In the highly regulated world of pharma marketing, creating content that's both accurate and engaging can be a real challenge. Chris Halling, a seasoned pro in the contract development and manufacturing organisation (CDMO) sector, has spent over 20 years fine-tuning this balance. From his years at Catalent Pharma Solutions to his current role as Director of Communications and Content at Orientation Marketing, Halling has become an expert at turning complex information into compelling B2B content.
Could you tell us a little about your background?
DK: For the last twenty years or so, I've worked in medical devices—spanning from inhalation through to surgical implements— and I worked for an orthopaedic company some 15 years ago. But the latter part of my career has been spent all in contract development, manufacturing organisations (CDMO).
The CDMO sector—broadly speaking—is an outsourced option for some pharma companies to develop meds from discovery all the way to commercial supply. That's where my real expertise lies. I work with a lot of pharma companies but I’m one step removed from the healthcare providers.
What’s your connection to content excellence?
CH: We produce lots of content on the technical aspects of the drugs, the formulation of the drugs, and the relationship between the outsourcers and the pharma companies. Typically, the audience for my content is other pharma companies and stakeholders, such as consultants and regulators.
Much of our content starts off technical, but then we have to adapt it for the audience we’re speaking to. Typically, the audience for my content is other pharma companies and stakeholders, such as consultants and regulators. We help get peer-reviewed articles published in very noteworthy journals like Nature, for example, but there's also the B2B hard marketing side of things where we’re trying to engage people.
What strategies do you use to adapt and personalise your content?
CH: A lot of our content is very technical. We're often talking about the technical aspects of project management, like when you move a drug programme from one stage of development to another, such as a preclinical to a commercial stage—where you’re scaling up equipment or scaling up volumes from a few tablets a day to potentially millions of tablets in a week.
And then there’s the aspect of taking something that may be very technical in terms of its formulation knowledge, or some aspect of the drug, and then converting it into what that means for a business case. So if we're speaking to purchasing teams, for example, our content is about what factors would affect those purchases.
For example, if you're manufacturing a drug that’s toxic, the company you're talking to must understand that they need suppliers with certain levels of health and safety protection for those toxic drugs to protect their workers.
We adapt content depending on each client’s needs, those of the market, and of the target audience. We work in a highly regulated market and that puts a burden on both agency and client to make sure communications are compliant and we don’t stray, for example, into inadvertently giving health advice. There are certain elements of communications that are relatively fixed, like company descriptions and those of certain processes. Those can act as anchors and be woven into custom copy to allow a piece to flow.
How do you balance the compliance side of things?
CH: Compliance is vital throughout everything we do. When you're one removed from the healthcare provider, it's very tempting to talk about a potentially revolutionary treatment as if it's a drug. But of course, it must be clinically approved first.
I was talking to an organisation that’s producing a universal flu vaccine. This is obviously very exciting stuff, but it hasn’t gone through clinical trials yet. It's very tempting when you write to talk as if it's a done deal—that this is an incredible vaccine that we're all going to benefit from. You just have to couch that excitement with a bit of realism. The regulatory process needs to come first.
How do you measure the success of your content?
CH: We use all the recognised performance indicators that are available to us, such as CTRs and time on page, but we try to gather subjective feedback too. The lead time for the services our clients offer can be measured in years, so it’s important that we try to evaluate how a piece of content resonates with various stakeholders, as that impact may stay with them and ultimately bring them back to a client when they need a technology or service.
Are there certain processes or tools that you find the most effective for content creation?
CH: For us, it's down to experience and having a basic knowledge of the processes that have to be gone through. So if a drug programme is proven in one country, you can't talk as if it's readily available in other countries, because the regulator in that country hasn't approved it. It’s about knowing the vagaries of the regulatory landscape and of the stage of drug development. I wish there was a more formal way of doing that, but we don't have access to it, so it's something that we tackle through experience.
I often tell myself that the first weak paragraph is the one that will open the reader to the temptation of reading their email instead!
I keep example copy and important recurring information where I can get to it easily, and more recently I’ve used LLMs to quickly research new concepts and topics, and even suggest starter copy to use as a basis for something I write.
Above all, I try to put myself in the shoes of the reader, make important points early, and edit again and again until I think I’ve achieved something that adds value – and if possible, holds the attention of the reader from beginning to end. I often tell myself that the first weak paragraph is the one that will open the reader to the temptation of reading their email instead!
Are there any other challenges that you often come across in the CDMO sector?
CH: I work in a complex industry where many sciences, regulations, processes, and technologies intersect, so prioritising important information is key. We’re all distracted, and more people consume content on the move, so if they need to leave a train, take a call, or read an urgent email then we need to give them at least one or two good points to think about. Then they’re more likely to come back.
We’re all distracted, and people consume content on the move… so we need to give them at least one or two good points to think about.
Large multi-million-dollar, multi-year projects are commonly purchased by multi-disciplinary teams, some of whom may not all be familiar with the complexities of, say, gene therapy or protein degraders. These people matter, so it is important not to alienate them. Without patronising the reader, I make sure that acronyms are expanded and, unless I’m sure the audience will be familiar, I pause to recap what we mean when we refer to technical terms.
Do you reuse content?
CH: Yes. We're reworking content almost all the time. Most companies are developing some kind of content channel strategy. They're embracing things like LinkedIn and Twitter—though not so much Facebook in our industry. Companies are gaining momentum on these channels all the time, they're sending out more, they're building their own databases, they're using other people's databases and sending out content. But then very quickly, they come across this brick wall where they run out of content.
Very quickly, [pharma companies] come across this brick wall where they run out of content
Most of our partners, clients, and so on have a large and capable team of scientific and technical staff. But most of these people are engaged in running client programmes, so getting them to produce new content all the time is tough. They say: “Well, I've got a day job as well!”.
Most of our clients are not making best use of their content because they're either not thinking about recycling content, or they're not effectively recycling as well as they should. But this can be done by specialist agencies like ourselves [Orientation Marketing] because we have dedicated writers who are pharmacologists, chemists, project managers, or people with years in the industry who understand what you need to say and what you can't say.
With a long-form piece of content, for example, you can explain fully what you mean. But if you're shortening that down to a LinkedIn post—one giving medical advice, for instance—you can’t fully explain that, when developed, the drug will do XYZ or the drug candidate will need XYZ.
If you haven't got that word count available to you, you can quickly run into difficulties because brevity creates misunderstandings.
Is there a certain channel that you think is most effective?
CH: We use a variety of channels. I guess because of the nature of the business to business space, there doesn't appear to be a single dominant channel. However, I think that LinkedIn is becoming ubiquitous. There's often a LinkedIn aspect to whatever we do—like the scientific articles we produce—which runs alongside PR.
I remember less than 12 months ago, people were getting very sniffy about podcasts, saying you’ll only get this many listeners and so on. Then all of a sudden, people started listening to podcasts again. I can even go to podcast platforms now and find people speaking about the B2B pharma space. I think it's amazing. It shows that you shouldn't write off a channel just because it hasn't found its space yet. And the ability for someone like me to, you know, perhaps walk the dogs listening to a podcast about my industry and make good use of my time that way, whilst still having all your faculties available to do the stuff you're doing during the day is incredibly useful.
You shouldn't write off a channel just because it hasn't found its space yet
The issue for marketing teams removed from pharma is that they’re relatively small and resource-starved. I'm generalising of course, but pharma companies tend to have teams of marketers who specialise in pricing, branding, and all aspects of marketing.
In the B2B space, marketing teams are typically made up of less than five or ten people, so they don't perhaps have the knowledge and expertise to embrace video content, for example. I think many of them see it as very expensive and something that they're not capable of doing.
