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Theo Ahadome just returned from Reimagine Pharma Marketing, where he was honored to deliver a keynote on the evolution of personalized marketing in pharma. It was a unique opportunity to take the time to answer the question: if we could push reset on pharma marketing and really start from scratch, what would we do differently?
His short answer? Modernize pharma marketing to catch up with how marketing is done in other industries, while still remaining compliant. But that’s really just scratching the surface. Read on for a question and answer session based on his keynote—and almost 20 years of experience leading pharma marketing teams.
What is the current state of pharma marketing?
Modern marketing is no longer about blasting messages and hoping something sticks. It’s about delivering the right message, to the right person, at the right time—based on their actual behavior, preferences, and context. Yet while the pharma industry pays plenty of lip service to “personalized marketing” and “1:1 marketing,” in reality, we’re still marketing like it’s 1995. For many pharma brands, the personalization starts and ends with printing a doctor’s name on a postcard.
In many ways, pharma is operating like direct mail marketing from yesteryear, with limited data collection, manual segmentation, limited channel interaction, and a brutally high cost per interaction.
But what if every marketing touch could be clinically relevant and perfectly timed?
What can pharma learn from other industries?
Let’s use Instacart, the online grocery delivery app, as an example. The brand’s Smart Cart doesn’t just show you products. It remembers your past orders, adapts to your diet, fills in gaps in your pantry, and offers recipes that match your habits. It’s invisible, frictionless marketing that feels like a customized-to-you service. It’s all made possible through comprehensive data collection, AI-powered segmentation, and dynamic, ever-updating personalization.
Of course, pharma marketing is more complex than selling groceries. We must navigate complex conditions, safety concerns, and clinical nuance. But at the end of the day, we’re still engaging humans. And those humans—whether physicians or patients—are used to intuitive, personalized experiences in every other part of their lives.
Right now, too many pharma marketing teams are still anchored in traditional segmentation: create three or four “personas,” map them to a journey, and push out content. It’s polite. Sometimes educational. But rarely timely. Rarely dynamic.
Taking cues from other industries, we can move from flat, traditional marketing to living systems that adjust to the individual’s needs and motivations in real time.
Can you provide an example?
Sure. In our keynote, I shared the story of “Julie.” She’s 68. She lives alone. She recently had a fall, broke her wrist, and was discharged from a hospital. Her chart shows no DXA score and no mention of osteoporosis. In most systems, that’s the end of the story.
But in our system, that’s where the story begins.
Unite identifies her risk based on a blend of structured and unstructured data. She receives a message: “Your recent fracture may be linked to bone loss. Would you like to message your doctor?”
She clicks yes. Her doctor sees the context, and they schedule a visit. She’s diagnosed with osteoporosis earlier than she would have been otherwise.
Later, she receives a branded message about a promising therapy. At this point, she’s ready. She’s informed. She’s engaged.
This is what it looks like when marketing supports—not interrupts—the care journey, and here’s how Unite enabled it:
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How does Unite Genomics enable pharma companies to do this kind of personalized, 1:1 marketing?
At Unite, we make personalization clinically actionable and fully compliant.
We connect to over 19,000 health systems across the U.S. to unify patient data in real time. Then we use AI to identify clinical gaps, patterns, and opportunities. That’s the clinical signal. From there, we help pharma deliver the right message—whether it’s educational, branded, or support-related—through the appropriate channel, at exactly the right moment.
We do this without overloading the physician. We embed into their existing workflow or reach the patient directly if needed. All messages go through rigorous regulatory alignment.
The result is 1:1 marketing that doesn’t just say it’s patient-centered—but actually is.
Any final thoughts?
The truth is, pharma has been talking about “patient-centered” marketing for over a decade. But the phrase has lost its shine—because we’ve struggled to show the substance behind it.
It’s time to move beyond the buzz. With the data, the tools, and the urgency we have today, there’s no reason marketing can’t be both compassionate and precise.
That’s what personalization means in healthcare.
That’s what we’re building at Unite.
