How Pfizer made the highest scoring Pharma ad of all time - Susan Rienow

25:16So, yeah, well done. It's absolutely brilliant. You talked about your journey from analytics and insight. What role does the kind of testing play in the process of getting to something quite as emotional as that? Yeah, so, I mean, I guess the starting point is that Pfizer uses System 1, as you know, for all of our ads now. So I think we've tested 300 ads over the last couple of years. So, you know, we think that having the sort of standardized approach with really clear benchmarks linked to ROI that allows us to be able to understand how our various ads are performing against themselves, but also how they're performing against other benchmarks has been extremely useful for us to be able to improve the sort of emotional resonance of the advertising that we've put out there.

25:59So our sort of partnership on the big game ad is not unique. We do it with all ads. That having been said, the other big statistic that I'm really proud of is I believe, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, but not only is it the highest scoring pharmaceutical ad that you have in your database, but it's also in the top 2 % of all ads that you have in your database, regardless of industry, right? That's quite correct. Yes. And so I think this has been absolutely a group effort to be able to get here. So if you describe sort of the journey that we've been on, we have a partnership with Publicis.

26:31They're our agency. when we started working on, you know, what we wanted to do for this year's big game. Of course, we start with, you know, really great brief and really good insights and all those sorts of things. And then Publicis brought us maybe six or seven different options, all of which, you know, were coming at it from different angles, different emotions, different calls to action, et cetera. And at that point, we were looking at multiple different versions. So do we talk about multiple therapy areas? Do we just talk about one? You know, Pfizer has lots of medicines and vaccines in different categories.

27:00And so was there a specific place that we should focus, et cetera? So you put all of those into system one to start to get a sense of where we should narrow down. And we started to land on the kind of concept that ultimately became the big game ad at that point. Then we put it back into testing to realize that we needed to not focus on multiple therapy areas, but really we needed to focus in on oncology. That was the one that had the greatest resonance and the greatest fit also with sort of Pfizer's mission and our promise and our commitment for the future. Then the next big pivot point was we actually had two different endings to the ad as well.

27:37And they both scored reasonably similarly. And I remember trying to figure out – I think we sat down with you, John, personally, which is amazing – to get some advice about what should we do, you know, which direction should we take. And I remember you looking at sort of the trace scores and being able to say, you know, look, this one, it scores really well, this ending. But I think you're about at the peak that you're going to be able to get to in terms of emotional resonance. Whereas this other one, if you can sort of overcome a blip that we were seeing at a certain point in the ad, then I think you can actually get to an even higher emotional resonance.

28:13So we aren't – in our work around testing, it's not – we don't test something at the end and then sort of hope that it works. We're testing it all the way through. We're looking at it sort of second by second, making decisions about how swapping things out, switching things around will make a difference in terms of the story arc and then also the emotional reaction as well. So the ad itself is the result of many, many rounds of testing and many, many rounds of feedback and advice, I think, both from the agency side, from our side, and then also from your side as well. You mentioned Publicis, actually, and massive credit to them as well, firstly for the creative ideas, which are brilliant.

28:51And actually, there were a lot of great contenders in the early rounds as well that all did quite well in early stage testing. But, I mean, this one was standout. And my favorite one as well from early on. So I'm really happy that it came through. Well, you always kind of look as a professional, you know, as someone who's there to help testing. But of course, you have your own point of view as well, don't you, as you go through it. But I think it's a really good example of where the creative agency, you guys as obviously the client and we as the sort of the tester in this process kind of collaborate as well.

29:24Because as you described it as well, I think you're absolutely best in class in terms of deciding the role of the music in terms of the peak ends. the role of editing. So which scenes do you use and which order do you use them in? So even down to decisions like that, you know, and the speed at which you're able to turn things around. I mean, I don't think I've ever been testing at the rate of knots that we test with you, honestly. So we filled up a few weekends over the last few weekends going, right, can we get this tested on Sunday? So results are back first thing on Monday. And, you know, even within the day, I think we were kind of turning around testing as well, which is amazing.

29:58Yeah, it's great. And obviously a lot riding on this. Do you know, though, I mean, I have an amazing team that really wants things to be perfect. So we really were looking at it second by second by second, trying to understand what was happening and how we needed to adjust it. I think also I need to give credit to the senior leaders at Pfizer as well, because one of the things that can derail ads is if you let your personal opinion come before what the testing results are. And an individual's reaction to a piece of creative is very individual. So one of my own views is that you always have to be guided by what the research says.

30:31And one of the things that I was really pleased about, you know, this is my first big game ads as my first sort of exposure to how senior leadership was thinking about it is they were absolutely laser focused on what the research was telling us and going in the direction that the research was telling us about how the ad would be received. So we very much were aligned in terms of having one source of truth about how we needed to move forward with the development and then ultimately the rollout, which I don't take for granted. It's quite a privilege and a positive thing to have. you're quite right actually i mean your team are so exceptional at that i mean obviously we work with lots and lots of people and not only do they really believe in the role that the testing plays and the standard you're trying to adhere to but the passion that they have for the work is just amazing as well and and what makes me happy as well because you know as you know something i do every day is just to see the delight from the team when they see the score go up and the celebration It's lovely.

31:30It's just and it makes it, you know, it's great to see, but it makes it extra worthwhile when you see a team respond with such enthusiasm and in the publicist as well. It's just brilliant. A real team effort. You can see how much people care about the quality of the result and what it all means as well for you as a business, which is exciting. And one of the things also that for me has been really exciting is as as the ad developed and we started getting more and more partners involved. Right. So we have a partnership with LL Cool J, for example. You know, his wife sadly was diagnosed with cancer.

31:58And so he and his wife are also working with us to raise awareness around early screening and detection. But of course, it's his music in the ad. And so there was this amazing moment in the development where he was listening to he was watching the ad listening to the music and he's saying, you know, this is amazing that my song is being used for this great purpose. And he's like, but, and he called up one of the creatives and he's like, I think in the transition between this scene and this scene, if you add a beat of the song here and cut a little bit away here, I think the musical arc will be more powerful.

32:29So like, hello, Cool J leaned in to help us optimize the ad. You know, the American Cancer Society has been tremendous. They've been absolutely incredible in terms of, you know, they saw the ad very early on. They were really supportive. The partnership with them has been really powerful and really important from our side and hopefully important in terms of the credibility of the effort as well. So there has been a lot of mothers and fathers to this particular ad. And I think all of us are proud of it and hope that it does some good in the world. Yeah, well said. I mean, you know, the music thing is such an important role.

33:02And as you say, the way it slows down after you've got the rocky moment, that's critical to the feeling you have in the final section where it cuts back to reality. And you have that bump back to, yeah, this is real. This is real. And then you see the emotion of the hugs of the family at the end. And you think, wow, that's the, you know, the chill moment, isn't it? And the music is a key part of that. The way, as you say, the way he kind of changed, you know, the way the song's been changed in that second half is very profound. um i was going to ask you that because one of the things that i used to be a system one client actually because i most of my career was client side and um the one is funny when people used to say to me what what do i use the testing for my answer was often actually it's about confidence it's about confidence in you're taking the right direction but it's also about confidence in the broader business getting behind something whether it's kind of the board or senior management and is that how your experience has been in terms of its role yeah i mean i would say it's deeper Certainly confidence.

34:03Absolutely. Because like I said, it gives you a single source of truth that you can use with everyone. And because it's independent, because it's validated, because it's standardized, you know, there's no sort of second guessing around whether you're cherry picking certain data or, you know, trying to make yourself look good or whatever. Like the score is what the score is. And you have a database. We have been eagerly in the entire prep up to the big game, as you know, we have been looking at our rankings relative to other ad rankings and seeing where we are relative to other companies. It becomes sort of the North Star in terms of whether you think you're communicating effectively.

34:40So absolutely in terms of kind of getting alignment and confidence around it, yes. But for me, the part that has really been the fascinating part is the degree to which you can forensically look at exactly what's working within an ad and what isn't working. So another good example is the first time that we put sort of the finished ad through, one of the things that was lower was around brand fluency, right? So the degree to which people understood that this was an ad from Pfizer. And I remember your team saying, look, you need to give people a clue that this is a Pfizer ad earlier in the ad so that people can follow the storyline and understand what it is that you're trying to communicate.

35:20So there is a point when the boy is on his epic journey, when we cut to a Pfizer scientist who's looking out the window and kind of nods at the boy. That's actually a real Pfizer scientist. It's actually an actual oncologist who is working on developing new oncology therapies that we invited to be part of the ad. And that piece was created because we knew from system one that we needed to increase our brand fluency. And so being able to make it clear to people that this was an ad from Pfizer, but at the same time making sure that we weren't taking over the whole narrative, right? Because there's a very fine line on something like that.

36:01What you don't want is for that to be so prominent that it looks like we're taking credit for the success of the boy. Because the success of a patient, of a healthcare professional, of their family, there are obviously lots of people that are involved in that journey and that own that success. But we also want to make sure that people know that it's a Pfizer ad. So I think the testing, some of it was about confidence. But we were really making decisions second by second about what we were including or not including in order to be able to get to the right place. And I agree. I think my team deserves a lot of credit.

36:31The publicist team deserves a tremendous amount of credit. I mean, they were working nights and weekends. I think they must have gone crazy by the time we finally finished the ad of like the number of revisions that we've done, the number of calls to action that we had tested. I mean, all of that was – they were turning it around overnight again and again and again for us to get to a place that we really felt confident about. And I think there's a professional pride in that, but also I think there is a pride in the sense of – I think – this may sound cheesy, but I think we all genuinely believe in the message that we're trying to communicate.

37:03And so we want to do right by cancer patients, by the science, by what we're trying to do as a company. I mean, all of those things actually matter. So for us, making sure that we were able to communicate in the most effective way was sort of morally important as well as being sort of professionally important as well. You made a really good point about the fluency in the scene that you just talked about there. And that's something we try and encourage all clients to actually is to authentically place yourself in the story rather than just like, here's our logo or like, you know, here's our pack shot or whatever.

37:36Find ways to embed yourself in the story. And that was, you know, a perfect example. The other thing actually I noticed that was quite striking coming through the research when we're looking at different, even different edits is the associations people had with the Pfizer brand. It differed really with some quite fine tuning. So some very subtle different executions of the same idea. Actually, you could see how people took out a different message. You know, it is a broader message or it is a more specific message. But it's amazing. you know i think people don't realize how small changes in these kind of things can actually lead to quite big differences in how people perceive you as a brand completely you know one of the things that surprised me was if i if you were to ask me before testing what are the critical things in in order for people to understand that this is a pfizer ad for example right it would it would have been the amount of time that we had with the scientist and the degree to which you could see the the logo on the um on her lab coat and it's also of course at the very end when we're talking about the breakthroughs and we're talking about going to PfizerFall.com and we have the logo up at the end.

38:40But actually, there were versions of the ad that had those two things exactly the same, but the middle bit was slightly different. And depending on where people were emotionally in terms of how they were responding to the middle bit made them more or less pay attention to or notice the logo at the end. And so that to me was completely counterintuitive in terms of how people were absorbing information, very much depended on where they were in terms of their emotional state at the point at which the information was presented. And being able to actually see that real time at the level of detail that we were able to see it was incredibly helpful.

39:17Yeah, amazing. And how do you evaluate the impact of something like a big Super Bowl ad? Yeah. So, I mean, I think there's reach, obviously. But, you know, if you're looking at the big game, you get reach naturally out of that. Last year, if you look at the number of visits that we had to our site following the big game, I think we had about 2 million visitors over the course of 10 days, which way exceeded all of the traffic that we had to any of our other corporate sites or our branded sites or any of that sort of thing. So reach is one element. We're also looking at the quality of the creative, the ability to emotionally connect.

39:51So, of course, last year we had a 3.8. This year we have a 4.4. So we can tick the box there that we feel like we're communicating in a more effective way this year, which is great, building on what we did last year. We're also looking this year about how this can be integrated into a full-year campaign. So rather than being a one-off effort, which is what it was last year, this is the kickoff of a full-year campaign where there will be presence on all of our digital platforms. There'll be presence on social media, community outreach, and all of the other channels that we have. So there are specific metrics attached to each of those as well.

40:22So if you look at, like, Pfizer for All, for example, which is the website that we are inviting people to go take a look at, there are cancer screeners. There's the ACS, the American Cancer Society's Cancer 360 screener. There's also screeners for – or questionnaires for atrial fibrillation. There are this information about migraine. There are things about vaccines. So there's there are a variety of different things that consumers in the U.S., of course, because the U.S. audience can go to to be able to help navigate the health care system and get home delivery of Pfizer medicines or understand what their vaccine eligibility is or, you know, be able to identify whether they're at risk for certain kinds of cancers and be able to schedule an appointment.

41:05So our hope is also that we're making an impact in terms of being able to help support people today. So we'll be monitoring all of the metrics around that as well to make sure that the pull through into the patient support that we want to be able to kind of rally people around is actually happening as effectively as we expect it to as well. Super important, isn't it? Super, super important that that happens. I wanted to pivot a little bit if I can. You've done a lot in your career. You know, you've managed different markets. You know, you've come up through Insight. You've been general manager.

41:36Now you're the CMO of one of the kind of biggest brands in the world. What advice would you give? What have you learned on the journey about what makes a great CMO? I think the first thing would be you have to be a really good listener. So you have to be a really good listener in terms of understanding the needs of your customers. And as you've correctly mentioned, if you think about my sector, you have HCPs, you have patients, you also have government bodies, you have regulatory authorities. So understanding where each of our stakeholders are, what they're looking for, how we can fit into the solution, how we can support that is really important.

42:13In my sector as well, being really, really laser focused on the patient is absolutely critical. That is why we exist. If we weren't able to create breakthroughs that help people either to get better or prevent illness, then we would not exist. So you have to stay focused on the people who benefit, hopefully, from what you're creating and really understand deeply what their journey looks like and make sure that you're tailoring your messages to them. And I think the final thing I would say is the use of data is just irreplaceable. There is so much data, particularly in the U.S. now, to help you understand what's happening but then also to really refine and optimize what you're doing.

42:59So, you know, I think in the old school, when I started sort of my career in marketing, you were very focused on, you know, you did an ATU. You understood sort of – you did some basic message testing. You know, you did sort of some of that stuff and then you created a campaign and you tested the campaign at the very end to understand what the – you know, whether it was good or bad and hopefully it wasn't bad and then you could put it on air. You know, the sophistication now about how we can understand our customer base, how we can tweak, as we've just discussed over, you know, the period of this discussion, the way that you can tweak your messaging so that it resonates in the right way is extraordinary.

43:37And then when you start talking about deployment from a media standpoint, for example, you know, the AI algorithms that exist to help you find the audiences that are going to be the most receptive, that are the most interested in your message. I mean, all of that that exists today is absolutely incredible. So staying, you know, paying attention to the data, paying attention to AI, to predictive analytics, to what the data tells you and being willing to adjust and modify dynamically on the fly would be the other, I guess, the final point of advice. That's great. I mean, people assume that as a CMO, it's all kind of innovation, creativity, arts and that sort of thing, don't they?

44:14But actually, you know, you're in a business. You need to look at how you're shifting those business metrics and delivering results. And the data is so important, isn't it? And I mean, other people on the C-suite often have, if you're in sales or if you're in finance, you've got a lot of, you know, data is standard really in your world. But I think with one of the challenges that CMOs often face is actually bringing the data to the party. But it's so critical, isn't it? And then it's often the best way of winning over your colleagues and the organization if you can bring the data because it's hard to argue with that.

44:42Completely. You know, there's that old adage that if you ask people what they wanted, they would have told you a faster horse, right, instead of a car. I take issue with that because what you're – the premise of that sort of old adage is that you're asking people what the solution is. The creativity is in finding the solution. But asking people what their problem is is something that absolutely has to be grounded in an insights-based approach. Like if you don't understand the problem, like in that metaphor as an example, the problem is you can't get from point A to point B fast enough. That's the problem.

45:18And then the creativity kicks in around how do we solve that problem in a completely new and different way? How do we transform the solution to that problem? If you think about my industry, you start with nothing and then you innovate and create an entirely new science that then solves people's problems from nothing. I mean the innovation comes from how do you solve the problem. It does not mean that you shouldn't be looking at the data to try to understand what the problem itself is. So to me there's a really important distinction there is creativity and art and daring and all of those sorts of things are bread and butter critical to being a great CMO.

45:55But if you don't understand what the problem is, there's no creativity that you can put at that that actually solves it because you're pointing it in the wrong direction. Yeah, I love that. That's a really good definition. Because we often have this debate in marketing between sort of data led, performance led marketers and the sort of brand led marketers who are supposedly more creative. But your definition is spot on because actually creativity is in coming up with the ideas and the solution. but you've got to start with the data and end with the data, you know, in terms of like, what's the problem, you know, what solutions are going to work and then evaluate what they have done and make sure you're evidence-based.

46:31And I think that's a beautiful way of kind of solving that conundrum that marketers often get categorized into the data-led ones or the creative ones. And actually it's the combination of both, isn't it? And that's critical. Maybe to round up then. So looking back on your career is what would be the one bit of advice that you'd give a younger version yourself or to somebody starting out now? You know, you do this as part of your career planning at big companies, certainly at Pfizer. You are often asked sort of, what do you, you know, what are you aiming for? What do you expect to do in three years?

47:03What do you expect to do in five years? My own personal experience was that I never had any idea what I was going to be doing in three years or five years. You know, I was always trying to find things that were interesting and that I felt like would grow me professionally, but also be interesting from a life experience standpoint as well. And there was a certain point in my career where I just sort of gave up on that obligation of having to sort of define my own life. Because if you'd asked me at the beginning of my career, where did I want to end up, I would have said I wanted to be a market research team leader.

47:36That's where I would have wanted to be. I never thought that I was going to be moving around the world and living in all these different countries and leading up countries and then becoming the chief marketing officer for a fortune 50 company i mean those things were never on my radar so i my recommendation would be to relax a little bit go for the things that are um that are fun and interesting do a really good job be good to people be a good collaborator and don't you know don't focus so much on the end goal focus on the journey itself oh i love that advice that's so good that's so good i mean i've been reflecting on that a lot myself and um i mean maybe maybe it's age but i just think following the energy right work out what gives you energy you know what i mean because if you've got the energy for it you're going to do a much better job and then become really good at something so that people want you you know want you to in their team and so on and then you're absolutely right is that you know we used to have this idea that a career was like this ladder of this to that to that and so on but actually today's careers are much more i mean there's a book um called squiggly careers which i love as a concept you know and it It is that, isn't it?

48:39You have to you can only you can only take, you know, what opportunities that are there in front of you and you need to create those opportunities. But it's really hard to predict what those will be in five or 10 years time. So almost kind of building your network as well. I mean, man, your network is your wealth, isn't it, in terms of opportunity. So building that up as quickly as you can as well is going to help you. And I'd also say don't be intimidated by other people's careers. You know, I call it the Instagram version of someone's career. When you get up on stage in a panel or something like this and you go through sort of the litany of everyone's successes and you don't hear about the time when something went horribly wrong and the person failed and was crying in the bathroom and those sorts of things, that happens to everybody.

49:20So I think don't get too intimidated by these stories of extraordinary success and jumping from one amazing thing to the next amazing thing. Everybody has failures. Failures are really, really important. And so I think it's also really important not to compare yourself to others and, you know, to continue to have confidence in yourself and be able to try to make yourself the best that you possibly can be. And in fact, you probably learn a lot more in those failures as well. And those oddly, those failures are almost like springboards that you you can use them as energy and also use them as insight into what didn't work that can help you help you go on.

49:54And the other thing that she that I discovered as well that I kind of maybe wish I'd learned earlier is sometimes you can create the job you want. You know, we kind of think that we have to apply for the job we want. But the other option is you create the job you want, a bit like doing this podcast. But you can, you know, if you spot an opportunity in a company for something you don't think is there, put yourself out there and say, I want to go and fix this. I want to build this. I want to be the person that does it. And very often you can kind of create your own career. But we sit there waiting to be asked so often, don't we, or waiting for the HR manual to tell us the next step.

50:25But go create it. Go find it. Completely agree. Susan, it's been a real joy to speak to you. thank you so much for doing this it's a genuine pleasure to work with you work with your team and we thoroughly enjoyed being part of the Super Bowl journey and dead proud of what you've what you've achieved so massive congratulations to you and the team and thank you for being open to coming on and sharing your journey and all the wisdom as well thank you no my pleasure John thank you for having me on and thank you for all of the partnership along the way and being willing to turn things around in crazy time periods over weekends to help us along the journey.

51:02I hope that the end has justified the means. And I hope when we all look back on this, that we will all agree that we've done something really amazing. So thank you all the way. Totally certain of that. Thank you. Thank you very much for listening or watching Uncensored CMO. I hope you enjoyed that. If you did, please do hit the subscribe button wherever you get your podcast. If you're watching, hit subscribe there as well. I'd also love to get a review. Reviews make a big difference on other people discovering the show. So please do leave a review wherever you get your podcasts. If you want to contact me, you can do.

51:33I'm over on x at Uncensored CMO or on LinkedIn where I'm under my own name, John Evans. Thanks for listening and watching. I'll see you next time.