Welcome to Knight Talks, the Uni of Florida's College of Journali and Communications talk show, produced by students for s Im Matt Abramson, a double gato at the College of Journalism.

And today, our guest is Wendi Go who held leadership roles with a including Cline, Davis, and Mann, and Agency Rx.

Now she's the executive vice pre and executive director of FCB He New York, one of the world's most-awarded communications netw focused on health care and the health care space.

Hi, Wendi.

Thank you for joining us today.

Nice to be here.

Great to have you.

As a journalism graduate of the how did that experience prepare you for the trajectory of your caree It actually prepared me a lot.

Being a journalism major here taught me how to writ I still remember reporting class which was the hardest class I ever took, but I came out of t knowing how to write.

And that was a huge, huge, huge help in working in advertising and any communication field.

So that was one of the big ones.

Also at the time, I don't know if you still have t I was required to take public speaking classes, or at least one, and that really helped me a lot And learning how to tell a story really important in journalism.

Really important in advertising, Oh, yeah.

Storytelling is huge.

One of your first roles was as s account executive with McAdams A Tell us about that organization and the role that you played the So this was a health care agency I worked with pharmaceutical com and other clients.

In fact, one of the brands I worked on wa when it was a prescription drug.

I was, you know, a junior person I just learned as much as I coul and did everything, whatever they asked me to do, I did.

Then you moved to CDM and held many positions there.

What was unique about CDM and what did those positions ent So I was at CDM for a really lon and I kept getting promoted every few years.

That was really my home and I learned everything about advertising at that point.

I launched drugs there.

I worked with different teams th I gained more responsibility as I work there.

At the time it was a smaller age and it was a great community of And we just we were all in it to and it was a great, wonderful ex for a very long time.

When you started, what role did you come in as.

I started there, I think, also as an account supe Got promoted up, up, up, up.

In the course of like ten or 11, 12 years to vice president and senior vice presid And I just had different brands.

I worked a lot with Pfizer.

I worked a lot in the cardiovasc at that time.

What goes into launching a brand You mention that was one of the things that Launching a brand is a lot.

So in the health care space, you we all talk about drugs and what drugs you're taking and what's new and what's not.

And you have to really understan the science behind the drug.

You have to understand what are doctors interested in l and hearing about the drug?

How do you position it?

All of these things that are thi you learn in the advertising sch So you put all of that together.

What's the story that you want t What's the creative going to loo And then you wait and you wait until the FDA approves your drug And when you get that approval, it is huge.

But then you've got to get every Right?

So you have to get all the mater You have a field force that's going to be selling your And so you have to get all the m ready for the field force.

You have to get all I mean, not but now everything ready online.

So is your website ready?

Is all of your digital advertisi Is everything that you could imagine to market a drug has to be done and ready the switch once you get the appr And then of course, the catchy j has started to be pre done.

Yeah, the catchy jingle.

So, you know, on healthcare adve space, there's two sides of it.

There's the catchy jingle on the commercials that you all We call that direct to consumer or DTC advertising, which the hope is that as a cons you hear about a drug or a disease state that you may and you go and talk to your doct about it.

Right?

The other side is to the health professionals.

So you want to talk to physicians and nurses.

And how do you communicate with And so you have to have that lev of expertize.

More clinical, more serious to just explain what this drug i what's the efficacy data, what is the safety data, and why want to prescribe it as a physic What are some of the biggest cha that you faced as you moved up through your car I think some of the biggest challenges were trying to do too much and really kind of pushing the c to do something that either they didn't have the budg or they weren't ready for or wer I wanted to do it, but maybe it didn't make sense.

And so how do you navigate that?

How do you build teams?

As I got more senior, you know, there are different ta that you need and certain- Sometimes you can have one quiet on your team, that's fine, but you don't want five quiet people on a team.

So how do you kind of work throu It took me a long time to figure that piece of it out.

And I would say the third challe is an ongoing challenge.

And I don't know that it's a cha as much as it's the industry is always changing you have to absolutely stay on t And if you don't, you will get l behind.

And so, you know, for me, making I am as in-tune with the new digital media, soci what's happening as our customer is incredibly important.

Exactly.

If your customers are moving to or Substack or TikTok, you to fo Youve got to follow them.

You do.

And so, you know, I have friends that are like, why are you on Ti I'm like, Because that's where my customer That's where the patients are.

They're talking about like these disease states in a w that's so innovative on TikTok.

So yeah, you go into it and you, you listen to their sto and you see their videos.

You know, all the agencies are l in New York that you've been wor Did you always envision yourself living there or did that just ha through the professional career that you ended up going through?

So I grew up in New York, on Long Island, and the fact that I flew down to and went to University of Florid back in the nineties was kind of So that's a bigger question.

What brought you down here?

I just always loved the Universi of Florida, a great school, and I wanted to go to a big rah rah but I always kind of knew that I was going to come back to It was not really that much of a So when I came back, as I said earlier, I was a journalism major.

I graduated in a year where there were no jobs in jour Actually, there still are no jobs in journ but at the time there were none.

And so I said, Well, I need to w And so I wound up in advertising You know, I had two job offers.

One was at a consumer shop, one was at a healthcare shop.

And I picked health care shop because it paid more and 30 year I'm still here because I love it And you're here as well to help find the future talent in the Ga and bring them to New York.

Why is that an emphasis to to find Gators that you can bring back to the a Well, there's a few reasons.

I think, number one, they're sma So any of the folks that I have that have gone to University of or have been in the journalism school of Florida, have been really bright, really And they know what they're doing And they are independent thinker and that's what we're looking fo Number two, obviously, I went to University of Florida, so I have an affinity.

I see a Gator on my resume.

I want to talk to them.

You know, a lot of advertising a in New York, they're all about Syracuse and N and all the Northeast schools.

We wanted to bring in some south in there.

University of Florida's also known for its diversity.

And that's something that is sup super important to IPG Health and FCB Health, which is where I am.

And so, you know, it's the right talent They're smart, they're ambitious Why wouldn't we want to come dow and meet you all.

Absolutely.

You know what you get with the Gator standard.

I mean, it's a good standard.

Ab You were a managing partner and director of client services at A Can you explain what the experience was like and what is a conflict shop?

So in advertising, especially in the health care sp you work at one agency, but if you are working, let's sa on a drug for depression with on and then another client comes ba and has another drug for depress they compete with each other.

So a conflict shop is literally You take some of your senior lea at one organization, you bring them to you firewall them.

So different teams, you don't sh everything is separate and then you could support anoth you know, another set of clients So at the time and this is years ago, Agency Rx doesn't even exis But at the time I was at CDM and then I wound up, you know, shifting over to one agency and then eventually to two Agency Rx to support different conflicts that we had.

I think, you know, the impact, let's be honest.

Now, you have two different clie that are, you know, working on the same therapeutic And so it's helpful and, you kno kind of expands your bottom line It gives people the opportunity and to get promoted into different roles that maybe they wouldn't have had the opportunity to at, you know, at one agency.

So I always think it's a great i if you are working at an agency and you have that opportunity to go to one of their sister sho because you can learn something You know, we talk about all the time at my something called proactive career management.

This is an amazing thing.

This is not just you saying, hey, I've been doing this for a year and I'm advocating fo give me a promotion.

No, no, no.

What we mean by proactive career management is thinking about you and saying, you know, I've worke in this brand for several years.

I want to work on a global piece of business or I want to work on a consumer piece of business, or I want to, you know, do a lau and you can go to your superviso and we will make that happen for And not only is it working on a different type of b you can switch your trajectory.

So if you were a copywriter and you know what I want to do broad then you can, you know, go into a different group as wel So I think one of the great bene of where I am at now, IPG Health and and FCB Health is it's a really big organization and there's lots of opportunitie to kind of think about your care in a broader way.

When you go to a conflict shop, are you basically on another loc It's that sort of unravel from the previous organization, not even sharing like any resources necessarily.

Now, there are definitely resour that get shared.

So for example, we have a production studio and all the agencies will share that production studio, but that will be dedicated to one piece o or the other.

And quite frankly, it's easier t now that, you know, since COVID and everybody is working remote, it's not like that physical spac Yes, the agencies definitely have different physic but it's easier, too, because so many people are worki now or hybrid.

Then you left CDM to be the executive vice president and director of FCB Health New York.

Tell us about the position you t that organization and what you d So at FCB Health New York, which is in New York City, we are part of a larger holding company called IPG Healt And IPG Health is the largest he network in the world.

It's massive.

We work in every market that you can imagine.

My role at FCB Health New York i oversee a large group, a large t I work with very varied clients.

Our clients like Novartis and Sanofi is another big client that I work with them and I also with a lot of smaller startup co that are launching their first p which is really exciting.

So our teams do everything on the patient sid We work with physicians and peer So doctor to doctor, we work with materials for the field for Again, same thing I've been sayi we tell the stories of these bra and so I have that role.

And then I also work on the executive leadership of F Health New York.

So we are bringing the culture of our agency to everybody, which is a lot harder to do now in the sort of this post-COVID w You know, it used to be back in in the olden days, ha ha.

You know, everybody came into th every single day.

We had three floors in the middl And yes, the technology to do meetings on Zoom or TEAMS was but nobody really used it.

And now, that has changed.

I think in some ways it's changed for the better in t people used to be at the agency, especially the more junior peopl that were getting all the jobs through the system.

And you had to be there live to check changes and do the Now you can do that at home and that's really nice.

And so you're not having to sit in the office until 10:00 or 11: at night.

I think where maybe it's not so is that collaboration isn't quit as much as it was, and I feel ba because I think some of the guys that are coming into the industr and they're working, yes, you meet people, but it's d a little bit more of an effort.

You have to work harder at it.

You know, the advice I always gi people when they start, when the my team is, look, when you're on these t meetings, please be on camera.

I know you don't want to be, but please do it because that's how we get to kno And I think that's important.

And so there's definitely been an adjus But I will say our agency has gr we have, you know, kind of maste I launched a drug completely through COVID, you know, more than one, because the business keeps going There's always going to be a new for people.

Absolutely.

You know, it's funny you've ment networking being sort of impacte and I hadnt really thought abou but my first job right out of th was at a local TV station, and I going to stay there particularly And I found my next job by netwo and going to an after party after a long day of work.

To this day, some of my closest are the friends that I met when I first started working, you know, at those agencies.

And it's nice when you are new to any industry and you're sitti you know, in sort of together, you can just ask people question It becomes very easy to like sor have that camaraderie and have those people there.

So while we don't want to make people come back to the office every da and we will never go back to tha likely, it is nice when you can have that experienc and as much as you can replicate using the technology that we hav I think that makes a lot of sens But it is also really nice because we now are able to have from all over the country that b we weren't able to have because didn't want to come to New York.

And so now we can hire people from Gainesville that maybe don't want to come to New York b are really super smart and want And, you know, then we have that opportunity to work with them as well, which So you mentioned launching a brand in COVID.

What was the process of the crea the planning and then the eventu So typically how we would launch a new brand and then I'll explain why it was during COVID is, you know, you have to understand what it i about the brand that is special.

What is the positioning, what is the story of the brand?

What is the creative that's going to break through?

We typically will work to prepare for a launch at least a year, if not 15 month before the product actually laun So we've been doing all of this all along and then we're getting for the FDA to approve.

We have everything set and ready and then we're preparing for what we have a big launch meeting.

All the sales representatives come in to one place and we train them on the drug and on all the materials.

And then they're supposed to, yo go out and go talk to all the do Right?

So, unfortunately, you know, COV and every doctor's office was cl The reps weren't going anywhere.

Nobody was getting on a plane.

We couldn't fly them anywhere.

So we had to turn that all and do everything virtual.

The reps usually we do a face to face mee Now they're doing it on TEAMS or And so we had to prepare the mat for a digital audience.

We also everybody was online so much more at that time.

They still are.

And it really forced us to have big multichannel plan.

So we were going talking to doct and consumers or customers across the board.

In a lot of different channels that maybe we weren't focused on at launch in the past It's almost like the challenge l as an opportunity.

A 100% definitely accelerated what was already happening in the health care space, but it absolutely accelerated it so that just more was happening and we would see the returns on So it made sense to keep doing i I have to ask, have you ever prepped a product it doesn't get the license of th And it is the most painful thing in the world.

Yeah.

Like a year of preparation and then nope.

Rug is pulled out from underneat We've been there.

I mean, I've prepared to do like a new business pitch where we're going to a new clien and they have a product that's going to be coming.

And then you, you work on this, you know, a presentation for two You go in, you do this wonderful presentation that the clients are like, Yes, this is great, we want to h And then two months later, their data comes through and they didn't like it, their e and then it's all gone.

It's painful.

I mean, I had times where, you k we've been working on something and then, you know, the FDA is l and then they don't launch the d and then, you know, you cry.

It's hard.

You put your heart and soul into That would feel devastating.

Yea Especially if you feel like you like, such a strong plan for it and then came and execute the pl And you know, and you believe in and you believe that it's really going to help people But you know, that is the nature of our busine A lot more, I've had a lot more than not, thankfully.

If only it was a placebo and it would just work in genera Exactly.

So Wendi, can you discuss the challenge of informative and helpful advertis avoiding anything unethical or manipulative in your marketin Absolutely.

And I will say it's a great ques In health care advertising, or pharmaceutical advertising, everything that we do goes throu extensive, extensive review proc So not only on our side at the a but also on the client side.

So everything gets reviewed by lawy everything gets reviewed by medical experts to make sure that anything we're is medically accurate.

And everything gets reviewed by what's called regulatory.

And they are looking at things against what the FDA requires in terms of their regulations.

We would never make a claim about something that isn't true.

It would never happen.

And every time we do make a clai how a drug works, how efficaciou it is, you have to counter that with the safety information.

So we always have that balance, which is why when you watch the commercials, you always hear tha know, the what we call the fair That's a legal requirement and we're happy to do it.

But it goes more than that.

You're talking about people's lives and diseases that they hav And so you have to have that rig You know, sometimes you can be f but a lot of times you can't.

And so that tone becomes really, really important as well We never lose sight that we're talking about serious cond And we are really trying to help And we want people and physician to have the information that the when they need it and that they know accurate and helpful, you know, content.

As the agency, do you have clien come to you and they already they've wrapped their mind around that concept or are you working with them to educate them on where those limi where those walls are, and where you really can't step much further outside of tha We work together on it.

So a lot of the marketing people who are clients that of course, we all know what those lines are but we we definitely try to go as far as we can and then we get pulled back and that's fine.

But, you know, there is a line.

But the idea of being respectful to our customers and understanding that these are serious diseases that we're working with, that is always a part of what we Are there additional regulations that you and the creator and adv have to grapple with that are sp to medical and pharmaceutical ad I think of all the like the foot and all the subtext.

It's a lot different and a lot d not just because of all the footnotes that you're talking about.

Every single thing that we say a a product has to be backed up with the rig you know, clinical data.

And we may want to say something it works in five out of ten people or eight out of ten people.

And if we don't have two differe that say that that's true, we can't say that.

So like I said, everything gets reviewed really tightly.

And you have to even when you're like as an art director, laying out a page or putting a c on, you have to prepare for all fair balance.

You know, something as simple as when you're watching those TV when they talk about all like sort of the important information, the music behind it can't be too It can't look completely differe It has to feel like it's- There' regulations that you have to go Have you ever had an instance where the music was questioned or challenged or had to be swapped for that re Oh, absolutely.

Yeah.

But all the spots that you see go to the FDA for approval before they get on air and the F will come back, you know, for gu And theyll come back to the age and say the music is too loud or you can the way that you said it.

So absolutely.

And then you have to make the ad based on.

So first it goes through the agency revie then it goes through the client review process.

And then especially for the TV s it goes to the FDA and they come back and say, you can't really say that or you don't have enough balance th or the music is too or whatever Absolutely.

Do all those regulations transla from broadcast to the new media So if you're going to put something on TikTok, are they reviewing with the same sort of guidelines that they would have had for the Pretty much, highly regulated.

Very different for like, you know, everyone says, oh, it's just like financial, yo advertising, which is very well, highly regulated as well.

And it is.

But, you know, they have all their stuff in the mouse typ We don't really have that.

Our fair balance has to be the s as our claims.

It's different.

With over 50 people on your acco what's your approach to organizational leadership?

A lot of it is knowing my team and knowing how they work and what their strengths are and you know, little teams together my group that I know are going t well together, that's number one Number two is promoting them, making sure that they are gettin new opportunities and moving aro And even if it's leaving my grou to go work on another group for a really good opportunity, that's really important to me.

Giving them feedback, giving my team feedback a lot and often and real time feedback is super important for Giving people the opportunity to do new things and promoting t if they deserve it have been suc I have you know, what we call even though we're virtual now an policy, everybody on my team kno they can always put time of my c or stop in and see me when I'm in the office.

I want to get to know them.

I want to help them.

Excellent.

Has it always been your style?

Did you learn from anyone or is that just the way that you it needs to work and to be effec I think it's a little bit of bot When I started working, the teams were much smaller and you did everything yourself and over time these teams have gotten larger.

I kind of didn't have a mentor.

I didn't have somebody to talk t You know, my day to day when I was in my twenties, worki you know, my first agencies.

And so I always was like, I want to make sure that I'm the for these people.

And I like it.

Like, I still think of myself as and I get so much energy and I learn so much from, you kn the more junior people on my tea It's one of the reasons why I'm They come in and everybody has so much energy and they want to learn and they' Tell me more.

Tell me more.

And I think it's great.

So for those folks who have all that energy and are trying to break into the what is some advice you'd share those looking to do high level and impactful advertising, whether a part of an agency or just as a freelancer trying t with their first couple of clien Advice I could give you guys.

Number one, if you're going into advertising understand what you want to do.

Where do you want to focus?

So I think even today, you know, I was at the career fair a few d and I was talking to some studen and they're like, oh, well, I'm interested in art and planning.

And account and production.

I'm like, That's great.

I am too, and you can do it all, but you got to pick one.

Where are you starting from?

So, you know, starting out, I think that's one big piece of I would say.

The second one is I say this to all the time, be a sponge.

Your first couple of jobs, get in there, learn as much as y Listen, don't always feel the need to speak.

That's okay as well.

Talk with your colleagues and work with them.

Ask them questions.

They will ask you questions.

Like, that is super, super impor when you get started in this bus as well.

Well, Wendi, thank you for joining us.

We appreciate all of the insight you've given us in agency life and in the medical and pharmaceutical space.

It was really fascinating.

And thank you, our viewers, for joining us.

Until next time, goodnight.