Welcome to Episode 45. This chat with Richard Long, Director of Strategy & Communications at earthware will be particularly interesting for you if you’re curious to understand how management consultancies operate versus agencies, and why they could potentially be posing a threat to your agency business.
This is going to be particularly relevant if you’re working in healthcare communications, because Richard currently works for an independent healthcare digital agency, but was also working for a management consultancy where he was setting up the life science arm.
Richard shares insight into:
– how management consulting consultancies operate
– what a land and expand approach looks like
– and how you can differentiate yourself from any management consultancy that might be posing a threat to your client business.
He also shared some top tips from his many years working in account management. I hope you enjoy this chat with Richard.
If you’re working in an agency account management role at any level, and you’d like a non salesy approach, to add more value to your clients and grow those existing accounts, then check out my Account Accelerator programme, starting again on 23rd September. If you’d like more details, drop me a line at jenny@accountmanagementskills.com and we can see whether it’s right for you.
Transcript:
Jenny 00:02
Today’s episode is with a friend of mine, Richard Long. I’ve known Richard for quite a while now. He’s the Director of Strategy and Communications at earthware, and earthware is an agency specialising in digital solutions for the healthcare industry. So welcome, Richard.
Richard 00:19
Thank you. Thank you for having me, Jenny.
Jenny 00:21
It’s an absolute pleasure. I’m looking forward to it as well. Can you spend a few minutes Richard, just to kick us off by explaining a bit about your background, and also your current role with earthware.
Richard 00:35
Sure. So I suppose the easiest way to describe it, it’s a bit like a Shakespearean tragedy, it’s got 4 acts, my career really. I left school with a penchant for absolutely not going to university or further education purely because that’s what my mum and dad were desperate for me to do. My dad was a teacher so everything was kind of geared towards doing that. So I ended up in various different careers, retail and other types of stuff but a passion for me at the time was health and fitness. So ended up really kind of working through a lot of independent gyms and the prime driver for me getting into marketing was that initial piece, because I ended up looking after for some quite big network gyms, their membership side of things. So that was really my first delve into direct marketing. You put an ad in a paper or you do a direct mail, somebody comes in and buys a membership. So I did that for about six, seven years and had some really interesting times. So ended up working for the Sanctuary group, trade testing therapists for those guys to go out to the Middle East and open spas and spent a year trade testing therapists. Great job, absolutely loved it. And the only trouble with it was at that time, the market was so small that I reached the natural ceiling. And I got bored, if I’m honest with you, I have this energy that I want to challenge myself all the time. So what I decided to do, we moved up to the northwest with my wife just so she could be close to her family at the time and I decided at that point that I was actually going to stop doing that and move into a pure marketing role. And the simple way to do that was to stop what I was doing, take my postgraduate in marketing. I took six months off to kick it off and go back to university, and then started working for various agencies up in the northwest and went from just blagging the job really in a really small agency of two of us, where we were helping startups really bring in customers. And that was the full marketing mix of working with B2B networking, Promotional Advertising, media, all that type of stuff. And then effectively worked through about three or four different agencies over a number of years kind, worked with housebuilding, which helped me with my property investment side of things. I invested in properties for 25-30 years before selling them all. And ended up doing some really interesting type work. And then in about 2008- 2009, ended up with a credit crunch, going down south and going client side and ended up with an agency as a supplier who was based back where I was living, actually, believe it or not back in Manchester. And long story short, I ended up working for them, they were my supplier for about 18 months. And they eventually offered me a position and I went there and at the time I was working in public sector, and had done on various kind of investment projects. So things like London 2012, and a lot of the business zone investments that were happening. And I went into the agency Creative Lynx or Havas Lynx as they are now and effectively headed up everything but health care. So I became head of public sector, which at the time was booming, and then government changed. And that area closed down and I ended up coming over to healthcare and I remember at the time, one of the owners of the business saying to me Well, the door’s been there, Richard we’ve just been expecting you to kick it down for about 18 months, so come on in. So that’s really how I started in healthcare. It was sort of a mistake. I hate to say. And loved being there, started off with one client, one therapy area really restricted with what we do because we were a young agency we were probably only about, I was person number 40 ish at the time. And by the time I left five years later, we were just under about 300 people. So we’d gone through this astronomical growth. And a big part of it really was the entrepreneurial spirit that I really enjoyed. And it goes back to the time in the health clubs, whereby you’re placing an advert someone comes in with an advert and buys something, or does something, it was back to that. I’d go from shoall we look at opening an office in Paris, because that’s where one of my clients were through to, let’s look at bringing on another service and absolutely loved it. And then really, my time changed quite dramatically there within the space of one afternoon, where I got a phone call from my mother. And she been diagnosed with quite an aggressive form of cancer. And obviously, at that point, she was 150 miles away. So decided overnight, at that point, that work didn’t matter anymore, went in on the Friday, actually phoned on the Friday as I was out on the road, seeing a client and just basically said, to the owners of the business, I need to prioritise other things at this point in my life. And God love them, and I can’t thank them enough at that point, I got a call later that afternoon, where all four or five of them had got together and they said, absolutely, there are more important things in life. And at that point, I literally just gave up agency life from that Thursday morning going in, on the tram in Manchester through to the Friday night, life had changed 360 degrees. And I’m ever thankful for that moment purely because I’d worked for healthcare at that point for about five years. And I’d seen it as a job. After that point, my mum had such a rare form of lung cancer at that point, we couldn’t actually access any information anywhere. There was nothing, there was one small clinical trial in one of the southern states in America. But there was nothing that anyone could tell me about this, what the life expectancy was, where there were patient groups or anything at all. And that became at that point a passion, I knew I would get back into health care at that point. And I knew what I actually had to do was forget messing about with bringing in money and looking for new business. My real passion was about putting information in the hands of the patients and their families at that point. I don’t want anyone to feel like I did on that weekend, searching Google looking for this particular ultra rare cancer and finding nothing because that it’s the bleakest of the bleak. So I went off and looked after my mother for a number of months, and then ended up totally by chance, getting the job in the NHS for three years working in their patient engagement and communications piece and worked with them for about three years. And the big piece of work that we did, we were configuring the hospital for Milton Keynes and Bedford, seeing between the two hospitals, who would have one service over another. And a part of my work was actually engaging with about 250 patient groups in Milton Keynes. I mean, I didn’t even know there were that many patient groups in there. But asking them, if we change this service from one place to another, how’s that going to affect you? What impact does that have on your life? And actually, what it did was it got me the total exposure to how services and healthcare impacts at the coalface. And it was really quite interesting to see the way that decisions that are made over here almost affects everybody, hundreds and 1000s of people across Milton Keynes and Bedfordshire and it was really interesting. And one thing I would say from that, we held so many kind of events in both towns. But the big question for me was the diversity and getting people involved in that. You would see a lot of middle aged semi professional, semi retired type people. And you wouldn’t see the kind of diverse patient groups that were there because they just didn’t want to engage at that point. And again, that kind of the back of my mind made me think, right, I need to change this, something needs to change with healthcare that has a long term benefit for engaging everybody. And I worked there for three years. I loved my time in the NHS and just literally as the NHS does, it kind of grows, it changes. And I ended up being asked to join one of the Publicis agencies, I know your ex Publicis, Jenny. And that was particularly interesting to work with those guys for about eight, nine months on fertility and IVF before getting headhunted to go into a management consultancy. This is a consultancy no-one’s ever heard of called Cognizant who are multi billion pound consultancy, started off as the old Dun and Bradstreet agency from the 80s and 90s. And effectively what they do, they work across many markets and healthcare was one of the markets. And they were setting up a European Life Sciences agency called Kadian. And I was person number two in there with my limited experience asked to expand that business, which effectively was digital consultancy, and worked there for four or five years before coming on to earthware, which I’ve been at now for just over a year, absolutely loving the kind of variety and I’ve gone from Cognizant, which has got 10,000 employees ish, down to an agency where we literally know each other, we’ve kind of 34-35 people, agile lighter foot really getting in and really making a difference in terms of digital healthcare and giving access to patients to clinicians, and working with some really cool clients, funnily enough, total synergy with ultra rare cancers and things like that, totally by chance. That’s kind of the career path.
Jenny 11:34
Well, first of all, Richard, I’m so sorry to hear about your mum. And that is an incredible story that that has driven you to do what you do now. And I think that it really comes across, your passion always comes across every time we have an interaction. Now I understand why. And I didn’t really know your background and story. But I think that’s phenomenal. And actually, interestingly, just a slight side note, I was talking to a global procurement person for a huge pharmaceutical company. And they said, we were talking about the pitching process, you can tell when some when an agency person comes in, that has a private story that they connect to what they’re doing, that you can see in their eyes, and the passion comes through. And for us, we love it. So I think it’s phenomenal. So incredible, thank you so much for explaining. I would love to ask you, because obviously, your background tells me that you had loads and loads of client contacts. And when we met, I mean, you just connected with me so quickly, I felt like I’ve known you for ages. And this is what I found with people in account management on on the kind of managerial side, they’re just natural communicators, which obviously you are. So let’s start talking about account management, because I’d love to get your views on this because you are so experienced. What in your view is, is the value of the account management role, both for the client and the agency.
Richard 12:58
So that’s a really interesting question and probably one that as a leadership team at earthware, where we speak a lot around, not only from our own perspective, but what clients need and value from from their perspective. I think from a client perspective, a really good accountant person will be totally independent. And I think that’s really important. So they’re not seen as just exploring the borders of their own agency and their own agency’s services. The whole thing about having a really meaningful client relationship is is mutually beneficial. So there are times whereby the agency that I’m working for at the time may not be best suited to do a particular challenge that the clients got. And I think, for me, the real secret sauce with a good account person is to say, look, this isn’t for us but I actually do know somebody that I think you’re really going to get on with. And the reason is because they offer XYZ and the benefits are ABC. So I think
the real importance is to realise that you can’t be everything to every person. And I think that’s a real shift from when I started in industry where it was just promise everything will sort it out behind the scenes. In terms of an agency perspective, the real benefit, I think to being a good account manager is that you’re expected to kind of become the expert, certainly within your own therapy area. So when you look at the huge amount of conditions that are within life sciences, there’s no way that if I’m looking for an ultra rare disease account person that I will find somebody that has dealt with so I mean, one of our clients has got, they just diagnosed 2000 patients a year in the whole of Europe. So there’s no way that that account person is going to put that particular skill on their CV. So what we’re looking for with the account person, actually within earthware is to become that expert, so that they can then speak to their clients around what’s happening with their competitors, what’s actually happening within the regulatory stuff. And it’s really about understanding the environment and beginning to signpost to them what’s coming over the hill? And that’s the real kind of value that lifts somebody beyond the order taker, I think.
Jenny 15:30
Do you think what stops, because you’ve mentioned a couple of things here, that is, to a certain extent, out of the account managers hands. One is positioning of the agency, if an account manager has, as you say, quite rightly, you know, guides to the client builds that trust by saying, actually, we’re not the ones for you but we know who can. It also depends on the philosophy of the agency doesn’t it from a leadership perspective, are we well defined and also, what’s our approach to new business? And then secondly of all, if we want to become an expert in a space, in a particular therapy area, for example, you have to again, be assigned the right accounts as an account manager. I’m just thinking, from your perspective, because you’ve been through, you know, like, I have the whole career journey.
Richard 16:24
Experienced!
Jenny 16:27
Exactly, that’s the word I was looking for. You know, sometimes some of these decisions are out of your hands. And then you end up with, I’m sounding a bit negative, but you end up with the consequences. I don’t have time and the bandwidth to get good at this specialism because I don’t have the time, I’m just in this delivery mode, etc. So there’s a certain amount of responsibility, that’s what I’m saying. Do you agree?
Richard 16:53
There is. What I encourage everybody that starts on a new therapy area is to begin to understand, what that external area looks like, what that whole environment looks like. So speaking specifically about healthcare, there are a certain amount of Congresses that happen each year normally two, find out what your Congress is and find out what was spoken about last year, because that’s probably going to set the benchmark of what’s being discussed for the next 12 months, then find out who the media are within your sector, who the main two, three titles are, just set up a newsletter subscription. Whether you do that daily, weekly, whatever. I have three or four newsletters that ping into my inbox each morning, I probably don’t read one of them most mornings. But occasionally I’ll see something on a headline and think actually that’s quite interesting. And you’ll be amazed by osmosis over a period of time, how quickly you can pick up very, very quick information. And then you’ve got a quick bit of LinkedIn research, just find two or three influencers and begin to follow them. And you will be absolutely amazed how quickly you can find information, whatever sector you’re in, whether you’re building cars, as an engineer, whether you’re building homes, whatever, you will find something, somewhere out there in the internet, whereby you can just begin very simply to get information and access it very quickly.
Jenny 18:33
You know, I think this is such a good tip for people that are perhaps you’re listening and thinking, where do I start. There’s some fantastic tips, because you do, I think sometimes you get so bogged down with what you’re doing, the delivery of the project, that you forget to look at the external perspective. And I certainly myself, wish I’d done more of that, and someone had guided me a little bit to always make it mandatory, because it would have benefited me so much more. When you’re sitting in front of your client, you want to understand their environment, the market, the competitors, what’s happening in the company. And also for those that are continual learners like you and I know, we both are very interested in personal development and there’s never going to be enough hours in the day for me to learn what I want to learn. So that’s great advice. And I would love to dive in to your point about working for a management consultancy. You and I’ve had a discussion about this, but tell me what threat you think the management consultancy groups pose for maybe independent agencies or agencies that don’t have haven’t been bought out by a group? What’s your view on the landscape?
Richard 19:49
Just to really clarify management consultancies,
I worked for Cognizant. These are the people like Ernst Young. Deloitte, Tata. all the other Management type consultancies. And what they tend to do, they tend to work across many verticals, as they call it, of which Life Sciences tends to be one. So they’ll work in banking and entertainment and that type of thing. And they’re usually kind of centred around region. So you’ll have EU, US and Asia Pacific. So these guys are a huge threat these days to agencies. And the worrying thing is, a lot of people may not even realise this. And the reason being, what’s happened is that traditionally started off with a kind of big IT projects. So if you need a CRM system, or an email system, these guys would specify and work with particular clients to put them in. And they have a process that they call ‘land and expand’. And ‘land and expand’ basically, is, we’re going to go into a client, and we’re going to do one project. But whilst we’re in doing that project, what we’re actually going to do is source new business while we’re in there.
And if someone’s putting in, I’m just pulling this as an example, if someone’s putting in a brand new email system, the add ons to that tend to be, let’s look at an email strategy for this particular market. Let’s look at a creative strategy that will drive people from email to the website. And suddenly what you end up doing is beginning to look at through ‘land and expand’ the series of connectors that will take people through different projects. And what’s happened with these big agencies, these big consultancies, is they found they didn’t have the expertise, certainly within Life Sciences. So they would not get in front of the brand person or the market access person, because we’re very much viewed as IT. So what they ended up doing about 7,8,9 years ago was beginning to procure small specialist agencies. And what they would do if somebody had a particular need in a niche, like doing a strategy for a new drug that’s being launched. What they could actually do with their purchases, is bring someone in from that agency that could talk to procurement and could talk to the brand manager and the technology officer in life science speak. So suddenly, they’re bringing in the expertise and getting people being able to talk to their chief technology officer, and procurement as well as the brand manager. So the person that’s actually making decision on agencies to appoint they’re actually able to have those people talk to their agency lead on a life science, one to one type of approach. So it’s incredibly proactive what they’ve done with their sort of procurement process. And then what they’ve ended up doing as well, if there is a multi agency approach, so they can end up having three or four different agencies they have bought coming in to shore up one solution, what that can actually mean, as well as for the big ticket projects, because they’re being put between the different agencies, they then don’t actually have to go to the tender process. So they can quite often be seen as being below the certain value, they’re just a portion in 25%, with each agency to make it easier. So if you’re not even being invited to the table to put forward a solution, then that’s obviously a massive, massive dent in new business.
Jenny 24:13
I was just going to say, do you think that traditional agencies are not used to this more commercial view of landing a new client and then strategically placing themselves as a land and extend and expand kind of approach? Do you think that they’re just a lot more proficient with their kind of way of developing business and that’s why they are threat to the current agencies?
Richard 24:37
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I’ve been on a call with a colleague where and I’m not even sure we should have been invited. I think the client invited us in by mistake. It was when I wasn’t working on the management consultancy side. And I actually game played with my colleague beforehand what questions would have been asked through this process and I know because I’ve done it. I’ve been on that side. So I was able to gameplay and what they were doing was beginning to understand where future demand would be. So the kind of projects that people were looking to bring in 12 months, 24 months down the line, but then also looking at where the gaps are with current suppliers and then look into fill those gaps. So it’s a really interesting kind of approach in terms of looking at new business that they’re looking to three years down the line, whereas the traditional agency model is you might have a relationship with someone but suddenly you’ll get a request for information, and it is kind of very much the here and now. If you ask majority of agencies, what new business are you going to be doing in six months time, they have no idea because it’s all reactionary, whereas these guys are able to look further out. And again, just one real USP that they have is the fact that they have what they call a client partner at every site, they pay for a person to be on site of the major players. This person really kind of quarterbacks, any client queries, questions, new business opportunities, anything like that. And it’s their role to identify, okay, this particular client has this issue. And therefore, let’s just see if we can fit some of the agency’s services into that. So that client partner is really, really key. And they’re highly visible, throughout all the pharma offices throughout world, you know, and every management consultancy will have that.
Jenny 26:39
I think this is so interesting. And I hope that the agency leaders are thinking about this, because,is it in your opinion, because the agencies don’t have the skills or the commercial acumen to operate in a way that the management consultancies do? Or do you think there’s still everything to play for and that they are really, they need to be aware of how these management consultancies operate, so that they can then be a lot more proactive with the development of that client business?
Richard 27:09
Yeah, I think interestingly, there’s a lot of non awareness around the kind of agency well, that the RFP and tender model has existed, you know, since Noah was a lad. And, you know, everyone expects that if you own a business, or you’re an agency lead, you know the process that it’s going to come through. And it doesn’t change whether you’re, you know, working for one of the big network agencies, or whether you’re working for a small agency, the way that these guys operate, they operate at scale. And what they are effective at doing is identifying an opportunity and then really expanding it. It’s almost like water that goes into a crack on a rock. And over a period of time, it freezes and gets bigger. And that’s effectively what they’re trying to do. They’re trying to leverage their learning and their activity. And at the end of the day, if they can stop a job going to a tender process, then they’ve succeeded. It’s a bit like, and we both listen to him in the 2 Bob’s podcast, but you’ve got Blair Enns, who talks about, if you can take the tender process out of a pricing discussion, then you’re eight tenths there you’ve already won. Because what that means is you’re having that one on one conversation with procurement.
Jenny 28:27
I mean, let’s not also forget, though, that those management consultancies are actually because of their ability to plan so far in the future, they’re looking to add value to the client business. A client, it’s only going to gain isn’t it? So, that’s the other thing to consider. I mean, since you work for the management consultancy, which had I mean, subsequently to that, obviously, the management consultancies, like Accenture have been the most acquisitive, haven’t they so they’ve been buying up loads of different creative agencies. Do you have any insight into what’s happening within those walls, because now they’ve boughtthe knowledge, the expertise, they can speed, the client language, they’ve got everything, really, to set them up for success to open so many more doors?
Richard 29:13
Exactly right. So what they ended up doing is looking at the geographies that each of the agencies serve. So for example, the agency that I worked for within Cognizant had really strong North American footprint, and quite a rich heritage actually been going for about 20 years, really well known. Outside of the US, even as far as Canada totally not known at all because they worked within that regulatory framework. So there’s two options at that point. If you want to come into the EU, do you buy another agency to give you that access, or do you grow your existing agency across and at the time the decision was made to grow the agency across, which is obviously more organic it’s sort of slower going. But I think at the time, in terms of that digital consultancy that we had at that time, was reasonably unique within healthcare, I could probably think of three or four other agencies that were were doing really kind of cutting edge stuff that Cognizant were looking to. So it was easier to actually grow that element to it. But it’s very much a long term view with this. I was given as a kind of new business, and I’m using that term loosely because I was second person into the business. So we were both really responsible for it. We were given a hiatus for about 12-18 months to say, okay, we’re not worried at this point, in terms of what business you bring in, we’re almost in an awareness phase here, because you’ve got no heritage over here in the EU, you’ve got no clients, no work. And I was aware, very much that sort of when I’m speaking to clients, I’m speaking on it from a US lens, which from an EU perspective is kind of very, very different, certainly in healthcare with all the regulatory frameworks. So, again, management consultancies are able to do that, as a new business person within an agency, I don’t think I’ve ever heard of anyone getting a 12-18 months window, it doesn’t happen.
Jenny 31:27
That’s so true. So just before we leave this subject, because I think this is really interesting for everyone, just from a market perspective or competitor marketing perspective, where do you think independent agencies do have the advantage? Because you’ve seen both sides of the fence? Where do you think we do have the advantage now? How would you suggest that people play it when they know that they’re what you’ve just described is happening?
Richard 31:57
So I think that the big advantage for agencies is to explore your niche, every agency exists, because they’re good at something not good at everything. And what these big management consultancies are about is really throwing mud until it sticks. So there are questions with some of the outputs around quality.
The advantage of management consultancies are to give you an idea, that one particular launch, and we had the ‘chase the sun’ model. So the client was actually based in Germany. And what would happen with the digital development was that the work that was going on for that client in Barcelona, when that office finished, it was handed off to the west coast for the day, so they could carry on, coding and doing their ones and zeros, and whatever it is, that the great work that coders do, and then they were handing it off to Asia. So by the time I came back in the morning, we would effectively be working on it 24 hours a day, and that’s the reality of the global marketplace that we’re in.
But what the large consultancies can’t compete on is the quality aspect. So if I think about some of the services that I plugged into global social listening, a lot of people that listen to this will understand social listening. And we had a very specific requirement around that around some of the technical medical terms, and it just was not feasibly possible with this model, to get somebody on social media that understood that. So somebody within an agency that is working within that sort of framework, understanding the whole treatment path will be able to talk to the client around terminology in SEO and things like that. The management consultants wouldn’t so what I would say to every agency owner, explore your niche, break it down into what you’re good at, and do more of it, because they won’t be able to do it on a level that you are.
Jenny 34:14
Such sound advice, go deep, go narrow, go experts, because then you become even more valuable, don’t you? Fantastic advice. Richard, I know you’re like me, a perpetual learner. And I know that you just absorb, you read so many different books , we swap book notes. Tell me if you can distil it because I be really interested to get your golden nuggets of wisdom that you’ve learned that someone listening in the account management role would benefit from. Can you give us your top five things that you’ve learned in your career which have been the most helpful?
Richard 34:49
Yeah, sure. So I think the big thing for me, I’m terribly early riser, I just don’t sleep drives my wife insane. But I basically show up every day in terms of work, and I know that I need to get real quality stuff done early. So that for me is is genuinely a big thing, quality work for the day where I’m really get into sort of mission critical stuff, think about on your own terms, when do I work best rearrange your calendar around that. Some people are night people, that’s great, no problem with that just make sure that, you have capacity in time to be able to do that. I think the big thing as well, that stood out for me, I realised very early on account management is it’s a bit like a pyramid, that’s the best way that I describe it, and you have that each of the points, you’ve got qualifications, you’ve got experience, and you’ve got insight that forms the base. And then at the very top, you’ve got stand out, and that makes the perfect kind of account person. So for me, in terms of each of those points it’s copyrighted, by the way, Jenny, not allowed to use it, any of those points, every account person, in fact probably everybody in an agency has got weaknesses, we all have weaknesses, and it’s about identifying what weakness on those four points it is, and then really beginning to bolster it. So for me, I don’t, I genuinely don’t have any medical training or background. So a lot for me is around ongoing training, and absorbing myself in that medical sphere, because I realised that for me, probably isn’t where I’m going to be on a par with somebody that’s come out of university with a bio science degree. So just be aware of yourself, and think about qualifications, experience, or insight can offer insight in my therapy area, or whichever agency that you’re in, and then on top, do I stand out to my client? How do I make a difference to my client, and the way that you may make a difference is, just look outside. So the big thing for me, I’d like to say, I do learn a lot, I try and look outside of health care. There’s a lot of lessons outside. So when I’m on the exercise bike at ridiculous o’clock, trying to burn away the evening hours, the night owls and stuff. I’m on YouTube, and I’m trying to find learnings from all different types of sectors and business leaders and just reabsorb them, podcasts and things like that. That’s a big thing to me, that kind of understanding of self.
Jenny 37:43
Fantastic advice and great insight. Can you think of any examples where you’ve kind of looked at another industry and thought, it’s given you an idea for what you’re currently doing? I’m putting you on the spot a little bit here.
Richard 37:57
No that’s fine. So I think really, what’s quite cool at the moment is the social media type thing. So traditionally, what happens is healthcare and social media don’t mix. Because healthcare is so regulated, what you can and can’t say, and actually you who you can speak to and who you can’t, traditionally, they run away a little bit from social media, because anything goes viral, right, you just genuinely can’t control it. So what has been really interesting for me, I worked probably about two and a half years ago with a particular client’s product. And what the problem was doctors actually didn’t realise that it was this particular condition. And what it meant was, the patient went, I think, was about eight years without being diagnosed, it wasn’t anything big, you can live with this kind of day to day, what it did do, it actually meant that you had an unbelievable need to go to the toilet very, very quickly. So as a patient, actually suffering from this, it’s incredibly restricting, you couldn’t even pop out for a loaf of bread, because, you know, you just had to be somewhere. So imagine going eight years being like that you couldn’t go in long car journeys to see family or anything like that. And what we actually did was we came through a series of YouTube videos about the whole condition and we did a focus group beforehand, ran the campaign and the focus group afterwards. And the diagnosis period reduced incredibly, it went from eight years through to eight months, literally, that quickly. And it was all about bringing awareness up. Now, normally, the clients that we deal with just wouldn’t entertain anything at all on YouTube. It’s bad, but it’s kind of learning really other industries, what works?
Jenny 40:02
Love that example. So going to where the patients could possibly be and then bringing it to their attention? You and I don’t giggle anymore, do we, about health care stuff like not being able to go to the toilet, you know, sometimes when you talk to other people in non healthcare specific agencies, they giggle at all these medical conditions that we talk about on a daily basis. But this is really debilitating, isn’t it? For a bit of the population? And you just think, wow, can you imagine being part of that as well being part of actually genuinely helping someone to completely change their life I’m sure.
Richard 40:39
Yeah, I mean, they go effectively from being some type of hermit, you know, self imposed kind of restriction about, Oh, my God, I can’t do this, that and the other, and you just open a world of possibilities, and it’s through a channel that hasn’t really been explored too much. And again, it goes back to how I started, it’s having that positive effect and being able to see that effect. That’s why I love what I do. It just it makes a difference to so many people’s lives.
Jenny 41:08
It’s brilliant. And it’s very proactive, isn’t it? The fact that you took that external perspective, you saw what was working in another industry, you were challenging enough to come to your client with that idea, which I think is fantastic to think because you must have had some trust there with the client for them to have accepted it. Richard, I’m just conscious of time, but I desperate to ask you a few more questions, if you don’t mind. I want to ask you about the trends that you’re seeing in the medcomms industry specifically, you know, what are you seeing in terms of clients expectations, from their agencies, from their account management teams? Can you give us a flavour of what you’re seeing?
Richard 41:45
Yeah, so I think
when I started, back in the day, there was very much siloed thinking. So you had an agency that dealt with one thing. And what I mean by that was, you were either heavy science and your medical education, or you were medical promotion, because you know, the nice stuff with advertising and websites and that type of things, or you were promotion and events. And what’s happened over thelast two, three years is they’re all beginning to merg. Clients really now are beginning to see everything being interconnected. And part of that really is the sort of digital thinking that we do at earthware, where it’s beginning to connect all these dots that were so disparate so long ago, and say, Okay, what we can do now is begin to say, Yes, I may be doing some traffic activity, I may be asking a certain amount of doctors to go to this particular platform, but at that point, what is it we need them to do? Do we need them to go to an event or whatever. So there’s that element. We’ve then got a blur around with clients wanting to deal with separate agencies for each of them. So quite often, in the past, there would be kind of 3,4,5 agencies within the relationship. And that’s kind of becoming less standout, really.
And then I think the biggest is a lot of clients now, and quite rightly are asking to collaborate on the final, whatever it is the final campaign, the final activity that comes out, I think, way back in the day, we almost, we almost used to take the client brief go off for two weeks, come back and present it back, ta-dah! What do you think of this, and the good thing about earthware is we do a challenge, a four week challenge that we speak about. And what we do is we engage the client for one session over four weeks a bit like your Accelerator programme. And again, we’ve copyrighted four weeks. What we ended up doing with that really is beginning to explore the user personas, and the pain gains. And ultimately from that, what we do is, rather than have clients coming to us and say, we need a website, we start from the back end and work through. So rather than coming to us saying, I need a website, that’s the solution, right? Quite often, the client hasn’t thought about, what is it I’m trying to say? Who am I trying to say to and what do I want them to do? So the whole process is about turning that on its head. And quite often, that website that the client wants, probably isn’t the right solution for it. But again, working in collaboration, we can take them through, they sprinkle on their expertise and their therapy area. And we sprinkle on the user experience type elements that we do.
Jenny 44:42
I love that because it’s really actually saying to the client, rather than them self diagnosing and saying, look, this is the solution we need, just make it happen. Any advice for an account manager thinking, Oh, how could I have that potentially challenging conversation to think no, we’re not gonna actually do what you’ve asked us. We’re going to take you back a ste. What’s your, to be perceived as rather than an order taker, more of a trusted adviser, any advice for an account manager listening thinking I need to really have that kind of conversation with my client? And I know I’m not.
Richard 45:12
Yeah, this is the old topic mean, we always talk about trusted advisor? Yeah, so this is really interesting. I mean, what I would say is, it’s okay to be an order taker, if you’re new into the industry, you have to kind of get to know it. What I would say is, if you’re with your clients just there to kind of take a change to a headline, or a change to a message, then let’s say you’re actually on shaky ground. Okay? Because what’s happening is, the client really isn’t valuing what you can do, what they’re doing is actually buying what you do on price. And who’s to say, you know, you do it at 100 pounds? Who’s to say, agency B comes along and says, I’ll do it for 50? then where do you go? So that whole risky element of long term is mitigated by trust. So what I would say is, with your client, talk to them about what their future plans are. I know you’re big on this, Jenny, the QBR, the quarterly business review, talk to them about so we’re in 2021, we’ve got the final quarter coming up, what do you want to achieve for it? What do you want to do in 2022, to really get under the hood of your client, understand them. Set up all these alerts, like I said, about what events are happening, what the trends are happening in the sector, set up your Google Alerts, do whatever you need to do, become an expert. And don’t be frightened to approach your client and talk to them about so this is what’s happening within your sector. These are the trends that we’ve seen in the last three, four months. This is where we think it’s going. And this is how it impacts you. And then bolt onto the end of that, the old FOMO case, right? So you talk about and again, I know you’re massive on this, you talk about the status quo. So what do we do if you’re doing now the client what stays the same, this is where you’re likely to be in 12 months time. But if you take this additional route, this is going to be the uplift that you would expect. So that’s what I would say in terms of order takers, don’t be frightened to switch it around. At the end of the day, the client will value your conversations about what’s happening in their sector, their trade, their competitors, they will absorb it like a sponge, and suddenly you go from this supplier through to I wonder what Richard’s got to say about this? And you’ll be amazed how quickly it turns around, because it really does love it.
Jenny 47:41
Thank you so much, Richard and I recognise a lot of the things you’ve just mentioned there. So let me ask you, what inspires you Richard, can you share some sources that you go to to get inspired? What are you reading? What are you watching? What are you listening to that may be also useful for the audience listening?
Richard 48:06
Personally, I, going off piste a little bit, I always have a 10 year plan. So I’m not sure if we’ve discussed this or not. So from a personal level, pretty much from kind of my 30s, I’ve always had a 10 year plan about what I wanted to do. So 30 to 40, I wanted to learn as much as possible but that was a bit of a cultural thing. And then 40 to 50. I decided, you know what, I want to become a Taekwondo black belt. Absolutely. Never done anything like that before. And now as I turned 50, I thought right, I’ve had enough of that. And I’m now kind of madly training for triathlon, with the aim of qualifying as a really kind of average age grouper for UK triathlon. So personally, I always set goals sort of personally, and they kind of drive me. It drives my wife mad. Professionally, I am an avid reader. I mean, looking around now I’ve got a great book about client services, Robert Solomon, about third read of that, I read that every three, four years. Great tip for anyone starting in the industry, about 50 odd tips in there. I always pick something up from that. Podcasts, I love 2 Bobs. I love David C. Baker. I know you’ve had him on. Cantankerous old man, I love him. If you work in agencies, you have to listen to 2 Bobs not every episode will hit the sweet spot with you. But they’re great in terms of looking at things I’ve spoken about, how to deal with creative how to deal with pricing policy, you know, all that type of stuff and Blair Enns is great. And then I’ve got the usual kind of podcasts, Marketing Over Coffee and Sweathead, and then I’ve just find it trying to find people on LinkedIn and YouTube. So I mean, my big influences, because of my marketing background are people like Seth Godin, I absolutely love and, Simon Sinek which I think everybody knows him out now, but he’s still putting out some amazing stuff. And then, on LinkedIn people that I’ve networked with for 10-15 years in companies, I follow people like Gary Monk, and Frank Comely and people like that. So I try and have a learning touch point most days, whether I’m on an exercise bike or running a crazy distance or get a podcast on headphones, or read or commuting somewhere. I think the main thing I would say to anybody, find what works for you. And just explore it. Just keep learning. The more you learn, the more you learn, I promise you.
Jenny 50:55
The more you earn as well, I think that’s another saying, isn’t it? Thank you for sharing all those tips. They’re fantastic tips. I really appreciate it. Tell me who would you like to be contacted by? And how can people reach you?
Richard 51:08
So people can reach me on LinkedIn? Richard Long or I think the URL is Richard B Long, my middle name’s Blair which is probably why I like the 2Bobs. So much I’ve learned. In terms of people to contact me, really anybody that works within healthcare, that genuinely in terms of my passion, my goal is about giving people access to the health care that they deserve. So I’m happy to speak with like minded people to talk through any challenges or anything that they have, so feel free.
Jenny 51:48
Fantastic. Thank you so much, Richard. This has been amazing. I appreciate your time. Thanks for sharing so many golden nuggets of wisdom and insight. This has been an absolute pleasure.
Richard 51:57
No problem anytime.
