By Helena Mello In this post, I will share some highlights from the iJOBS Site Visit to McCann Health in New York City. McCann Health is a global marketing company with more than 60 offices worldwide, and is a leader in strategic communications for the healthcare world. Several big pharma and biotech companies rely on McCann’s services to bring their products to life and engage with their audiences. Broadly speaking, McCann’s market is part of the Medical Communications world. However, as I learned at the event, strategic medical communication goes beyond just talking about the science behind a product in a compelling and accurate way. It requires an understanding of human behavior towards health issues, comprehension of the target audience, and much more. Executive Strategy Director Daryl Somma brought up that simply understanding a disease is not sufficient to explain it. In order to develop a communication plan for disease X, one needs to think “what is it like to live with disease X?”. Moreover, the target group for a particular campaign must be well studied: Do they [the target group] carry the disease? Do they provide care or treatment for patients with it? Or perhaps they live with someone that has the disease. All of these aspects must be factored in when developing pieces of communication for a particular product. In this sense, the strategy team consults with a diverse set of professionals, ranging from social scientists to PhDs trained in immunology and other areas. In terms of Medical Strategy, there are three focus areas: 1) Healthcare Marketing, in which customers are – usually - pharmaceutical companies looking to launch products; 2) Promotional Medical Education, in which the target audience is key opinion leaders in a given field; and 3) Publication Planning, which helps translate clinical trials and other important findings into meaningful and coherent reports. Regardless of the area, the goal is to develop innovative ways to promote medical and scientific information. For that, McCann seeks employees that are not only well versed in scientific content, but also extremely creative. Some of the top skills they look for are excellent writing, presentation, and the ability to translate complex information. Importantly, as a marketing company, McCann wants its employees to be able to demonstrate why they are the best agency to launch their clients’ products.
Creativity and strategic planning are essential to deliver reliable and compelling advertisement.
In conclusion, in order to be competitive for jobs in medical communications, it is imperative that you (1) develop your writing skills (perhaps by joining our blog!), (2) exercise your interpersonal skills (teamwork and diversity are key for creativity in this area), and (3) think as a marketer (yes, you are going to launch products!). It is not too late to start working on those skills, and if you think McCann might be the right place for you, send them your resume!
In my next post, I will explore careers within McCann Health. I will write about the panelists that talked to us, and how they transitioned from various backgrounds to the biggest healthcare marketing company in the world. This article was edited by Andrew Petryna, Monal Mehta and Paulina Krzyszczyk.