Dorothy Gemmell, Chief Commercial Officer at GoodRx, discusses two powerful and practical opportunities in pharma marketing today: personalization and partnerships. Using data and digital platforms to deliver more tailored messages to patients and healthcare providers, marketers can increase engagement and action. Aggregated patient journey data enable marketers to support patients across the health journey, engaging, educating, and assisting them in accessing and adhering to their prescribed medications. Additionally, new types of partnerships between pharmaceutical companies and pharmacies, digital health platforms, and consumer brands bring new viewpoints to better understand a patient’s unique experience. GoodRx contributes to pharma brands’ successes by deeply understanding the patient-provider journey, bridging the communications gap between patients and providers, and acting as a conduit for pharma brands to engage with and activate patients effectively.
Michele Benz:
Hi, my name's Michelle Benz, content director at Fierce Pharma. I'm here with Dorothy Gemmell from GoodRx. Before we begin, can you tell us about your role at GoodRx?
Dorothy Gemmell:
Sure. I joined in July ago as the chief commercial officer of GoodRx for our Manufacturer Solutions business. Really excited to be part of the team and also to be talking to you today.
What are the most exciting opportunities for enhancement in pharma marketing today?
Dorothy Gemmell:
I'm going to pick two things. The first is personalization and the second is partnerships. I think as someone who's been in and around the pharmaceutical industry for a long time; I spent the first 10 years of my career in pharma, and then the last 20 years working with pharmas as my clients, mainly from a digital health perspective.
I think the idea of personalization is finally upon us. The use of data, the use of more sophisticated platforms in order to help bring a message forward to consumers and providers is something really important. We've been waiting a long time and it's finally here. And the second thing I think is around partnerships. I think we're seeing more and more innovative partnerships that pharma is taking with everything from lab companies to pharmacies, to digital healthcare platforms, to other consumer brands, or even digital therapeutics as well. It's just a very different time than when I started in the industry.
Michele Benz:
In what ways are digital capabilities enabling pharma companies to personalize and impact the customer experience?
Dorothy Gemmell:
Pharma has always been pretty good at documenting and focusing on the patient journey and really researching and understanding the pain points of their patients, right?
So, if it's a multiple sclerosis patient or it's a cardiac patient, an acute medication, or a specialty medication, I think that data has made those patient journeys even more detailed, which is now enabling pharma to weather through partnerships. And like you said, personalization is really inserting themselves or their trusted partners into the pain points of their patients in order to help educate them in order to help engage them, in order to help them get on medication, and then more importantly, stay on medication and live their lives in a better way.
Michele Benz:
Now, Dorothy, you've had an illustrious career with a lot of different jobs, and you gained a deep perspective of the industry, and you recently joined GoodRx, as you mentioned. So, can you tell us what attracted you to GoodRx and what you intend to contribute to its ongoing success?
Dorothy Gemmell:
I don't know if it was illustrious, but it's been fabulous and fun, and I hope that I’ve had an impact in the industry. To me, GoodRx brings together some things that are really important to me.
I'm really excited to work for a really recognized and trusted brand. Before we started recording, you said “I love GoodRx.” It's a great feeling when you talk to a friend or you go to a cocktail party and you say, “GoodRx people have great personal stories, but they also share brand love. They're excited to tell you about their GoodRx story.” So, for me, the trusted brand, the second thing was the people in the culture. GoodRx is 10 years old. It's a public company, but its roots are in California. Its roots are also in the idea of a very mission-driven culture with really, really smart people who are focused not only on delivering a great product, but it's also the underlying tech that they've built as well. So, it's the brand, the people, the product. And as far as the opportunity, I'm excited to join because I see that GoodRx is in a place where they have developed products and solutions that not only help pharma with reaching a consumer at critical times and helping them fill and refill their medications through affordability, but also the provider side.
A year and a half ago GoodRx realized that sure, doctors use and trust GoodRx, but they're using it at a moment where they're looking up how to help a patient afford a medication. It's not about education, it's not about content per se. They're looking up brand affordability––is it better at CVS or Walgreens? That is to me, really exciting and I hope to help GoodRx bring pharma into that moment because it's very unique in our industry that the patient and the provider both have brand love and brand recognition for the same thing, and that's GoodRx.
So, whether it's in that doctor's office, whether it's at the pharmacy counter, whether it's just online or in their app, to me that is something really valuable, and I look forward to helping pharmaceutical companies and their retail and specialty brands engage really responsibly and helpfully in that moment.
Michele Benz:
Can you give me an example of how GoodRx contributes to a pharma brand success?
Dorothy Gemmell:
We talk about ourselves as being one of the most accountable marketing partners to pharma, because our core platform is actually surfacing drug savings and affordability. We are at the ‘finish line.’ Pharma spends billions of dollars on educating and engaging healthcare professionals, as well as creating awareness for their brands with consumers. At the time they get to GoodRx and they're looking up their brand for affordability, they're at that finish line. So, there is an opportunity to surface manufacturers’ copay cards, specialty drug patient support programs, hub services, and all the things that help get that patient over the finish line to fill or refill their medication. We sit at that unique point for the programs we have done with 19 of the 20 top pharma companies and many smaller companies for both retail and specialty brands.
The nice thing is we can go all the way to the claim because we know if someone's redeemed the coupon, we know they filled the prescription. And combine that with our media solutions and other things that our pharma and agency partners can track through third parties and trusted sources. They know that our programs have proven performance, especially that far along the patient's journey. For most brands, the most important thing is that the patient gets the prescription.
Michele Benz:
It's all about access.
Dorothy Gemmell:
You're right.
Michele Benz:
We mostly know GoodRx as a platform that serves customers and more recently providers. What can GoodRx do for pharma companies?
Dorothy Gemmell:
As we talked about, most pharma companies’ budgets are spent early in the conversion process, whether it's their sales forces, advertising, promotion, education, and thought leadership. These tactics encourage, engage, and educate physicians to choose their medication for the right patients.
And consumer advertising prompts that patient to go in and ask the doctor for the medication. In most cases, I believe there's a huge opportunity to enable pharma to message with their proven messaging, their education, their services and other things to help that patient convert, whether they're a specialty or retail drug.
Michele Benz:
As we know, the use of specialty treatments continues to grow, particularly for chronic conditions. How does GoodRx help specialty brands reach patients who need them the most?
Dorothy Gemmell:
When we talk to a pharmaceutical manufacturer about GoodRx there's a lot of education on our part that has to happen. First, everybody thinks GoodRx is for people that don't have insurance. In fact, 75% of people that use GoodRx have insurance, but they often find a better price on GoodRx better than through their insurance.
Second, they're not sure the status of the patients. Eighty percent of the patients either have a new prescription or have a refill, and they're coming to us to find affordability options. So, for most specialty brands, we are in the process of completely changing the patient experience because we learned that specialty patients come to GoodRx because they trust us for all the other medications they take, right? They're acute medications, they're generic, they're brand medications, and their early experience with a specialty medicine wasn't so great when they came to GoodRx. They may see an out-of-pocket price of $4,000, and we saw that many patients actually left. It was a negative impact on GoodRx. So, we're completely redesigning the specialty drug pages to help educate patients around ‘What's a specialty pharmacy?’ and ‘What is a specialty drug?’ What's this thing they hear about all the time that their doctor has to do—a prior authorization?
And what we're allowing pharmaceutical brands to do is now surface their services which could be hubs or patient assistance programs. So, it'll look and feel a little different than your typical retail drug experience on GoodRx. But there's a tremendous opportunity because these patients come to GoodRx in droves looking for help, and it's a perfect opportunity to find these patients—who sometimes are very hard for pharmaceutical companies to find—and engage with them at that moment when they're trying to fill or refill a medication.
Michele Benz:
Thank you so much for sharing your insights and your perspective. I really appreciated learning from you.
Dorothy Gemmell:
Thanks for including GoodRx in this interview series.