Shifting mindset from brand-centric to customer-centric engagement
Cheemia worked with a global pharmaceutical company to strengthen collaboration across marketing, medical and commercial functions and to support more coordinated engagement with healthcare professionals.
The challenge
Engagement was driven by a brand-centric planning approach, with a limited understanding of how omnichannel should be applied in practice. Omnichannel activity was often treated as a bolt-on at the end of the planning process rather than integrated from the start.
As a result, teams invested significant effort in engaging healthcare professionals, but activity was often fragmented. Marketing and medical teams developed materials independently before handing them to omnichannel teams, leading to disconnected and inconsistent engagement.
The organisation wanted to strengthen collaboration and ensure engagement reflected how healthcare professionals prefer to work.
Cheemia’s approach
Cheemia delivered a capability programme designed to shift how teams approached engagement and collaboration, moving from brand-centric planning to a focus on customer need.
The programme helped teams move away from leading with the brand and instead focus on the problems healthcare professionals are trying to solve.
The programme included:
- facilitated workshops exploring customer-centric engagement in practice
- exercises to deepen understanding of healthcare professional needs, behaviours and system pressures
- cross-functional working sessions bringing teams together around shared customer challenges
- practical action planning to embed new ways of working
Omnichannel was positioned as an integrated approach to engagement rather than an addition to the plan.
The focus remained on real situations teams faced in practice, ensuring that the shift from brand to customer was applied in day-to-day work.
Outcomes
The programme helped teams shift from brand-centric to a more customer-focused way of working and embedded omnichannel thinking as an integrated part of planning.
Participants reported:
- stronger alignment around a shared view of the customer
- more integrated use of omnichannel within planning and execution
- clearer collaboration between marketing, medical and commercial teams
- more coherent and relevant engagement with healthcare professionals
- reduced duplication of activity