we really get a read from our organized customers is to how they’re going to position a drug or view a drug as it relates to formulary coverage. But as we get more into launch phase one of the big areas that we’re expanding our team at schema to enhance our capabilities and a lot of the experience of our team members is in the development of patient support programs and Michael had mentioned earlier the concentration of specialty drugs that we represent very complex therapeutic disease States. And so those patient support programs are really vital to this success of getting the patient diagnosed really understanding their disease given them the disease Ed really talking to them about critical points of care coordination that they’re going to be experiencing and then really helping them get the level reimbursement that they need for these expensive drugs. And so they reimbursement field managers. Work to make sure that the insurance coverage exists for the people that participate so those are really great programs to dig in their meaty. We feel like we’re really helping patients out and really that’s that’s the best part I think of what we do at schema. And I think secondly we’re starting to get more requests from clients particularly when they’re second or third to Market in the generation of real world evidence. And those are also very engaging projects where we’re working with the local IDs acos to really get drug in the hands of patients generate that real world evidence and then turn around and publicize that to kind of expand the the basis of clinical evidence to support a drug and the argument for Access. So I would say in summary patient support programs in real world evidence programs are our favorite to work on and they’re really relevant times. Like now when we look at areas, like Alzheimer’s disease and the need to you know, new products coming out the Kennedy’s approval and now trying to figure out how to commercialize and bring it into a space that that needs help and that’s Or bgb group has kind of a fun way of looking at this. So you see our most our favorite type of work. I love working on the complex. So something like a space like an Alzheimer’s or in complex cell and gene therapy work. It takes a multiple multiple sets of perspectives from both commercial and Medical Market access to really understand and build a framework around it. But my absolute passion is on emerging Pharma. I love working with emerging Pharma on that clinical to commercial transition where you’re working with a clinical medical team and maybe one commercial person and really helping them to figure out how do they how do they transition from that early stage to becoming a commercial organization? Whether that’s you know, developing a commercial organization and launching it themselves finding a partner out licensing that asset and prioritizing other assets, but then also thinking through all of the complex challenges of not just building an organization, but whether you’re building a new market whether Building a product strategy just helping them think through all those different pieces and having worked with about 20 companies to do that. It’s really exciting to see something that was just, you know, a few people in a small building now become a major major player in a space because their asset is approved and launched. I appreciate you both, you know detailing what your your preferences are in terms of the work and and kind of giving us a glimpse into the spectrum of different clients that you work with and in terms of different focus of the therapeutic areas. I wanted to Pivot the conversation a little bit towards the challenges especially as it relates to change that we’ve seen the payer Community Michael. Is there anything that stands out from that perspective to you? Yeah. I think it goes back to our earlier Point Jack of it’s just that increasingly important need for for clients to engage with payers earlier and the process we’ve got high cost drugs. They’re whether you’re going into New Market areas you’re trying to deal with and trenched often, you know could be inferior competitive products, but they’re entrance with payers. So being able to have that. Payer, discussion earlier into convince clients that they need to engage earlier and leverage the benefits that leases, you know talks about with pi and other things to really have something that’s going to be viable. It’s great to have a product that’s that’s commercially or clinically awesome. But if it can’t get to Patient it’s not being used then we’re we’re not doing our job and we need to figure out how to get that product to patients without the barriers of access or availability. Lisa was there anything that you want to add on that front? Yes, I would say in addition to what Michael said one of the interesting statistics that came out in January 2022. Was it 75% of all us Physicians are now employees of hospitals or corporations. And so what that really translates into is that these positions are now being employed by idn’s acos and as a result of taking on more risk, the decision makers are the ones that own that control the local level. And so these value decision makers of the past used to be the health plans the pbms, but with so much specialty drug coming into the market and our focus on specialty drugs. Our decision makers are really at that local level. The people that are making the formulary decisions at the integrated delivery networks the health systems the acos and it’s important to understand that because they are the ones that are developing and enforcing restrictive Pathways and formulas and there are penalties if those formulas are not respected. So I think what that really translates into is that the market share Battles are taking place at the local level. And so the hospital account managers. The msls are really fighting out that market share battle at the local levels are supporting role. There is to help them identify who those decision makers are so that they can have a positive influence around the discussions of those Pathways and how they can influence them to secure optimal access for the brands Michael. I’m curious what you would consider maybe some of the biggest opportunities or things you’re looking forward to as we head into the back stretch of 2023. I think in the second half of 2023 the initially one of the most exciting things is going to be just watching the continued successful growth of Scion on schema with Lisa and I coming in to help what was an organically grown business really rooted in the science and then bringing in the outside perspectives and people to build out the these teams and really grow them connected but independent from from pgb group. It’s it’s really exciting to see the growth of that and see the benefits of that. Nation of Science and creativity coming from bgb and then the support that we can bring to commercial medical and Market access. So for me, it’s it’s the just the excitement of growth but also looking at what’s going to happen and some of these disease states were you know, we’re seeing we’re seeing new products. We’re seeing contentious discussions, you know, we talked about Alzheimer’s disease. We’re looking at, you know new products and selling gene therapy. You’ve got companies that are you know, looking to deliver gene therapy solutions for type 1 diabetes. It’s just it’s exciting times and what’s coming to patients and helping to accelerate that path to patients is why Lisa and I and the rest of the team within bgp group do this every day. It’s just it’s it’s fun to help the process, but it’s also just really exciting to be part of that process and speed it up and really focus on the value. We bring to patients Lisa when you’re looking at the second half of 2023 what stands out to you? Well, I would have been quite an honor. To schema for bgb group. It’s an area of growth significant investment by bgb, and it really helps round out our capabilities in Market access work. And so to to be leading such a great team to have the ability to bring in Talent within the industry to really support the needs of our clients in the areas of solutions to address value demonstration access support and pull through really means that we complement our client teams and and give them a more Innovative perspective as to how to really address that payer Market as we add new capabilities. So in partnership with Siad Michael and his team, we’re really the supporting infrastructure around it because obviously bgb is looking to position themselves as a comprehensive solution and being very Grounded in the science as we talked about the importance of being grounded in the science and utilizing data assets to to create insights that we think are differentiating in the way that we potentially look at more comprehensive patient Journeys that reflect significant access challenge patient Journeys typically take a one-size-fits-all approach, but I think one of the things that we’re really looking at is the idea of dynamic patient Journeys because if there’s one thing that really comes into play a market access is that each patient really does go through a very unique Journey particularly in these complex disease States and being able to partner with our clients to really map out those Journeys and figure out intervention points to make sure that patients are getting diagnosed on a timely basis and on Innovative drug therapies as soon as possible to improve outcomes is really what we’re looking forward to doing in partnering with our client teams. I would add I think another exciting thing to look forward to in 2023 is just being part of bgb group. It’s such a diverse challenging a collaborative. Culture, they they’re expanding their services to be a more comprehensive solution as Lisa mentioned but they’ve done this not by just acquiring other firms and trying to patch work together. Like we see in other organizations do where there’s no cohesiveness or connectivity or just centralized strategy. The strategy is is simple it’s science and creativity and it’s pulled through so Sayad was created in 2021 and schema was created and built in organically internally and now we’re expanding and adding in that external talent to really differentiate it but we’re rooted in our teams have been part of bgb groups and since they started so it’s really exciting to kind of see that kind of activity having been having worked with other institutions that were either acquired together or Consolidated. It’s just it’s a whole different feeling and a whole different level of collaboration that really translates to better benefits to our clients. I really appreciate you both kind of detailing what’s going on at bgb group. Obviously a lot of very exciting stuff a lot of science driven stuff on behalf of your clients. And I promise that the start that we were going to have a final mystery question. I don’t know who is brave enough to walk the plane first to answer it. You’re scaring me. My God, have you go first since I’m scaring lease on this one is the agency 100 Studio. There’s nothing to do with Healthcare. But since it’s the agency 100 Studio sections, I have to ask Michael. What is the last song you listen to? The last song I listened to I’m gonna have to to pull it up. It was actually a Landslide by sleeping Mac because I’m excited going to see Stevie Nicks in concert later this year and she hasn’t she hasn’t been on torna in a long time. My wife got tickets. So it’s just exciting. It’s like bringing back a little old school, you know, the way things were but also keeping it current new and fresh. So it’s yeah, I feel like I’m on the on an episode of hot ones and I’ve got to stare into the camera and after reading Rings. No, that’s a great one. Obviously a great song by a great musician. I’m gel. I’ve never seen Stevie live, but I’ve heard nothing but good things about her performance. So you should be in for a good show Lisa. It’s over to you. What is the last song that you listen to? 1 million bullets by Sia one million bullets by SIA interesting bullet song, but it’s about somebody that would take 1 million bullets for you because that’s what that person represents in your life somebody that you would protected I’ll cost so I was out early morning getting some things at the store and that came on on the way home, and I jammed it pranked it up and jammed to one million bullets by SIA excellent. Well, I appreciate you both being open not only about your business and the work that you do, but also with your playlist as well. So I feel like we’ve got a little bit more color there. It’s really been a pleasure Lisa and Michael, but having you both on the podcast. Hopefully we get to reconnect down the line and wish you nothing, but the best going forward Jack. Thanks for having us. We’re really excited to have Place top 25 Healthcare advertising agencies this year and thank you so much for this opportunity. Thank you Jack. It’s been an absolute pleasure.