At the start of 2022 I shared three 2022 predictions with my customers (and the predictions from Veeva’s commercial leaders) on some interesting trends I thought we’d see. These are quite niche to the pharma marketing world. Let’s see how they panned out:

1. Consent Based Marketing is going to make a big comeback. And it’s not just a one time gathering of consent. Confirming consent regularly and using it as a way to ensure you are adding value is going to drive greater trust and higher engagement.

• So far I’m seeing this driven more by governments than companies. Opt in for data collection as a default is becoming more prevalent and something that companies and data providers are looking to do upfront.
• There’s still an opportunity to improve the feeling of consent and buy in from customers and I’d love to see pharma customers do more here.

2. The Home Office Is A Competitive Advantage. It’s been nice to assume the home office is a temporary change. It’s not. For many people it’s more productive and a better place for modern work – particularly virtual calls. Companies are under investing in employees’ home offices and missing a competitive advantage. Invest in camera, lights, sound and space productivity. And then make sure that mini production spaces are available in your office too.

• It was disappointing seeing how companies implemented their home office policies.
• Many companies gave home office allowances and left it up to employees to optimize without providing much guidance or education.
• Some company cultures opted for a preference for camera off communication – a missed opportunity as I see it.
• Companies are still reconfiguring offices for the new ways of working. Most are still under investing.

3. Artificial Intelligence in 2022 is Augmented Intelligence. The best way to think about AI in 2022 is how it can be used to augment your employees to make them more successful. Help them learn, gain insights, analyse, and deliver better. The foundation is still going to be data and Veeva products are still best in class when it comes to integrating your data into one place.

• The cost of enterprise artificial intelligence is still limiting progress.
• This is coupled with a focus on big data where limited data is available and machine learning as the primary tool for “AI”.
• Lack of imagination outside of machine learning cases is also holding back progress with decision support systems, semantic graphs and so many other technologies that fall under artificial intelligence.
• Some companies are making significant investments in people and capabilities and it will be interesting to see if these can cut through legacy culture.

Look out for my 2023 predictions coming soon!