Ambassadors’ sought for ambitious engagement plan
pharmafile | June 5, 2009 | News story | Sales and Marketing |Â Â ABPIÂ
People from across the industry are being asked to volunteer as 'ambassadors' for the pharma sector to conduct a large-scale 'conversation' with stakeholders.
The ABPI is launching a nationwide initiative to find out how thousands of stakeholders view the industry, from healthcare professionals to NHS managers, patient groups, media and other interested groups.
The ABPI says it needs to appointed dozens of ambassadors and wants industry employees to come forward and volunteer for the ambitious new project.
The ambassadors will have face-to-face meetings with a range of stakeholders, with the aim of reach 8,000 different people, from across the spectrum of stakeholders. Records of the conversations will be reported live on to a specially designed website so the whole industry has access to the views as they are revealed.
David Lewis, director of corporate affairs at the ABPI, said: "This is an enormous undertaking. We think it is probably the biggest stakeholder communications exercise of its kind in the UK. We want to have open and honest conversations about how people regard the industry so we can map and understand concerns where they exist and respond directly to them."
Colette Goldrick, Director, Corporate Affairs Europe at Pfizer is one of the industry representatives leading the new initiative. She says the project is truly different to any other industry activities aimed at engaging stakeholders.
We need people from companies who are prepared to dedicate time to going out and engaging with stakeholders.
We need to devote time to this – it's not just a piece of market research."
She added: "I think the benefits will be in proportion to the amount of effort that people put into this initiative".
Subhanu Saxena, country president for Novartis UK will serve as chairman of the programme. He says he has seen first hand in his company's employees the enthusiasm and dedication towards serving patient needs, and believes this must be communicated outwards more effectively.
"We have to take the energy from our associates and share it more openly," he said. "We can really show who we are as an industry, and that we really aren't part of the problem, we are part of the solution."
The long-term aims of the project include helping companies build up their corporate social responsibilty (CSR) work, which could include an audit of existing pharma industry CSR work to establish best practice standards for the sector.
Saxena concluded that the UK pharma industry needed to take a more proactive approach to communicating its message.
"We have to step forward and say what we believe is right and lead from the front."
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