Building long-term relationships with media brand editorial teams beyond “just pitching stories” can be a valuable asset for pharmaceutical companies, provided, of course, there’s clear understanding of parameters governing editorial independence, audience trust, and the like. In the following Q&A, Matt Hoffman, Editorial Director, Specialty Healthcare Division, MJH Life Sciences, shares insider insight and perspective on ways drugmakers can bolster such relationships in their earned media outreach strategy.
What makes a pharma or biotech company—or story—stand out to media brands?
Hoffman: As media, we’re focused on delivering the details that matter to our audiences—in my situation, that’s physicians, researchers, and medical scientists—so simply put, the best way to stand out is to be top of mind or of interest to those groups. In general, though, we’re always looking for the companies that are either at the leading edge of therapeutic development and/or are seeking to address meaningful patient needs. For example, one of the brands I oversee is NeurologyLive—there are a ton of rare neuromuscular and neuroinflammatory diseases with patient populations that are sorely lacking real treatment options. If there’s a massive gap in clinical care, and there’s a company out there trying to address that, it’s going to be important to us.
Similarly, the stories we’re paying attention to are the ones that are making waves among the audience (or at least directly affect the process of providing patient care, positively or negatively). Standing out among the noise there can admittedly be difficult to do regardless of the story, but pointing out a challenge that’s not getting enough attention or highlighting a solution toward addressing it can bring it to the top of our list of coverage options.
How can pharma companies better tailor their outreach and messaging to align with a publication’s specific audience and editorial mission?
Hoffman: Keep clinical care in mind is the first and foremost piece of advice. That’s what we’re focused on from a coverage perspective. If your outreach is in line with that, it’s easy for us to align on coverage opportunities. In my eyes, the best way to do this is to build a relationship with the teams you’re pitching to and understand our goal to serve our audience first. Most of our editorial teams are inundated with outreach from everyone in the industry. If you’re willing to put in the time to not just share the pitch and do your outreach, but really collaborate with us, it goes a long way.
Knowing the right people is half the battle when it comes to getting in touch with the right people and finding the right information, so being a fellow steward of that process is essential.
Taking some time to really familiarize yourself with our publications is important as well—our websites have our mission statements and our goals on display, and it’s easy to tell right away who’s familiar with them and what we’re trying to do.
What are the most common mistakes you see in pharma press pitches or media outreach?
Hoffman: In the current age of the internet, it’s challenging—there are a lot of places to pitch to and only so much time to do so, which makes it hard to totally personalize every bit of outreach. But proactive and tailored outreach will always work best. Receiving a pitch addressed to the wrong person, or with misspellings of their name (or worse, the publication’s) are simple errors that can make a pitch stand out for the wrong reasons. But in a harder-to-look-past sense, the biggest error is a lack of knowledge about the publication. The easiest way for a pitch to be passed on is for it to completely miss the mark topically.
I oversee our Eye Care Network, and believe it or not, I’ve gotten pitches for those publications that are focused on niche gastrointestinal diseases and rare cancers—topics that are way off the mark from what we’re covering. Unfortunately, too, we often don’t have time to respond to every pitch to clarify our coverage areas, so although we may let you know when we can, having it right from the jump is super helpful.
Are there particular topics, trends, or types of data that you believe are underutilized by pharma communicators seeking earned media?
Hoffman: In the specialties I focus on, the pharma communicators do tend to have a decent finger on the pulse of what’s trending. The key thing that seems to get lost sometimes is that core focus on our audiences, though. At the end of the day, we care most about the news that directly affects healthcare professionals and their patients.
The best pharma communicators are the ones who understand the things that matter to the patients—especially those with chronic diseases. Take multiple sclerosis, for example. Patients and physicians, of course, care deeply about controlling disease activity and relapses, but in this day and age, there are many available therapies that do that quite well, so much of the focus for patients and providers has shifted to what used to be the secondary concerns and invisible symptoms: things like fatigue and cognition and overall quality of life. Understanding those nuances is incredibly important to pitching a story successfully.
Overall, though, in this age of social media, I am surprised that more pitches don’t leverage or incorporate active or ongoing trends on different social channels. It’s something that’s occasionally mentioned, but I do think that keeping social in mind and having a more holistic view of the publications they’re pitching to is going to be incredibly important as time goes on.
