Interview with Alexandros Athanasiou, Head of Marketing, Innovation and Excellence with Takeda Pharmaceuticals
Have you considered that emotional branding, while not traditionally employed in the data-driven pharmaceutical industry, could provide a significant boost to customer engagement?
Alexandros Athanasiou, Head of Marketing, Innovation and Excellence with Takeda Pharmaceuticals, posits that as healthcare providers are as human as anyone, emotional engagement could drive significant marketing impact, provided it is carefully and intelligently balanced with scientific rigour.
SciencePOD had the opportunity to speak with Athanasiou, ahead of the Pharma Omnichannel HCP Engagement 2025, organised by Ubiq, from 12-13 May in Barcelona, Spain. Alexandros will be speaking on Bridging the Gap Between Scientific and Commercial Messaging in Omnichannel Marketing: Aligning Medical and Sales Communications.
What is your current role?
I’m the Head of Marketing, Innovation and Excellence with the Japan Oncology Business Unit at Takeda Pharmaceuticals, and work in Tokyo. My team leads initiatives to elevate marketing capabilities, drive innovation, and foster creativity, which I realise sounds very stereotyped, but for the Japanese culture embedding innovation and creativity is really important. We have a special focus on above-brand strategies to enhance customer engagement and help the brand teams to develop solid strategies.
What are your views on the challenges of communicating across cross-functional teams, using digital content?
To develop content which can be impactful, engaging, and resonate with customers, we need to break down the silos that we, unfortunately, still have in the pharma industry. This will involve showing teams how digital innovation can really enhance customer engagement and patient care. Challenges arise as different teams have different priorities or perspectives, and different levels of urgency when it comes to embracing digital advancements.
To bridge that gap, it’s really critical to cultivate a shared understanding of the customer journey and a culture of co-creating. The other thing that we try to do is emphasise the value of customer insights, and align the content across the different functions by balancing scientific data with emotional resonance. We still have the perception that human beings make purely rational decisions, but they actually take decisions primarily based on emotions.
What is required in the digital era to increase brand impact with HCPs?
The first thing is to change mindsets. It’s not just about pushing more content. HCPs are bombarded with so much information, and it’s more impactful to deliver the right content at the right time through the right channels. A customer-centric approach is required, meaning that we understand customer needs, preferences and motivations. Then, we can use the power of digital tools, such as advanced analytics and artificial intelligence to personalise our engagement. Omnichannel orchestration can ensure a seamless, consistent experience across different touch points. However, this is a work in progress. We try and test and fail, until success.
“While it might sound heretical in a science-driven field like healthcare, the evidence is clear that emotions influence how we perceive brands and how we assess risks… brands that manage to balance scientific credibility with emotional resonance will build stronger and more enduring relationships with customers”
What are your thoughts on emotional branding in pharma?
Overall, we’re not very comfortable in using emotional branding in the pharma industry, somewhat because of regulatory constraints, although other highly regulated industries, such as finance, have managed it. However, we have decades of research in behavioural economics showing that most decisions are actually driven by emotions or subconscious biases.
While it might sound heretical in a science-driven field like healthcare, the evidence is clear that emotions influence how we perceive brands and how we assess risks. For HCPs, that means that while data and evidence are essential, emotions such as trust, empathy, and purpose shape their prescribing decisions. There is a huge emotional component to healthcare, as you are affecting someone’s quality of life and potentially extending their lifespan. So, for instance, we could use storytelling to powerfully illustrate the strength of a given treatment in a patient’s life, while respecting compliance boundaries.
What are the key lessons for the future in enhancing HCP engagement based on your experience?
The world is changing rapidly, and our industry will need to become more agile to keep pace with this. Other industries have evolved more quickly in terms of digital offerings, and we can draw inspiration from their progress to harness our own potential and enact the changes that we need to make. This will involve becoming more agile and employing continuous learning. The most important change we need to make is to enact a radical shift in the industry’s mindset from a product-centric focus to an outcome-focused partnership with HCPs, prioritising patient outcomes.
There is an urgency for the pharma industry, and we really need to accelerate this digital transformation. What works today might not be relevant tomorrow. This will involve embracing experimentation, taking repeated small risks and being willing to fail fast and try again.
We are in a data-driven world. However, engagement, whether face-to-face or digital, is ultimately about human connection. So, the brands that manage to balance scientific credibility with emotional resonance will build stronger and more enduring relationships with customers. Those who can combine digital technology, cross-functional collaboration, and empathy effectively will have a huge impact in the market.