See show notes for this episode: S 02 | Ep 10 Rewriting the Rules: Innovation and Brand Performance in Healthcare and Beyond | Show notes.
00:01 Alex Shevelenko: I'm just going to hit clap. Hold on a second, there's some background noise. Okay, one, two, three. Hello, welcome to Experience Focused Leaders. I'm delighted to introduce you to Haider Alleg, a strategist, entrepreneur, and investor helping regulated industries scale through innovation and brand performance. As founder of Kaiju Marketing and Strategy Consultancy for Regulated Industries and GP at Allegory Capital, Haider brings us some really interesting perspectives on what it takes to innovate in sectors that are notoriously hard to innovate in. Haider, welcome to the pod.
00:53 Haider Alleg: Thanks for having me.
00:53 Alex Shevelenko: Well, listen, we've been having a lot of great chats as partners in figuring out how to bring innovation—particularly digital and experiential innovation—to the regulated world. This is a world that has a harder bar to innovate, and I'd love to get your thoughts on what inspired you to start and focus on these industries.
01:26 Haider Alleg: Thanks for having me. It's a good question because it's not the easiest industries to be in. When I say "regulated industry," I think we need to put a bit of definition around that. The world is getting more regulated. While we hear that the US might want to deregulate quite a bit of stuff, still, the world is becoming more regulated. We've seen that with data privacy and different programs in the EU recently.
So for me, "regulated" means that we have high bars to entry. There's a code of conduct, rules that you need to comply with to penetrate the market, which protects the market in a way from misconduct.
02:11 Haider Alleg: And I'll say for the audience that is listening: if you want to sell honey online, you might have less regulation than if you want to sell OTC drugs in a pharmacy shop, right? So that's where we said to ourselves 20 years ago, when I started in this industry, I said, "Oh, there's some complexity here." Being an engineer by background, I said, "Yeah, I can find some solutions for that complexity." So that's how it started.
02:50 Alex Shevelenko: What is the particular challenge that you see in communicating creatively in this world? What would you say is super relevant from your point of view?
03:04 Haider Alleg: So I would say, if I look at the pharma industry, which I know a little bit better than the others, in the pharma world creativity has been outsourced to creative agencies. If I put it bluntly, it's like, "Oh, we need to be creative? Let's hire Publicis, Havas, DDB, Dentsu—those folks."
So creativity has never been focused on creating a delightful experience for the patient or for the doctor. It was more like, "Let's do the best drug ever, the best science ever, and if we do that, somehow the doctor will prescribe it." Right? So we don't need to, because the system will just use us.
03:48 Haider Alleg: And right now, the pressure on those industry players is that the doctor and the patient are consumers of other experiences, so they have higher expectations in terms of the apps they'll use, the websites they'll consume, even the PDFs they'll download—or pretend to download. You don't have this excuse anymore that "it's crap, but I can basically just deal with it because it's just healthcare," right?
04:24 Alex Shevelenko: So basically, in the old world, the bar for healthcare was low because it was said, "Hey, we're healthcare, we're different, we're scientists, and the best drug wins."
04:39 Haider Alleg: Yeah, exactly. And it's a generational thing. You know, look at your parents or my parents. They were excusing three types of categories of work, right? The banker—"I don't ask my banker to create a delightful experience. I just want the banker to make my money work." My lawyer—"I don't want to have a delightful experience with my legal counsel. I just want them to fight and win," right? And my doctor—"I just want them to fix me. I don't want to have a delightful experience."
05:10 Haider Alleg: Well, you know, our generation and the new generation are a little bit more demanding in terms of the time that you're requesting them to spend to actually deal with information or data. So because the world is much more digital and you're consuming much more data and services through those channels, the level of experience is not excusable anymore, right? And that's basically, for me, where you have a little bit of a pressure point, I would say.
So if you're building a digital health platform or if you're creating a communication plan for the clinical practice of doctors, those doctors are now 30, 35, 40 years old maybe, and they'll tell you, "I'm not spending 10 minutes to create a login that sucks," so they don't do it.
06:04 Alex Shevelenko: So this old-school enterprise software era design, for lack of a better umbrella—what you're just describing—simply no longer works. But it's not because these industries have changed dramatically. It's because the rest of the world has changed dramatically, and the consumers of regulated services are also, first and foremost, general consumers, whether they're employees, healthcare professionals, or patients. They're just spoiled by good, easy-to-understand content. And so the more regulated industries basically have to leapfrog what has been the de facto standard in their bubble in order to be effective. And whoever does that leapfrogging the best will have an edge in that industry.
07:11 Haider Alleg: I mean, look at banking. I love to use banking—the banking industry, the finance industry, the insurance industry—as a benchmark. They've been in the same place 20 years ago. Your e-banking experience was crap. No one wanted to spend time on e-banking 20 years ago. And right now, if you look at Revolut or Stripe or N26, all those digital banks—you want to send money to your friends? Easy, just do it.
07:41 Haider Alleg: There are no barriers. Of course, it's not free—there are always some hooks associated with it—but it works. It's just making you focus your time on something else. And what I would say is where there are huge pain points for the pharma industry, for example, is in trying to catch up. Because they're trying to catch up and delegate things to Havas and have it be a black box. But I think the brands that are doing a good job creating those delightful experiences—it's also anchored in talent and culture. So people want to do it. They're obsessed with creating a perfect customer experience.
Like if you look at Zalando, for example, or you look at Airbnb, there's attention to detail, looking at the data, understanding the data, and saying, "Okay, people are not using that form, let's change it."
08:44 Haider Alleg: What I've witnessed in the industry is, "We have to build X, Y, and Z for the year, check the box, gain our bonuses. I did the campaign, delegated to an agency, checked the box, got my bonus, and moved on to the next brand." Check the box, got my bonus, and moved on to the next brand. And there's not enough of that obsessive willingness to create delightful experiences.
09:11 Haider Alleg: And that's not the fault of the brand leads or the communication leaders. I would never put the fault on them. It's just—I would say it's the company structure and the systems creating their own creatures in a way. So don't blame the messenger. They're just executing. Blame the culture of the company that is basically focusing on the wrong things sometimes.
09:37 Alex Shevelenko: And so where is the disruption coming from? Digital health companies are a lot younger and have a different DNA than some traditional companies. Sometimes they're competing for the same mindshare, if not identical products. What's your view of the best practice examples? Who's doing something really amazing in these regulated—let's say pharma and digital health—worlds that challenges everybody?
10:16 Haider Alleg: I mean, it's an interesting question. If you ask me, and if you ask yourself, "Would you follow the Instagram of a pharma company to have an amazing experience, so much so that you would share it with your friends?"
Chapter 2: Transforming Healthcare With Authentic Content
10:33 Haider Alleg: The answer is probably no. So I really have a hard time giving you a name of a pharma company that's doing something nice on the digital side. There are some companies, like on the mental health side in the US and so on, that did some really nice campaigns that are moving, that make people use symptom checker services to actually have a wake-up call.
And the question with these digital health startups—when we see them, it's because they're small, they're faster, they don't have the luxury of time like some big pharma have. And also, the world has changed. You know, to create—to host a webinar, you don't need a crew to host a webinar.
11:24 Alex Shevelenko: You can do it yourself.
11:25 Haider Alleg: So there's less question of, "Oh yeah, should we buy 10 mics to actually have good sound?" No, they just go with it with their iPhones. "Do you want to do a cover for the webinar?" Just go on Canva and do it. You see? So there's much more willingness to hustle and say, "Yeah, let's just do the 80% good enough with a template." And that approach is actually working most of the time, and even more so now with AI coming to facilitate onboarding.
11:58 Haider Alleg: So I would say digital health startups or companies—the ones that did a good job are, first of all, consumer-facing.
12:08 Alex Shevelenko: Right. That's where I was going to go with it. So I'm thinking their DNA is just—if you're looking at something like Calm, which is now becoming part of employer-sponsored health and benefits packages in the US, right? But obviously their origins were very much as a consumer company. That is about as diametrically opposite DNA as you would expect compared to a traditional pharma that may still have some drugs that are helping with mental health issues.
So for me, that's where the collision is most prominent. But then there's a hybrid where there's a digital health solution that's still more traditional B2B and has to go through trials.
13:02 Haider Alleg: So you have "digital" and "health," right? You have some startups that are healthcare startups that went digital, and you have digital startups that are coming to the healthcare world. So there are two forces. The companies that started to build something simple with a beautiful experience, very consumer-ish, usually look for growth and volume to have critical mass. You know what we say: if you have 1 million users in your app, whatever your app is, you'll find a business model, right?
13:33 Haider Alleg: You'll figure it out. And some of the startups that have this approach usually get the complexity of the healthcare practice later. They start to say, "Oh, now out of the 1 million mental health potential patients we have, let's do an algorithm that detects burnout, or let's tackle depression, whatever." So this is a good approach.
14:00 Haider Alleg: Actually, I prefer that approach of creating the demand and educating the market. Then the other part is a little bit more scientific, which is more like, "Let's take 300 patients in a hospital and let's build a simple questionnaire. It doesn't have to look good because a doctor will force it into the hands of the patient."
And then suddenly, after three years—because those studies take time—after three years, the startup is saying, "Hey, I have validation of my questionnaire. Great, it's scientifically relevant," which is great for science.
14:42 Haider Alleg: But at the end of the day, as a business, you're looking at it and you say, "You only have 300 patients. What do we do with this, right?"
14:46 Alex Shevelenko: How do you scale? How do you get to 1 million?
14:49 Haider Alleg: And that is basically the burden that is on those startups. So yes, those startups have a different skill set, different culture. That's why I use the word "culture." I think—you know, remember Novartis tried to do that a couple of times? I know they tried to hire people from the perfume industry, from the tech industry.
15:10 Haider Alleg: Even if you bring one leader inside the company to bring that focus on creating delightful experiences, it's not enough. The company needs to basically understand the value, the long-term value, of creating a better experience and content.
So we've been saying "content is king" for many years, which is true. But right now we're talking about vertical videos, high-velocity content, high-velocity channels. When I hear companies saying, "We need to post twice a day on Instagram" as a pharma company, I ask: What are you saying? What's your strategy? What are you trying to convey? What's your goal?
Posting two times a day on Instagram? You're not going to promote your product—you can't, it's forbidden. So what are you going to promote? So when you take content only just for posting, without having the soul of the company...
16:09 Alex Shevelenko: So it's kind of—you know, to use the perfume example, there's this phrase, "lipstick on a pig." But this is like a pig that has lipstick and perfume, but you still, at the end of the day, realize it still thinks in a relatively traditional, old, old-school way.
And so I guess if we take a step back, you know, what would it take to change—to really put excellence in content in a way that's more moderate, right? That is, let's say there's a culture change and then there are some business objectives that, in your view, are best in class.
16:56 Alex Shevelenko: Describe to me that platonic ideal of a still-regulated DNA of a major company, but it's really turning itself around. It has a brand-new CMO, has a switched-on CEO, and they have the mandate to change the way they think about content as king, queen, and the fuel for all good things in and outside the company. What would that look like? Describe to me your ideal scenario of the future.
17:31 Haider Alleg: Yeah, I think if you're looking at those industries and looking at what good looks like—putting a definition around what good looks like—I would say right now, authenticity is going to be the new currency. Okay? So that's the first piece. Because the more and more you create content with templates, it's going to feel a little bit déjà vu for a lot of people, for a lot of reasons. That's okay.
I'll give you an example, because context is going to be more powerful than authenticity. So I believe more—if you're trying to find information about a drug, like the SPC—the Summary of Product Characteristics—you need to know if you can give that drug to your kid or not. You don't need to be creative, right?
18:19 Alex Shevelenko: There's no context.
18:24 Haider Alleg: Context is always more powerful, and I think in some of those critical moments, when the brand needs to be the first answer, you want to have that service approach, like "I'm the best at giving the right content to the right person at the right time. I have the right piece of info."
So I think the contextualization of the information, the way it's structured and the way it's presented, the simplicity of it—I think that will be much more appreciated. Like if you're driving in southern Italy for vacation and you have your tire break, you need to find a solution. If I drive a Volvo, and Volvo did a good job, maybe I'll use my Volvo app. And if they did something nice, I'm not going to Google anything else. I'm just going to use the brand that created the fastest time for context and solution.
19:17 Haider Alleg: Now, that said, that's one behavior, right? People having a problem and acting on it.
19:23 Haider Alleg: And then you have people that are a little bit more in research mode, right? Or entertainment mode. And this is, I think, where the world of social media and even the news world—the journalists, the investigative journalists—if you take investigative journalists that are covering war, that's high-context type of content, right?
And right now, news outlets are a little bit more entertaining with a bit of contextual news. But you want to entertain the user, you want to create that dopamine rush, you want to create that hormone that social media has been proven to hook you up with.
So I think it's becoming much more complicated for those industries to compete because the time available to capture attention—the showstopper, the creativity to do that—is much harder.
20:53 Haider Alleg: And I'll say here, in a world where all brands are going to rush with templates, authenticity is a new window of opportunity to actually feel genuine. So if I have a brand, if I'm talking to the CMO of a new brand, I would tell them: don't try to go into the rat race of posting twice a day on Instagram just to please the algorithm. What happens when it becomes six times a day, right? You're going to be the victim of an algorithm and you're just going to rush. Maybe focus on authenticity.
21:04 Alex Shevelenko: So basically, getting a story that really sticks and is authentic—you still need coverage and distribution for that story, but it's less about the formula as much as it is about getting an authentic narrative of why this story matters and why it interrupts.
21:26 Haider Alleg: Correct. I would say if you have a budget of 10K, just to keep it simple, and you have to divide it into mini posts to create whatever—I would say hire a team that's going to make the people talk, right? Make the people who are creating this vision talk instead of taking a template and just making mechanical updates. So again, mechanical updates when they're contextual? Okay, fair enough.
21:57 Alex Shevelenko: It's a necessity, right?
22:06 Haider Alleg: I'll give you an example for pharma conferences. Pharma loves to do symposiums, right? Scientific symposiums. And usually, when pharma is looking at communication plans around a scientific event, my recommendation is always: you have to tease before the event—the speakers, who created the symposium, the advisory board, blah blah blah, right? It's a content-driven teaser so that people can choose to spend time there instead of at the competition. And in that case, I would actually give a little capsule—one minute of each member of that advisory board on why they should come, instead of just an agenda that's super cold.
22:48 Haider Alleg: Imagine the experience, right? You don't have time to read, so you just swipe and you have eight figures—opinion leaders—telling you why they spent time building that agenda.
Then, during the event or one day before the event, you give those logistical details: where to find the symposium, when is it, do you need to reserve, do you need to click somewhere, do you need to have a lunch bag option? All those logistical things that are what I call contextual content that are needed, that you don't need to put so much creativity into.
23:24 Alex Shevelenko: So it feels like, because of the history of the industry and the training—just the nature of the mindshare—it's a very clinical, detail-oriented, evidence-driven approach. Whenever you say "evidence," you have to put everything, right? You have to have an abstract, you have to have the body, the conclusion. The mindset of sharing lots of content is prevalent, and I think what you're saying is it's splitting into areas where it's not as relevant, right? In high-level marketing, you overwhelm people with details, and the experience is suffering.
24:06 Haider Alleg: The pressure on this type of industry is more on the type of channel. If you ask someone to download another app, you're going to have a huge burden to convert.
24:20 Haider Alleg: I'll give you an example. If you say, "Okay, download my app," but basically you're going to get for free a summary from my scientific team of all the papers that are coming out—you're not selling an app anymore, you're selling a service of basically a peer-reviewed meta-analysis of the entire event.
And then those doctors who need to come back and don't have time to read say, "Oh, of course I'm going to download that app because I have free Wi-Fi embedded, everything's going to be a neat experience." So these types of ideas—when content and services are bundled to create the experience—that's powerful.
25:03 Haider Alleg: But you said something interesting. You said this industry has a lot of content, but that's never been the blocker. Those people are usually used to consuming lots of heavy scientific papers. What's problematic is the conduit.
So if you look at a doctor, they don't want to talk about a drug necessarily. So again, if they have a problem with a patient with severe symptoms and they want recommendations on what others do in that area, they don't want to Google and find 20 pieces of information.
25:51 Haider Alleg: Right? So they want to go to the one-stop shop where they can find: "There was a study on 20 people with this type of symptom. That's the next best decision to act. Should I double the dose? Should I do another protocol? Who's testing things here? Can I contact another doctor who had this experience?" You see my point? So the problem has never been finding the information and data when they're at work. It's more like, "Okay, I need to go further into the content and explore." And the problem we had was: "Hey, click on 20 disclaimers before you get to the scientific liaison." And before you get to the scientific liaison who can answer your question—"Oh, did you know we have another label for the drug? Blah blah blah." You push so much promotional info that the doctor is just swiping to get through it.
Chapter 3: Streamlining Medical Information Access With AI
26:52 Alex Shevelenko: When we work with our clients in this world, we've noticed some things that struck me—tell me if you're seeing the same pattern. One is download fatigue in general, whether it's an app or "download this PDF, that PDF, this thing." People do want the information, but they want easier access to the relevant information.
And then what we're seeing with AI—it's been surprisingly relevant to us. They obviously don't want to ask ChatGPT questions about drugs, but if you could use the framework of ChatGPT looking at the relevant materials that they feel confident about—"This is precisely the material that I want aided from an AI tool"—there's a lot of interest in that, right?
28:02 Alex Shevelenko: "Help me analyze all of these five documentation assets about this particular area. This is my question. I don't want to go through five PDFs, I don't want to download an app, but I would ask questions." And as long as I know the materials it's looking at are related and I can trust that, it shrinks this time. Then they'll still go and check, right? Then they'll still verify that this is actually answering their question.
So what are you seeing in applications of AI that companies are starting to experiment with? It's been hard for the industry given the approval cycles and length of everything to get done, but what have you been seeing that's innovative that's happening there?
28:42 Haider Alleg: The problem with those new tools that doctors have access to—from their hospital or from their own pocket on their phone—beyond the sensitivity of the data, right? They're usually smart enough to not upload personal data and so on. The problem is the exhaustivity of the information. So basically, if you ask those common LLMs a question on "What dosage should I give my patient?" and you want accurate data, you want exhaustivity—you cannot just have a summary that's 80% correct. You need to be 100% correct. The problem is, legally, you can't rely on information that's not 100% correct.
Chapter 4: The Future of Medical Decision Making
29:48 Haider Alleg: So I'll give you an example of the best case that might happen in a few years. If the hospital imposes a protocol on how to treat patients for a certain therapeutic area, like cardiovascular, and the hospital decides you need to do X, Y, and Z in that order to maximize cost efficiency, and they use a bot to assist the nurse, to assist the doctor—your doctor will still be able to override the decision. But we know, you and I, that in a few years, for legal reasons, the doctor will say, "Hey, I followed the protocol that was recommended to me, and I agreed with the protocol." So their responsibility is shifting from their medical practice license slowly to the hospital, to the system. Right now, it's not the case.
30:41 Alex Shevelenko: Right now the doctor can decide whatever they want. The doctor is the one buying the liability insurance.
30:49 Haider Alleg: The doctor is liable. But tomorrow—and I'm not saying this generation or the next generation of doctors—but what happens in 40 years? In 40 years, you'll have an AI that's basically talking with all the AIs of the industry, trying to figure out the next best protocol for that particular patient. And maybe your mobile phone has given data on the fly about your weight, your mood, whatever. So you'll have those assistants that are basically working in the background.
31:19 Haider Alleg: So I would say the practice right now is very much aware that there's risk associated with decisions that are founded on data that's not 100% reliable. So there are startups that I know that are basically doing a better job at stabilizing the output of information.
I know a company in Chicago that's basically taking all PubMed data, and they compare it, they analyze it so that you don't have to read it. And if you ask the LLM they have: "Give me the exhaustive list of everyone who published on this matter," it will give it to you because it's trained to be exhaustive. But it will not give you information like "Treat your patient with this," because it would be liable.
32:18 Alex Shevelenko: Exactly. This is what we're seeing. It's funny—in other parts of the world that are also regulated, like in insurance, there's one strain of thought that says, "Well, if you're selecting your health and benefits insurance, we will recommend it to you." You could make some recommendations: "I'm this, I'm that," and on that basis, here's the recommendation.
But for some people, they don't want to go there because the moment you go from "Here's the information, here's a convenient way to consume information" to "Here's what we recommend for you"—the moment you start recommending, the employer could be liable, the benefits advisor could be liable, because "Hey, you recommended I do this, and I did this, and I didn't get coverage, and all these bad things happened."
33:30 Alex Shevelenko: So there's still that risk in the regulated world. It feels like packaging the information to help people make decisions is a much safer starting point than actually being the decider, so to speak.
I think one of the striking patterns I've noticed also that worries me—and I'm curious about your take on broadly behavioral science and neuroscience that you're seeing happening in this world—is little things like Google Maps, right? You brought up a trip to Italy. When you drive in a city that you know—for me, for example, I know Paris, and I drive in Paris sometimes—I see Google Maps recommending insane directions that don't make any sense, that make me drive an extra 10 minutes.
34:15 Alex Shevelenko: There was a part of me at first that was like, "Well, I'm just going to follow Google Maps." Then you look back and you're like, "This is really insane." I don't know—are they trying to avoid traffic congestion and driving people this way? Did they lose their marbles?
And so that mode is worrying me because increasingly we're delegating our decision-making to some tools, and they're not good, right? The experts know the tools are not good. So I'm curious if you've started seeing this happen in the industry. This goes broader to behavioral and neuroscience, right? How do we process information in this age of overload and not being an expert in everything?
34:55 Haider Alleg: So yeah, I've seen some work where, surprisingly—when the data is generated by a machine but it is useful, like Google is doing on search—people are basically complaining that Google is stealing information from your website to give the answer to the user, and the user doesn't visit your website anymore, right?
So that's an issue, right? So basically, what will happen to your website tomorrow? You're just working for Google to basically have more visits. You're investing in SEO literally just to be in the directory.
Chapter 5: Maximizing Content Impact Through Strategic Distribution
35:42 Haider Alleg: For those answers—it's like a directory. Your website is not going to be better than Trust Radius or whatever. You're just going to be listed. And that's an issue because then the sovereignty of your presence—it's going to create microcosms of information. And people will basically be on one passport, you know? "I'm tribe Google," "I'm tribe Samsung," "I'm tribe..." you know what I mean? So it's going to create different pockets of users, and it's okay. I mean, that's already happening.
When people talk about the accuracy of the information or the danger of the information, I tell them: look, it's like you're telling me there's a white web and the dark web in terms of information.
36:33 Haider Alleg: You're not going to the dark web, right? Because people tell you it's bad and you can get nasty stuff. Tomorrow you'll have less of that black and white—it's going to be gray. People will tell you, "Oh yeah, don't go to that Wikipedia platform because the information is not relevant. Go to this because it's the German government who did it." You're going to have new forms of internet, I would say, that are going to be much more controlled, much more secured also. That's also the trade-off. When you want security and safety, you're going to lose a bit of freedom. And in that world, in that context, when the information is controlled and made by machine and it's answering your simple need, people are going to say, "It's okay, I don't need more."
37:35 Haider Alleg: The only problem I see when it comes to content is when you want to be entertained. And the problem I've seen in the last 5 to 10 years—we went from basically mainstream TV-type content where you could sit and focus 30 minutes to one hour on a show, on a sitcom...
37:49 Alex Shevelenko: Still on a sitcom, right? But at least you can focus.
37:53 Haider Alleg: Correct, you can focus. And right now, basically, people are watching a TV show without really focusing on the TV show because they chat in real time. That's the thing. Believe me or not, people are watching everything by talking with others. So you're watching your Netflix movie, but you're not watching it with full concentration like you have in a movie theater. You're watching it with peers who are basically saying, "Oh, have you seen this? What do you think?" Blah blah blah, right?
38:23 Haider Alleg: And on the other side, you'll see people who are lovers of long-form content, like the Joe Rogan Experience podcast, when he sits for three hours with someone and people literally listen to that for three hours. They're basically amazed by the discovery.
38:45 Alex Shevelenko: So there's this vibration.
38:49 Alex Shevelenko: So actually, let's talk about that because it's a bizarre world a little bit. And I would say in the short form, what worries me—I also see behavioral patterns of kids, right? And they're not even looking at 30 minutes. I wish they were looking at it for 30 minutes. They're looking at TikTok, YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels, and just completely glazing through that. And that is even more interesting—hitting you like a slot machine for your attention.
And so will that same person be able to spend three hours listening to even Joe Rogan with all the interest, right? Or are they already too spoiled? Or will they be able to concentrate and read 100 pages?
39:51 Haider Alleg: You said it yourself. I mean, Joe Rogan as a business is obliged to cut his three hours into millions of tiny one-minute videos to attract the next generation because they want to have the sentence that makes you go, "Wow, he said that!" Right? And I think that's what we're looking at. You have content that is hyper-contextualized that needs to be distributed smartly.
40:19 Alex Shevelenko: You're thinking that's a way to lead you in, or that's all we're going to be? All we're going to do is a bunch of headlines and very little substance?
And the broader question is: what does that mean for regulated and complex communications where we're moving to that world?
40:31 Alex Shevelenko: One of the thoughts that we have is: how do I take that—back to Joe Rogan, right? How do we take a podcast episode, for example, and organize it into 20 or 21 one-minute videos that are topically oriented, but they could work as standalone, but they also work in the narrative? And then we create a format that creates a narrative around that.
And so if you're into it, you could jump around, right? And if you're not into it, you still have a little bit more than just, "Oh, this conversation," and then the next conversation about summer vacation in Italy in a Volvo, right? Which are completely random—you're distracted and they don't help you stay focused and really absorb something.
Or we could organize information in a way that moves you further toward a goal.
41:44 Haider Alleg: So that's more operational for me. This is what I call the content vortex, right? The content vortex is the strategy where you say to yourself, "Okay, I'm going to do one book." I'll give you an example—and some pharma companies, I think Merck is doing this. Some pharma companies do that. So they say, "Let's build a book that we'll do in the 2025 edition." And the book is going to be 250 pages, and the book is a scientific memory of how we see the world. It's basically a statement to the world. There's a new editor every year. It's a book.
42:37 Haider Alleg: That book then creates white papers. You extract things from that book, and every month, or every two weeks if you want, you have a new white paper that's beautifully crafted. It feels new, but it's just basically a repurposing of that book.
42:48 Alex Shevelenko: Bouncing on one of the chapters of the book, right?
42:48 Haider Alleg: And then from that book, you extract big ideas, and you create long-form blog articles—2,000 to 4,000 words, whatever. Long-form blog articles with at least three paragraphs, three arguments. And then, from that blog post, you create your short-form content. You create a quote from one of the big ideas, you extract a carousel, blah blah blah. So that is what I've seen built by content factories in terms of disseminating the content multi-channel and basically having the best bang for your buck.
43:27 Alex Shevelenko: Because you have the book, but then you can break it down into multiple form factors.
43:40 Haider Alleg: And I say "book"—I say "book" just because some people will see books as super complex things to do. I'll give another example: you have a yearly symposium. This is a big event. You're investing lots of money on your event, and this event can basically create a report—a yearly report, right? And you've seen companies—and I don't know if you're watching, but there are a lot of companies telling you, "This is our 2025 report on ESG," blah blah blah, right? They're basically doing more than just an ESG report. They're telling the way they see the world through the ESG lens, right? It's a lot of content. And then that content is disseminated inside an editorial line called ESG.
44:18 Alex Shevelenko: Yeah, yeah. Well, it's fascinating that you bring this up. We see this concept work in some areas, but in a lot of places it just stops at that report, right? It's like, "Oh my God, we worked so hard on this report. It took so much work to put this thing together." And it's like—whether it's for ESG or it could be a company annual report, right? Or the flagship—the brand's flagship thing that defines what it is, their industry trends. And typically they slap the CEO name on that, they may even interview them for five minutes.
45:11 Alex Shevelenko: So they work so hard on getting that thing done. Then in the last mile, they're like, "Here's the PDF, we slap it on our website, we get a banner to promote it, and we're done." And I feel like this is 80 to 90% of these corporate communications. And there's no content factory effort to do this—to bring it down, to atomize it, to humanize it. And it feels like a huge loss, frankly, right? Because who's going to—are your employees going to look at that? Are your stakeholders realistically, in this day and age, going to read through 200 pages, small font? Or can you get them to find the chapters they care about and so on, and then engage?
So what's your advice there? How do people—
46:01 Haider Alleg: I'm coming back to the word culture, right? It's basically, if you set as a business rule in your company that everyone is incentivized to become the next, whatever title, by checking the box and just showcasing that you delivered—the word "leadership" is dictated by internal scorecards or OKRs, right? And the problem, for me, starts there. It starts at the definition of what good looks like on the outside, and it's not necessarily always sales. That's why sales is a consequence, right? This is what we want to achieve. You want to find the drivers that go into that. But we also know that brands that are doing a good job are nurturing sales because of the investment, the equity they possess, right?
47:44 Haider Alleg: And the leaders that understood this—they say, "You know, my brand is everything because it's what's going to live on. It's the legacy of the founding team. It's what we created that's going to remain." You know, it's basically the noise that you hear about the brand when you're not in the room, right? And the brands that are doing a good job at creating that delightful experience and doing a good job at operationalizing content, for example, for sustaining the brand—the brand essence and the brand tonality—are also rooted in the "why we do this." Why are we spending this extra time to do this?
47:48 Alex Shevelenko: So we're not doing this report to say, "Hey, here's the ESG checklist or here's the annual report checklist."
47:55 Haider Alleg: No. You want the report—we want to activate our shareholders.
47:58 Alex Shevelenko: We want to activate our stakeholders. We want everybody to care about us.
48:05 Haider Alleg: I worked with corporate communication teams that, when they write something, are basically saying, "You know, I want to make sure that the financial observer who's potentially going to write a paper about our company—I want them to really, really understand what it is to live and work for this company. What is our purpose?" You don't have an interview. You don't have time to do 20 emails to change the behavior of that person who's basically covering 20 companies—who has 1,500 companies to pick from for writing a paper. And they work at Forbes or Financial Times or whatever you name it, and they need to pick one. I can guarantee you, if there's some effort done in that report, they'll say, "Yeah, you know what?"
49:01 Alex Shevelenko: They care. There's something there. It's easier for me.
49:05 Haider Alleg: And they care, right? There's an experience. I guarantee you, open a white paper from Apple. Open the white paper from Apple—just the most basic white paper you can find, like when they explain how they recycle their plugs. You know, something so simple as that. You see the craft they did, the way they write. And it's just—you know, I'm not saying you will read it per se, but if you're a student and you want to find a paper where you can base yourself as a reference, man, it's easy to read, it's easy to find. So at every corner, every touchpoint of the brand, there's care, there's a delightful experience.
49:57 Haider Alleg: And I think this is what you don't find in the pharma industry, for example. It's basically, "Yeah, the law is asking me to do this. Let's do what the law is asking me to do."
50:03 Alex Shevelenko: And so those that will bring that will basically have an edge. And they'll feel better about it, you know? Because the irony is that pharma companies—when you work there, when you support clients in pharma—you feel really proud about what you're doing because you're actually really impacting lives in a positive way.
But it sort of reminds me of the saying: it's not about whether people think you're really smart or that you're an activist, but generally, what do they feel after they talk to you as a human being? How do they feel? Do they feel energized? Do they feel empowered? Do they feel excited about whatever you're excited about? Are you able to transfer energy in a memorable way at the interaction?
Chapter 6: Influencing Algorithms and Brand Authenticity
51:01 Haider Alleg: I'll give an example on this. To get to that level of sentiment—that je ne sais quoi that you feel in the room and you don't know what's happening—imagine that your brand is a president of the United States and you're running for a campaign, and people have to vote for you. What will you do to move people's hearts and minds for your brand—to ask them to pay with a credit card or to prescribe your drug? So it's beyond just the facts and figures.
Yes, it matters, right? If there's someone else basically saying, "This team has done so much of a great job in their clinical trial. They're the first line of therapy because their science is 10 times better." Of course, you don't have to work much, you see? So if your product is 10 times better scientifically, everyone's going to prescribe it, right? It's a no-brainer.
51:48 Haider Alleg: But on top of this, if you're saying, "Yeah, but on top of having the best scientific drug, their training to pharmacists is spot on. When there's a problem with a product, their pharmacovigilance is spot on. It's a delight to basically work with their scientific teams if we have a question"—if there's anything beyond the product, your company becomes a product. That's what I'm trying to say. Your company, your brand, is also a product, and the content is basically part of it, right? So it's one touchpoint. It's one vehicle to get through.
52:24 Haider Alleg: And also remember, right now we're talking about human beings. Humans have a limit in terms of content consumption. I was talking about the showstopper and the amount of content we have—the magma of content we have. So humans have a cap, a bandwidth of content they can consume and be delighted with per day, right? That's the issue.
53:12 Haider Alleg: And you talk about frequency and reach. This is where creativity plays a role, right? To basically play the game, to catch the heart, and then you bring the science and the contextual info. But why I'm saying this is because the real game tomorrow is going to be convincing platforms that you have the best content and services. So that also is—right now, the most demand I see is: "How do I convince a ChatGPT-like person that my product needs to be the answer for ChatGPT?" Right? That's a different question.
54:26 Haider Alleg: So I've actually been very vocal on this almost 10 years ago when Alexa started to come into houses, and people were asking me, "Yeah, but we don't need to focus on that because it's just a home device telling you the weather. Why should we bother with it from a pharma angle?" Right? And I said, "You know, look, if you're a mom and you're using Alexa for everything and it's convenient, and she uses it for Wikipedia, and Alexa starts to choose what to give her, she's not going to Google anymore. Alexa is the filter."
54:26 Alex Shevelenko: What happens? BlackBerry is the new Alexa, or ChatGPT is the new Alexa.
54:31 Haider Alleg: Exactly, exactly. And then now pharma companies are saying, "Hey, but how can I influence the algorithm so that my product is the first line?" Got it?
Chapter 7: Navigating Regulated Industries Through Content
54:43 Alex Shevelenko: Well, this is a great way to wrap up. So I think part of it is you're still, whether you're regulated or not, competing for informational space. And then one is just to get in there. And then the second is, once you're in there, how do you ultimately stand out and carry the brand voice in a way that's authentic?
And I'll give you the permission to say, "Hey, we are 10 times better," or "We discovered the science," right? You can't—science itself does not lead to success anymore in this world where you're competing in a very dense informational space.
And I think that is something that historically regulated industries, because they thought, "Well, if we just share enough information and we say that we've been around for 100 years, that's good enough," and I think that's no longer the case.
55:58 Haider Alleg: No, no.
55:58 Alex Shevelenko: Well, listen, Haider, this has been fantastic. Thank you so much for sharing your insights with our audience. How can people find you and continue to learn more about you?
55:58 Haider Alleg: Yeah, I'm on LinkedIn, so I'm pretty vocal on those topics there. So yeah, they can just search for me.
56:10 Alex Shevelenko: We'll do that. Or ask ChatGPT?
56:10 Haider Alleg: Or ask ChatGPT, or ask ChatGPT.
56:10 Alex Shevelenko: Ask ChatGPT, right? So again, Haider—the thought leader on how brands can navigate in regulated industries through content and much more. Thank you so much, Haider, for your insights.
56:10 Haider Alleg: Thank you.