Xperience Comms: ‘Think of doctors as consumers’

Joseph Wenke, partner and creative director at Xperience Communications, says bringing marketing principles into discussions with doctors makes sense. 

“We think that it’s important to think of physicians as consumers,” said Wenke. 

With the Genzyme brand Myozyme, indicated for the treatment of Pompe disease, Wenke was tasked with taking information from internal meetings and moving it around the world. “We created a ‘director’s cut’ DVD of the meeting, which included outtakes, interviews with physicians, and interpolations of patient data,” said Wenke. The response to the work led to a follow-up documentary series in production, which will track patients over 18 to 20 months, and utilize a partnership with European physicians to document treatment procedures.

Wenke acknowledges the difficulties with compliance and legal restraints, but says that just because new technologies are innovative, doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re risky. For Sanofi-Aventis, Xperience Communications created a driving-simulator for use at trade shows that allowed doctors to witness the effects of Allegra’s competitors on motor skills. The project was approved and cancelled twice, before winning a Sanofi-Aventis innovation award. 

However, generic competition prevented the simulators from being used.