Interview with Morten Christian Bjerre, Global Lead, Content Hub, Customer Engagement Execution CoE, Novo Nordisk
Excellent in-house planning is vital for driving change in organisations, says Morten Christian Bjerre — who will be speaking at Pharma Customer Engagement Europe 2024 — but so too are active listening and the ability to adapt quickly.
“Meaningful customer experiences always start within organisations, and you need to have your own house in order first.”
Could you tell us a bit about your role at Novo Nordisk (NN)?
I head up Content Hub, our internal digital agency for asset production. We produce every type of digital asset under the sun, HCP portals, IVAs, RTEs, and much more. Content Hub is a vast organisation within Novo Nordisk with many specialised colleagues in various commercial areas, including marketing automation managers, editorial teams, creative teams, and more. Together we serve our commercial teams in our local affiliates but also Global Brand Teams.
What are you planning to talk about in your Reuters Event Customer Engagement session?
In my session, I will discuss driving change and adoption of innovation in commercial organisations. At Novo Nordisk, we are a growing organisation and constantly strive for best practice in content excellence and digital channels. One of our key digital tools is our content authoring tool for email channel, which is fully integrated with Veeva Vault PromoMats. We rolled this out in 2023 and successfully implemented it in 70 affiliates and 10 global brand teams.
This success didn’t happen by magic. It required closely monitoring the rollout, planning accordingly, and understanding our commercial stakeholders’ pain points. By doing so, we managed to launch a successful content authoring tool that has ultimately upscaled our commercial teams and our commercial colleagues.
What were your biggest digital marketing lessons learned in 2024, specifically in terms of harnessing innovation?
Working with change management on a daily basis, I’ve learned that ‘one size fits all’ rarely works; I usually say that ‘one size fits few’. But how do we do that in large organisations where scalability is key? Rolling out digital marketing solutions for commercial colleagues and affiliates requires active listening and continuous improvement.
When we were introducing this content authoring tool, we realised that we needed various supporting materials to ensure success. One of them was our content authoring Super User Corner, an open forum where colleagues could join, share their technical struggles in advance, and bring them directly to me and the rest of the Content Hub team. This type of support ensured that we maintained the momentum of rolling out innovation very effectively.
Could you give an example of your proudest achievement in terms of creating meaningful customer experiences so far?
Meaningful customer experiences always start within organisations, and you need to have your own house in order first. This content authoring tool exemplifies how we managed to rollout a key project while simultaneously understanding and addressing the challenges that come with it.
We need to adapt quickly if internal stakeholders are unwilling to collaborate, or adopt the innovation, or have questions about the innovation. We also need to recognise that these onboardings of digital tools are always teasers; they’re not handovers. Nothing is fully rolled out during a kick-off call, especially commercial tools and capabilities
What is the biggest hurdle to overcome in 2024, to get more effective customer engagement?
I would say, again, to get our own house in order. There are so many glitchy, beautiful innovations out there, but it’s really about driving that change internally. I would say making sure that we are fit for customer engagement first, before we focus on the actual engagement.
What type of new tactics are you planning to include in your digital engagement in 2025?
From an internal perspective, we now have a framework in place, we know how to leverage innovation. We know how to rollout innovation using an effective change management strategy, and we can now span this into more channels and other innovations across our organisation. I know how to bring innovation to our in-house colleagues and how this formula can be applied to other channels. This will ultimately give our commercial teams a competitive advantage within this space.