Cliff Covey of CMI Media Group on AI in Healthcare and Pharma Marketing

Cliff Covey: I’m Cliff Covey, C-L-I-F-F C-O-V-E-Y, SVP, Group Director, Digital Activation at CMI Media Group.

Jeanniey Walden: And we’re back, and I’ve got Cliff Covey with me. I’m so excited to have you on the show, because we’re going to get down into the specifics around healthcare and pharmacy.

Cliff Covey: I love it. Very excited. It’s not often I get to have a great conversation that goes deep into healthcare with people who are such experts at it like you are.

Jeanniey Walden: You’ve been in healthcare 20 years?

Cliff Covey: Almost my entire career in the pharma space, and I’m incredibly excited about the transformation in AI and the impact we’re going to have on patients’ lives.

Jeanniey Walden: That’s exactly what I want to talk to you about. Let’s talk about AI and what’s happening with it as it relates to the healthcare industry, because there must be so many positive opportunities to impact everybody’s life.

Cliff Covey: Absolutely. I’m incredibly excited. There’s obviously a lot of trepidation in the world about AI and the impact it’s going to have on our lives, how we interact with brands, what our careers are. But I think we should approach AI from a healthcare standpoint with enthusiasm. It’s going to create very exciting and innovative medicines, but from a media standpoint, I’m incredibly excited about the impact it’s going to have on our collective health. Pharma is typically slow to innovation, and I’d say in general we’re about 1% of the way there when you think about big, bold AI. But what I’m most excited about is the ability to transform doctor-patient conversations and to meet patients where they are. Pharma has a reputation of pushing ads at people. We all see the same 30, 60, 90-second ads. What’s most exciting is the ability to take healthcare data, patient data, and create very meaningful experiences about where patients are in their journey. These are critical health decisions that either a patient or a caregiver is making, and the ability to create meaningful creative and meaningful experiences is going to have massive impact on patients’ health.

Jeanniey Walden: With the companies you work with, and I can only imagine you work with so many in the healthcare and pharmaceutical space, where do you see AI giving them a huge push forward into more positive results, from a marketing and branding perspective, from a customer trust and advocacy perspective, and from an educational perspective on what the customer goes in and asks the doctor?

Cliff Covey: I think you hit the nail on the head with trust. Trust is absolutely critical. We’re in a world where patient privacy and data are forefront. So it’s not just on agencies, it’s on the entire industry to make sure we get this right, because it’s a lot harder to ruin a reputation than to gain it back. From a data standpoint, we’ve long worked in very siloed data sets. There’s patient data, RX data, rep data, and none of it really speaks to each other. AI is going to give us the ability to bring all of that together and action it in real time. This was previously unmanageable data that was very manual, and the ability to action it in real time is going to be incredibly impactful and serve those meaningful experiences. I think we’re a bit behind on the creative standpoint. We saw Coke’s Super Bowl ad, which was AI-generated. I don’t think we’re necessarily there yet from a creative standpoint, but in the future we’ll be able to see more personalized creative that really meets patients where they are.

Jeanniey Walden: I know you’re working with Audience Path to use their AI-powered signals and mirror technology to help identify the meaning in the moment. That must be such a different approach from what you’ve been able to legally do in the past, to identify people based on what they’re watching, understand their interests, and then be available for them at a time when they need you most.

Cliff Covey: Completely. It’s transformational. We have historically dealt with healthcare-modeled audiences based on claims data. This looks like a group of people that look like patients with a specific condition. That can be very dated data. The ability of Audience Path to give us signals in real time that patients may be experiencing symptoms, may have a condition, really gives us the opportunity to reach them in the moments that matter most and drive them to the doctor to talk about their symptoms and have much more meaningful conversations. And when we think about it from the HCP perspective as well, there are 5,000-plus pieces of literature published daily. It’s impossible for a doctor to keep up with all of that. We’re seeing LLMs developed with HCPs at the forefront. If we’re able to meet a patient when they’re experiencing a symptom and educate a doctor, that’s going to create really meaningful conversations and ultimately lead to much better health outcomes.

Jeanniey Walden: As CMI, when you’re advising companies on integration into the insights that LLMs provide, not just on the doctor side but the consumer side, are you finding that challenging, easy, a work in progress? I know if I have symptoms, I’m historically Dr. Google. Dr. Google, what’s wrong with me? And now I’m Dr. Claude or Dr. ChatGPT. What I’ve found interesting is Google will just say, oh, you might have this and you might have that, and I end up diving into websites deciding whether I have a cold or a terminal illness. But ChatGPT and Claude tend to be very concerned, like a mom, always saying, I’m not a doctor, I’m not a physician, but you need to go to your doctor right now. They seem to make it a more inflammatory situation than it is sometimes. How are you advising clients on that?

Cliff Covey: It’s a huge conversation we’re having. We’re moving from SEO to GEO. We’re no longer just focusing on a website, we’re focusing on a brand’s entire presence and how they’re being represented in these LLMs. There’s a lot of misinformation being pulled into these, so it’s incredibly important for brands to understand where that information is being pulled and make sure it’s accurate. The last thing we want is inaccurate information being pulled into these LLMs, as you said, very aggressive, inflammatory, go speak to your doctor, this may be terminal. Making sure our information is accurate is absolutely critical. And it’s moving past just a website. We’re no longer just thinking about the content on your site, it’s more the content on the results page. It’s absolutely critical for us to think about how we are representing our brands accurately.

Jeanniey Walden: I almost see what you’re doing with Audience Path as a trifecta of opportunity. You’ve got a signal coming in from a real-life person based on what they’re watching, searching for, how they’re responding. You’ve got your existing information from your clients and their brands. And then you’ve got the LLM going to the HCP that’s helping to inform them. So this must improve the quality of healthcare significantly.

Cliff Covey: That is our end goal. We are all in this industry to improve health outcomes. I’m incredibly excited about providing information when it is most critical, when patients need it most, in these really important, emotional decisions many people will have to make in their life, with an educated doctor, to drive very meaningful conversations and, yes, improve health outcomes. That’s our ultimate goal.

Jeanniey Walden: I think it’s fantastic. You’ve been in healthcare for 20 years. You probably sit at conferences and see things from the retail industry, the tech industry, or fintech and think, oh man, I wish we could do that. What can you steal from other industries now that you’ve got the luxury of a little leniency with AI?

Cliff Covey: I touched on this earlier: creative. We need to make sure our creative is fair-balanced and accurately representing the clinical trials, but the ability to adapt that creative to the patient and where they are in their journey is the key. Someone just diagnosed with lung cancer is in a very different spot in their journey than someone who’s had it for four or five years, and we shouldn’t be giving them the same message, the same experience, the same channels. It’s not one-size-fits-all. Other industries have the ability to adapt their creative much more. The word personalization isn’t my favorite, but in a much more personalized way, to meet patients where it matters most. That’s what I’m really excited about, making sure we’re meeting them when it matters.

Jeanniey Walden: If I look forward two years from now, where do you think the industry is going to be?

Cliff Covey: We’ve long focused on trigger-based activations that meet patients and HCPs where they matter in their journey. I think we’ll be using dynamic creative optimization across a variety of channels, and dynamic, predictive data, not just focusing on healthcare claims data, to meet patients and HCPs where they are and really drive those profound and meaningful doctor-patient conversations.

Jeanniey Walden: That is a bold statement, Cliff. You heard it first from Cliff. We’re going to meet right here on this giant yacht in two years to see if you’re right. I’m very excited, because I’ve worked in the healthcare space, and you are pushing the envelope, my friend. Everything you’re doing at CMI is fantastic, and I can’t wait to see how you’re bringing all these brands and activations to life.

Cliff Covey: We’re very excited. We love the clients we work with. We have a strong tenure of everyone at CMI, it’s a great team, and we’re very excited about the future of the health space.

Jeanniey Walden: Thanks so much for being on Liftoff.

Cliff Covey: Thank you so much.

This conversation was recorded at POSSIBLE and lightly edited for readability.