The Supreme Pod

Supreme Group
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Welcome to The Supreme Pod by Supreme Group, where we discuss the art behind effective marketing in life science and healthcare. Every episode, we'll bring you insider strategies and expert interviews on crafting campaigns that drive real impact.

  1. Oct 20

    E17: The Gene Therapy Commercialization Playbook: Lessons From Supporting Launches

    With more and more gene therapies now reaching approval, attention is sharpening on the commercialization stage. This episode explores the unique complexities and challenges of a gene therapy launch, and where the traditional drug launch playbook needs to adapt. Host Paul Avery sits down with Elizabeth Yi, Doug Tischler and Allison Kramer from Broth to break down what the team has learned from supporting gene therapy launches and how brand and commercial leads can prepare. What you'll learn in this episode What makes a gene therapy launch different, and which parts of the traditional launch playbook need to be rebuilt Strategies for engaging gene therapy treatment centers, including who the key stakeholders are and how to build relationships Why a one-time treatment can be a harder decision than expected when a patient’s current care is part of their routine and doesn’t feel like a burden Who patients and caregivers turn to when evaluating a gene therapy, from advocacy groups to clinical trial participants, and what that means for how a brand builds trust How to build HCP confidence in rare disease gene therapies when clinical trials often enroll fewer than 100 patients, by using patient stories, case studies and ambassadors The importance of highly targeted, education-led campaigns that are often co-created with patients The personal learnings and highlights the team have experienced while supporting gene therapy launches Links Supreme Group: https://supremegroup.ai Broth: https://www.brothagency.com/ Timestamps 00:00 Introduction and welcome  02:10 How a gene therapy launch differs from a traditional drug launch 04:50 Centers of excellence and the champions who make treatment possible  06:55 One story, many audiences: authenticity and separate campaigns  10:15 The importance of preparing early and the risk when you don’t 12:55 The role of education and building gene therapy experts  14:10 Winning treatment centers: P&T committees, HEOR data and pharmacists  19:20 Surprises from the field 24:20 The cost of launching before treatment centers are ready  26:05 Referral networks and the post-launch bolus effect  28:35 Engaging HCPs when trials have fewer than 100 patients  31:50 Personal highlights: making complex science click and meeting the first patient to receive a gene therapy

    E17: The Gene Therapy Commercialization Playbook: Lessons From Supporting Launches

  2. Sep 21

    E16: When and How to Run Meta Ads in Life Sciences

    Meta Ads often don’t make the shortlist in life science marketing. LinkedIn and Google typically get the budget and the attention, with Facebook and Instagram often written off as consumer channels with no place in B2B.  But the reality is that Meta can provide scale and high engagement, particularly for B2B growth initiatives, HCP campaigns, and compliant patient recruitment strategies.   So when do Meta Ads earn a place in a life science media plan? And how do you get the most out of them? In this episode, Eric Southwell sits down with Robin McArthur, Senior Manager, Paid Social (Supreme Optimization) and Ally Dolezal, Senior Strategist, Paid Social (Supreme Optimization), two of the most experienced Meta specialists in the life sciences industry, to discuss when Meta earns a place in the mix and what it takes to build a campaign that performs. If you are a senior marketer in life sciences or healthcare, and Meta has been sitting untested in your channel mix, this episode is for you. What you'll learn about in this episode - The four pillars of building a successful Meta Ads campaign for life sciences from scratch, including setting benchmarks - The mistakes that show up in almost every Meta account audit and how to avoid them  - Why consolidating campaigns and ad creatives beats spreading budget across parallel tests - Tips to avoid creative fatigue or MLR bottlenecks  - What Andromeda actually is, and how to make it work for your business - Which of Meta's AI creative features are worth turning on and which aren’t - A case study showing a clinical trial recruitment playbook that delivered fully eligible, geographically qualified registrants at around $15 each - How Value Rules restores demographic control without switching off AI targeting, and the bid-down approach used on a trial with strict eligibility criteria Links - Science and healthcare digital marketing: Paid Social Advertising for Life Sciences | Supreme  Timestamps 00:00 Intro 01:14 When the audience is bigger than a job title 01:55 The case for Meta as the second platform alongside LinkedIn 03:24 Retargeting website traffic as the lowest-hanging fruit 04:31 The two mistakes that kill Meta campaigns 06:00 Creative fatigue and the fastest fix for it 07:33 The most expensive mistake: six figures a month on link clicks 08:09 The four pillars of a Meta account built from scratch 09:00 Fifty conversions per ad set per week, and what to do when you cannot hit it 09:30 Consolidate: why spreading yourself thin costs performance 10:30 Creative variety and the Advantage+ options worth using 11:27 Does Meta reward early adopters of new features? 12:10 Why a Meta account needs checking every day 13:04 What to settle with a marketing VP before launch 13:55 A creative system that survives MLR 15:04 The Good Nature Program: the recruitment playbook that worked 16:15 Get Paid to Poop: the tagline that won, at $15 per eligible registrant 16:42 When a registrant costs less than a click 17:13 The one quick win: consolidate, then vary the creative 17:59 What Andromeda actually is 18:57 AI slop, overlays, and where human judgment stays non-negotiable 21:56 Input quality as the next battleground 23:00 Value rules and getting demographic control back 24:49 Targeting the person most likely to start the conversation 25:45 Rebuilding processes with AI instead of bolting it on 27:36 No silver bullet, just faster and better 28:30 Closing thoughts and where to find us Keywords #metaads #metaadsforlifesciences #facebookads #instagramads #lifesciencemarketing #healthcaremarketing #pharmamarketing #biotechmarketing #patientrecruitment #clinicaltrialrecruitment #paidsocial #paidmedia #performancemarketing

    E16: When and How to Run Meta Ads in Life Sciences

  3. Sep 1

    E15: How to Build a Paid Media Strategy That Delivers Results in Life Sciences

    One-size-fits-all paid media strategies rarely work for life science companies, where audiences are often highly niche and deal sizes range from $50 reagent orders to million-dollar CDMO contracts. So, how can you build a paid media channel strategy that suits your life science business and delivers results? To unpack how to build a program that works, Paul Avery sat down with three of Supreme Group’s most experienced paid media strategists: Irene Lecker, PhD, Director of Performance Marketing at Supreme Optimization; Mihaela Pupavac, PhD, EVP of Operations at Supreme Optimization; and Eric Southwell, Chief Growth Officer at Supreme Group. Between them, they have decades of experience in building effective paid media programs for life science and healthcare organizations. If you're a marketer in pharma, biotech, medtech, or diagnostics and you've been running paid media campaigns that aren't delivering the outcomes you need, this is worth a listen. Key takeaways from this episode: → Audience size and company maturity drive strategy more than price point. A $100K microscope and a $50 reagent need completely different channel mixes, but not for the reason most people think. → Bing is the most underused channel in life science. Half the cost per click of Google, and your ads show up in Microsoft Copilot, where locked-down university and pharma laptops are doing most of their searching. → Video is the highest-ROI awareness play, and AI has made it more cost-effective. One team cloned a CEO's voice from a kickoff call recording, built three awareness videos, and 10X'd their LinkedIn following in four months without him lifting a finger. → Lab influencers are the next big arbitrage opportunity. Grad students and post-docs with growing audiences influence every purchase in the lab, and almost no life science brand is tapping them yet. → Upper-funnel attribution is still unsolved, and that's okay. The danger is tunnel vision. If you optimize only for what you can track and starve awareness spend, you'll eventually damage your bottom-of-funnel results. → Programmatic isn't just a buzzword. Modern DSPs like StackAdapt have no minimums, offer LinkedIn-level ABM targeting, and reach across CTV, OOH, and premium web, including NPI-free physician targeting. Chapters: (0:00) — Intro & guest introductions (5:00) — Matching channel strategy to company type: reagents vs. microscopes vs. CDMOs (8:00) — "We can't run paid search — our market's too small." Is that true? (11:00) — Are Google Ads really too expensive? The real reason CPCs go up (13:00) — The case for Bing: Half the CPC, and your ads run in Microsoft Copilot (18:00) — Auditing a new client: What to look at before picking a platform (22:00) — LinkedIn vs. trade shows: The real awareness comparison (26:00) — Solving the awareness problem: Why video is still the answer (27:00) — Case study: 10X followers in 4 months using AI voice cloning (31:00) — Attribution in 2026: What we can and can't measure (33:00) — The tunnel vision problem: Why bottom-funnel ROI hides upper-funnel decay (36:00) — How to help your internal champion defend the spend (41:00) — Thought leadership as a channel: The Supreme Pod origin story (42:00) — Why thought leadership works — and why finding the face is the hard part (46:00) — Programmatic demystified: What it is and when to use it (50:00) — Is programmatic right for every life science company? (56:00) — Trends prediction: Where paid media in life science is headed Subscribe for more content on life science and healthcare marketing strategy from The Supreme Pod. Supreme Optimization is a life science and healthcare digital marketing agency. Links Supreme Group: ⁠⁠https://supremegroup.ai⁠⁠ Supreme Intelligence: ⁠⁠Supreme Intelligence | AI-Powered Services for Healthcare & Life Sciences⁠⁠  Supreme Group LinkedIn: Supreme Group

    E15: How to Build a Paid Media Strategy That Delivers Results in Life Sciences

  4. Aug 10

    E14: Tackling the Big Challenges in Pharma Marketing Today

    What have been some of the biggest challenges facing pharma marketing teams in 2026 so far, and how can commercial teams adapt to ensure a competitive advantage? In this latest episode Eric Southwell, CGO at Supreme Group, sat down with Olly Johnston, EVP of Platform Growth and Transformation at Supreme Group, and Kelli Gauss, Director of Marketing and Growth at Pivot Design (a Supreme Group company), to discuss how they are tackling some of the industry’s biggest challenges. Together they dig into AI adoption and how to actually realize its value, weigh in on when omnichannel is the right fit for a business, and look ahead to the looming drug patent cliff. They also touch on staying creative amid tightening regulations and possible solutions to the shrinking access sales reps have to HCPs. If you are a senior marketer or commercial lead in pharma or biotech setting direction for the remainder of 2026 and beyond, this episode is for you. What you'll learn in this episode Why a small, ‘safe’ AI pilot often costs as much time and resource as a more ambitious, infrastructure change, and where the disproportionate value actually sits How a modular content approach lets a brand adapt fast when regulatory rules change Why untitled letters are showing up more often, and how to treat compliance limits as a creative brief rather than a ceiling How to determine if an omnichannel ambition is realistic for your organization and where to get started How to differentiate your therapy post-patent cliff and why starting after exclusivity runs out is too late Reaching HCPs with a data-led, digital-first approach as rep access continues to decline Links Supreme Group: https://supremegroup.ai Supreme Intelligence: https://supremeopti.com/supreme-intelligence Timestamps 00:00 Welcome and introduction (Olly Johnston, EVP Growth and Transformation, Supreme Group, and Kelli Gaus, Director of Marketing and Growth, Pivot Design) 01:24 Sprinting toward omnichannel and creating new silos on the way 02:27 Doing more with less, and pressure to use AI without knowing how 04:39 Managing the AI fog, and why small AI pilots can defeat the purpose of innovation 07:17 Untitled letters, and using compliance limits to push creative strategy 08:12 Atomizing approved creative into Lego pieces 09:21 Starting with what the patient actually needs 11:51 Four things to get right before omnichannel is realistic 14:34 The Super Bowl AI ads and content with no soul 15:45 Moving DTC toward end-to-end care coordination 17:53 Marketing into the patent cliff as categories commoditize 19:56 Data strategy for HCP targeting as rep access declines and the rise of synthetic AI reps 20:54 Digital-first strategy to drive patient demand 23:49 The value of in-person connection and clients asking to meet the team before they sign 27:25 Wrap Keywords #pharmamarketing #lifesciencemarketing #healthcaremarketing #omnichannelmarketing #pharmacommercial #hcpengagement #aiinpharma #pharmacompliance

    E14: Tackling the Big Challenges in Pharma Marketing Today

  5. Jul 24

    E13: Get Real: How Pharma Brands Can Earn Trust in 2026

    How can a pharma brand earn the attention and trust of patients, physicians and other stakeholders in an industry filled with skepticism, AI generated noise and an overwhelming array of media channels? In this episode, Paul sits down with Nicky Battle, President of Supreme Communications, to discuss why pharma brands need to get real in 2026 and lean into honesty and authenticity to cut through and build trust. If you are a senior marketer, communications lead, or commercial leader in life science, healthcare, or pharma trying to figure out how to build a successful strategic communications program in 2026, this episode is for you. What you'll learn in this episode Why the rigid 1 year comms plan produces volume without breakthrough, and what should replace it How being too risk averse and over-sanitized can undermine successful strategic communications The value of open data access when it comes to building physician and patient trust Why compliance guardrails don't have to kill authenticity, and how brands can find the "Goldilocks zone" between the two The importance of listening in strategic communications, including an example of mirroring a community's exact language to build a connection Links Supreme Group: https://supremegroup.ai Supreme Communications: https://www.supremegroup.ai/science-healthcare-communications  Supreme Intelligence: https://supremeopti.com/supreme-intelligence Timestamps 00:00 Welcome and introduction (Nicky Battle, President, Supreme Communications) 00:55  Why "PR has a PR problem," and reframing strategic communications as earning permission rather than reputation 02:50 The old playbook: Fractured frameworks and rigid, milestone-driven annual plans that create volume without breakthrough 04:05 From 7 touches to 7,000: why fragmented attention means brands must repeat themselves consistently everywhere 05:45 The point of care as pharma's most vulnerable moment, and the mistrust pharma faces  07:10 What Netflix's unapologetic price hike and Nike losing its "share of cool" teach pharma about brand complacency 10:00 Why "Big Pharma" became a negative term despite undeniable innovation, and the cost of skipping community-level trust work 12:10 Listening sessions, ad boards, and a Reddit-scraping example of mirroring a community's own language back to them 14:25 Why AI slop is part of pharma's trust problems, and the case for showing real, reflected life instead of a sanitized "polo shirt and khakis" image 17:10 Real regulatory guardrails in pharma, and finding the "Goldilocks zone" between compliance and authentic engagement 17:40 Radical transparency: giving physicians open access to full data sets 21:45 Coaching risk-averse clients, and why the best comms work happens when clients are willing to be "gladiators" for a tested message 22:45 The power of chopping the rigid annual plan into quarters 26:50 The four operating systems of modern PR 29:40 Inside the SG thought leadership mapping tool that matches message, messenger, and medium, and drafts the pitch itself 32:05 What excites Nicky most about the future of earning trust in pharma communications Keywords #lifesciencemarketing #healthcaremarketing #pharmamarketing #strategiccommunications #pharmapr #publicrelations #healthcarepr

    E13: Get Real: How Pharma Brands Can Earn Trust in 2026

  6. Jul 14

    E12: AEO in Life Sciences: What's Actually Working in 2026

    In life sciences, buyers are now more likely to find your brand through an AI-generated summary than through a traditional Google blue link in the search results page. Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) is an evolving marketing tactic that addresses this shift and focuses on optimizing content for answer-first experiences via AI. But how does AEO actually work in life sciences marketing and how do you know when it’s working?  Recorded live at Supreme's annual offsite in Punta Cana, host Eric Southwell (Chief Growth Officer, Supreme Group) is joined by Paul Avery (EVP, AI Adoption, Supreme Group), Dean Hallam (Scientific Digital Marketing Strategist, Supreme Optimization), and Lauren Whitehead (Managing Director, Supreme Optimization) to give an honest, data-backed picture of the current role of AEO in the marketing mix and how to ensure your organization can be found by AI.    What you'll learn in this episode AEO and SEO share the same foundations, the technical bedrock hasn't changed. What's changed is how content surfaces and what winning looks like (citation vs. ranking). AI traffic converts 4.5x better than organic, but it's still less than 1% of traffic for most life science clients. Proportional investment matters. Your biggest AEO risk might be invisible content. JavaScript-rendered specs, interactive maps, gated PDFs. LLM bots can't read any of it. Digital PR is more important than ever. How your brand appears across the web directly influences AI citation frequency. Quick wins and where to start if you’re overwhelmed Strategies based on your audience. Pharma and patient audiences need different AEO strategies. Branded vs. unbranded, HCP vs. patient, the approach and expectations must differ. Links Supreme Intelligence: https://supremeopti.com/supreme-intelligence Supreme Group: https://supremegroup.ai Supreme Optimization: https://www.supremeopti.com/  Timestamps 0:00 — Sizzle Reel 1:00 — Intro & Guest Introductions 3:00 — AEO vs. GEO vs. LLMO: Settling the terminology debate 5:00 — How AEO differs from SEO (and what stays the same) 8:00 — AI referral traffic: 4.5x conversion rate & branded search trends 9:00 — Why SEO still has a place in life sciences 11:00 — Google's revenue incentive to protect paid search 13:00 — Query fan-out: Why 80%+ of AI answers don't pull from page one 15:00 — Risks of ignoring AEO — and the "arbitrage panic" problem 19:00 — Agentic AI and second-order consequences for marketers 20:00 — The omnichannel content play that covers all your bases 22:00 — AEO content tactics: Expert quotes, citations, data-backed content 23:00 — Technical AEO: JavaScript, crawlability, schema markup 27:00 — Why AEO is additive to SEO, not a replacement 29:00 — Schema markup and author bios for LLM trust signals 30:00 — FAQ schema: The easiest AEO win most companies skip 32:00 — Where to start if you've done nothing with AEO yet 34:00 — The PDF problem: Why gated content is invisible to LLMs 35:00 — AEO metrics: Visibility, citations, sentiment, and share of voice 40:00 — Designing prompts that actually work for AEO measurement 41:00 — Unexpected learnings: Digital PR and earned media's new role in AI 47:00 — AEO for pharma branded vs. unbranded vs. patient-facing sites Keywords #AEO #AnswerEngineOptimization #LifeSciencesMarketing #PharmaMarketing #HealthcareMarketing #SEO2026 #AISearch #GenerativeAI #DigitalMarketing  #AIOverviews #GenerativeAI #ChatGPTMarketing #DigitalPR

    E12: AEO in Life Sciences: What's Actually Working in 2026

  7. Jun 16

    E11: What AI-Native Means for Life Sciences & Healthcare Marketing

    AI-Native vs AI-Dependent. There's a massive difference. AI-native means using tools to amplify your expertise and AI-dependent means handing off your thinking entirely. The team at Supreme Group unpack this distinction and much more in the latest episode of Supreme Pod. Recorded live at Supreme's annual offsite in Punta Cana,  Paul Avery (EVP, AI Adoption) sits down with Sheldon Zhai (Chief AI Officer and Founder), Paulo Simas (Head of AI Growth), and Ramon Felciano (Board Member and Strategic AI Advisor) to discuss the benefits and considerations of becoming an AI-native organization in complex, regulated marketing environments such as those found in life sciences and healthcare. If you are a senior marketer, agency leader, or commercial lead in life science or healthcare trying to understand what meaningful AI adoption and deployment looks like from the inside, this episode is for you. What you'll learn in this episode The distinction between AI-native and AI-dependent, and why using AI to amplify domain expertise is very different from outsourcing your judgment to it The biggest potential AI efficiency gains for life sciences and healthcare commercial teams including fully automated, reliable MLR review   Why top-down AI mandates fail where peer-to-peer learning and sharing succeeds Practical examples of an AI-Native agency in practice, including a website created in five days and a buried dashboard experiment that became a viral capability Why becoming AI-native starts with reinventing workflows from the ground up How AI efficiency gains in non-personal promotion could fund a meaningful shift back into personal promotion, and what that rebalancing means for commercial teams working in life sciences and healthcare Links Supreme Intelligence: https://supremeopti.com/supreme-intelligence Supreme Group: https://supremegroup.ai Timestamps 00:00 AI-native in life sciences: what it actually looks like 00:37 Welcome and guests (Sheldon Zhai, Paulo Simas & Ramon Felciano) 01:45 AI as a first Photoshop session: the discomfort of learning something genuinely new 05:00 What it actually takes to lead AI transformation across an entire business 07:00 Pitching by prototyping: the new way of communicating ideas to clients 09:00 The 7-day pharma website: what a curious, AI-native team can actually deliver 11:10 Curation over accumulation: knowing what not to use is a competitive advantage 12:52 Hours instead of weeks: collapsing MLR review cycles with verified brand data 14:30 The superpower of client proximity: in-house expertise meets AI-enabled delivery 16:20 AI puts every workflow in question, starting from the ground up 18:17 The Knowledge Lake: why brand-specific data beats general AI in regulated marketing 22:00 What AI-native actually means, and what it is not 23:10 AI-native vs AI-dependent: a distinction that matters more than most leaders realize 27:00 Culture of curiosity and the usage scoreboard 28:00 Solutions from the coalface: the diversity of what curious people build 30:47 Why bottom-up adoption sticks when top-down mandates fail 33:00 Leadership in the ring: leading by doing, not by directing 37:00 The reports feature nobody planned: viral innovation and the end of big roadmaps 40:00 Speed as a differentiator: deploying a voice tool to 300 people in five minutes 43:00 What AI can do today that it genuinely could not a year ago 45:00 From bullet points to clickable experiences: communicating through experiment 49:10 Domain expert meets 100X leverage: building what you wish existed 50:30 The scientific mindset is an AI mindset 52:00 Predicting the next two years: agencies, efficiency, and what fundamentally changes 55:00 Humans at the edges, AI in the middle, and the personal promotion shift 57:00 Wrap and where to find us Keywords #lifesciencemarketing #healthcaremarketing #pharmamarketing #biotechmarketing #aitransformation #marketingai

    E11: What AI-Native Means for Life Sciences & Healthcare Marketing

  8. Jun 2

    E10: What the AI Forward Deployed Expert Model Means for Healthcare & Life Sciences

    Ninety percent of generative AI pilots fail, often because the technology is disconnected from data, workflows, and anyone accountable for results. As a fix, some AI providers now offer Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE) models to build custom AI solutions from inside a company. Before choosing an FDE partner, healthcare and life sciences organizations should ask: does this company understand the complex realities of regulated healthcare commercialization? And will they recommend what's best for my company’s needs, or what's best for their platform?  In this episode, Sheldon Zhai (Founder and Chief AI Officer, Supreme Group) digs into the considerations and opportunities of an AI deployment model in regulated healthcare and life sciences commercial environments. If you're a senior marketer, commercial lead, or AI decision-maker in healthcare or life sciences trying to figure out how to make AI actually land, this episode is for you. What you'll learn in this episode What a FDE model is and what it means in practice for a healthcare and life sciences company The benefits of a healthcare specific FDE model vs a generic FDE model  Why platform agnosticism matters in a market where most AI partners have a platform agenda How to identify a commercialization partner that is genuinely AI-Native  Data security and compliance considerations, and what pharma companies should ask before committing to a FDE provider The 20/60/20 model for human-AI collaboration, and why the human contribution may shrink in time but grow in impact How a patient website project went from a three-month, six-figure quote to five-day delivery at thirty percent lower cost, with full legal and regulatory sign-off Links Supreme Group: https://supremegroup.ai Supreme Intelligence: Supreme Intelligence | AI-Powered Services for Healthcare & Life Sciences  Timestamps 00:00 Opening and lead-in00:37 Welcome and intro (Sheldon Zhai, Founder and Chief AI Officer, Supreme Group)01:00 What is Supreme Intelligence FDE+?03:30 Why model agnosticism matters: the Trojan horse problem with vendor-deployed AI engineers07:00 The five-day website: three months and six figures vs five days at thirty percent less10:00 Personalization at scale: AI-powered campaigns for 30 personas, and what the performance data showed13:00 Why consultative depth matters: clients don't know what's possible17:00 What IT and procurement actually ask: AI councils, SOC 2, and why the conversations go better than expected20:00 Pitching by prototype: showing AI-native competency before the conversation starts25:00 Supreme Intelligence: the infrastructure layer that powers FDE29:00 The human's role in an AI-native world: the 20/60/20 model35:00 Custom at scale: AI-native workflows vs templatized shortcuts38:00 What makes FDE+ unique: 70 PhDs and hands-on pharma backgrounds39:00 Wrap and where to learn more Keywords #pharmamarketing #lifesciencemarketing #healthcaremarketing #AIinpharma #forwarddeployedexperts

    E10: What the AI Forward Deployed Expert Model Means for Healthcare & Life Sciences
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About

Welcome to The Supreme Pod by Supreme Group, where we discuss the art behind effective marketing in life science and healthcare. Every episode, we'll bring you insider strategies and expert interviews on crafting campaigns that drive real impact.

Information

  • Creator
    Supreme Group
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    17
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Supreme Group
  • Show Website
    The Supreme Pod