Welcome to 2022! It’s time to put aside any leftover notions of “getting back to the way things were” – to stop looking backward and, instead, weed out any lingering, hindering assumptions and approaches, identify the trends that will shape the year ahead, and move to meet them. You can read our complete annual trends forecast here, but let’s talk about one of them today. We’re calling it “musical chairs” – the ways in which staffing adjustments will continue to affect our work in a variety of different ways.
As what Harvard Business Review calls “a tidal wave of resignations” continues — with the highest rates for those ages 30-45 — and, as many pandemic-induced changes continue to alter to the structure of businesses worldwide (including pharma sales and marketing organizations) — many of our basic assumptions, approaches, and priorities need to shift. The Great Resignation, and other factors, are changing the makeup of every group within pharma marketing — manufacturers and marketers, agencies and partners, patients and caregivers, HCPs, and staff.
More bleakly, according to estimates from the WHO and The Guardian/Kaiser Health News, by the spring of 2021, more than 100,000 healthcare workers globally had died from COVID-19, and more than 3,600 of those were in the United States. Losing these professionals contributes to the toll on the profession in itself, and that detrimental effect becomes exponential when the mental and emotional impact of each loss on colleagues is reckoned.
Some people’s changes were involuntary, due to the pandemic causing difficulties in childcare or business viability. Some were voluntary, due to prioritizing their or their family’s well-being. Many people have endured extreme hardship over the past two years, it goes without saying; but we can hope that as many people as possible will find themselves in positions that better suit their strengths and their lives.
Medical science liaisons and medical affairs personnel are becoming increasingly important customer-facing components of the team, as sales rep access continues to be limited.
“We’re seeing brands increase budgets for Medical Affairs,” says Stewart Young, SVP, Strategic Planning, Intouch Proto. “Given the decline in how effective sales forces and promotional content can be, medical content delivered by Medical Affairs and MSLs is definitely getting increased attention.”
Medical science liaisons and medical affairs personnel are becoming increasingly important customer-facing components of the team, as sales rep access continues to be limited.
“Given the decline in how effective sales forces and promotional content can be, medical content delivered by Medical Affairs and MSLs is definitely getting increased attention.” ~ Stewart Young, SVP, Strategic Planning, Intouch Proto
Nurse practitioners (NPs) and physician assistants (PAs) have always been prescribers, but as doctors shift out of their practices, NPs and PAs are an audience that shouldn’t be an afterthought. Both types of HCPs hold prescribing privileges everywhere in the United States – and increasingly globally, as well.
“The expansion of NP and PA roles in the healthcare ecosystem has increasingly been a consideration among clients,” says Jen Crabill, Group Media Director, Intouch Media. (And physicians agree, according to new data from IQVIA.) “It directly impacts how we, as a media team, assess potential target audiences and determine which are most relevant to a brand. Companies that have traditionally focused on targeting physicians should expand their marketing efforts to keep NPs and PAs more educated and informed.”
In addition, the market for marketing talent — in all industries, but also in life sciences specifically — is going to keep experiencing aftershocks. “Certain disciplines, like copywriters, have always been in high demand; now, we are seeing it across the industry,” says Susan Perlbachs, Chief Creative Officer, Intouch Group. “Compounding the issue for healthcare marketers, healthcare is growing overall, with more and more drugs coming to market. Agencies must find innovative ways to not just entice talent from within the industry but expand the talent market overall. (Something that relates to several of our projects in the works!)”
Taking Action
After a couple of unbelievably volatile years, 2022 will see staffing keep changing. That means your company; it means your partners and agencies; it means your medical practices; it means payers’ organizations; it means your patients’ livelihoods. Business will find themselves hiring; individuals will be changing jobs; and we will continue to reanalyze and reprioritize our audiences as they shift and change. We will all continue this game of musical chairs in 2022. Are you considering how this stress and change is going to affect all of those people … and, therefore, your audiences, and your brands?
Contact your Intouch team to discuss how this trend – or any of the others in our annual forecast, “What Matters Most: The Trends That Will Shape Pharma Marketing in 2022” – can be addressed for your brands in the coming year.