Some things I've learned

1. The Heathrow Express is best way to get into London, unless you are 3+ people with luggage, in which case a black cab is cheaper.  Don’t ever take the Piccadilly Line (Underground), it may be cheaper but it takes forever and you’ll arrive at your hotel feeling like a loser after an hour surrounded by all those sweaty backpacker
2. There are a few good hotels around Paddington, which is right at the other end of the Heathrow Express.  These are actually easier to get to and far nicer than the Heathrow airport hotels which cabs hate taking you to, forcing you onto horribly unreliable shuttle services
3. Without shredding your nerves with traffic stress, it is almost impossible to schedule appointments with two ‘London-based’ pharma companies in the one day unless both are in either Cambridge or Uxbridge.  If you're not driving don't even contemplate it
4. British clients assume that you drove to the meeting.  So do Americans.  European clients do not
5. The pharma companies based in Cambridge aren't as near to the rail station as you would think / like
6. Take a cab from Edinburgh airport
7. Meetings in Dublin are rarely anywhere interesting or fun like Temple Bar.  If you want anything like an Irish experience you'll need to get the hotel to order you a cab
8. No one wears a tie in the UK.  Nor does anyone carries a business card
9. Travel everywhere by air conditioned cab in Singapore.   The alternative is to arrive at the meeting sweating like a pig
10. Vodafone doesn't have mobile roaming in Korea.  Annoying
11. Take cabs in Seoul.  The streets are badly marked and Korean is impossibly hard to decipher on the run
12. Don't expect to use your gym gear in Beijing, the notoriously poor air quality is such that you’re in danger of making yourself ill
13. If you want to start a mild yet interesting argument over a meal in Malaysia ask the table for the recipe for an authentic lahksa 
14. An Australian wanting to compliment someone from the Gulf merely needs to say that the Burj al Arab is the architectural equal to the Sydney Opera House.  You won't be lying
15. Do not attempt to diet on a trip to Singapore.  The food is just too good
16. Discussing international travel is a great way to make conversation in Europe.  In the US it only serves to remind them that you're not from under around here 
17. Never discuss politics or religion with American clients.  When in doubt ask people to name their favourite Will Ferrell film
18. Everyone in Europe loves Barcelona FC (except a few bitter, bitter people from Madrid and Manchester)
19. Never wear leather-soled shoes in Scandinavia or Sweden in winter.  You will slip and injure your head, neck, shoulders or back
20. Don't be afraid of the Metro in Paris.  But don't confuse it with the RER.  Don't be afraid of the RER either
21. There isn't a weekend’s worth of fun in Warsaw.  Go to Cracow instead
22. Contrary to their carefully cultivated reputation, Finns have a terrific sense of humour, however, they're prone to annoyance if you actually make them laugh out loud
    
23. Public transport is brilliant in Basel.  The iPhone 'maps' app has all the details
24. Germans do not appreciate self-deprecatory humour.  Never attempt to break the ice at the start of a meeting with a flippant comment at your own expense as it will make you seem inconsequential in your audience’s eyes.  Let them make the first joke
25. The Spanish like shaking your hand every time they see you, as often as ten times over the course of a day-long meeting.  This is nice
26. If someone mentions that Paris, Barcelona, Milan, Luzern or Nuremburg are an option for an upcoming meeting then push hard to make it happen.  These cities are everyone's cliche favourites for a reason
27. Brussels isn't much more fun than Warsaw
28. Don't stress too much about mobile / data roaming charges.  Life’s too short

High priority

Spent the day in Switzerland talking to a couple clients about upcoming product launches.   In both cases I'd been assured that my involvement was 'high priority'. I've been on holidays for ten days and, in one case, nothing has happened in the interim.  Literally nothing.  My carefully crafted proposal hadn't even been read.
Merlin Mann is brutally realistic about this: -

The only way that I will be able to tell if you thought something was 'high priority' was that you finished it. If it's not done it's not really a priority

When a client tells me something's 'high priority' mostly she's just making nice.  I'm not saying that she's lying, but rather there's a misuse of the phrase.  What she actually means is that there's an inclination within the company to get a project up but that inclination hasn't yet been matched with the necessary will.  It does me no good whatsoever to call her on it; she is still the client.  Instead I smile and put a note in the diary to follow up with her in a month or so. If she indicates commitment with action in the mean time then I'm ready to respond immediately.

The other client demonstrated what 'high priority' actually looks like: upcoming meetings diarised, purchase orders generated and a timeline for senior management sign-off. The actual phrase 'high priority' didn't rate a mention.

Musical comedy

Just before I took off for Greece we staged a terrific one-off improv show at a pub near Southwark called The Miller. I got to work with three of my favourite performers: Rob Broderick, Gemma Whelan and Rachel Parris.

From a standing start The Miller has become the home of London improv, devoting several nights a week to the form under Steve Roe's Hoopla! aegis. Most of the shows are improvised musicals of some form or other.

Musical comedy, both scripted and not, is going through a Renaissance here in London and Rob and Rachel are both part of the scene. As a decidedly unmusical performer I've always maintained that in most cases the music is a crutch; a shiny distraction that diverts the punter's eye away from the paucity of the actual comedy.

As they say in the advertising game: -

If you have something to say, say it. If you have nothing to say, sing it

Commitment

Sales Manager 1: Everyone in the team is still 100% committed to using your approach to selling the product.

Sales Manager 2: Yeah, it's just that they just don't apply it in the real world all that often.

Talk is cheap.  Too many of my clients' have cultures wherein a proclamation of commitment is sufficient for management's gaze to turn elsewhere.  As long as we're 'all singing from the same hymn sheet' and 'making the right noises' then we're okay, right?

Except that in the business of behavioural change shouldn't there be an expectation that behaviour actually, y'know, changes?  The fulsome yet disingenuous public endorsement of someone elses plan is the oldest rhetorical play in the book.  Yet we knowingly allow ourselves to fall for it anyway.

I heard a fantastic quote from the filmmaker Milos Forman: -

You cannot make a real commitment, unless you realise that it's a choice, that you keep making again and again

The job of not working

Just back from ten lovely days in Greece.  After about twenty years of self-employment I may just have mastered the art of taking a holiday.  I've long been plagued by freelancer’s paranoia: that horrible suspicion that you only get the work because you're the first supplier the client calls so if you don’t answer the phone then she'll just go to whomever is next on the list.  Never give your understudy a break and all that.

Absurd of course: the only like-for-like substitute I have is my business partner and he’s busy with clients in Asia-Pac.  So why has my mindset has always been to behave as if I have dozens of direct competitors across Europe?

Partly, I suspect, it’s my attitude to work itself.  One of the books I read on the beach* described two conflicting attitudes to work and leisure: the ‘income’ effect and the ‘substitution’ effect: -

Income effect: the old school economists’ assumption that once a man has earned sufficient for his needs then devote the remaining time to leisure 

Substitution effect: the phenomenon that as a man’s time becomes more valuable he is less and less likely to substitute high-paid work for another activity that pays less (i.e. any other activity, including leisure)

Supposedly we're all looking for a life informed by the income effect but of course it’s the substitution effect that describes most modern lives. This is especially so for anyone working in corporate services and especially for anyone self-employed in that sector. We work every hour that God, or the client, gives us.

Contrast this with a farmer or other seasonal worker: when the time is right you work as hard as you can as efficiently as you can then you rest.  Only a fool harvests an unripe crop.  Still, it's rare for a truly successful freelancer to be continually snowed under.  If you are then you're probably either on the way to taking on staff (good) or becoming an employee of your biggest client in all but name (bad).

So I persist with comedy, blogging and sundry other projects out of a need to create a substitution effect: there’s only so much time and attention I can pour onto a consulting project before it becomes counterproductive.

I work hard for good money when the opportunity demands it.  My real problem is that I actually like working hard all the time.  Idleness has never become me.  So for the last week I've been hanging out in the Greek islands forcing myself to not work.  I had to convince myself that proper relaxation was a right and proper substitute for thinking about something I’ll be working on in a month’s time. 

Only I could create a job out of not working.

* Yep, that’s me on holiday – reading economic theory for shits’n’giggles…

On holidays...

And away from the keyboard for a week or so

Narcissism of small differences

No surprises in these articles from Pharmalot and Reuters outlining the shift in balance between Primary Care (GP) sales teams and their hospital colleagues.  For years to come the biggest selling drugs in the world will be prescribed by oncologists and other specialists so that's where the reps will be pointed.

From the inside there might be seem to be a disctinction between these two branches of pharma selling: -

Hospital or specialty sales jobs require more intellectual horsepower than the primary care rep has.  That’s why they’re paid more and get more face time with the doctors

'Industry Insider' commenting on the Pharmalot article

In my experience the jobs are essentially the same.  Okay, the science might be more complex and illnesses more serious but the marketing is very simple in both cases; Freud's 'narcissism of small differences' comes to mind.

A Decent Proposal

I've spent much of the last week grinding out a proposal for a large project.  Often I find writing the document to be harder work than actually delivering the project.  There appear to be possible three explanations for this: -

1. Parkinson's Law.  After an extremely busy stretch my time is freer and so a task that would otherwise have been properly completed in hours expanded to take days
2. Big Projects need Big Documents.  The job is unquestionably large and quite complicated (multimarket, potentially requiring multilingual delivery, etc).  Ironically, it's the simplicity of my approach that's got me invited onto the project team yet my instincts are screaming out for a long and complex proposal
3. The Unseen Audience.  One of the advantages in making a face-to-face presentation is that I know exactly who I'm speaking to.  This sounds obvious but consider the alternative: an emailed PDF (or PPT presentation) will almost certainly be circulated amongst stakeholders who I am yet to meet.  I have no idea of their needs, level of involvement or even their level of written English.  Do they need to understand my background before getting into the detail or are they going to go straight for the costings?

A client once described to me a phenomenon known as 'fear-based slide proliferation': -

When addressing an unknown audience (or one that's scary in some other way) the temptation to add in just one more PowerPoint slide can be irresistible

This is apposite because what I'm describing here is the effect of fear.  Freelancers fall prey to Parkinson's Law because we're terrified of not being busy.  Big projects are a high stakes game.  An unseen audience can seem unknowable.  The impulse to work harder and longer in the face of such things is natural.  My business is built entirely on project work.  I do a relatively small number of high-value projects a year so proposals are a vital part of my workstream.  It just frustrates me that I'm not more efficient at writing them.

But as inevitable as death comes the moment when I have to embrace that unsettlingly liberating feeling that comes as I hit 'send'.

How IP goes AWOL

Twice in the last seven years my intellectual property has been appropriated without my permission.   I'm not sure if two incidents of blatant theft since 2004 is a lot but it's certainly more than I want to deal with.

Both times the culprit was an overambitious yet cost-conscious training manager who had invited me in to make a credentials presentation.  In both the rip-off was based on introductory slides from that first meeting and despite the intrinsic simplicity of my ideas each end product of it all was rudimentary to the point of being completely useless, yet still vaguely linked to my brand.  The worst of all worlds.

I'm told that in each cases like this the plagiarists' thinking would have followed a progression such as this: -

1. That's such a simple idea!  I wish I'd thought of it.
2. That's such a simple idea!  I've often thought something similar myself.
3. Ideas like that are pretty commonplace.  It's really all about delivery
4. That idea has been around forever.  Much of the delivery techniques are probably already in the public domain
5. Why would I pay this guy to deliver ideas that are no better than my own and which he probably lifted from someone else anyway?

In other words, a pernicious internal monologue that begins with admiration and ends in defiance.  Left uninterrupted it costs me stupid amounts of time and emotional energy to arrive at a financial settlement that will 'make things right'.  Even worse, it also sets back my relationship with that company by years.  The sort of people who pass off others' work as their own usually have a highly attuned political sense and are going to do everything in their power to stop me ever getting back in the building.

This phenomenon, albeit rare, is why I have to out so much stock in my personal brand: my ability to convey my own ideas better than anyone else can is the reason why I make credentials presentations instead of watching them.

The business world's often cavalier attitude to plagiarism ('getting caught is the real crime') is also one of the differences between B2B and B2C.  When you're selling direct to the public at large the progression is likely to be: -

1. I wish I'd thought of that
2. I wish that I could do that
3. I wish I was doing that
4. I don't have time / energy / talent to be doing that but I'm so happy that someone out there is doing it and I get to enjoy it

Commerce isn't anywhere near as squeamish as Art on matters of originality.  You have to call the foul because it's unlikely that anyone else is going to do it for you.

Embracing ever-increasing complexity

I've just finished Kevin Kelly's What Technology Wants.  The central thesis of the book is that technological advance is an inevitable extension of the natural development of, well, everything.  Kelly grandly posits that technology ('the technium') should be seen as the seventh Kingdom of Life, alongside archaebacteria, eubacteria, protista, fungi, plants and animals.

Kelly describes a number of key trajectories for his technium, one of which is 'complexity': -

This arc of complexity flows from the dawn of the cosmos into life.  But the arc continues through biology and now extends itself forward through technology.  The very same dynamics that shape complexity in the natural world shape complexity in the technium.

Kelly, p.287

I've spent my entire career working on product launches; i.e. trying to anticipate the Next Big Thing the consumer wants, building that thing and making it available.  I've always believed this drive for novelty to be one of capitalism's fundamental impulses but I'd not before seen it as embedded in the very fabric of the universe.  It makes sense: increased variety engenders complexity thus life will get evermore complex, be it in the jungle, supermarket or hospital pharmacy.

Last Thursday I was discussing an upcoming oncology launch with a new client.  I made the pedestrian observation that ever-expanding choice in cancer treatments added complexity to the medicine and therefore to the marketing task also: -

Once upon a time there was no treatment for cancer at all.  Then there was surgery.  Then chemotherapy.  Then radiotherapy.  Then tumour-activated monoclonal antibodies.  And so on.

The oncologist's job has gotten more complicated at every turn, especially as alongside a dizzying variety of potential combinations, sequences and so on, the original option (do nothing at all) is still on the table and must always be entertained.

Me

Marketers charged with launching a new drug must acknowledge that they are automatically complicating the customer's working life.  Doctors understand that part of the job of medicine is to understand all of the available options, which in a launch-heavy specialty like oncology can seem like a full-time job on its own.  Time-poor doctors will often actively resent the advent of a new therapy, especially if it doesn't represent an immediate and obvious medical advance.  There has to be clear communication that this additional complexity is justified by a worthwhile improvement in clinical outcome for a sub-cohort of patients.

Inexperienced marketers tend to focus on the novelty of the treatment (hence the proliferation of messages around 'mode of action', etc.) whereas the key word is sub-cohort.  Because we now know too much about genetics to take an undifferentiated approach to therapy disease, no cancer drug will ever again be right for all patients.

We are in the business of increasing complexity in the world and we need to embrace it.  It is the inevitable consequence of a defined population of cancer sufferers getting better treatment today than yesterday.

Engaging the disinterested customer

The WSJ recently ran a piece on the growth of digital marketing in American pharma.  As with so many of these articles it begins with dark portents of the death of the drug rep and then frantically rows back from there to conclude that reports of this death are greatly exaggerated.

All pharma companies now have some sort of 'digital' capability, however, the buzzword is too broad to be useful in dissecting industry trends.  Digital is employed by pharma in two broad ways: -

1. Shinier presentations on iPads given to reps
2. Websites for doctors to access information

Whilst the same eMarketing department / digital agency can handle either type of project, the underlying effect of each should not be confused: the former is an animated sales aid with an infinite number of pages whereas the latter requires the doctor to make the first click to succeed at all.  Digital is only as good as the people who see it.  A client of mine is deploring a subordinate's budget request for a medical journal (i.e. print) campaign to drive doctors towards their underused website; old media giving succour to the new.

Vast amounts of time and energy are being spent on luring doctors' eyeballs to pharma company sites, including novel and generally useful activities such as having a key opinion leader Twitter his impressions of a major congress in real time.  Yet as with any other online campaign getting potential customers to your site is a balancing act and compelling someone to visit you is rightly seen as obnoxious.  Pharma companies must be especially careful because the doctors they're trying to attract represent a relatively small and definitely finite population, pretty much all of which is valuable.  The 1% success model that drives the rest of eCommerce definitely does not apply.

The article quotes a German GP -

Christopher Luyken, a general practitioner near Cologne, Germany, says he exchanges views with other doctors online, but sees some of the industry’s online marketing as “spam.” He says he’d rather hear about new drugs from a sales rep he knows and trusts.

Online is certainly cheaper than reps; pharma sales teams are the most expensive comms channel in any form of marketing.  But reps are compelling in a way that websites can never be, especially with those customers who aren't especially interested in what you're trying to say in the first place.  Unlike markets where you really make your money just from those customers who want to buy from you, pharma success requires that everyone be aware of what your product does and for whom.  The uninterested doctor must be engaged with or patients get suboptimal care and a website cannot achieve this.

And what about all the sales reps that Dr Luyken doesn't really know or trust in the slightest?  For what is a rookie rep with a list of target doctors and a shiny new iPad if not spam incarnate?  Delicious to Polynesians but annoying to everyone else.

Manufactured urgency

My projects fall into two broad categories: -

1. Product launches
2. Institutional / cultural change

Implemented correctly, my IP has value in both scenarios, however, it needs to be positioned  differently in each case to achieve the desired outcome.  Any project that seeks both endpoints (i.e. successfully launch a product + change a sales culture) will almost certainly fail.

I prefer working on launches.  The heady combination of defined timelines and clearly understood success criteria brings out my best.  Who doesn't enjoy the challenge of 'getting it right the first time'?*

Institutional change is different.  These projects are too often plagued by a poorly manufactured sense of urgency driven by soft deadlines and project teams who are easily distracted by higher priority tasks (like product launches).  This is not to say that such projects aren't vital, just that the organisational benefits are often subtle to the point of immeasurability.

This is not solely, or even primarily, an external consultant's perspective; being invited to work on a product launch is an unambiguously gilt-edged opportunity whereas a cultural change project is often perceived as a poisoned chalice.

None of this is especially noteworthy.  Neither is, I suppose, my conclusion: that smaller consultancies are better at finite, high octane projects like product launches.  We don't have the manpower or the willpower for the endless meetings that come with cultural change projects.  We tire of writing 'reminder' emails to follow up on proposals written in good faith and great urgency in response to artificial deadlines.  And unlike the likes of McKinsey, we rarely have the stomach to bill by the hour for work that doesn't seem to be going anywhere.

Perhaps it's my performing background but I do interventions better than processes.  I find it easier to enact change in people than systems.  In fact the first thing I'll do if you offer me process work is convert the project into a series of face-to-face events so that I can focus the system's attention and demonstrate value.  Which is, of course, just another way of manufacturing urgency.

* A long-standing joke of mine is that launch is the only marketing activity that pharma knows how to do well; its instinctive response to any other scenario is 'relaunch'

Interlinked levels of branding

When a pharmaceutical salesperson sits in front of a prescriber there are three interlinked 'branding' interactions in play: -

1. Corporate: doctor's opinion of the pharma company
2. Product: doctor's opinion of the product
3. Personal: doctor's opinion of the individual representative

Product is by far the most important of the three; the doctor's main priority is to his patient so this is where he focuses her attention.  As most doctors will tell you: -

What makes a good drug rep?  A good drug

No rep ever wants to hear this.  She wants to believe (must believe) that her specific input makes a difference.  How the hell do you get about of bed every morning otherwise?  The thing that every experienced salesperson cherishes most and discusses least is her credibility, aka her personal brand.

The very embodiment of 'passive aggression' is a roomful of salespeople, arms folded, listening to a marketer some outline some brilliant new 'brand building' initiative.  The lens through which they view everything the marketer asks of them is this: -

If I undertake this activity will my personal credibility (brand) be enhanced or diminished?

Any product manager who treats a sales team as merely an especially expensive comms channel is a fool. If the team fails to execute the clever, agency-wrought strategy it's not because they didn't understand it but rather they didn't bother executing it at all.  Marketing activity must enhance the credibility of the individual salesperson or it's a waste of time and money.

What of corporate branding?  Would a doctor shy away from trying Horizant (a new GlaxoSmithKline treatment for restless leg syndrome) because of concerns over Avandia (its diabetes drug linked to increases in heart attacks and subject to $6 billion in law suits)?  Not if Horizant is as good as the data seems.

But will the GSK rep selling Horizant have to work that bit harder to establish her own credibility in the face of all the negative Avandia headlines?  Almost certainly.

In a perfect world these three branding level complement each other; a credible salesperson selling a valuable drug made by a respected company.  That alignment happens regularly.  Even so the salesperson has to earn that credibility just as the company has to earn that respect.

That begins and ends with honest, straightforward conversations about a new, needed therapy drug that does some genuine good.

We’re not into high science R&D; we’re into making money

My recent thinking on Pfizer may be a slight case of jumping the gun.  Pfizer isn't shedding 100% of its R&D, although it is reducing its spend from around $9.4 billion last year to perhaps as little as $6.0 billion in 2012.  A massive decrease but still a huge investment (second only to Roche).

My argument is better made by Valeant, a Toronto-based company run by a J Michael Pearson,  ex-McKinsey consultant.  Instead of the usual combination of medics, pharmacists and scientists, Valeant has assembled a group of very smart venture capitalists as its board of directors.  Everyone's favourite Pearson quotes come from a recent Bloomberg profile: -

We’re not into high science R&D; we’re into making money.

We’re looking for companies that have products in them that we could grow and maybe do a slightly better job than current owners.

The thinking is that there's room for one or two of these in the market but no more than that.  An entire industry that thinks in this way will become increasingly risk averse, giving less leeway to researchers to follow that 100-to-1 hunch that leads to the Next Big Thing.

And let's not forget that because this is pharma, that Next Big Thing is almost by definition a further alleviation of human suffering.

What is it that you do again?

Recently Pfizer announced that is shedding European jobs in R&D in order to expand its sales/marketing operations in China.  Leaving aside the basic business motivations for this, the existential implications are worth exploring: -

Remind me again, what does Pfizer do?

For well over a hundred years the raison d'etre of every pharma company has been the scientific development of medicines that assist in mankind's fight against disease.  As obnoxiously as the pharmaceutical industry has behaved over the last few decades (although certainly less so than, say, finance), it has been broadly tolerated because the fruits of its labour have to led to us all living longer, more pleasant lives.

Pfizer's move is a hard-headed reaction to the bleak news that the salad days of the 1990's and 2000's are past and unlikely to return.  But is it the right reaction?  Sure, the industry believes itself to be in trouble: at the front end, ever-deepening legal exposure and a pickier FDA have massively increased the cost of getting a drug to market whereas the enthusiastic championing of generic manufacturers by insurers and governments has severely curtailed ROI at a minute past midnight on the day of patent expiry.

All of which may mean that the profitability of a sector which has historically outperformed the wider economy will come back to the pack somewhat.  Individual companies will perform better or worse but pharma as an overall sector won't be so profitable nor its stocks be seen as such a safe bet.  Yet this unpleasant fact isn't reason enough to toss all the toys out of your pram.

Pfizer, once rid of all but the safest prospects in its pipeline, will join the evermore frantic hunt for the next small, sexy biotech with decent clinical trial results, pull out its chequebook and pick up ownership of a product that's ready to launch.  This is not an entirely negative outcome because Pfizer does global product launches better than most, many people will gain access to important drugs.

The long-term consequence is that Pfizer may be seen to have opted out of the (noble) pursuit of science in favour of the (unseemly) business of marketing.  And what is marketing if not the shaping of how you are seen by the customer: -

You used to be one of the good guys, beavering away in lab in the hope of one day cracking the code, using science to help relieve the suffering of millions.  Now you're just a big company with a lot of cash to spend.

You don't innovate any more

You're Dell not Apple.  You're Disney not Pixar.  You're GM not VW.

Which is fine for now but the only genuine advantage the West maintains over the developing world is a superior genius for innovation.  Throw that away and what are you left with?