Marketing/Prod Mgt in Pharma or Biotech?

[cc8]

I'd love to find folks in the pharma or biotech industry to chat about job strategies. I have a seven year history of marketing and PR in roles with progressively increasing responsibility. I'm currently finishing up my MBA. My dream job would be to work in marketing at a biotech company (ie medical devices).

Anyone else?

[lisainpink]

I can tell you that I have worked for 3 of the big 10 pharma/biotech companies- and all of our marketing/brand teams had experience in our field sales teams. Do you want to do company marketing or brand marketing? Most PR done in this industry comes from the legal department.

[cc8]

Hi Lisa! Thanks for responding. So it sounds like it's best to work in sales a bit before marketing in order to acclimate to the industry - is that what you're saying (Please correct me if I am misinterpreting what you wrote).

Right now I am vying for an internship (MBA) position at a med device company and they have thoughts of placing me in either upstream mktg (product mktg) or downstream (ie sales). Right now, I do sales/mktg support in financial services.

Thanks for your input!

Oh BTW, how are you differentiating/defining "company mktg" and "brand mktg"?

[lisainpink]

If given the opportunity- I would absolutely "carry the bag." (Go the sales route.) It seams that our most readily promoted- and valued- marketing professionals came from the field at some point (some started there- some came back to the field to get a better understanding of the business.) To get a feel for how products are used and valued- and to get a feel for the whole business model in this very different industry- I can't tell you how vital time in front of the end customer (ie Docs/nurses/whoever is buying or writing) is. You can go to medical school, read every market analysis, interview countless consultants- but the none of that information comes close to being a thorough as what you get sitting down over lunch with a group of customers on a regular basis. You get to know what their needs really are (which is vastly different than what they tell the marketing teams in surveys.) Once you have a feel for that- and combined with good education and research background in marketing- you would be a HUGE asset to a company.
The difference between company and brand marketing depends on the size of the company. Generally- the company will have a marketing department that handles the media buying, basic PR, etc. That department also works closely with the HR department in broad recruiting. Everything that comes out of a pharma company goes through a legal department (much more so than any other industry)- so there are usually marketing folks who are actually lawyers. Then there are brand teams. At a large company, there is a Brand team for each promoted brand. These are the people having a great time. Their job is to create a brand around the brand- does that make sense? They help create any advertising for that brand (not just tv commercials- mostly ads in professional journals), sales aids to be used in the field, motivational stuff for sales professionals, educational information- the list goes on forever. They get to be really creative (after medical/legal has approved it) and they really work closely with the people in the field. I would say the 3 most important groups of people in a bio based company are the Bench Chemists- coming up with compounds (or researchers in device), The Field Sales teams (nobody has a job if sales people aren't successful), and the brand teams.
HTH.