July 16, 2025 • 50 mins
In this SCORRCAST episode, Elizabeth Chabe of High Touch Group shares how life science brands can break free from the creative 'safe zone.' Learn how constraint drives innovation, why bold design matters, and how to turn strategy into standout storytelling.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Helloeveryone, and welcome to another
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episode of the SCORR cast. I amyour host, Alec McChesney, and I
am very excited for today'sepisode. Before I even get into
that, I just have to say I'mrecording this a week or so
after bio. This is coming outabout three weeks post bio, and
even post dia. And there was alot of optimism on the show
floor at bio. I've had a lot ofoutreach in the last couple of
(00:36):
days about, you know, theindustry as a whole, what we're
seeing from a trendsperspective, and then certainly,
how does marketing play a rolein that? And I know I have gone
on a handful of tangents, and Imight go on a tangent today as
part of this podcast episodeabout the value proposition,
about the big idea, about beingable to have a clear story as
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part of your marketing. And soif you were at bio or you didn't
end up attending the show inBoston and want to connect on
the show, please reach out. I'dbe happy to have that
conversation. It seems likethat's a show that continues to
grow, and had a really niceperformance in 2024 and
certainly another greatperformance in 2025 with that
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being said, I am so excited fortoday's episode, because I have
essentially become kind of likethe number one fan, I think, of
today's guest, who is the authorof the giants ladder. And
Elizabeth, I'm gonna have youintroduce yourself here in a
second. But I just have to say,a a couple months back, I was
going through and adding a wholebunch to my to be read list, and
(01:44):
I added a couple of ABM books,and added a couple of sales
books, and then I stumbled uponthe Giants ladder. Bought it
about two minutes later, andthen read it about 15 minutes
after I got it, and wasinstantly consumed with the
topic that you were sopassionate about, and really
building this playbook forscience, Innovation, Science
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marketing, and then being ableto tell this story, and then
I've listened to you on ahandful of podcasts, and just
the way that you speak about theclarity that's needed from a
Marketing and positioning andmessaging standpoint, and the
impact that that's going to haveon your marketing. Frankly, it
fires me up and has me ready torun through a brick wall. And I
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know that anybody that'slistening to the SCORR cast and
has been listening for the lastyear, this is what they are most
interested in, as well, is howdo we market really complex
topics within the life sciences,and how do we do that in a way
that can be effective to theshareholders, but also effective
to the target audience? So thankyou, Elizabeth for making time
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for us today. And before I startrunning and asking you
questions, I'd love for you tojust give a little background
and introduction to yourself,and then we can jump in from
there. Thanks, Alec, these aresuch nice words, and I'm
incredibly flattered, and thanksso much for having me on the
show. I'm excited to be here. Ithink probably, you know, I can
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start this in a lot of differentways, but I think the most
succinct way to describe thework that I do and my team at
high touch is that we build thestrategies behind science that
changes the world. So frombiotech to space tech, our work
involves taking thebreakthroughs that others have
developed that could shape thenext century and making sure
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that they don't die in a pitchdeck or a grant proposal. I run
high touch group each day. Andthere we're really working
towards engineering marketdominance for serious science
companies. We look for companiesthat have innovations that save
lives, power cities, or have thepotential to redefine
industries. And we're here tomake sure the world knows it
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buys it and builds on it.
I love it. You said succinct,and we're going to talk about
messaging and how to take thatcomplex science and be able to
boil it down. And I feel likeyou did just a fantastic job
with high touch and yourbackground. I am curious. I
learned a little bit about thison a previous podcast of yours,
and then a little bit within theGiants ladder. But can you talk
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a little bit on the backgroundof the intersection of of
science and marketing? I thinkit's a really interesting topic.
And I know high touch group doesa little bit outside of of the
life sciences as well. So wouldlove to hear that. But I think
when I interview people on thisshow, it's so interesting
hearing how you got your startwithin the life sciences. And a
lot of people just kind of fellinto it, and then realized, wow,
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there's a huge impact that canbe made here. I want to stay in
this industry. I want tocontinue to tell these stories.
Is that kind of what happenedwith you? And can you walk us
through that intersectionbetween science and marketing
here? Sure, so my certain.
Sciences was at the JacksonLaboratory, which is
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a genetics organization that hashoused the research of numerous
Nobel laureates, Nobel Prizewinners. They're doing such
interesting work at their BarHarbor campus in Connecticut and
in Sacramento, California, andthat was really my first foray
into the life sciences. Prior tothat, I worked primarily on the
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R and D program management sideand the communication side of
other types of science programs,specifically climate tech, some
nano composites applied tostructural applications and
transportation, forceprotection, defense, aerospace,
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space tech and so on. So Iworked closely with Office of
Naval Research, NASA, Departmentof Transportation, Department of
Energy, national labs across thecountry, like Sandia, PNL and so
on. And so I had a lot ofexperience working on all of
these completely different typesof projects, basically from an R
D perspective. And so often whatI saw this was an academia by
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the way, I saw these incredibleprojects that could have turned
into products die because theywere too far along for
additional research fundingthrough the Office of Naval
Research, for example, but theydidn't really have a business
plan or a funding model or anysort of commercialization
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strategy in place in order tospin out of academia and truly
commercialize theirtechnologies. So that was really
the first time that I came faceto face with, wow, so much stuff
is getting patented, but thosepatents sit on the shelf at
academic institutions andnational labs around the
country, around the world,really, because of that gap. So
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technology transfer officesexist, and I worked very closely
with one, in particular at theUniversity of Maine, to help
translate some of theseinnovations into viable
companies. Get them their firstSBIR STTR funding, get their
early stage funding, so maybethey're at the pre seed or the
seed stage at this point, andget them out of the lab and into
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something, an incubatorsomewhere. So did that for a
number of years, and loved it.
Then I went to work at theJackson Laboratory on strategic
programs and helped launch thefirst commercial CRISPR program.
This was essentially at thetime. It was when there was
still the IP battle going on.
Who invented CRISPR? Who ownedit? Right? So there was in a lot
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of people thought that CRISPRwas just going to be a loss
leader for mouse model or otherin vivo model breeding services.
And that was sort of what theold guard thought they were
like, who, what pharma companyis going to care if they can get
these models sooner? And therewere a couple of us who were
saying, biotechs, biotechs. Youknow, this was 15 years ago, and
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biotechs were just sort ofstarting to be this really
exciting thing that a lot ofthese older guard research
institutions hadn't quite caughtup yet. And so we had this
really exciting initiative tolaunch this first CRISPR program
commercially in the US and thenlater around the world. And that
just brought even more clarityaround this idea that it doesn't
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matter whether you are ascientist who was not trained on
these commercialization aspects,and you might not even be
thinking, oh, I need to dosomething with this IP nor does
it matter if you are the toptier at a research organization
or Research Institute. You couldbe lauded have all these Nobel
laureates coming out and NobelPrize winners coming out of your
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organization, but still not beable to successfully
commercialize technology. Andsomething clicked, really for me
around that time, when it wasjust so clear that this was a
massive problem. And so anyway,I had brought a T I had, I had
had this team with me at theUniversity of Maine, where I was
doing all of this work there. Ibrought a good subset of that
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team over with me to the JacksonLaboratory, and then I brought
them with me to high touch, andI said, Come on, guys, let's go.
Let's, let's figure this out.
And so we spent the last, yeah,I don't know, 12 years, 10
years, something like that,essentially working with a
subset of companies that wetypically hand pick. We're
looking for that next gentechnology and med tech,
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diagnostics, life sciences, kindof more broadly, as well as in a
couple of other key areas, likenext generation materials,
robotics, space tech, and we'vewe help get them funded, we help
get this IP commercialized, wehelp get them their first bits
of traction, customers and soon, and then nurture them
towards acquisition, or maybethey're at their series B or C
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at that stage. You know, afterthat point, they don't need us
anymore. They should have theirown internal team.
Usually we help them build rightbut very often, you know, we're
with them through Series B orbig acquisition, or we work also
with a lot of VCs and privateequity on their portfolio
management. So sometimes we'rekind of in there a little longer
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now, but that's essentially whatwe do. I love it. And you talked
about this in your in yourinitial intro to it, just in
terms of the science that is atthe table here. And then you
have to have the story that thatgoes with it. And it seems like
that for you is a reallyimportant piece of the puzzle.
It's an important piece for usat SCORR, but something that I
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rant about all the time, whichis, if you don't have a story
that is, you know, effectivelyarticulated in the market,
you're going to lose out. And Ithink that one of the fun
challenges that we have is thatnot everybody within the
industry sees that as animportant piece of the puzzle
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early on. And I, you know, Ithink the argument on our side
is that it's a foundationalelement to how we strive
forward. And so I think, for inyour mind, when you start this
out and you identify, you know,you said you hand pick a handful
of these companies, how are youWhere are you starting? Where do
you start? In terms of, okay, wehave this brilliant science, we
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have this innovation, we havethis piece of the puzzle that
that could make a really bigimpact, and we have to move
forward. What are thoseabsolute, you know, non
negotiables, from an insight,from a planning perspective, to
have that story line up with thescience and then move into that
commercial perspective, sure,sure. So do you know anything
about how boy bands in the 90swere put together. There are so
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many questions I thought youwere going to ask me there,
and I I did not expect that, andI'm going to have to answer no.
I think I might know, but like,right off the top of my head,
now I'm nervous, and so I wantyou to just tell me, or I don't
know if you have a bunch of likeGen Z listeners who are into k
pop, but essentially, all ofthese bands, they're, they're
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commercial projects, right? So,and actually, when you think
about any bands that iscommercially famous, they are,
they are businesses. You know,they are run like businesses.
They have a brand. They have,you know, merch behind them.
Every song is on brand, theproductions on brands, right? So
with these boy bands in the 90s,like Boys to Men and sing all
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these things, or k pop bandsnow, you know, music executives
basically said, I see somebodywith talent that's going to be
the anchor star for this groupof people who have come up
through the ranks of, like somekids show on Disney or what have
you, right? And that'sessentially where I got the idea
for, hey, there's all this IP onthe shelf, and nobody's doing
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anything with it, so let's bethe music executives putting
together these k pop bands,right? So, so I'm going to put
that kind of on the shelf for aminute, just because the way
that we start with that story,when we're kind of matchmaking a
little bit, is a little bitdifferent, right? Because there
we see the market, and we seewe're seeking out IP that can
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solve a problem that we know canbe commercialized with the right
group of people, right? Sothat's one way of doing it more
typically, and this is probablymore aligned with a lot of
agencies and, you know, internalmarketing teams that are your
listeners. You know you reallyhave to have product market fit,
yeah, and that can be difficultto determine the earlier a
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company or product is right. Soif it's a very early stage
company, or even a product thathas sometimes gotten a lot of
development in a large companywithout much validation, and
you're nodding your head, so Iknow you've been through a
couple of these. What happens isyou might have an internal
consensus on your team, thisproduct solves a problem for
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somebody, I had this problem,therefore it'll solve a problem.
But the reality is that veryoften you can ask a founder,
have you spoken with anycustomers? And they're like,
well, we don't have anycustomers yet. We're three years
out. You know, don't worry aboutit. Well, right? But have you
actually sat down andinterviewed 10 people who would
potentially buy your product,not friends, not advisors, and
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ask them what they're currentlydoing instead, what would make
them switch? What would a 10ximprovement actually look like?
And from there you can you canstart to see, okay, is this a
founder I should be takingseriously, or is this a founder
who has internally validated hisor her own idea for a product
and hasn't done this research,if they're willing to do the
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research. Great sometimes,though that and is that's kind
of a red flag for us, and that'stypically when we say, Okay,
well, we'll refer you tosomebody. Or here's a checklist
you can use, but we're probablynot the right match, but that's
number one. So has what, whatsort of validation has been
done? And you see this often inlarge companies, we do a lot of
work with.
Strategics in the diagnosticspace, and very often they're
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developing very expensiveproducts, but they haven't
actually said to clinicians,hey, how would this diagnosis
sooner, faster, better, withmore differentiation between
strains or variants? Would thathelp you? Would that change
standard of care? Would thatchange your next action for
patient care? And very often,the answer is no. Very often,
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these things get developed evenpretty far down R and D, without
those basic questions beinganswered. So that validation. It
doesn't need to be a $300,000you know, product positioning
market survey. It can be asking10 viable customers a handful of
questions for 15 minutes at ashow. And if you, if that hasn't
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been done, that's veryimportant, right? That basically
validates, like, does this evenmake sense? And then you really
get into crafting that productnarrative, which I think is a
little bit more aligned withyour question. And one of the,
one of the pushbacks we get alot from scientists, initially,
who are working with, we'reoften working with scientists,
founders or scientific leads,maybe of commercial teams in
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these larger companies. They areunder the impression that
scientific storytelling in amarketing context is some level
of dumbing it down. Right? I'msure you see this, but it's
really not about dumbing itdown, right? It's about cons.
It's about providing context forvery specific audience segments.
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Because if you are selling toclinicians, for example, a
diagnostic, they're really notyour buyers. They might be using
your product. You need to solvea problem for them. They might
be advocating for your products.
But there are 10 other people atthat hospital or hospital system
who need to be convinced.
There's a payment model orreimbursement model that needs
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to be figured out. There are alot of elements to that story
that need to be figured out andthen conceptualized, broken down
into, in a in a language and acultural context for it, for
purchasing, for, you know, ablood management team at a
hospital. You know, there areall of these different groups
that might be important to beable to speak with. So, you
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know, the best narratives that Isee in scientific marketing
answers that. So what question,not in that dismissive way, but
in that buyer focused way. Whydoes this matter to me right
now? So it's the basics of goodsales, right? It's the basics of
good marketing. It's justapplied to kind of complex
products, right? Yeah, gosh, somuch that I want to dive in on
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and nerd out. And we only aregoing to record for 45 minutes,
so I have to pick and choosehere. I think, just going back
to the beginning here at theproduct market fit, one of my
favorite, one of my favoritereads, is from April Dunford,
just in terms of her build outof positioning and really being
able to answer and ask thatquestion, you know, if we didn't
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exist, what is the alternative?
And I think that within thisindustry, more than than any any
other industry that I had workedin prior to to joining about
four and a half years ago, theability to change takes time and
and so being a little bit betteror a little bit cheaper or a
little bit different, does notmove the needle. And so, like
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you said, you know, you don'thave these customers right out
of the gate. Okay, great. Well,let's go and let's go to a show
and let's talk to 10 people. AndI think that's something when we
bring up our concept at SCORR,Voice of Customer, whether that,
you know, is a lost opportunity,where or a current client or a
prospective client, we'retalking about a 10 minute phone
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call, anecdotal conversation. Weare not talking about sending a
mass email and running ads and,you know, a nine month affair.
It is can we hear from, youknow, seven really quality
individuals that we know are atthe right company that have the
decision making prowess to beable to purchase what you are
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bringing to the table. And Ithink if you can't answer that,
and I say this all the time,even for clients that are in the
market right now, but are alittle bit lost with their
message, if you can't go throughand have that conversation, or
you couldn't, you know, identifythat we're gonna have to take
seven steps backwards. Becausewithout that, nothing else that
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we're we're going to do withoutthat position, nothing else that
we're going to do from amarketing, from a messaging,
from an execution standpoint, isgoing to be as effective as it
could be. So I love, I love thatyou hit on on that before I even
move forward to the next part, Iwant to make sure anything else
that you would add to that pieceof the puzzle with the product
market fit and some of thatnarrative there, you know, I
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mean, I think that it'simportant that all of that gets,
you know, it gets validated, itgets you start to use it, you
start to have theseconversations, and you're
focusing in.
On the specific influencersalmost immediately in order to
sort of hone and run messagingtests and that sort of thing.
But I think it really isimportant for scientific
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founders or product leads tounderstand that, you know, we're
not just writing aboutmechanisms and features. We're
not, you know, dumbing down.
We're contextualizing. And Ithink that that's really
important, because,you know, so much of marketing,
especially, like, Isn't peoplethink, people out there in the
world generally think thatmarketing is about like gloss,
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right? But everything you justsaid to me is, no, we're leading
with strategy. We're asking goodquestions, and then we're
applying those answers in a waythat looks nice. Yeah, because
we want to differentiate clientsin the market. But it really
isn't about just adding glossover something that isn't going
to work. It's about helpingrefine strategy, working hand in
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hand with these companies sowell, said Alec, yeah, I love
it. I have joked at length thatI think that marketing needs to
rebrand to sales support, or,you know, I really do if, if I
use the words guy, you're thesales I know, I listen, I hear
in this in this field, the wordmarketing often just gets looked
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at as it's, it's A nice to haveat best, branding is even worse,
in a lot of ways, in terms of,we don't really need that. We
have the science, or we havethat thought leader, or the CEO
came from that organization, andwe can compete on that and that
alone. And I think that's where,you know, it's interesting, the
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the theory or the concept of,we're taking this really complex
science and dumbing it down, italmost seems like there is this
giant opening to do it right,because people either don't do
it at all and they are way tooscientific, they're super
jargony, and they're suturethey're they're super feature
based, or we have The exact sameseven word descriptor for 40
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different companies, and, and,and they all do different
things, but it's the end to end.
It's the one stop shop I've I'veran on tangents about data
driven lately, data driveninsights has started to driven,
drive me crazy, and they're allblue, right? Like, and they're
all blue, they're all bluegreen, yes. And the font is the
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same, the imagery is the same.
So how do you you know, withoutgiving the secret sauce? And I
am going to recommend anybodythat's listening to this go read
the giant slider, becausethere's a lot of the secret
sauce in there. But what's theprocess in your mind to to get
somebody not only to agree that,hey, we do need this, but then
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also, how do we find thatnugget? What is that, that thing
that we're going to pull out tobe able to execute for that,
that art of this storytellinghere? Yeah, so just first on
secret sauce. I give all secretsauce away, because, to be quite
honest, none of us is as smartas all of us. That was, like,
etched in the wall of the firstI heard you say that on a recent
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podcast. I love that. Yeah. Andso, you know, there are so many
fish in the sea when it comes toclients that I think that if
more marketing agencies,especially, and also, you know,
these lead gen sales typeagencies, you know, if we're all
do, doing more to improve on themarketing efforts, then I think
we'd be a lot further along thanwe are in terms of biotech. I
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don't think we'd see these biggap years in biotech funding and
med tech funding like we'reseeing now, like we saw in 2015
so anyway, so just a note there.
I love that.
Happy to talk business modelsall that. But, you know, I think
that,I think that there are a lot of
different ways that you have tosort of sell right what you're
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doing. I think the proof is inthe pudding. If you can get that
one campaign where maybe it wasseen as a bit of a risk, because
it's, you know, broke sometraditions within a larger
company in terms of marketingthat can help. But I think it's
also very important thatagencies, especially because
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that's where I am. But I alsodid this when I was in house.
You have to pick your clientscarefully. It doesn't make a ton
of sense. I mean, I get it. Weall have to keep the lights on
right. So sometimes, you knowyou take on a client because you
know you feel like you have tofor whatever reason. But I can
tell you that thoserelationships don't work out.
They just don't. You're lookingfor in an ideal world, somebody
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that your account manager,strategist, whoever can really
vibe with because you're goingto be in the trenches with them.
If you can get a product managerat a company to really buy into
the marketing strategy thatyou're developing for them,
they're going to sell it up thechain.
In for you or collaborativelywith you, even better, because
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that one gets you brought intomore projects in that
organization, if it's a largeone, but it also earns you and
your organization more mutualtrust, basically, even just
within that one product line. SoI think it's very important that
agencies start saying no toclients. If somebody comes in
and they're like, we just want abetter mousetrap. Like, make us
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another ugly blue booth. Say no.
I mean, I get it. We all have tokeep the lights on like, I suck.
So, you know, there are economicrealities of everything, but I
don't think that as marketers,we should settle for less than
stellar, and we have for toolong because, well, what happens
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if that clients that we've beenpitching says, No, you know, the
salesperson will get theircommission, whatever, the team
doesn't fill this gap in theschedule, whatever. But the
alternative is that we'reputting more junk out there, and
I feel like especially for foragencies that want to operate in
life sciences or any of theseniche science areas, it's on all
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of our shoulders to make surethat we are doing our best work,
especially now in a time whenthe US is seeing contraction in
science funding, especially whenventure markets are where they
are for things like med tech andbiotech, I think it's very, very
important that we are pickingwinners and helping them win, as
(26:32):
opposed to kind of helping thesealso ran companies just survive.
It doesn't do anybody favors inthe long run. You have surprised
me twice thus far in the first30 minutes. The first one was
asking me about boys, boy bandsin the 1990s and that was the
second one. And I love thatanswer. And the reason that it
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fires me up and hits home rightaway is, you know, at SCORR, we
work with companies that are prerevenue, and have three people
and are trying to get help withtheir pitch decks to potential
investors all the way up to thecdmo, that has 47 locations
across the globe. And, you know,$500 million in revenue, in in
(27:17):
in the year. And I get asked allthe time, what's the through
line? You know, how do youmarket towards that? How do you
sell towards it? How do youwork? And the thing that comes
back to me over and over againis that they believe in
marketing, they believe instorytelling, and it's really
hard to, it's really hard tomarket towards that in terms of,
you know, running a campaign onbehalf of an agency, but that is
(27:42):
a through line for all of theclients that that we work with
that have positive outcomes.
And, you know, I think of on thejust the B to B side in general,
Dave Gerhart, over at exit five,he runs, you know, a huge B to B
marketing program for, you know,2000 3000 different individuals.
And they always talk about, lifeis way too short to work for a
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CEO who doesn't get marketing.
And, you know, it's very similarin terms of, life is too short
to work at an agency that workswith companies who don't get
marketing. And so it's a reallyinteresting perspective. But
when you think about it, I youknow, one of the rants that I go
on all the time is theconnection between marketing and
commercial and businessdevelopment, sales and then
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operations. Because the storythat the ops team has to be that
they're telling, has to be thesame as the sales, has to be the
same as marketing and all theway through. And the only way
you can do that is if you havebuy in at the at the highest
level of the organizationthroughout. So I love, I love
that answer. Elizabeth, thankyou.
Anything you want to add tothat? Yeah, I'm like that. Now
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you have me ready to go on, likea complete different tangent. So
I want to get to add that. No,no, no, keep going. Keep going.
These customers are great. Okay,so I do, I do want to talk a
little bit aboutthe, the ability to be creative.
You said the gloss, and yousaid, we want it to look nice.
And I think one of the thingsthat we hear a lot of times is a
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company comes in and says theywant, they want to be big and
they want to be bold and theywant to be different. And then
when presented the opportunityto be big and bold and
different, they choose the blueand the static and the same. And
I think that there is thisperception within the life
sciences. Specifically, youknow, as broad as it is, that
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being creative is reallydifficult, because this is
serious work, and there isserious implications of the work
that we do and the impact thatcan be made, which is completely
true, but it could also lookreally good while we do it. It
can look different. And so howdo you think about that, from
taking the value proposition andthen being able to articulate it
(29:54):
as part of a creative campaign,as part of this creative story
that you are bringing?
To the market. I love thisquestion. So I think first of
all, constraint breedscreativity. I don't think that
creative team is creative whenthey're told, hey, it's get
whatever you want, open booktest, you just go for it. That
(30:18):
doesn't usually get very goodresults, whether we're talking
about a branding project orwe're talking about a, you know,
just a trade show booth, orwe're talking about, you know,
any particular asset or campaignas a whole. So I think that what
works best, typically, is avery, very sharp, strategic
brief. So let's say it's a newaccount, right? So you've got
(30:39):
the account brief and fine.
That's background. You've gotsome background information
about who their customers areand what the products are like
and that sort of thing. Thentypically, at least at high
touch, there's a strategy brief,and it's not necessarily
marketing strategy, yet it's nothere's the marketing plan and
sort of where this campaign fitsin. It's what is the business
(31:00):
strategy that we're going toutilize to really sell this
product. Let's say, you know,what's the, what's the payment,
reimbursement model, what's thetimeline for getting it to
market? What are, you know, whoare their competitors? What's
the positioning, or, what arethe positioning options, if
we're really starting very base,very early stage, and we
(31:22):
essentially are going to becrafting our initial creative
based around that strategybrief. And this is just such an
important it's where I spend alot of my time, honestly, is
doing doing deep strategy work.
AndI think that what that does is
two things, it it gives the itgives the client a strategy that
(31:45):
everybody's sort of agreeing toand they understand sort of the
underlying, you know, you formatit like it's a Harvard Business
Review piece. It's veryexecutive friendly, right? Yeah.
But, you know, there's obviouslya lot of work behind there in
terms of market positioning,competitor analysis, so on. And
what you're what you're doing isyou're getting some buy in to
the strategy before you'vepresented any visuals. And I
(32:06):
think this is different fromsort of that like Mad Men era ad
agency type pitching that peoplein the general space, when they
think of marketing, oh, that'swhat an agency does. They're
going to pitch some amazingcreative that somebody came up
with. Really, that strategybrief is important that keeps
everybody on the same page, andonce they've agreed to that,
that is, I think, more valuableto a creative team than even a
(32:30):
brand's guide, right? Becausewhat does it I mean? What does
like a different shade of bluereally inspire? But what does
you know a very specific andnarrow positioning statement, as
well as you know, comps as wellas you know, whatever, right? So
then you you as the strategistpaired with a creative lead in
(32:51):
our agency, is how it works, andthat's when we start kind of
ideating around campaign itselfand campaign strategy, or maybe
we're kind of deep, diving intoa particular asset or brand at
this point, maybe, and that, Ithink those constraints giving
the creative team a sandbox thatis where the real creativity
(33:15):
shines. And you know, maybe thatsandbox is blue, one of my
favorite clients that I workwith a lot, and I work with them
not because they're our largestclient, not because they're but
because they're my favorite,honestly, yeah, and their brand
is blue. It's literally twoshades of blue and, like an off
white, like they just did arebrand, and they're still,
like, two shades of blue noteand but you know what? They are
(33:38):
so strategically minded, andwhen we are working on a stretch
strategy brief, I work primarilywith the Chief Commercial
Officer and the chief operatingofficer there. You know, when
we're aligned on a strategicbrief, they don't even, they
might have one comment on thecreative, but they're, they're
like, Fine, if you we buy intothe strategy. If you're telling
(34:00):
me this is the creative thataligns to that strategy. I trust
you. I believe you. Let's tryit. What's the pivot? If it
doesn't work right, and if youdon't have that trust, and if
you don't have the baseline ofstrategy, I think it can be very
difficult to sell creative, evenif it's really good. So similar
to IP dying on the shelf, Ithink I see a lot of really
(34:21):
great creative get shelved,because very often artists
designers aren't as great atselling the ideas that they're
having because they don'tnecessarily have the right
words. It's not how theycommunicate. They're not always
business minded in the same way.
And so even if you have a greatcreative director, it can be
tough to sell creative withoutthat strategy piece. So that
(34:42):
would be my advice, yeah, andit's, it's fantastic advice in
terms of the strategy, breedingthe creative. And we've even
started to just say it's, it'sstrategic creative, because
without the strategy, I knowthat our team could go and
create some really.
Unique art and designs andbrands. But if it is, if it
(35:03):
doesn't have that strategy, itjust becomes completely
subjective, and you might likeit you might not. And so, you
know, we go through and one ofthe most important factors for
us in identifying potentialclients is, are you willing to
go through that assess phase?
Are you willing to go throughthose interviews and to be able
to build that relationship andtake the six weeks, or whatever
(35:23):
it might be, in order to, like,invest that time and and get on
the same page. We're gonna thenwalk through that strategy,
brief together, and then we'rewalking hand in hand, and if
we're walking hand in hand, thecreative now, now we can
actually get gage and judge iton Well, I actually like this a
little bit more, or I like thispiece a little bit differently,
not looking at it and saying,Where did we where did we go?
(35:46):
How did we get here? Type ofapproach, and so that is it's
really important for for me,especially on the messaging
side, because I think that'swhere, you know, I, as much as
we talk about the color blue anda lot of the same imagery. For
me, it's the messaging thatreally is going to be pulled
through to all of the othertactics. It's going to be pulled
(36:07):
through to your trade show, topotential speaking engagements,
to those campaigns that you arerunning, and I know in the
Giants ladder, and I've heardyou talk a little bit about in
terms of just the execution, andI'm going to ask you the really
unfair question that I get askedall the time, which is, Alec,
(36:28):
where should I invest my moneyto be the most successful in
marketing? And I have to givethe there's a good answer and a
bad answer. And we're going tobuild a strategy, and we're
going to build a plan how. Howdo you break that down from
tactical execution and just kindof saying, Okay, now we have the
brand, we have the story, andnow we're going to go out there
and we're going to do theseseven or eight different things
(36:50):
in the market to execute formarketing. Yeah, yeah.
And again, I think that this isdifferent, depending on the
stage of the company and sort ofhow mature the leadership team
is that you're working with, orwhatever team you're working
with is, but typically, youknow, it is a hard question, but
the answer really is, as yousaid, it's strategy first. It
(37:12):
has to be, because, if you know,you we can test messaging,
right? We can test taglines. Wecan test, you know, like
campaign art, right? And we do,like, that's a different phase,
right? But if you aren't alignedon strategy, if you're not
aligned on core messagingprinciples, core brands and sort
(37:34):
of how that brand is presented,you know, what are you going to
actuallyexecute in terms of tactics,
right? Like, I can't just say,go to this trade show. You have
to be there. It's the best one,you know. Like, that's just not
ever going to be advice thatanybody should be giving.
There's this idea who JasonCohen is, the guy who founded,
(37:58):
he made WooCommerce, which islike an E commerce, WordPress
thing, yeah. So he's, he's alsoa really prolific blogger, and I
just love him, because he's veryno nonsense, and he has this
wonderful graphic. I'll send youthe link after this, so you can
put in the show notes if youwant. But it's, it's essentially
this, this chart where on the xaxis you have talked, and on the
(38:18):
y axis you have walked, and it'sessentially in like this top
quadrants, you are exaggerating,because you might say it, but
you don't walk that walk as acompany, right on, like, the
next stage down, you can't doit. You can't walk the walk, and
you never would say it, becauseyou just would never say it as a
(38:39):
salesperson, right? But thenthere's this, like, really sweet
spots for trusted brands, forbrands that really understand
product market fit and marketingstrategy, and everything that
they do that the public sees orthat their client base sees,
falls within that quadrant. Andit's this idea of you can, you
can walk the walk for thosecustomers in a world class way
(39:02):
and it exactly aligns to yourprimary positioning. And that's
really the sweet spot that we'realways going for. That quadrant
of the company can absolutelydeliver on this in a world class
way, and it aligns perfectlywith their positioning. And it's
very difficult to do that forany tactic or asset, unless you
(39:23):
understand that strategy andeverybody's aligned really
clearly. So strategy is numberone. In fact, if a client
doesn't already come with somesort of pitch deck or like
strategy document, that's numberone. We do like a little mini
sprint with them, essentially toget them there. So I would say
that that's like the mostimportant piece and then that.
(39:46):
But honestly, in the lifesciences, the number one client
side expenditure outside of anagency retainer is probably
going to be trade shows. And youknow this, you just got back
from shows. I just got back fromshows. You know, before the.
Who were talking about our crazyshow schedule. And so really, I
think that next piece is talkingthrough that show schedule,
(40:07):
because so much of a ofmarketing and Life Sciences is
about driving around those showslike, Can we, can we isolate
this product launch and do it atadlm? Can we, you know, do a Kol
pre meet up at bio, or beforebio, or whatever, right? And so
that tends to be, like, thefirst big expenditure part of
(40:30):
the marketing strategy thatwe're putting together, far more
so than, you know, ad buys,which might
be, you know, a tactic for,like, we do a lot of work in the
defense industry, and, you know,there, it's a lot about media
and ad buys and very nichepublications, whereas life
science a lot of trade showsspend, yeah, and I think then
using those trade shows aspillars, like you were
(40:52):
mentioning, for a Kolopportunity, or for, you know,
piece of content that can comeout of it, and being able to
build around that. And I think,you know you said it as well,
which is, it depends on whereyou're at as an organization.
And a lot of times, I try tosimplify this as much as
possible to your audience. Hasto know you first, like you
second, and trust you third. Andif they don't know who you are,
(41:13):
then we have a brand awarenessproblem. So there's going to be
some brand awareness things thatare happening, and then as we
move them through that funnel,that's really what we're looking
at. And so love that answer.
I've got one more question foryou before we wrap up. We've
only got a few minutes lefthere, and this question was not
on the suggested outline, but Iam curious on on your thoughts.
(41:34):
What's the biggest hurdle thatyou see, just in general, life
sciences and marketing, and thatrelationship very vague. I
promise that I get to ask onebad podcast question every
episode. And I'm on 60 episodes,and I've asked at least one bad
podcast question every time. Sothis is going to be the, this is
going to be the bad podcastquestion for this episode. What
(41:56):
do you see as the biggest hurdlecoming from inside the industry,
for for scientists, for lifescience companies as it as it
pertains to that relationshipwith marketing,
yeah, you know, right now withfederal funding for sciences,
kind of across the board, butespecially life sciences with
(42:17):
cuts at any NIH and NSF, I thinkthat is going to be a struggle.
And kind of, likewise, whatwe're seeing kind of
reverberating in private marketsright now, I'll put my venture
capital hat on for a moment, issort of this reduction in VC
spending in med tech, especiallyin a couple of core areas. And
(42:42):
we see that in biotech as well,of course, and that gets more
headlines, I think, than butyeah, both are really important.
But when we look at kind of theventure model as a whole, and
sort of all the money in privatemarkets, venture and sort of
what we see very often in theseearly stage
startups, early stage companies.
(43:03):
We're focused on venture andwe're like, Oh no, venture
markets contracting, or we'refocused on, you know, federal
funding, because that's going toaffect how many of these
companies can spin out ofnational labs and so on.
But the reality is that there'sa lot of money in the private
markets, and one of the keysthat marketing needs to be
(43:24):
better at in order to reallywin, I think, both for their
teams or as an agency, for theiraccounts, for their clients, is
to really think strategicallyabout the money. Where does the
money come from? Because if thecustomers are broke, if the
hospital systems are broke,they're not buying, you know,
(43:45):
clinical diagnostics equipment.
They're not buying, you know,they're going to put these big,
you know, purchases off anotheryear or two or three. They're
certainly not looking atinvesting in your new, you know,
hospital bed technology orwhatever that you're trying to
help a company sell, right? Andso we have to be strategic
advisors to senior level teams,and they're concerned about PNL,
(44:11):
and we should be too. So it'snot about trying to figure out
the next best trade show or, youknow, the next, you know,
campaign or media buy for acompany, or just, oh, if we were
just in this one new outlet,more people would buy. It's not
any of that. It really isbusiness fundamentals and going
(44:31):
back to them. And so what I tryto urge anybody in marketing to
do, and I do this both at hightouch, but also, of course, when
I'm talking on shows like this,is understand business strategy,
understandswhere the money is going and
where there is spend in themarket, and help guide your
(44:55):
accounts in those directions. Itdoesn't mean that it's always.
Going to be the right fit. Butif a cop, if a client, comes to
you and says, Hey, nobody'sgoing to buy our product in the
US, because, you know, somethingjust happened, right? Then help
them look at other geographies.
(45:15):
Help them look at, you know, ana non, an unregulated space,
version of their products,perhaps, maybe it can work in
the wellness sector, and theyhave a different market play,
but essentially be the strategicadvisor that can lead their
commercial team, because that'swhat they typically need very
rarely. I mean, AI can do somuch, right if we're banking on
(45:39):
being able to make nice lookingcollateral, and, you know, maybe
coming up with a witty turn ofphrase every now and then for a
tagline. Well, that's not enoughfor us to keep our jobs once the
AI revolution is in full swing,right? Not to mention, I really
don't think it's what thesecompanies need anyway. And then
I think it's sort of, youmentioned marketing needing of
rebrands. I think that marketingreally is about selling to your
(46:03):
points, but it's also aboutstrategy. It's kind of knitting
together the what can we sell,and how do we how do we help
sell it right? And sometimesthat means being strategic.
Almost all the time, it meansbeing a strategic advisor to C
level teams, senior teams, asopposed to just kind of waiting
(46:24):
for their request to come toyou. If that makes sense, it
absolutely does. I love that. Ilove that whole answer, and it
reminds me, one of my favoriteauthors on the sales side is
Anthony inorino, and he has abook called eat their lunch that
talks about level one, leveltwo, level three and level four
partnership, and that level fourpartnership is where we start to
be that strategic advisor, andyou are that business partner.
(46:46):
And I think one of the thingsthat you know we talk a lot
about is that revenue as a wholeis a is a team game and
marketing at whether that's inhouse or that's an agency, is
responsible for that revenuegrowth as well, and that story
is responsible for that revenue.
And I think the more that we canassociate marketing and branding
with the commercial aspects,with being revenue drivers,
(47:09):
rather than a spend that is veryeasily cut when budgets are in
trouble, then we're going to bemore successful. So I think
that's that's fantastic. I Theonly other thing that I wanted
to cover, which is here in thelast minute or so here is just,
where can people find you. I'mgoing to link and continue to
hype up the Giants ladder andcontinue to promote that, and I
(47:33):
will link it. But where canpeople find you shows what, how
would you like them to reach outto you? I mean, I'm certainly
going to be raving about thisfor a couple of weeks now, so if
you want to give that finalfinal close, and then I'll get
you out of here. Elizabeth,yeah, sure. So you can find me
probably LinkedIn. I'm notreally on social media, because
I just not. I know that's like abad marketing thing to do, but
(47:55):
you can find me on LinkedIn. IfI'm anywhere, it's probably
going to be on LinkedIn. I'malso elizabethshop.com
I've got a team over therehelping with book stuff and high
touch group.comyou can also, if you are a
startup founder, if you are astudents in the sciences and you
have lost funding or you don'thave funding, email
(48:18):
inquiries@elizabethshop.comhappy to send you a free PDF of
the book. Somebody over therewill get one back to you. And
yeah, read the book if you areearly stage, before you hire,
before you go talk to ALEC, orbefore you come talk to my team,
read the book or something likeit, because it's really
important that you get some ofthese basic questions answered.
(48:38):
And if you do need guidance,there are lots of really great
niche science agencies out therewho can support you. So hope you
guys get in touch if you haveany questions. I love it well.
Elizabeth, this was as as goodas I expected it to be, if not
better. I was looking forward tothis. And again, thank you so
much for taking time out of yourday. And I know everybody that's
(48:59):
listening to this just got a tonof value out of it. So if you
did listen to it, please leavethe SCORR cast a five star
review wherever you arelistening, whether you are on
Spotify, YouTube, wherever youget your podcast, because
somehow, someway, we are on the60th episode of the SCORR cast,
and that's pretty cool. Over thelast year, we've had to do a lot
of work and interview a lot offantastic minds just like
(49:22):
Elizabeth. So that being said,thank you so much Elizabeth and
thank you to everybody forlistening today's episode of the
SCORR.
Cast as always, thank you fortuning in to this episode of the
(49:43):
SCORR cast brought to you bySCORR Marketing. We appreciate
your time and hope you foundthis discussion insightful.
Don't forget to subscribe andjoin us for our next episode.
Until then, remember, marketingis supposed to be fun.
Helloeveryone, and welcome to another
(00:13):
episode of the SCORR cast. I amyour host, Alec McChesney, and I
am very excited for today'sepisode. Before I even get into
that, I just have to say I'mrecording this a week or so
after bio. This is coming outabout three weeks post bio, and
even post dia. And there was alot of optimism on the show
floor at bio. I've had a lot ofoutreach in the last couple of
(00:36):
days about, you know, theindustry as a whole, what we're
seeing from a trendsperspective, and then certainly,
how does marketing play a rolein that? And I know I have gone
on a handful of tangents, and Imight go on a tangent today as
part of this podcast episodeabout the value proposition,
about the big idea, about beingable to have a clear story as
(00:59):
part of your marketing. And soif you were at bio or you didn't
end up attending the show inBoston and want to connect on
the show, please reach out. I'dbe happy to have that
conversation. It seems likethat's a show that continues to
grow, and had a really niceperformance in 2024 and
certainly another greatperformance in 2025 with that
(01:20):
being said, I am so excited fortoday's episode, because I have
essentially become kind of likethe number one fan, I think, of
today's guest, who is the authorof the giants ladder. And
Elizabeth, I'm gonna have youintroduce yourself here in a
second. But I just have to say,a a couple months back, I was
going through and adding a wholebunch to my to be read list, and
(01:44):
I added a couple of ABM books,and added a couple of sales
books, and then I stumbled uponthe Giants ladder. Bought it
about two minutes later, andthen read it about 15 minutes
after I got it, and wasinstantly consumed with the
topic that you were sopassionate about, and really
building this playbook forscience, Innovation, Science
(02:05):
marketing, and then being ableto tell this story, and then
I've listened to you on ahandful of podcasts, and just
the way that you speak about theclarity that's needed from a
Marketing and positioning andmessaging standpoint, and the
impact that that's going to haveon your marketing. Frankly, it
fires me up and has me ready torun through a brick wall. And I
(02:28):
know that anybody that'slistening to the SCORR cast and
has been listening for the lastyear, this is what they are most
interested in, as well, is howdo we market really complex
topics within the life sciences,and how do we do that in a way
that can be effective to theshareholders, but also effective
to the target audience? So thankyou, Elizabeth for making time
(02:52):
for us today. And before I startrunning and asking you
questions, I'd love for you tojust give a little background
and introduction to yourself,and then we can jump in from
there. Thanks, Alec, these aresuch nice words, and I'm
incredibly flattered, and thanksso much for having me on the
show. I'm excited to be here. Ithink probably, you know, I can
(03:14):
start this in a lot of differentways, but I think the most
succinct way to describe thework that I do and my team at
high touch is that we build thestrategies behind science that
changes the world. So frombiotech to space tech, our work
involves taking thebreakthroughs that others have
developed that could shape thenext century and making sure
(03:36):
that they don't die in a pitchdeck or a grant proposal. I run
high touch group each day. Andthere we're really working
towards engineering marketdominance for serious science
companies. We look for companiesthat have innovations that save
lives, power cities, or have thepotential to redefine
industries. And we're here tomake sure the world knows it
(03:59):
buys it and builds on it.
I love it. You said succinct,and we're going to talk about
messaging and how to take thatcomplex science and be able to
boil it down. And I feel likeyou did just a fantastic job
with high touch and yourbackground. I am curious. I
learned a little bit about thison a previous podcast of yours,
and then a little bit within theGiants ladder. But can you talk
(04:20):
a little bit on the backgroundof the intersection of of
science and marketing? I thinkit's a really interesting topic.
And I know high touch group doesa little bit outside of of the
life sciences as well. So wouldlove to hear that. But I think
when I interview people on thisshow, it's so interesting
hearing how you got your startwithin the life sciences. And a
lot of people just kind of fellinto it, and then realized, wow,
(04:44):
there's a huge impact that canbe made here. I want to stay in
this industry. I want tocontinue to tell these stories.
Is that kind of what happenedwith you? And can you walk us
through that intersectionbetween science and marketing
here? Sure, so my certain.
Sciences was at the JacksonLaboratory, which is
(05:04):
a genetics organization that hashoused the research of numerous
Nobel laureates, Nobel Prizewinners. They're doing such
interesting work at their BarHarbor campus in Connecticut and
in Sacramento, California, andthat was really my first foray
into the life sciences. Prior tothat, I worked primarily on the
(05:27):
R and D program management sideand the communication side of
other types of science programs,specifically climate tech, some
nano composites applied tostructural applications and
transportation, forceprotection, defense, aerospace,
(05:47):
space tech and so on. So Iworked closely with Office of
Naval Research, NASA, Departmentof Transportation, Department of
Energy, national labs across thecountry, like Sandia, PNL and so
on. And so I had a lot ofexperience working on all of
these completely different typesof projects, basically from an R
D perspective. And so often whatI saw this was an academia by
(06:10):
the way, I saw these incredibleprojects that could have turned
into products die because theywere too far along for
additional research fundingthrough the Office of Naval
Research, for example, but theydidn't really have a business
plan or a funding model or anysort of commercialization
(06:32):
strategy in place in order tospin out of academia and truly
commercialize theirtechnologies. So that was really
the first time that I came faceto face with, wow, so much stuff
is getting patented, but thosepatents sit on the shelf at
academic institutions andnational labs around the
country, around the world,really, because of that gap. So
(06:55):
technology transfer officesexist, and I worked very closely
with one, in particular at theUniversity of Maine, to help
translate some of theseinnovations into viable
companies. Get them their firstSBIR STTR funding, get their
early stage funding, so maybethey're at the pre seed or the
seed stage at this point, andget them out of the lab and into
(07:16):
something, an incubatorsomewhere. So did that for a
number of years, and loved it.
Then I went to work at theJackson Laboratory on strategic
programs and helped launch thefirst commercial CRISPR program.
This was essentially at thetime. It was when there was
still the IP battle going on.
Who invented CRISPR? Who ownedit? Right? So there was in a lot
(07:38):
of people thought that CRISPRwas just going to be a loss
leader for mouse model or otherin vivo model breeding services.
And that was sort of what theold guard thought they were
like, who, what pharma companyis going to care if they can get
these models sooner? And therewere a couple of us who were
saying, biotechs, biotechs. Youknow, this was 15 years ago, and
(07:59):
biotechs were just sort ofstarting to be this really
exciting thing that a lot ofthese older guard research
institutions hadn't quite caughtup yet. And so we had this
really exciting initiative tolaunch this first CRISPR program
commercially in the US and thenlater around the world. And that
just brought even more clarityaround this idea that it doesn't
(08:23):
matter whether you are ascientist who was not trained on
these commercialization aspects,and you might not even be
thinking, oh, I need to dosomething with this IP nor does
it matter if you are the toptier at a research organization
or Research Institute. You couldbe lauded have all these Nobel
laureates coming out and NobelPrize winners coming out of your
(08:45):
organization, but still not beable to successfully
commercialize technology. Andsomething clicked, really for me
around that time, when it wasjust so clear that this was a
massive problem. And so anyway,I had brought a T I had, I had
had this team with me at theUniversity of Maine, where I was
doing all of this work there. Ibrought a good subset of that
(09:08):
team over with me to the JacksonLaboratory, and then I brought
them with me to high touch, andI said, Come on, guys, let's go.
Let's, let's figure this out.
And so we spent the last, yeah,I don't know, 12 years, 10
years, something like that,essentially working with a
subset of companies that wetypically hand pick. We're
looking for that next gentechnology and med tech,
(09:30):
diagnostics, life sciences, kindof more broadly, as well as in a
couple of other key areas, likenext generation materials,
robotics, space tech, and we'vewe help get them funded, we help
get this IP commercialized, wehelp get them their first bits
of traction, customers and soon, and then nurture them
towards acquisition, or maybethey're at their series B or C
(09:53):
at that stage. You know, afterthat point, they don't need us
anymore. They should have theirown internal team.
Usually we help them build rightbut very often, you know, we're
with them through Series B orbig acquisition, or we work also
with a lot of VCs and privateequity on their portfolio
management. So sometimes we'rekind of in there a little longer
(10:15):
now, but that's essentially whatwe do. I love it. And you talked
about this in your in yourinitial intro to it, just in
terms of the science that is atthe table here. And then you
have to have the story that thatgoes with it. And it seems like
that for you is a reallyimportant piece of the puzzle.
It's an important piece for usat SCORR, but something that I
(10:38):
rant about all the time, whichis, if you don't have a story
that is, you know, effectivelyarticulated in the market,
you're going to lose out. And Ithink that one of the fun
challenges that we have is thatnot everybody within the
industry sees that as animportant piece of the puzzle
(10:59):
early on. And I, you know, Ithink the argument on our side
is that it's a foundationalelement to how we strive
forward. And so I think, for inyour mind, when you start this
out and you identify, you know,you said you hand pick a handful
of these companies, how are youWhere are you starting? Where do
you start? In terms of, okay, wehave this brilliant science, we
(11:21):
have this innovation, we havethis piece of the puzzle that
that could make a really bigimpact, and we have to move
forward. What are thoseabsolute, you know, non
negotiables, from an insight,from a planning perspective, to
have that story line up with thescience and then move into that
commercial perspective, sure,sure. So do you know anything
about how boy bands in the 90swere put together. There are so
(11:44):
many questions I thought youwere going to ask me there,
and I I did not expect that, andI'm going to have to answer no.
I think I might know, but like,right off the top of my head,
now I'm nervous, and so I wantyou to just tell me, or I don't
know if you have a bunch of likeGen Z listeners who are into k
pop, but essentially, all ofthese bands, they're, they're
(12:06):
commercial projects, right? So,and actually, when you think
about any bands that iscommercially famous, they are,
they are businesses. You know,they are run like businesses.
They have a brand. They have,you know, merch behind them.
Every song is on brand, theproductions on brands, right? So
with these boy bands in the 90s,like Boys to Men and sing all
(12:27):
these things, or k pop bandsnow, you know, music executives
basically said, I see somebodywith talent that's going to be
the anchor star for this groupof people who have come up
through the ranks of, like somekids show on Disney or what have
you, right? And that'sessentially where I got the idea
for, hey, there's all this IP onthe shelf, and nobody's doing
(12:50):
anything with it, so let's bethe music executives putting
together these k pop bands,right? So, so I'm going to put
that kind of on the shelf for aminute, just because the way
that we start with that story,when we're kind of matchmaking a
little bit, is a little bitdifferent, right? Because there
we see the market, and we seewe're seeking out IP that can
(13:13):
solve a problem that we know canbe commercialized with the right
group of people, right? Sothat's one way of doing it more
typically, and this is probablymore aligned with a lot of
agencies and, you know, internalmarketing teams that are your
listeners. You know you reallyhave to have product market fit,
yeah, and that can be difficultto determine the earlier a
(13:33):
company or product is right. Soif it's a very early stage
company, or even a product thathas sometimes gotten a lot of
development in a large companywithout much validation, and
you're nodding your head, so Iknow you've been through a
couple of these. What happens isyou might have an internal
consensus on your team, thisproduct solves a problem for
(13:55):
somebody, I had this problem,therefore it'll solve a problem.
But the reality is that veryoften you can ask a founder,
have you spoken with anycustomers? And they're like,
well, we don't have anycustomers yet. We're three years
out. You know, don't worry aboutit. Well, right? But have you
actually sat down andinterviewed 10 people who would
potentially buy your product,not friends, not advisors, and
(14:19):
ask them what they're currentlydoing instead, what would make
them switch? What would a 10ximprovement actually look like?
And from there you can you canstart to see, okay, is this a
founder I should be takingseriously, or is this a founder
who has internally validated hisor her own idea for a product
and hasn't done this research,if they're willing to do the
(14:42):
research. Great sometimes,though that and is that's kind
of a red flag for us, and that'stypically when we say, Okay,
well, we'll refer you tosomebody. Or here's a checklist
you can use, but we're probablynot the right match, but that's
number one. So has what, whatsort of validation has been
done? And you see this often inlarge companies, we do a lot of
work with.
Strategics in the diagnosticspace, and very often they're
(15:03):
developing very expensiveproducts, but they haven't
actually said to clinicians,hey, how would this diagnosis
sooner, faster, better, withmore differentiation between
strains or variants? Would thathelp you? Would that change
standard of care? Would thatchange your next action for
patient care? And very often,the answer is no. Very often,
(15:26):
these things get developed evenpretty far down R and D, without
those basic questions beinganswered. So that validation. It
doesn't need to be a $300,000you know, product positioning
market survey. It can be asking10 viable customers a handful of
questions for 15 minutes at ashow. And if you, if that hasn't
(15:48):
been done, that's veryimportant, right? That basically
validates, like, does this evenmake sense? And then you really
get into crafting that productnarrative, which I think is a
little bit more aligned withyour question. And one of the,
one of the pushbacks we get alot from scientists, initially,
who are working with, we'reoften working with scientists,
founders or scientific leads,maybe of commercial teams in
(16:10):
these larger companies. They areunder the impression that
scientific storytelling in amarketing context is some level
of dumbing it down. Right? I'msure you see this, but it's
really not about dumbing itdown, right? It's about cons.
It's about providing context forvery specific audience segments.
(16:32):
Because if you are selling toclinicians, for example, a
diagnostic, they're really notyour buyers. They might be using
your product. You need to solvea problem for them. They might
be advocating for your products.
But there are 10 other people atthat hospital or hospital system
who need to be convinced.
There's a payment model orreimbursement model that needs
(16:53):
to be figured out. There are alot of elements to that story
that need to be figured out andthen conceptualized, broken down
into, in a in a language and acultural context for it, for
purchasing, for, you know, ablood management team at a
hospital. You know, there areall of these different groups
that might be important to beable to speak with. So, you
(17:16):
know, the best narratives that Isee in scientific marketing
answers that. So what question,not in that dismissive way, but
in that buyer focused way. Whydoes this matter to me right
now? So it's the basics of goodsales, right? It's the basics of
good marketing. It's justapplied to kind of complex
products, right? Yeah, gosh, somuch that I want to dive in on
(17:40):
and nerd out. And we only aregoing to record for 45 minutes,
so I have to pick and choosehere. I think, just going back
to the beginning here at theproduct market fit, one of my
favorite, one of my favoritereads, is from April Dunford,
just in terms of her build outof positioning and really being
able to answer and ask thatquestion, you know, if we didn't
(18:02):
exist, what is the alternative?
And I think that within thisindustry, more than than any any
other industry that I had workedin prior to to joining about
four and a half years ago, theability to change takes time and
and so being a little bit betteror a little bit cheaper or a
little bit different, does notmove the needle. And so, like
(18:25):
you said, you know, you don'thave these customers right out
of the gate. Okay, great. Well,let's go and let's go to a show
and let's talk to 10 people. AndI think that's something when we
bring up our concept at SCORR,Voice of Customer, whether that,
you know, is a lost opportunity,where or a current client or a
prospective client, we'retalking about a 10 minute phone
(18:46):
call, anecdotal conversation. Weare not talking about sending a
mass email and running ads and,you know, a nine month affair.
It is can we hear from, youknow, seven really quality
individuals that we know are atthe right company that have the
decision making prowess to beable to purchase what you are
(19:06):
bringing to the table. And Ithink if you can't answer that,
and I say this all the time,even for clients that are in the
market right now, but are alittle bit lost with their
message, if you can't go throughand have that conversation, or
you couldn't, you know, identifythat we're gonna have to take
seven steps backwards. Becausewithout that, nothing else that
(19:26):
we're we're going to do withoutthat position, nothing else that
we're going to do from amarketing, from a messaging,
from an execution standpoint, isgoing to be as effective as it
could be. So I love, I love thatyou hit on on that before I even
move forward to the next part, Iwant to make sure anything else
that you would add to that pieceof the puzzle with the product
market fit and some of thatnarrative there, you know, I
(19:49):
mean, I think that it'simportant that all of that gets,
you know, it gets validated, itgets you start to use it, you
start to have theseconversations, and you're
focusing in.
On the specific influencersalmost immediately in order to
sort of hone and run messagingtests and that sort of thing.
But I think it really isimportant for scientific
(20:11):
founders or product leads tounderstand that, you know, we're
not just writing aboutmechanisms and features. We're
not, you know, dumbing down.
We're contextualizing. And Ithink that that's really
important, because,you know, so much of marketing,
especially, like, Isn't peoplethink, people out there in the
world generally think thatmarketing is about like gloss,
(20:33):
right? But everything you justsaid to me is, no, we're leading
with strategy. We're asking goodquestions, and then we're
applying those answers in a waythat looks nice. Yeah, because
we want to differentiate clientsin the market. But it really
isn't about just adding glossover something that isn't going
to work. It's about helpingrefine strategy, working hand in
(20:54):
hand with these companies sowell, said Alec, yeah, I love
it. I have joked at length thatI think that marketing needs to
rebrand to sales support, or,you know, I really do if, if I
use the words guy, you're thesales I know, I listen, I hear
in this in this field, the wordmarketing often just gets looked
(21:16):
at as it's, it's A nice to haveat best, branding is even worse,
in a lot of ways, in terms of,we don't really need that. We
have the science, or we havethat thought leader, or the CEO
came from that organization, andwe can compete on that and that
alone. And I think that's where,you know, it's interesting, the
(21:38):
the theory or the concept of,we're taking this really complex
science and dumbing it down, italmost seems like there is this
giant opening to do it right,because people either don't do
it at all and they are way tooscientific, they're super
jargony, and they're suturethey're they're super feature
based, or we have The exact sameseven word descriptor for 40
(22:01):
different companies, and, and,and they all do different
things, but it's the end to end.
It's the one stop shop I've I'veran on tangents about data
driven lately, data driveninsights has started to driven,
drive me crazy, and they're allblue, right? Like, and they're
all blue, they're all bluegreen, yes. And the font is the
(22:24):
same, the imagery is the same.
So how do you you know, withoutgiving the secret sauce? And I
am going to recommend anybodythat's listening to this go read
the giant slider, becausethere's a lot of the secret
sauce in there. But what's theprocess in your mind to to get
somebody not only to agree that,hey, we do need this, but then
(22:46):
also, how do we find thatnugget? What is that, that thing
that we're going to pull out tobe able to execute for that,
that art of this storytellinghere? Yeah, so just first on
secret sauce. I give all secretsauce away, because, to be quite
honest, none of us is as smartas all of us. That was, like,
etched in the wall of the firstI heard you say that on a recent
(23:07):
podcast. I love that. Yeah. Andso, you know, there are so many
fish in the sea when it comes toclients that I think that if
more marketing agencies,especially, and also, you know,
these lead gen sales typeagencies, you know, if we're all
do, doing more to improve on themarketing efforts, then I think
we'd be a lot further along thanwe are in terms of biotech. I
(23:28):
don't think we'd see these biggap years in biotech funding and
med tech funding like we'reseeing now, like we saw in 2015
so anyway, so just a note there.
I love that.
Happy to talk business modelsall that. But, you know, I think
that,I think that there are a lot of
different ways that you have tosort of sell right what you're
(23:55):
doing. I think the proof is inthe pudding. If you can get that
one campaign where maybe it wasseen as a bit of a risk, because
it's, you know, broke sometraditions within a larger
company in terms of marketingthat can help. But I think it's
also very important thatagencies, especially because
(24:17):
that's where I am. But I alsodid this when I was in house.
You have to pick your clientscarefully. It doesn't make a ton
of sense. I mean, I get it. Weall have to keep the lights on
right. So sometimes, you knowyou take on a client because you
know you feel like you have tofor whatever reason. But I can
tell you that thoserelationships don't work out.
They just don't. You're lookingfor in an ideal world, somebody
(24:41):
that your account manager,strategist, whoever can really
vibe with because you're goingto be in the trenches with them.
If you can get a product managerat a company to really buy into
the marketing strategy thatyou're developing for them,
they're going to sell it up thechain.
In for you or collaborativelywith you, even better, because
(25:03):
that one gets you brought intomore projects in that
organization, if it's a largeone, but it also earns you and
your organization more mutualtrust, basically, even just
within that one product line. SoI think it's very important that
agencies start saying no toclients. If somebody comes in
and they're like, we just want abetter mousetrap. Like, make us
(25:25):
another ugly blue booth. Say no.
I mean, I get it. We all have tokeep the lights on like, I suck.
So, you know, there are economicrealities of everything, but I
don't think that as marketers,we should settle for less than
stellar, and we have for toolong because, well, what happens
(25:46):
if that clients that we've beenpitching says, No, you know, the
salesperson will get theircommission, whatever, the team
doesn't fill this gap in theschedule, whatever. But the
alternative is that we'reputting more junk out there, and
I feel like especially for foragencies that want to operate in
life sciences or any of theseniche science areas, it's on all
(26:10):
of our shoulders to make surethat we are doing our best work,
especially now in a time whenthe US is seeing contraction in
science funding, especially whenventure markets are where they
are for things like med tech andbiotech, I think it's very, very
important that we are pickingwinners and helping them win, as
(26:32):
opposed to kind of helping thesealso ran companies just survive.
It doesn't do anybody favors inthe long run. You have surprised
me twice thus far in the first30 minutes. The first one was
asking me about boys, boy bandsin the 1990s and that was the
second one. And I love thatanswer. And the reason that it
(26:55):
fires me up and hits home rightaway is, you know, at SCORR, we
work with companies that are prerevenue, and have three people
and are trying to get help withtheir pitch decks to potential
investors all the way up to thecdmo, that has 47 locations
across the globe. And, you know,$500 million in revenue, in in
(27:17):
in the year. And I get asked allthe time, what's the through
line? You know, how do youmarket towards that? How do you
sell towards it? How do youwork? And the thing that comes
back to me over and over againis that they believe in
marketing, they believe instorytelling, and it's really
hard to, it's really hard tomarket towards that in terms of,
you know, running a campaign onbehalf of an agency, but that is
(27:42):
a through line for all of theclients that that we work with
that have positive outcomes.
And, you know, I think of on thejust the B to B side in general,
Dave Gerhart, over at exit five,he runs, you know, a huge B to B
marketing program for, you know,2000 3000 different individuals.
And they always talk about, lifeis way too short to work for a
(28:03):
CEO who doesn't get marketing.
And, you know, it's very similarin terms of, life is too short
to work at an agency that workswith companies who don't get
marketing. And so it's a reallyinteresting perspective. But
when you think about it, I youknow, one of the rants that I go
on all the time is theconnection between marketing and
commercial and businessdevelopment, sales and then
(28:26):
operations. Because the storythat the ops team has to be that
they're telling, has to be thesame as the sales, has to be the
same as marketing and all theway through. And the only way
you can do that is if you havebuy in at the at the highest
level of the organizationthroughout. So I love, I love
that answer. Elizabeth, thankyou.
Anything you want to add tothat? Yeah, I'm like that. Now
(28:48):
you have me ready to go on, likea complete different tangent. So
I want to get to add that. No,no, no, keep going. Keep going.
These customers are great. Okay,so I do, I do want to talk a
little bit aboutthe, the ability to be creative.
You said the gloss, and yousaid, we want it to look nice.
And I think one of the thingsthat we hear a lot of times is a
(29:10):
company comes in and says theywant, they want to be big and
they want to be bold and theywant to be different. And then
when presented the opportunityto be big and bold and
different, they choose the blueand the static and the same. And
I think that there is thisperception within the life
sciences. Specifically, youknow, as broad as it is, that
(29:32):
being creative is reallydifficult, because this is
serious work, and there isserious implications of the work
that we do and the impact thatcan be made, which is completely
true, but it could also lookreally good while we do it. It
can look different. And so howdo you think about that, from
taking the value proposition andthen being able to articulate it
(29:54):
as part of a creative campaign,as part of this creative story
that you are bringing?
To the market. I love thisquestion. So I think first of
all, constraint breedscreativity. I don't think that
creative team is creative whenthey're told, hey, it's get
whatever you want, open booktest, you just go for it. That
(30:18):
doesn't usually get very goodresults, whether we're talking
about a branding project orwe're talking about a, you know,
just a trade show booth, orwe're talking about, you know,
any particular asset or campaignas a whole. So I think that what
works best, typically, is avery, very sharp, strategic
brief. So let's say it's a newaccount, right? So you've got
(30:39):
the account brief and fine.
That's background. You've gotsome background information
about who their customers areand what the products are like
and that sort of thing. Thentypically, at least at high
touch, there's a strategy brief,and it's not necessarily
marketing strategy, yet it's nothere's the marketing plan and
sort of where this campaign fitsin. It's what is the business
(31:00):
strategy that we're going toutilize to really sell this
product. Let's say, you know,what's the, what's the payment,
reimbursement model, what's thetimeline for getting it to
market? What are, you know, whoare their competitors? What's
the positioning, or, what arethe positioning options, if
we're really starting very base,very early stage, and we
(31:22):
essentially are going to becrafting our initial creative
based around that strategybrief. And this is just such an
important it's where I spend alot of my time, honestly, is
doing doing deep strategy work.
AndI think that what that does is
two things, it it gives the itgives the client a strategy that
(31:45):
everybody's sort of agreeing toand they understand sort of the
underlying, you know, you formatit like it's a Harvard Business
Review piece. It's veryexecutive friendly, right? Yeah.
But, you know, there's obviouslya lot of work behind there in
terms of market positioning,competitor analysis, so on. And
what you're what you're doing isyou're getting some buy in to
the strategy before you'vepresented any visuals. And I
(32:06):
think this is different fromsort of that like Mad Men era ad
agency type pitching that peoplein the general space, when they
think of marketing, oh, that'swhat an agency does. They're
going to pitch some amazingcreative that somebody came up
with. Really, that strategybrief is important that keeps
everybody on the same page, andonce they've agreed to that,
that is, I think, more valuableto a creative team than even a
(32:30):
brand's guide, right? Becausewhat does it I mean? What does
like a different shade of bluereally inspire? But what does
you know a very specific andnarrow positioning statement, as
well as you know, comps as wellas you know, whatever, right? So
then you you as the strategistpaired with a creative lead in
(32:51):
our agency, is how it works, andthat's when we start kind of
ideating around campaign itselfand campaign strategy, or maybe
we're kind of deep, diving intoa particular asset or brand at
this point, maybe, and that, Ithink those constraints giving
the creative team a sandbox thatis where the real creativity
(33:15):
shines. And you know, maybe thatsandbox is blue, one of my
favorite clients that I workwith a lot, and I work with them
not because they're our largestclient, not because they're but
because they're my favorite,honestly, yeah, and their brand
is blue. It's literally twoshades of blue and, like an off
white, like they just did arebrand, and they're still,
like, two shades of blue noteand but you know what? They are
(33:38):
so strategically minded, andwhen we are working on a stretch
strategy brief, I work primarilywith the Chief Commercial
Officer and the chief operatingofficer there. You know, when
we're aligned on a strategicbrief, they don't even, they
might have one comment on thecreative, but they're, they're
like, Fine, if you we buy intothe strategy. If you're telling
(34:00):
me this is the creative thataligns to that strategy. I trust
you. I believe you. Let's tryit. What's the pivot? If it
doesn't work right, and if youdon't have that trust, and if
you don't have the baseline ofstrategy, I think it can be very
difficult to sell creative, evenif it's really good. So similar
to IP dying on the shelf, Ithink I see a lot of really
(34:21):
great creative get shelved,because very often artists
designers aren't as great atselling the ideas that they're
having because they don'tnecessarily have the right
words. It's not how theycommunicate. They're not always
business minded in the same way.
And so even if you have a greatcreative director, it can be
tough to sell creative withoutthat strategy piece. So that
(34:42):
would be my advice, yeah, andit's, it's fantastic advice in
terms of the strategy, breedingthe creative. And we've even
started to just say it's, it'sstrategic creative, because
without the strategy, I knowthat our team could go and
create some really.
Unique art and designs andbrands. But if it is, if it
(35:03):
doesn't have that strategy, itjust becomes completely
subjective, and you might likeit you might not. And so, you
know, we go through and one ofthe most important factors for
us in identifying potentialclients is, are you willing to
go through that assess phase?
Are you willing to go throughthose interviews and to be able
to build that relationship andtake the six weeks, or whatever
(35:23):
it might be, in order to, like,invest that time and and get on
the same page. We're gonna thenwalk through that strategy,
brief together, and then we'rewalking hand in hand, and if
we're walking hand in hand, thecreative now, now we can
actually get gage and judge iton Well, I actually like this a
little bit more, or I like thispiece a little bit differently,
not looking at it and saying,Where did we where did we go?
(35:46):
How did we get here? Type ofapproach, and so that is it's
really important for for me,especially on the messaging
side, because I think that'swhere, you know, I, as much as
we talk about the color blue anda lot of the same imagery. For
me, it's the messaging thatreally is going to be pulled
through to all of the othertactics. It's going to be pulled
(36:07):
through to your trade show, topotential speaking engagements,
to those campaigns that you arerunning, and I know in the
Giants ladder, and I've heardyou talk a little bit about in
terms of just the execution, andI'm going to ask you the really
unfair question that I get askedall the time, which is, Alec,
(36:28):
where should I invest my moneyto be the most successful in
marketing? And I have to givethe there's a good answer and a
bad answer. And we're going tobuild a strategy, and we're
going to build a plan how. Howdo you break that down from
tactical execution and just kindof saying, Okay, now we have the
brand, we have the story, andnow we're going to go out there
and we're going to do theseseven or eight different things
(36:50):
in the market to execute formarketing. Yeah, yeah.
And again, I think that this isdifferent, depending on the
stage of the company and sort ofhow mature the leadership team
is that you're working with, orwhatever team you're working
with is, but typically, youknow, it is a hard question, but
the answer really is, as yousaid, it's strategy first. It
(37:12):
has to be, because, if you know,you we can test messaging,
right? We can test taglines. Wecan test, you know, like
campaign art, right? And we do,like, that's a different phase,
right? But if you aren't alignedon strategy, if you're not
aligned on core messagingprinciples, core brands and sort
(37:34):
of how that brand is presented,you know, what are you going to
actuallyexecute in terms of tactics,
right? Like, I can't just say,go to this trade show. You have
to be there. It's the best one,you know. Like, that's just not
ever going to be advice thatanybody should be giving.
There's this idea who JasonCohen is, the guy who founded,
(37:58):
he made WooCommerce, which islike an E commerce, WordPress
thing, yeah. So he's, he's alsoa really prolific blogger, and I
just love him, because he's veryno nonsense, and he has this
wonderful graphic. I'll send youthe link after this, so you can
put in the show notes if youwant. But it's, it's essentially
this, this chart where on the xaxis you have talked, and on the
(38:18):
y axis you have walked, and it'sessentially in like this top
quadrants, you are exaggerating,because you might say it, but
you don't walk that walk as acompany, right on, like, the
next stage down, you can't doit. You can't walk the walk, and
you never would say it, becauseyou just would never say it as a
(38:39):
salesperson, right? But thenthere's this, like, really sweet
spots for trusted brands, forbrands that really understand
product market fit and marketingstrategy, and everything that
they do that the public sees orthat their client base sees,
falls within that quadrant. Andit's this idea of you can, you
can walk the walk for thosecustomers in a world class way
(39:02):
and it exactly aligns to yourprimary positioning. And that's
really the sweet spot that we'realways going for. That quadrant
of the company can absolutelydeliver on this in a world class
way, and it aligns perfectlywith their positioning. And it's
very difficult to do that forany tactic or asset, unless you
(39:23):
understand that strategy andeverybody's aligned really
clearly. So strategy is numberone. In fact, if a client
doesn't already come with somesort of pitch deck or like
strategy document, that's numberone. We do like a little mini
sprint with them, essentially toget them there. So I would say
that that's like the mostimportant piece and then that.
(39:46):
But honestly, in the lifesciences, the number one client
side expenditure outside of anagency retainer is probably
going to be trade shows. And youknow this, you just got back
from shows. I just got back fromshows. You know, before the.
Who were talking about our crazyshow schedule. And so really, I
think that next piece is talkingthrough that show schedule,
(40:07):
because so much of a ofmarketing and Life Sciences is
about driving around those showslike, Can we, can we isolate
this product launch and do it atadlm? Can we, you know, do a Kol
pre meet up at bio, or beforebio, or whatever, right? And so
that tends to be, like, thefirst big expenditure part of
(40:30):
the marketing strategy thatwe're putting together, far more
so than, you know, ad buys,which might
be, you know, a tactic for,like, we do a lot of work in the
defense industry, and, you know,there, it's a lot about media
and ad buys and very nichepublications, whereas life
science a lot of trade showsspend, yeah, and I think then
using those trade shows aspillars, like you were
(40:52):
mentioning, for a Kolopportunity, or for, you know,
piece of content that can comeout of it, and being able to
build around that. And I think,you know you said it as well,
which is, it depends on whereyou're at as an organization.
And a lot of times, I try tosimplify this as much as
possible to your audience. Hasto know you first, like you
second, and trust you third. Andif they don't know who you are,
(41:13):
then we have a brand awarenessproblem. So there's going to be
some brand awareness things thatare happening, and then as we
move them through that funnel,that's really what we're looking
at. And so love that answer.
I've got one more question foryou before we wrap up. We've
only got a few minutes lefthere, and this question was not
on the suggested outline, but Iam curious on on your thoughts.
(41:34):
What's the biggest hurdle thatyou see, just in general, life
sciences and marketing, and thatrelationship very vague. I
promise that I get to ask onebad podcast question every
episode. And I'm on 60 episodes,and I've asked at least one bad
podcast question every time. Sothis is going to be the, this is
going to be the bad podcastquestion for this episode. What
(41:56):
do you see as the biggest hurdlecoming from inside the industry,
for for scientists, for lifescience companies as it as it
pertains to that relationshipwith marketing,
yeah, you know, right now withfederal funding for sciences,
kind of across the board, butespecially life sciences with
(42:17):
cuts at any NIH and NSF, I thinkthat is going to be a struggle.
And kind of, likewise, whatwe're seeing kind of
reverberating in private marketsright now, I'll put my venture
capital hat on for a moment, issort of this reduction in VC
spending in med tech, especiallyin a couple of core areas. And
(42:42):
we see that in biotech as well,of course, and that gets more
headlines, I think, than butyeah, both are really important.
But when we look at kind of theventure model as a whole, and
sort of all the money in privatemarkets, venture and sort of
what we see very often in theseearly stage
startups, early stage companies.
(43:03):
We're focused on venture andwe're like, Oh no, venture
markets contracting, or we'refocused on, you know, federal
funding, because that's going toaffect how many of these
companies can spin out ofnational labs and so on.
But the reality is that there'sa lot of money in the private
markets, and one of the keysthat marketing needs to be
(43:24):
better at in order to reallywin, I think, both for their
teams or as an agency, for theiraccounts, for their clients, is
to really think strategicallyabout the money. Where does the
money come from? Because if thecustomers are broke, if the
hospital systems are broke,they're not buying, you know,
(43:45):
clinical diagnostics equipment.
They're not buying, you know,they're going to put these big,
you know, purchases off anotheryear or two or three. They're
certainly not looking atinvesting in your new, you know,
hospital bed technology orwhatever that you're trying to
help a company sell, right? Andso we have to be strategic
advisors to senior level teams,and they're concerned about PNL,
(44:11):
and we should be too. So it'snot about trying to figure out
the next best trade show or, youknow, the next, you know,
campaign or media buy for acompany, or just, oh, if we were
just in this one new outlet,more people would buy. It's not
any of that. It really isbusiness fundamentals and going
(44:31):
back to them. And so what I tryto urge anybody in marketing to
do, and I do this both at hightouch, but also, of course, when
I'm talking on shows like this,is understand business strategy,
understandswhere the money is going and
where there is spend in themarket, and help guide your
(44:55):
accounts in those directions. Itdoesn't mean that it's always.
Going to be the right fit. Butif a cop, if a client, comes to
you and says, Hey, nobody'sgoing to buy our product in the
US, because, you know, somethingjust happened, right? Then help
them look at other geographies.
(45:15):
Help them look at, you know, ana non, an unregulated space,
version of their products,perhaps, maybe it can work in
the wellness sector, and theyhave a different market play,
but essentially be the strategicadvisor that can lead their
commercial team, because that'swhat they typically need very
rarely. I mean, AI can do somuch, right if we're banking on
(45:39):
being able to make nice lookingcollateral, and, you know, maybe
coming up with a witty turn ofphrase every now and then for a
tagline. Well, that's not enoughfor us to keep our jobs once the
AI revolution is in full swing,right? Not to mention, I really
don't think it's what thesecompanies need anyway. And then
I think it's sort of, youmentioned marketing needing of
rebrands. I think that marketingreally is about selling to your
(46:03):
points, but it's also aboutstrategy. It's kind of knitting
together the what can we sell,and how do we how do we help
sell it right? And sometimesthat means being strategic.
Almost all the time, it meansbeing a strategic advisor to C
level teams, senior teams, asopposed to just kind of waiting
(46:24):
for their request to come toyou. If that makes sense, it
absolutely does. I love that. Ilove that whole answer, and it
reminds me, one of my favoriteauthors on the sales side is
Anthony inorino, and he has abook called eat their lunch that
talks about level one, leveltwo, level three and level four
partnership, and that level fourpartnership is where we start to
be that strategic advisor, andyou are that business partner.
(46:46):
And I think one of the thingsthat you know we talk a lot
about is that revenue as a wholeis a is a team game and
marketing at whether that's inhouse or that's an agency, is
responsible for that revenuegrowth as well, and that story
is responsible for that revenue.
And I think the more that we canassociate marketing and branding
with the commercial aspects,with being revenue drivers,
(47:09):
rather than a spend that is veryeasily cut when budgets are in
trouble, then we're going to bemore successful. So I think
that's that's fantastic. I Theonly other thing that I wanted
to cover, which is here in thelast minute or so here is just,
where can people find you. I'mgoing to link and continue to
hype up the Giants ladder andcontinue to promote that, and I
(47:33):
will link it. But where canpeople find you shows what, how
would you like them to reach outto you? I mean, I'm certainly
going to be raving about thisfor a couple of weeks now, so if
you want to give that finalfinal close, and then I'll get
you out of here. Elizabeth,yeah, sure. So you can find me
probably LinkedIn. I'm notreally on social media, because
I just not. I know that's like abad marketing thing to do, but
(47:55):
you can find me on LinkedIn. IfI'm anywhere, it's probably
going to be on LinkedIn. I'malso elizabethshop.com
I've got a team over therehelping with book stuff and high
touch group.comyou can also, if you are a
startup founder, if you are astudents in the sciences and you
have lost funding or you don'thave funding, email
(48:18):
inquiries@elizabethshop.comhappy to send you a free PDF of
the book. Somebody over therewill get one back to you. And
yeah, read the book if you areearly stage, before you hire,
before you go talk to ALEC, orbefore you come talk to my team,
read the book or something likeit, because it's really
important that you get some ofthese basic questions answered.
(48:38):
And if you do need guidance,there are lots of really great
niche science agencies out therewho can support you. So hope you
guys get in touch if you haveany questions. I love it well.
Elizabeth, this was as as goodas I expected it to be, if not
better. I was looking forward tothis. And again, thank you so
much for taking time out of yourday. And I know everybody that's
(48:59):
listening to this just got a tonof value out of it. So if you
did listen to it, please leavethe SCORR cast a five star
review wherever you arelistening, whether you are on
Spotify, YouTube, wherever youget your podcast, because
somehow, someway, we are on the60th episode of the SCORR cast,
and that's pretty cool. Over thelast year, we've had to do a lot
of work and interview a lot offantastic minds just like
(49:22):
Elizabeth. So that being said,thank you so much Elizabeth and
thank you to everybody forlistening today's episode of the
SCORR.
Cast as always, thank you fortuning in to this episode of the
(49:43):
SCORR cast brought to you bySCORR Marketing. We appreciate
your time and hope you foundthis discussion insightful.
Don't forget to subscribe andjoin us for our next episode.
Until then, remember, marketingis supposed to be fun.
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