Haider Alleg speaker and chairman at Fleming’s 3rd digital marketing summit in Barcelona

In September, I was honoured to chair a digital event gathering global and local digital marketers from pharma companies.
This article shares what I learned from these three days and shares the speakers’ keynotes.
On September 11th, I participated in the 3rd pharma congress in Barcelona. The event was well organized, intimate, easy to locate and surprisingly brought a high level of experts and discussions.
On the topics list, a full day was dedicated to social media. The workshop was animated by two consultants and brought fundamental questions, but it was a perfect refresher for most participants.
The second day was the actual start of the event. I started it with a keynote on generating value within a pharma player. I just thought to bring this subject to the table as many buzzwords circulated lately on different tactics, but nothing concrete. I wanted to give a vision of where digital should be a tactic for bringing value to the customer and company processes. Because of our internal constraints, I believe that we think differently to implement this channel and optimize it as much as possible. I think we, as pharma marketers, generate a positive image of a pharma company trying to take the next digital train and working on the different wagons, starting from the web creation and finishing hopefully with social media.
The rest of the speakers provided an excellent level of expertise and inspiration. For example, from the US, John Mack, a.k.a; the pharma guy, stressed the regulatory aspects and provided a view from the US.
Emma Darcy provided an excellent presentation on how medical practices are changing due to communities and social media. A very inspirational talk and I can only recommend reading it.
On the rest of the speakers, I think that they are pretty similar to what you saw in the past few months in the digital era. There is one exception, though, from Nichola from Britania Pharmaceuticals. His talk was very well connected to the business. It provided fresh air on how we, as marketers, should change how we approach the delivery of our products in markets, using common sense and emotional marketing.
The second day was a bit less intense due to the Barcelona weather, perhaps and willingness from people to check the sea, but overall an enjoyable session with a lot of opportunity to network and learn more about how other companies approach the digital channel.
What I learned on my side is about patient websites. Most of my conversations with other digital marketers help me conclude that, at a certain point, collaboration with the patient association is more than necessary, especially when trying to amplify your platform on social media. You do not want to go as a pharma player but much more as a conversation facilitator. I think there is room to better plan the roll-out of such tactics in countries with the research of establishments of these patient groups. I hope my summary is helpful and will be ready to answer any of your questions. For your information, if you contact me to assist with one of their future events, I can see to negotiate a better rate for your delegation.