Campaign Imminent: Pfizer taps new marketing VP (Score 77)
Sales Lead: In August 2023, Pfizer selected Susan Townsend as its global marketing technology VP.
- Townsend was previously Aledade's engineering, clinician, and patient engagement VP.
- She now oversees areas such as Pfizer's content management, marketing workflow, personalization, marketing analytics, social media optimization, and ad tech.
- The company will likely:
- Shift its strategy
- Continue increasing digital spend
- Keep centering its advertising around patients' stories
- Seek additional new agency partners following recent hires (more below)
- Target demographic:
- Gen-Z and millennials
- Pfizer also targets Gen-X but has been ramping up its digital spend to reach younger audiences.
- Gen-Z and millennials
Additional spending insights:
- Broadcast insights (TV ad creative spend, effectiveness, impressions, and performance)
- YTD spend: Since the beginning of 2023, Pfizer has spent approximately $84.5m on national TV commercials, 10% less than the approximately $94.1m spent within the same 2022 timeframe.
- Last year: In 2022, the company spent around $267.8m on this channel, more than 5x when it spent around $45m in 2021.
- 2023 ad programming: Pfizer's 2023 commercials have targeted older millennials and Gen-X watching shows such as NFL Football, College Basketball, ABC World News Tonight With David Muir, NBC Nightly News With Lester Holt, and The Oscars.
- Digital and social insights (digital ad spend, effectiveness, impressions, and performance)
- YTD spend: The pharmaceutical giant has allocated roughly $107.1m toward digital ads YTD, more than double the roughly $47.3m allocated by this point last year.
- YTD data: So far this year, Pfizer has earned ~15.2m digital impressions via Facebook (79%), Instagram (13%), desktop display (4%), YouTube (2%), desktop video (1%), and mobile display (1%) ads.
- Last year: The company's estimated full-year 2022 spend of $133.9m reached 18% more than that of $113.4m in 2021.
- Additional channel insights
- Pfizer utilizes Google Ads along with email, OOH, digital, local broadcast, print, radio, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, and online video (primarily via Youtube.com) ads.
- The company sponsors podcasts such as Stuff You Should Know, The Herd with Colin Cowherd, The Glenn Beck Program, The Dan Bongino Show, and The Joe Rogan Experience.
- Pfizer invests in short-form DRTV ads.
- It has almost ridiculously widely dispersed network TV coverage and will likely launch a new campaign within the next 90 days or so.
- Pfizer's top TV networks include DLFE, CMT, WGN, GAC, and COZ.
Additional agency insights:
- Opportunity: If you haven't yet done so, reach out soon to remain top-of-mind.
- We haven't heard of any additional roster shifts following Pfizer's recent appointments of CMO Drew Panayiotou (September 2022), digital innovation agency partner Work & Co (June 2023), media, data, and production AOR Publicis Collective (May 2023), and creative and product PR AOR IPG Health (May 2023).
- Current agency roster:
Insight Sources: Broadcast insights estimated by iSpot; digital spend insights estimated by Pathmatics; email insights estimated by Bombora; additional channel insights estimated by Vivvix; podcast insights by Podchaser; DRTV insights by Media Analytics.
