Drew Panayiotou says it was “an absolute privilege” to become the first-ever global chief marketing offer for Pfizer –a company known that became a household name in vaccines during the pandemic.
“I first entered healthcare nearly 30 years ago, and my motivation was deeply personal after advocating for my mother who couldn’t get the treatment she needed when I was young,” says Panayiotou, who joined the company in October 2022. “The pace of innovation in the industry I entered then was excruciatingly slow and I left deeply disillusioned.”
“Fast forward to today, reentering healthcare and the speed of innovation at Pfizer and many other healthcare companies today is unparalleled – faster than the technology industry I recently left,” he adds. “Pfizer developed, manufactured, and distributed a vaccine in record time. And that’s the bar we set for ourselves across the company, and specifically in marketing we continue to rapidly innovate through technology, collaboration, communication, and creativity.”
Heading into the new year, the brand has a bold vision to change a billion lives a year. “To do that, our marketing teams have an imperative to connect with people in a real, personal way and facilitate meaningful impact,” says Panayiotou.
Prior to joining Pfizer, Panayiotou held senior marketing roles at brands including Google, Best Buy, The Walt Disney Company and The Coca Cola Company. Panayiotou is speaking at Brand Innovators CES event on Tuesday morning.
Brand Innovators caught up with Panayiotou from his office in Boulder, Colorado to talk innovation, storytelling and AI. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
What makes you excited to go to work in the morning?
I’m working at a company that helps change the world. I’ve worked at iconic brands like Coke and Disney, but I’ve never had the opportunity to be part of a company that has as much of an impact as Pfizer. Pfizer’s scientists are delivering life-changing breakthroughs every day, but if we can’t connect those breakthroughs to the people whose lives need changing, it’s a tree falling in the forest with no one around to hear the sound. We have an opportunity to advocate, activate, and improve access to healthcare for billions of people around the world. That’s a mission that will get you out of bed in the morning.
How are you thinking about innovations in healthcare in 2024?
Former health tech consultant Leonard Kish famously said: “if patient engagement were a drug, it would be the blockbuster drug of the century and malpractice not to use it.” I would add to that statement, “and creativity is how we administer that drug.” True creativity is the ability to see how innovation can be applied to change the current conditions. At Pfizer, our goal is to change how healthcare happens. To do that we need to continue to rewrite the marketing healthcare playbook in 2024 and beyond.
A large part of that is meeting people where they are and providing the kind of seamless, retail experience in healthcare they’ve come to expect in other parts of their lives. Our VaxAssist platform is one example – it allows people to quickly and seamlessly determine eligibility for common vaccines, then search and book appointments. Eli Lilly recently announced telehealth prescriptions and home delivery for its weight loss drugs. In 2024 we’ll see even more of these innovations, building on the frictionless consumer experiences created by companies like Amazon.
What is your approach to storytelling?
Not every story has to be an epic one. When Aaron Rodgers referenced Travis Kelce as ‘Mr. Pfizer’ because of his support for our vaccine booster campaign, our teams reacted within hours with creative that inserted our brand and our mission into a conversation that exponentially increased the impact of our initial advertising investment. Don’t be afraid to let someone else be the hero of your story if it gets you in front of the audience you need to reach.
Who are your target audiences – both patients and practitioners- and how do you reach them?
We have a unique challenge in that our audiences are very broad, and the information we have to share with them can actually impact their health. Getting information to people is the biggest lever in medical intervention. We have to get personal, get local, and get real in terms of delivering information where people are consuming that information. Communication isn’t one size fits all, it’s one size fits one, and we have an opportunity to use our technology, talent and creativity to truly make an impact. We encourage our teams to leverage data and technology to engage with and understand the people whose lives we want to change. We challenge our teams to connect with people at a personal level, using channels and language that resonates with them no matter where they are.
Healthcare happens on the street, in homes, and in digital communities. We have to empower those communities to ignite change and work closely with community leaders, retailers, partners, and competitors to encourage a coalition of the willing to drive better outcomes between doctor visits. For example: An estimated 40 million people in the United States and 1 billion people globally suffer from migraines. Migraines are a seriously debilitating condition that impact our work and leave many people feeling helpless.
Through an analysis of Google search trends, our Pfizer migraine marketing team discovered a correlation between barometric pressure drops and a spike in searches related to migraines in the same geographic area. By partnering with Google, they were able to develop a migraine weather alert; an AI-powered YouTube activation that delivers a personalized, branded ad to a market 72 hours before a storm. We used Google AI to find and drive target demographics to a special page on the brand’s website where we could educate sufferers on the relationship between migraines and weather, delivering timely, actionable information when people need it most. The campaign drove 62,000 site visits and directly generated over 5,500 new scripts.
What role does data and technology play in your marketing strategy?
We always start with data. It’s the foundation of everything we do. With data powering our processes, we then invest in technology and tools like AI to extend our creativity where we couldn’t before. First comes investment and experimentation, then scale.
Tech improves both the speed and quality we’re able to deliver. In fact, we are launching an AI-powered marketing workbench, called Charlie, that is designed to help accelerate creative ideation and collaboration between Pfizer and our agency partners. Named after our founder Charles Pfizer, and created in partnership with Publicis, Charlie provides seamless access to centralized intelligence and shared collaboration tools, such as Adobe Workfront, to enhance our ability to crowdsource ideas and push collective thinking. In a world of rapidly fragmenting media and audience attention, tools like this can help increase the speed of execution and creative exploration to penetrate critical cultural moments that influence behaviors impacting individual health.
AI is also fueling a rapid proliferation of execution possibilities. For example: In a recent campaign for one of our vaccines, we worked with our creative partners at IPG to use AI at almost every step of concept testing. The creative idea was of human origin, but the production of imagery and animatics was augmented by AI. It reduced the time for producing new creative from days to hours, allowing the teams to explore more possibilities and rapidly test our creative against our audience needs, delivering four to five times more content that was extremely personalized and relevant to more people.
Technology, powered by AI, augmented, honed and allowed our creatives to see their vision break through to a wider audience.
How does your background at brands such as Johnson & Johnson, The Coca-Cola Company, Best Buy, The Walt Disney Company help in this role?
My background has not only exposed me to diverse industries but has also reinforced the significance of collaboration and the power of working with exceptionally talented individuals. I’ve had the privilege to surround myself with some of the smartest, innovative minds. Working across these different industries has also underscored a fundamental truth: creativity is the linchpin of transformation. No matter the industry, innovation is the door to new possibilities and creativity is the key that unlocks that door.
I’m also passionate about breaking down barriers with organizational structure. That means less bosses and creating more leaders as well as creating strong relationships with our agency partners so we’re working as efficiently as possible toward a common goal.
What predictions do you have for marketers in 2024?
I really believe that AI, including Gen AI, will be the catalyst for a creative renaissance. Good creatives embrace the latest technologies and tools to expand their creative possibilities, and AI is an example of a tool that can be rocket fuel behind creativity. I’m excited to see where it will take us.
