THE MARKET ELEMENT :: NOTCH COMMUNICATIONS :: HDMZ ...scriptphd.com/mywork/MadMenofScience.pdf · to use your product or solution? Then when you get in to distribution, there’s

MEN &WOMENMAD

THE

OF

THE MARKET ELEMENT : : NOTCH COMMUNICATIONS : : HDMZ

BIOSTRATA : : CG LIFE : : SLACK AND COMPANY

http://cenmediakit.org

THE MARKET ELEMENT 04NOTCH COMMUNICATIONS 09

HDMZ 14BIOSTRATA 20

CG LIFE 26SLACK AND COMPANY 31

CONTENTS

3C & E N M E D I A G R O U P T H E M A D M E N & W O M E N O F S C I E N C E M A R K E T I N G

While there are universal truths all marketers know, there are special tactics, layers, and tools reserved for those specifically reaching a scientific audience. So we welcome you to C&EN Marketing Elements profile series on the experts setting the stage: the Mad Men and Women of Science Marketing.

These are the people and agencies who are pioneers in our field, working with companies big and small. They launch products, they define brands, and they are in incredibly in tune with the challenges we all face as science marketers — and how to solve them.

We’ve conducted interviews and compiled their professional expertise and insights in the following pages. You’ll read about the best ways to leverage PR, what impact millennials will have on our messaging strategy, and how storytelling and technical content can come together.

We hope you gain as much insight from them as we have.

Cheers,The C&EN Media Group Team

Introduction

4

Chuck Miller is the president and co-

founder of The Market Element. Based

in Louisville, CO, the company focuses

on developing industry-specific digital

marketing toolkits to drive highly targeted

lead generation, ROI and business growth

for clients in high-tech industries. In our

interview, Chuck discusses the value of

merging traditional business marketing

and lead generation metrics with smart

content development for showcasing

science and technology companies.

CHUCK MILLER

The Market Element


QaWhat are the essential challenges of developing a digital toolkit marketing strategy, particularly focused on the needs of a science or technology company?

My colleagues and I identified two unique challenges from our perspective. The first one is content balance mix. There’s going to be a balance of peer reviewed articles from third parties that are validating your technology or solution, so that has to be a component of your overall content strategy. The other part is: what type of internal content are you creating to then educate and persuade buyers to use your product or solution? Then when you get in to distribution, there’s also the mix of earned and paid PR. Finding that right balance, especially in business-to-business sales for science and technology, is critically important to everything that you do as a marketing department.

The other challenge is central to almost every science company out there, and that is “How do we reach sophisticated buyers?” They’re skeptical in nature, so you have to build trust over time. You do that with the right level of communication frequency, and relevance and context behind your messaging. With those critical components defined, there are digital marketing tools out there that allow us to reach the right person at the right time with the right message, and provide a level of context that was not available to us ten years ago.

C&EN Media Group Chuck Miller

The Market Element team


Marketing isn’t a one-size-fits-all proposition, especially within the diverse science business space. What are the dangers of oversimplifying a campaign and what are some ways that The Market Element tailors their work towards client individuality?

Websitethemarketelement.com

Facebook/TheMarketElementLlc

Twitter@Market_Element

Primary IndustriesHigh-techScienceProfessional Services

Notable ClientsThermo Fisher ScientificpicoSpinVUV AnalyticsApplied BiosystemsInvitrogenMagritek

ServicesDigital StrategySEM and PPCSEOSocial Media ManagementEmail MarketingBrandingWebsite Design & DevelopmentUI/UX ConsultingPricing Optimization Consulting

Target AudienceDirect ConsumersBusinesses

Basic fundamentals of persona marketing are often overlooked, and they’re not really implemented very well at the digital level — meaning on the website and in email marketing and social media. We put a lot of effort into identifying the “buyer personas”: who are those target segments that are buying this product, to really understand these buyers at a deep level. What common attributes do they share? What is their position and what industry do they work with? But we also try to understand what their behaviors are as well. We mock up profiles for each of the buyers.

Then we try to understand what the journey is, from the attraction stage, to educating that person, to persuading them. Ultimately, what is it going to take to convert them as a customer and keep them as one for years to come? Throughout these phases of the buyer’s journey, we really try to be very intentional and deliberate with how we communicate with them. What are those different pieces of content we need to create along the way? What are the calls to action? There is an intersection between sales and marketing that has changed and developed over time. With digital marketing, a lot of the sophisticated buyers do a lot of research online way before they talk to a sales person. So marketing plays a much bigger role in the education and persuasion parts of the sales process than it has in the past.

Tactically, I’ve found a lot of success with LinkedIn as one of the more powerful social media platforms and services. I’ve been targeting specific people for webinars, for example, and doing personal presentations via LinkedIn’s InMail service. So I’m able to connect on a personal level. We’ve found that to be highly successful in getting the right people to be a part of important events for our clients.


The Market Element is a HubSpot partner company, using their algorithms and digital tools to measure market performance, ROI and lead generation. What is the value of using external quantifications to obtain these metrics?

We’re a certified gold HubSpot partner. Primarily, the key benefit is the ability to take this tool and segment your contact database and really understand how they got in touch with you. You can use progressive profiling, which essentially only asks questions your database doesn’t already know, to find out who they are and what they care about. And then you can market to these groups accordingly. So instead of doing mass email blasts, you can do much more targeted campaigns to better nurture the customer throughout the entire experience. HubSpot allows you to personalize messaging to these individuals. The more personal you can make these messages, the more you increase engagement, and it assists your overall efforts of getting better responses.

And of course, measurement. None of us have crystal balls out there. But we come up with great campaign ideas, and we’ll launch them, and test them in real time. If you can then double down on the successful campaigns or you can tweak and pivot them, you can have more turns. If you have more turns in your marketing, the more efficient you’re going to be. So this idea of testing, pivoting, testing again, - that process is relatively new to the marketing space. And something that these platforms allow you to do.

Think Outside the Marketing Box

Reaching a unique customer base or complex industry sometimes requires creativity. Miller’s primary objective for selling the mini NMR machines was to grow a large database of chemistry professors and then introduce them to the technology to drive purchasing. He created an NMR machine giveaway, which resulted in gathering the interest of thousands of professors. Over time, many were nurtured via email into leads and eventually, customers.

Science Inspired The Market Element

Miller got his digital marketing start for a Boulder, CO startup company that had developed novel miniature cost-effective NMR technology primarily aimed at chemistry educators. Using a limited budget at the time, Miller developed many of the successful digital marketing tools that are the foundation of The Market Element.

Successful Marketing Doesn’t Stop with Initial Branding

For The Market Element, they drive continuing relationships with brands and clients by tinkering with search engine optimization (SEO), creating additional email marketing, social media, new campaigns and creative assets.

Insights From The Market Element


This is where the real science and the art of marketing comes into play. What is our messaging? What are the content pieces we’re going to utilize at distinct points of time? With any type of marketing messaging, you should have storytelling elements at the early stages of any customer engagement outreach with your brand. When we talked about identifying buyer personas, best practices say you can identify maybe three to five core buyer personas to go after. So if you’ve identified those buyer personas, you know that the distinct phases in the buyer’s journey are Attract, Educate, Persuade, Convert, and Keep. What we try to do is use narrative and storytelling in the early stages of Attract to get people to engage and hopefully opt in to our content, becoming part of the conversation.

Once they do that, the stories are still there. But really, our objective at this point, especially with sophisticated buyers, now needs to change. We go a little bit more technical. We educate them, give them all the different types of tools and content, — the manuals, the whitepapers, — to allow them the ability to take the deeper dive. And of course, persuasion becomes a little bit more technical, maybe a webinar, to then enable the customer to do comparisons between our solution and others.

Keep It Simple, Scientists

In working with science and technology clients, Miller has noted they are always very smart people and very passionately verbose about their products. He advocates keeping copy as simple as possible and minimizing unnecessary information to take customers on a journey through the website, making it consumable.

How do you obtain that perfect balance between storytelling and extremely technical concepts in facilitating communication between a science company and their buyers?

Thought Leadership Is Essential

Miller is a proponent of supplementing traditional marketing tools with webinars, podcasts and blogs to aid in the education of the buyer’s journey. His clients have found maximal success by being highly specific and targeting a particular technology or application, rather than glossing over general talking points.

The Art of Science

Miller underscored the “tangible wow” factor of science clients that can visualize their technology through beautiful websites or attractive infographics. The balanced merger of strategy, execution and creative evokes both a connection to the product and a universal human emotion that persuades the customer to make that extra click, or submit information to a database.


KATE WHELAN

Notch Communications

Kate Whelan co-founded Notch

Communications in 2011 in the UK

with Peter Brown, and now heads up

their Sweden office. Her scientific

background consists of a PhD and

postdoctoral fellowship at The

University of Cambridge, Centre for

Brain Repair, where her research

specialized in the neurocellular

elucidation of spinal cord injuries. Her

marketing expertise centers on brand

strategy, PR and technical writing.

9


QaBusiness to business (B2B) agencies can sometimes fall back on a pragmatic approach, due to the specialized nature of the client base, the sales cycles, and technical collateral. Yet, Notch Communications has a very creative, out-of-the-box, modern B2B marketing and brand management strategy. Can you elaborate about this philosophy?

Obviously B2B marketing is slightly different than business to consumer (B2C) marketing. There are different buying cycles, different processes and so on. But ultimately, we don’t have to see such a big separation between B2B and B2C. At the end of the day, these people who we are engaging with, the people who are buying the products, they’re still consumers.

Therefore, you can engage with them in a similar way to consumer marketing. And we think that B2B marketing can, and should, learn from what’s happening in B2C marketing. That’s one thing that we really buy into: that the distinctions between B2B and B2C can be blurred, and this is one of the reasons for our approach.

We find that life science marketing can be very ‘vanilla’, and has typically been more conservative than some other B2B sectors. So we really need to find ways to help our clients stand out. It’s so important that brands can be differentiated properly. If you’ve leafed through many of the trade magazines in life sciences, you’re going to see a lot of the same kind of cliché stock imagery and lab shots. There’s a lot of clinical blue and white branding, even now, which means the majority of companies look the same. It’s important for brands to get away from that.

At Notch, we don’t do stand out creativity for the sake of it, though. There’s a really intense process we go through before we get to those final outputs - whether it’s for a brand or a campaign. It involves researching the industry, researching the client and its brand, researching its competitors, and researching its customers for insights. We make sure we understand what the customers’ needs are, what their challenges are, and what they want from a brand. Once we’ve got all that together, we find what our client uniquely has that customers are looking for. We balance that with how to differentiate it from all the others, and then determine how to get those messages across to their customers in ways that really resonate. Quite often, that does mean stand out creativity or a B2C approach.

C&EN Media Group Kate Whelan


Websitenotchcommunications.co.uk

Facebook/NotchCommunications

Twitter@NotchCom

Primary IndustriesLife ScienceTechnologyRenewable energyChemicalsPharmaceuticals

Notable ClientsJohnson MattheyUmicoreSCIEXCole-ParmerCancer Research UKCentre for Process Innovation

ServicesDigital StrategyBrandingContent and Strategic MarketingMarket researchPRTechnical writingSocial Media

Target AudienceBusinesses

n tchHow have your clients in the chemical, pharmaceutical and life science B2B industries reacted to this approach? Could you offer a case study where you’ve overcome any resistance or hesitation for an ultimately effective campaign?

Back in 2004 – before Notch was formed – Sigma-Aldrich had a fine chemicals business, which was all about custom APIs and manufacturing, in addition to its well-known catalogue business. Sigma-Aldrich had been investing in the fine chemicals business for several years, but the sales were flat-lining and they really needed a solution.

My co-director Peter Brown and his team went through the intensive market research process that I talked about, and we discovered that nobody realized this was a custom manufacturing API offering. And that was basically because it was associated with Sigma-Aldrich, which was widely recognized at the time for catalogue chemicals off the shelf. We came up with a solution that they change the offering name, create a new brand for this fine chemicals business, and dissociate it from Sigma-Aldrich for a period, in order to help people recognize that it was a completely different offering. Today that may sound kind of obvious, but at the time, it was a pretty radical thing to do!

When Peter first presented this solution to the fine chemicals board, there was a stunned silence. Most just sat and looked at each other until the general manager at the time said, “That’s inspirational and we should do it.” When we launched the brand at CPhI in Brussels that year, the booth was in a very inconspicuous spot, so we hijacked the main registration areas, with red and white branding everywhere. We had people dressed up as futuristic scientists, representing the tools that the business would bring, and we had these cutout figures of space scientists positioned all around the event. At the time, that was quite new for a company to do; the conference organizers embraced the concept and has offered various floor sponsorship opportunities to exhibitors since then. C&EN even published an editorial about it!


Insights From Notch Communications

A company’s ethos, what defines them, what they stand for – these are all concepts that are all over your site and stamped into how you tailor collateral to maximize ROI and results. Why do you consider values to be an important aspect of branding chemical and life science companies?

Learn to Work Around Industry Constraints…

Different regions and areas have varying regulations governing how advertising can (and cannot) be used. In Europe, for example, prescription drugs may not be advertised to consumers. Attaining knowledge about these constraints will help agencies and marketers understand the critical benchmarks they must work around.

Tapping Into Creative Potential of Science

Notch is passionate about the “cool factor” of the products their clients make and showcase to the world. It’s important to convey this through marketing and advertising without reverting to a campaign focused on “simply wearing lab coats and creating reactions.” Conveying inspiration from scientists reverberates not just with clients, but also other scientists in the industry!

…But Take Big Steps Where You Can!

That innate regulatory conservatism, however, doesn’t mean marketers can’t take risks with clients, particularly with evolving technology and advertising technique. Kate points out many chemical and life science product companies were late to social media. Staying abreast of trends, values, and changing generational demographics is essential to lead your brand strategy.

Brand values are absolutely critical. It’s a part of what we do. The brand values are part of the brand promise, which is the set of promises or beliefs or values that a customer is going to form about a brand based on their experience with the company. Whether they’ve bought products from the brand, whether that’s from the brand communications, advertising, talking to their peers, and so on. All these different aspects form your impression of a brand.

And brand values need to match up with those impressions, otherwise there’s a disconnect there. It’s very important that the consumer has a reason to buy into the brand and reasons to believe in those values. So those brand values are actually critical as part of the differentiation process - to help a brand to stand out from its competitors.

In terms of the future, and particularly how chemical companies and those products affect the environment and so on, I think that’s critical. We, and our clients, are certainly finding that the next generation graduating and coming into jobs are far more concerned with sustainability, corporate responsibility and social responsibility. Many of the talented young people want a purpose - they want a mission. They want to work for a company that they believe in.


Lead Boldly; Clients Will Follow

Notch regularly blogs about many of the most salient or even contentious science topics in today’s conversations and global impact. This is because, as Kate points out, they are a science communications agency, and communicating science isn’t just what they do - it’s what they’re passionate about. An upcoming post, for example, will tackle how to communicate science in the era of fake news and scare mongering. Past topics have included how to converse about science with the general population. Auxiliary work like this is invaluable in helping clients grasp an agency’s skill set as science writers, what is important to them, and how they work.

On Not Showcasing Portfolio Online

Notch takes the unusual stance of not showcasing their portfolio and client work on their website. While it has been a source of internal debate, ultimately, the company wants to focus on what they can do for clients, what clients are looking for, and what they need to know about their industries. This has the dual benefit of allowing each project to develop uniquely, without comparison to others, and to also encourage looking forward rather than towards the past. Of course, Kate recommends that all agencies still have some kind of portfolio and case studies on hand should clients request it.

What are some future trends or possibilities you’re seeing that excite you about your work?

Content marketing is only going to grow. We put out an awful lot of content, in addition to creating websites, brands and advertising. We do a lot of PR. We write a lot of technical articles; we work with a lot of editors. We write features and bylined articles, as well as technical pieces. And we also create a lot of content for our clients to have on their websites, as well, to use with their own marketing mix. It’s all integrated into our social media campaigns, and all about driving traffic and getting that engagement. Giving people a reason to keep coming back to our clients’ websites. It’s growing even still, and something we love doing.

In terms of marketing trends - it’s changing all the time, and digital marketing in particular. In social media, you have to keep on top of the latest trends in multiple platforms, but also keep abreast of likely new developments, such as: what will be the next big platform? How are demographics changing, and how can you work with social media in different countries?

Old-fashioned media consumption is changing all the time, too, with the ways people are consuming their media, and their interactions with different devices. Wearables like watches could change advertising and social media yet again. A couple of years back, people were talking about fragmentation and splintering. That’s already happened. People are so selective now. You can choose what to watch, what to read, and when. You can ignore ads if you want to. Everyone in the advertising industry has to think about this as well.

HDMZ 14

15

Formed in 2013 as a merger between life

science agencies Harris D. McKinney and

Zoomedia, and dually based in Chicago and

San Francisco, HDMZ is a marketing and

communications agency primarily serving

the life sciences and health care industries.

Daniel Hoexter is the President and CEO

of HDMZ, and Ryan Ferrell is their director

of scientific communications. They provide

detailed insight into how HDMZ leverages

their long-standing expertise in PR and

media outreach to help life science and

technology clients tell unique brand stories,

establish elite information leadership in

their established fields, and use content to

build trust and generate business leads.

DANIEL HOEXTER& RYAN FERRELL

HDMZ


QaHow would you describe what your agency does for life science clients and why is that “informational advocacy” so important?

In the biotech/biopharma space, companies tend to be very humble. They want their technology to speak for itself. They want the work that they’re doing to benefit their customers — the researchers and scientists that are employing their technologies and solutions to achieve breakthroughs. What we can do on their behalf then is to articulate the good work these companies are doing in a manner that fits their brand voice. In some cases that voice might be one of a caregiver, it might be one of a warrior, it might be one of a hero. We want to find out how to speak to the world on behalf of these companies, and then help them articulate their story in a way that gets the attention they deserve. And beyond that, help them engage with people in a way that can provide a new perspective on what they do on a daily basis, so they can make a difference in the world, a difference in their lives, and find results in their careers.

We are facing a time in our society where science has a greater role in the public sphere than it has in the past. In some ways that is a function of fields, like genomics, that are maturing to a point where they are now relevant to the broader public. Science companies need to consider the human element and evolve how they interact with both scientific and lay audiences. Part of what we do is to help these companies find their voice in the public and influence the debates that affect their business.

C&EN Media Group Daniel Hoexter

Ryan Ferrell

Particularly in life sciences and biotechnology, startup companies are very prevalent. Would you say that there are differences in marketing, or use of PR, for young companies versus more established brands?

Large consumer brands have a lot of money to spend. In the science space, that’s not the case. And that’s why you see agencies like ours focusing on the most efficient ways to market for these companies. They do not have massive budgets like you’d see on Mad Men. We need to be very practical and very efficient in how we approach problems. For startup companies though, there are different focuses besides budget constraints. Many companies try to go out a little too early, I think. The timing has to be right. The product has to be ready. And it’s difficult to know what the right timing is, but you only have one chance to make a first impression. And at that time, the company needs to have strong advocates outside of the brand and customers who help establish that credibility. Young science companies should not neglect marketing, as it can shape early perceptions of the company’s potential. They should be judicious about the best avenues to drive results in the audiences that matter.

Ryan


Daniel Hoexter

Websitehdmz.com

Facebook/HDMZAgency

Twitter@HDMZHealth

Primary IndustriesLife SciencesHealth CareBiotechnologyAdvocacy Organizations

Notable ClientsApplied BiosystemsNew England BiolabsAgilent TechnologiesSeattle GeneticsNectar TherapeuticsDinovaxMedTronic

ServicesPRContent CreationMarketing CommunicationDigital and Social MediaMessagingSpecialty Events

Target AudienceDirect ConsumersBusinessesGeneral Public

Strategically-speaking, what are the challenges as a science communicator to introduce something new to the conversation? How does PR help act as a conduit for these brands?

DanielNot to say this doesn’t happen with larger organizations, but new companies or entrepreneurial companies are often coming to market with technologies or solutions that are in some ways breaking the mold. They’re challenging the status quo. Therefore, they’re products that people don’t even know exist today, or that they should even be in the market to purchase. Where PR could have a tremendous impact with those types of businesses is by communicating as much the problem as the solution. What we oftentimes look for is: where do these companies sit within the “maturation stage” for the understanding of the technology? If people know they have a problem, but they don’t know what the solution is, PR is a very excellent communication vehicle.

Whereas if you have a problem, and you know what the solution is, then PR doesn’t often play in to the situation. Because people are then comparing existing products; they know how to search for the solution already. So, PR is that kind of magical way of coming in contact with a customer in a surprise — “Now I see something that I didn’t before, I’m interested!” It’s a way to engage with them through a third party, credible source that really gives a company the opportunity to be noticed, — in a way that would otherwise be close to impossible.

Ryan Ferrell


Thought Leadership Is Like Gift-Giving

Blogs, webinars and other content can leverage brand growth but only when brands step into the shoes of their customers’ needs. By giving them ways to understand the company, solve auxiliary problems on their own, and empowering them with something useful in their lives, brands are giving a gift to a customer that builds loyalty, the reward for which is a potential sale.

PR Is about Education and Creativity

Daniel and his HDMZ team feel strongly that their currency is providing education and fresh perspective for clients to drive dialogue with their consumers and stakeholders. That form of respect and credibility leads to engagement, which is a competitive advantage in the marketplace.

Insights From HDMZ

Think Like a Publisher

Even established sources of news like the New York Times are integrating infographics and videos to diversify how they deliver their information. Marketers and communicators should also be aware of how their clients’ data is progressing, what their challenges are, and how to communicate those creatively, by maintaining an ongoing intimacy with their business.

I think that’s where this whole idea of content versus product marketing comes into play. And quite frankly, it’s our job to help educate our clients and convince them it makes more sense to think from an ‘outside-in’ perspective than from an ‘inside-out’ perspective. Those fundamentals of content marketing just makes so much sense, especially with the complex sales cycles in which we work: the long sales cycles, and the technical nature of the products and services which our clients sell. We explain to our clients that if we can create content, in the form of whitepapers, webinars, case studies, interesting articles, point-of-view pieces, we can promote on their behalf, and in doing so, engage with their customers. Bring them back to their website and in that way, connect them back to their products. It’s not to say that product marketing doesn’t have a role. But on its own, it does tend to fall short, and so it’s really a combination of the two that work best at the end of the day.

For the second part of your question, most companies have clinicians and scientists who are inspired and eager to educate customers. But they aren’t full-time journalists or book authors, so they need a partner to recommend an editorial strategy and publication schedule. They need help constructing plans

Daniel

Ryan

How do you overcome impatience or reticence towards long-term brand building on the part of your clients? And how do you empower them to help produce some of this content themselves?


for a webinar or white paper and additional eyes to ensure it’s inspiring and enjoyable to read. We also help those people turn that core idea and content into multiple forms, be it shorter versions, infographics, social media posts, and interview talking points that amplifies their initial effort.

Any particular project that has you very excited, that is the epitome of the kind of work that represents HDMZ?

New England Biolabs is doing something very smart with the Passion Science Awards. This year we’ll be handing out awards to scientists who are not just pursuing the “publish or perish” mentality, but also giving back to the world through humanitarian service, through environmentalism, through art. We’ll record those scientists giving short, inspiring talks that stream online similar to a TED Conference. That will let more scientists experience what NEB’s ethos is truly about, and help more of the public understand that scientists are not ivory tower geniuses, but rather passionate people who are working to make the neighborhoods around them better places.

Network Like Your Clients Do

HDMZ builds clientele through an interactive, informative website and word-of-mouth as an established life sciences specialty company. But they also actively attend scientific conferences, travel to different institutions and companies and are constantly meeting people and associating with potential brands. They advise companies to do the same — it’s an invaluable resource in the scientific and technical communities towards attracting clients and building familiarity.

Marketing, Benjamin Franklin-Style

“Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing about.” The HDMZ team believes marketing is not confined to paper and pixels — indeed, that’s often just a start. Building communities, attending events, becoming a fixture in the lives of potential clients, and exchanging ideas and conversations about how to improve the lives of others builds a connection and elevates brand expertise.

20C & E N M E D I A G R O U P T H E M A D M E N & W O M E N O F S C I E N C E M A R K E T I N GBioStrata 20

21C & E N M E D I A G R O U P T H E M A D M E N & W O M E N O F S C I E N C E M A R K E T I N G 21

CLARE RUSSELL & PAUL AVERY

BioStrata

Clare Russell, BSc, PhD and Paul Avery,

BSc, PhD are the Managing Directors

of BioStrata, a life science marketing

agency. Clare’s research background

in physiology, immunology and medical

research is paired with many years’

experience in health care, life science

and pharmaceutical technology

marketing. Paul’s background is based

in genetics, molecular biology and

pathology, including a PhD completed

at the University of Cambridge,

before he moved into marketing

for scientific companies. Here they

discuss the importance of combining

marketing strategy, creativity and

their scientific knowledge to produce

interesting, engaging stories and

data-driven marketing results.


QaCan you provide a specific example where being a PhD scientist has helped with a breakthrough or project resolution, and how a traditional marketer on your team did so as well?

We work for companies operating in complex areas like immuno-oncology, biomarker analysis and medicinal chemistry. When working to help brand and position these companies in the marketplace, it requires both technical insight and a creative mind-set. In this way, our scientists are an important part of our creative brainstorming process, while also helping to keep our creative ideas rooted in scientific accuracy. When it comes to messaging strategy, our ex-scientists can ‘think like customers’ for many of the vertical markets we work in. Our marketers can then put that messaging in the right place, at the right time and in a format that will demand attention and drive action.

C&EN Media Group Clare Russell

Paul Avery

Heading up our scientific content team, I often see our science writers quickly extracting key information from conversations with client key opinion leaders, or after reviewing existing scientific materials, like peer-reviewed papers and scientific presentations. This is then used to produce high-quality content for lead generation, thought leadership, demand creation and so on.

This approach increases the speed of project delivery and reduces the time investment needed by the client’s technical specialists. These people are usually very busy (and their customers even more so), making it challenging for them to allocate the necessary time to writing content. So when our marketers do the writing, we reduce the time demands placed upon subject matter experts by 90%, ensuring fast production. This is the power of combining skill sets in our industry. The final product is usually something highly compelling that includes the necessary depth, technical detail and fits with the company’s overall strategic objectives, but is also written and formatted in a way that will engage the interest of sales prospects and drive them to take further action.

Can you talk about the notion that science brands are still somewhat “behind” in the marketing and advertising space, as compared to other B2B and even B2C companies?

The life science industry is a very exciting and rewarding sector to work in, as it improves the world around us by driving innovation in areas like health care, agriculture, energy production and more. However, the innovation burden that this creates means that most companies must invest significant resources into research and development to create newer, faster, better and more efficient technologies, products and services. On occasion, this can mean reduced investment in other important business functions, such as marketing and sales, which restricts growth and innovation in these areas.

Clare


Websitebiostratamarketing.com

Facebook/BioStrata

Twitter@BioStrata

Primary IndustriesDrug DiscoveryDiagnosticsLab AutomationBiotechnologyLife SciencesPharmaceuticalsFine Chemicals and APIsMedical Devices

Notable ClientsLonzaThermo Fisher ScientificAptuitHermes PharmaERT

ServicesDigital StrategyBrandingContent and Strategic MarketingMarket ResearchPRTechnical WritingCreative Writing

Target AudienceBusinessesDirect Consumers

To this day, many scientists, researchers, CEOs and executives of science companies are reluctant to budget for substantial, wholesale marketing and branding efforts. As both scientists and marketers, what would be your message to those who have reservations about allocating marketing and branding resources, especially for young startups?

This mind-set, allocating equal value to R&D and product marketing, has to be baked into your entire sales and marketing process, from strategy through to execution. If we take a lesson from a fast moving area like Software as a Service (SaaS), creating a great product is only half the challenge. Getting to market quickly and building a loyal customer base as quickly as possible is just as important.

Many science companies tend to be really good at R&D, but this can cause them to place less onus and importance on marketing and sales, so they are missing the other critical half of the equation. You need both to be successful.

Clare

Life Science Marketing

This is a shame, as companies that embrace new and more effective marketing and sales tactics before they become commonplace can use this as a competitive advantage to generate better sales results. This might mean investing in modern approaches like inbound marketing to attract and earn the trust of your target audiences, before your competitors can. However, it’s mostly about looking for any communication gaps that you can leverage to get better results.

For example, if tactics like direct print mailings continue to fall out of favor with most marketers, this could open opportunities to dominate this medium and grab the attention of potential customers. We place a great deal of focus on looking for these opportunity gaps, so we can bring them to the attention of our clients.


Insights From BioStrata

Balancing Act for Highly Analytical Customers

Our industry needs to engage with highly analytical and technical minds, - people who may be cynical towards overly trite, “salesy” messaging. Thus, the key is to balance a great creative narrative and impactful storytelling with facts, data and accuracy. Support customers through the more logical and analytical parts of their buying process, while striking an emotional chord that will resonate to drive action.

The precise tactics that will deliver results for each company depends entirely on the context of their situation. The tactics that will work for a diagnostics company selling into government-funded health care systems are not the same as the tactics we’d need to use for a global Contract Manufacturing Organization providing formulation development and manufacturing services to Big Pharma. Therefore, we’re solution oriented and tactically agnostic.

This is why a holistic approach to offering marketing services, from PR, digital marketing and branding through to technical writing and graphic design is so important. We use skills from across the agency to recommend and execute the tactics that will get results, whatever they are, and we have the people to do it. Of those rare and highly specialist services that we may not provide in-house, we connect our clients with one of our expert partners. For example, for things like high-end 3D animations, our team often storyboards and scripts the content, but we work with partners to deliver the final animated product. The important part is that our account team explores the best options to support each client, based on their unique marketing challenges and opportunities.

Why Great R&D and Products Are Only Part of the Story

The greatest product in the world sometimes lives and dies in a marketplace vacuum. This is because a customer base cannot (and will not) buy something they don’t understand, have never heard of, or don’t see the value or benefits that it may provide. Marketing for science and technology products is the art of converting the technical features into customer-driven benefits.

Why Marketing Can Be Treated Like Data-Driven Research

At the end of the day, marketing is about understanding the needs of the customer, while figuring out how to solve their challenges and drive interest better than competitors. There’s no reason achieving these goals cannot be achieved by “thinking like a scientist,” Paul reminds us. Research, data collection, and analysis at every phase of the marketing and brand strategy informs everything.

ClareWith the worlds of marketing and sales changing so rapidly at the moment, how can science companies choose and optimise the right tactical mix to get the best results?


This speaks to BioStrata’s emphasis on developing lasting partnerships with clients: providing resources, and being helpful to the community at large. Any thoughts on effective partnership building?

While we hope our clients choose to work with us for a wide variety of reasons, I think fundamentally it comes down to the fact that we trust each other to deliver. Whenever a company brings on an agency to support their marketing efforts, they are placing trust in the agency to take good care of their company’s brand and reputation. Often, their own individual reputation will also be tied to the performance of the agency they select. As such, we understand the gravity of the trust that is placed in us by our clients, and pay back this trust by producing the highest quality of work – on time and on budget.

For us, modern marketing is about helping clients overcome their challenges and reach their goals. Fundamentally, our job is to help them with a few key objectives, such as raising awareness of their offering, building their profile and creating demand for their products and services. We also help them generate high quality sales leads, and finally, we help them build systems that will nurture these leads and support the sales team in closing them as customers. That’s ultimately what a successful marketing strategy boils down to, for a company in any industry. That being said, there are certain tips, tricks and tactics that tend to work very well in our industry, so we often select from this toolset when bringing new clients onboard and building out their program.

Marketing Pet Peeves Are Disguised Opportunities

At the end of the day, deficiencies or gaps in marketing strategy are areas where a great agency can help their clients “out-market” their competition with competitive advantages. In the technical and complex world of fine chemicals and pharmaceutical R&D, for example, primary market research data is time-intensive and complex to collect, but ultimately helps craft more effective and specific messaging to attract customers.

A CRISPR Molecular Biology Future

As a trained molecular biologist and geneticist himself, Paul professes unbridled enthusiasm for the possibilities of CRISPR technology. He sees it as not just a transformative tool for targeted gene editing, but also a transformative platform for downstream applications such as medicine, agriculture and biotechnology. Remaining excited and inspired by scientific innovation and developments is a great way for marketers (especially those with scientific backgrounds) to infuse creative motivation and invigoration into their work.

Paul

Clare

26

Based in Chicago, with offices in San

Diego, San Francisco and Boston,

CG Life is a full service marketing

communications agency specializing

in brand and campaign development

for life sciences and health care

organizations. Founding Partner

Murad Sabzali shares his thoughts

on communicating unique science

brand stories, balancing creativity and

scientific rigor, and important future

digital trends.

MURAD SABZALI

CG Life


QaC&EN Media Group Murad Sabzali

Tell us about universal branding tools you retain for your science clients, and ways you set them apart when creating advertising campaigns.

There are certain best practices when communicating to a broad audience, regardless of product or sector. For example, segmenting the audience and developing very specific buyer personas. That’s just a smart thing to do. The mistake, in my opinion, is “normalizing” these personas over time, and using it as a baseline for all campaigns or across clients. Without continuous scrutiny of these personas, and the market at-large, brands risk becoming commoditized. Which in the end has negative impact on market share, revenues and profits.

From a B2B perspective, personalization is critical in our market. We are communicating to a highly technical and well-educated audience. By the virtue of their training, this audience is wired to engage in content, not be “marketed or sold to.” As such, we place a great emphasis on really understanding the audience and their specific nuances. We develop dynamic buyers personas and deliver useful content, per a defined buyers journey. It’s done in a way that informs and educates, as opposed to traditional product promotion that’s almost transactional. In the end, if we create a meaningful relationship — a brand — the product or service will sell itself.

A brand should be informed by real-time data. After we develop interview guides, questionnaires and surveys, we use a five-phased approach to gather the data itself. First, we perform internal interviews with key stakeholders. Second, we conduct interviews with customers and prospects. Third, we survey the broader industry and target audiences, usually a relevant segment. Fourth, we perform a thorough competitor audit. Lastly, we review magazine and journal articles for trends and valuable industry insights.

Each phase provides us with unique intelligence that we use to develop a distinct brand platform. These brand platforms are messaging cornerstones and guide all internal and external communication activities. I’m not sure if our approach is all that unique, to be honest. However, our experience and focus on the life science and health care industries give us an advantage of speed- to-market.

What are the elements you use in ground-up brand building for your cohort of scientific clients in particular?


WebsiteCGLife.com

Facebook/CGLifeAgency

Twitter@CGLifeAgency

Primary IndustriesLife SciencesHealth CareMedical DevicesDiagnostics

Notable ClientsThermo Fisher ScientificGSKIlluminaBio-RadAbbVieBD BiosciencesDowPfizer Centre OneGore Medical ProductsGE Healthcare

ServicesStrategyCreativeDigitalInbound MarketingContent and Public Relations


What is a science “brand voice”?

“Voice” is an extremely critical element of a brand that is often dismissed. To me, the brand voice showcases the personality of a company. It’s what creates engagement and trust. As an industry, we project a very serious and academic voice. One of our greatest pet peeves is showing a scientist in lab, glaring at what appears to be a volatile liquid in a flask. Our industry thinks that simply using a scientist when marketing products will automatically resonate with researchers and increase conversion. This strategy is ineffective and frankly redundant. The scientists to whom we market are actually real people — they don’t go home and put on another lab coat. They don’t cook with beakers and graduated cylinders. A brand voice should always communicate to the person, not the profession. We always encourage our clients to humanize their brand to help define this voice. More often than not, it is not an academic tone they seek, it’s an approachable one. The voice should reflect this attribute, across all mediums.

This ultimately means to avoid science clichés. I really feel that when companies use scientists to promote products and call it a day, it almost insults the intelligence of the scientist. Yes, they are a different audience from a B2B standpoint, and you have to know they have influencers and other gatekeepers to involve before they make decisions. But ultimately, you want to establish trust with the audience. And if you’re going to establish trust, then you really need to know what this person is about.

For example, suppose the audience we’re going after is doing genomic research. They’re going to be a little more progressive, and they’re looking for cutting-edge technology. And the person in charge of this happens to be a principal investigator. There are other demographic and psychographic information that can help to shape and define this persona. By looking at the whole of the person, we can determine what really matters to him or her is “immediacy and speed.” If that’s the case, consider other options to communicate this as opposed to a scientist running to the finish line. And that’s where strategic and creative agencies come in.


From a brand standpoint, if we are going to be successful, our team has to be fully integrated and work together. When we put together a major brand initiative, we try to get all functional teams involved as early as we can.

We ask the creative team to perform a comprehensive competitor audit — look at key messaging, voice, and creative elements that the relevant set of competitors are using.

Not a lot of agencies do a proper literature and article review, but I think it really helps inform and gives us a sense of where the market is going; i.e. greater context. Our PR and content teams contribute by looking at the available material in the public domain and try to define trends and determine where the market is going. Is this movement consistent with the desired brand perception?

Our senior management team that oversees the program generally perform the one-on-one interviews with our client’s key internal stakeholders. This is always a very enlightening process. We’ve had interviews with major multi-billion-dollar companies where one of the first questions [is] “In one sentence tell me what your company does” and you’d be surprised how one executive

What kind of a team do you put together for a wholesale effort around a branding campaign?

Insights From CG Life

“If It Makes You a Little Uncomfortable, It’s Going to Work”

The risk-averse culture of science and technology organizations is still pervasive in marketing, particularly in the B2B sector. But it’s often exacerbated by the hiring of PhD scientists, who apply the rigorous conservatism of scientific protocols to a creative endeavor. CG advocates marketing training for transitioning scientists and encouragement of risk-taking in branding.

Trends Don’t Always Supplant Tradition

While the online FOB Chemical venture inspired Sabzali as a creative marketer and strategist, he was also careful to note that the proliferation of dot-com companies in the early 2000s didn’t significantly change the chemical manufacturing industry, much of which still relies on “brick and mortar” models with infrastructure and delivery trucks.

Science Is Universal, Culture Isn’t

One of CG Life’s biggest career blunders was rapidly expanding its services into the EU market without proper cultural due diligence. After all, the language of science is the same everywhere, right? Mostly. The key difference is interpretation of that language must be culturally sensitive and should still acknowledge diversity of business practice.


Inspired By Science

Sabzali studied biology (alongside finance and advertising) and interned with a fine chemicals company focused on pharmaceuticals/nutraceuticals. He was one of the leads on the branding and business development of FOB Chemicals, one of the first dot-com ventures in the chemical industry. His aggregate experiences at the intersection of research, intimate knowledge of the scientific and chemical industry dynamics and development of industry-specific marketing techniques were all heavily influential in inspiring his work at CG Life.

Millennials Shall Inherit the Earth

By 2025, 70 percent of the working population will be comprised of millennials. This will have a significant impact particularly on science marketing, because millennials approach business decision-making from the perspectives of approachability, independence, cause-oriented impact and loyalty. This will drive more empathetic, personal marketing and compelling campaigns.

describes the company in a completely different way from another. Sometimes with some very profound differences. The key to getting management on board or getting their input is to get them a little more aligned with one another, which is extremely critical when you’re developing a cohesive brand strategy. So while senior managers on our team do the one-on-one interviews, we’ll have different account functional teams and different research teams run the other surveys for the secondary or primary industry research. Everyone gets involved to parse through a lot of data. Then we go through it and we find similarities, differences, and ultimately opportunities.

Where would you say we stand with alternative platform storytelling currently, particularly within this science and technology segment?

You’re seeing these unique storytelling vectors in very small pockets, and you’re not seeing a full immersion. I think a lot of that has to do with what I call a transition stage, where a demographic shift is happening. Right now, you’re appealing to two different audiences, and campaigns can appear a little schizophrenic, because they appeal to the influencer and simultaneously, to the decision-makers.

Moving forward, I’m hoping we see a lot more emotional branding across the board — I think it’s going to happen. Believe it or not, scientists and researchers have interests outside laboratory work. Again, it’s important to get to know the person as opposed to just the profession. Especially as millennials become the work force. We’re going to see a lot more consumer-centric campaigns.

31Slack and Company

32

Based in Chicago, IL, Slack and

Company is one of the first integrated

marketing companies, with over 28

years of experience in marketing,

communications and strategy within

the business-to-business sector.

Gary Slack is the chairman and CEO

of Slack and Company and Gayle

Novak is Partner and Director of Client

Services. They offered their thoughts

on cutting-edge best practices for

B2B marketing to companies in the

science and engineering sectors, and

provided direct case study examples.

GARY SLACK & GAYLE NOVAK

Slack and Company


QaWhat are the advantages of running such a mature company within the business-to-business (B2B) chemical and engineering industries, and what are the ways you’ve grown as a company over the years?

From day one, we’ve tried to always be at the cutting edge of emerging technologies or marketing techniques. In fact, we pioneered many of them, such as the use of microsites 15-20 years ago. And we are at the forefront of predictive analytics and augmented reality as well. So, being 28 years old, if we felt old, I suppose we would be a legacy agency, but my firm is filled with just as many twenty- and thirty-something’s as any other agency.

As a B2B agency, we’re probably about 80-90% digital, but we are fundamentally an integrated marketing agency. Most marketers, whatever field they’re in, have made two big bets. They’ve made bets on digital marketing and on face-to-face marketing, which includes trade shows and events and all kinds of sales tools for direct selling. And even though face-to-face marketing events might seem old-fashioned to some, B2B marketers still spend the single biggest chunk of their budgets on them.

C&EN Media Group Gary Slack

As an agency operating within the scientific B2B sector, you regularly produce highly technical and authoritative materials. To what degree does your team monitor, for example, trends in the lab, or the published literature, and even interacting with researchers, to aid in that process?

Gayle Novak

We try to spend lots of time talking with subject matter experts. For example, in our nine-year relationship with Dow Corning, every time we start a new program or project, one of the first things we do is request to speak with subject matter experts. Sometimes, it’s the actual folks in the lab. Sometimes, it’s the engineers who are working in their innovation areas, coming up with ideas well before they go into laboratory testing. Whatever the case, we talk with those subject matter experts to gain an understanding — and it’s all from the perspective that they have knowledge we ourselves couldn’t possibly have. Then we supplement that information with our own secondary research on what is happening in that area, in terms of engineering, in chemistry, and so on. That can include monitoring what their direct competitors are talking about, too. It’s a combination of all these efforts to make sure we are coming at the project with the best perspective from all the different angles.


Websiteslackandcompany.com

Facebook/SlackandCompany

Twitter@SlackandCompany

Primary IndustriesTechnologyChemistryMaterials Science

Notable ClientsDow CorningThe Clorox CompanyElevance Renewable SciencesGENarrative SciencePPGTenneco

ServicesDigital StrategyIntegrated Marketing and Branding CampaignsTechnical Communications


Gayle NovakGary Slack

Speaking of Dow Corning, it’s an iconic brand in the chemical industry, and one of the oldest. Are there examples you can give of brand building you’ve done with them?

Dow Corning is a venture of Dow Chemical and Corning, the glass company. For 70 years, they’ve had one mission — to exploit the silicon atom, and boy have they done it. They’re the world leader in the custom engineering development of silicones that are used in everything that you can think of: silicones hold windows to skyscrapers, they’re used in automotive, they’re used in personal care, electronics, and in many other categories. About ten years ago, we began work with them to help talk about a second company whose purpose was to market end of life cycle or commodity-like silicone products. The product life cycle dictates that anything and everything goes from being new and expensive and highly engineered, to eventually being copied, and down the road, becoming a commodity.

Many of Dow Corning’s customers, especially with the commodity silicone products, didn’t need the high-engineered products. They wanted an easier way to buy silicones. They knew how to incorporate them into product lines, so they just needed a way to buy commodity silicone in bulk at market prices. We helped market what today is one of the most

Gary


Insights From Slack and Company

Given the seriousness of B2B in the science and chemicals industry, it’s easy to conflate that with ‘boring marketing.’ Do you fight that a lot, internally and externally, to create visually arresting and interesting ads?

B2B Is Powerful, But Often Invisible

Although the B2B economy is two to three times the size of the consumer economy, most consumers don’t see it. The iPhone, for example, is composed of more than 500 parts, each of which has undergone a complex sales and business cycle with Apple. But the complexities of the purchasing strategies and marketing programs are not visible when buying the final product — one phone.

successful poster-child business model experiments. It’s called XIAMETER® and it is a purely online business. A significant percentage of all Dow Corning silicones are now sold through XIAMETER®. It’s been featured in the Harvard Business Review, and it’s also been very hard for other industries to replicate. It’s one of the projects we are proudest of: helping a client successfully fashion dual brands: both the Dow Corning® brand for custom engineered silicone products and the XIAMETER® brand for later-stage commodity silicones.

Just the Facts, Ma’am

Most B2B marketing avoids “puffery,” or heavily exaggerated claims about product services and quality. This is particularly true of engineering and scientific audiences, which expect marketers to be fact-based and evidence-driven.

Understanding the Journey

Part of what scientists and subject matter experts help the Slack team to understand is the buyers’ journey for intricate, complex products and commodities. Providing this key information to the marketing team helps in not only understand what drives purchasing, but also the correct way to write the content and the proper channels to disseminate it to customers.

GayleThe Corporate Executive Board (CEB), the consulting firm behind the Challenger Sale concept, has done a lot of research around business buying decisions. It so happens that the personal value of a decision can be twice as important to business decision makers as the business value. We are using this insight to help B2B marketers sell not just on facts and more purely rational considerations.


Marketing Against Fear

The biggest challenge for B2B marketers, particularly for science and engineering products, is to convince buyers against the safe choice, towards unconventional buying. B2B buyers deal with large, multi-level buying teams, often in the hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars in purchasing, converting years-long sales cycles. Bad decisions can have deleterious consequences for companies and careers, so clients are often driven by the fear of making a bad decision.

Why So Serious

With millenials comprising one half (and growing) of B2B buyers in the marketplace, traditional whitepapers and dry technical reports are less effective and trenchant marketing tools than they were in the past. They’re still necessary, but the Slack and Company team says humor and entertainment are becoming more impactful even for serious companies. The IT equipment company Cisco hired a late-night comedy show actor/writer to make product launch videos, and in so doing, increased visibility one hundred fold from previous campaigns.

What kinds of elements go into a multi-faceted campaign that incorporates new platforms and channels?

GaryThe Institute of Food Technologists, based in Chicago, is a global society of 22,000 food scientists all around the world. For years, they have felt demonized by people claiming all they do is make “Frankenfood.” When in fact, food scientists are critical to solving the challenge of feeding the 9 billion people who’ll inhabit this planet by 2050. And so we have launched a program called “Future Food,” designed to communicate that food scientists are an important part of the solution to feeding a growing population, and that the food products they’ve designed and conceived are helpful rather than harmful.

Future Food began with the naming and creation of a visual identity. The first element was a nontraditional website, — a news site on steroids if you will. You can see it at FutureFood2050.com. For each of 15 straight months, we published five originally researched, professionally written articles, often by well known journalists, on some facet of food science that is solving a food issue or problem. The item that will bring this program to its three-year close is a 90-minute documentary. We call it a “moviementary,” because we don’t want it to come across sounding dry. The IFT hired Scott Hamilton Kennedy, an Academy Award-nominated director and filmmaker, to develop and have total creative control of this moviementary, called “Food Evolution.” So this is big program that has leveraged microsites, content marketing, video, and storytelling, all with a very clear definition and evolution of its identity.

The C&EN Media Group provides advertising opportunities

targeted to our large, powerful audience through custom

media and publications. Chemical & Engineering News

(C&EN) is the award-winning news outlet that reaches

the American Chemical Society’s vast membership of

nearly 157,000 scientists, as well as the worldwide

chemistry community in academia, industry and beyond.

Through our custom content studio C&EN BrandLab, or

traditional print and digital opportunities, we work with

marketers to grow their audience and their businesses.

For more marketing and advertising content written for

you, the science marketer, visit our C&EN Marketing

Elements blog at cenmediakit.org/blog.

@cenmediagroupcenmediakit.org

37



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