As senior director of client services for The Trade Desk, Elizabeth Keenan oversees teams responsible for audience strategy, campaign management and data analytics for the digital media-buying platform’s pharmaceutical vertical.
But, that’s her day job. At night, you might find her at a listening bar in Brooklyn, New York, mixing blends of funk, Italo disco or R&B.
Keenan began moonlighting as a DJ two years ago after friends inspired her to take a music mixing class. “I love music. My mom was a dancer, and growing up, I loved to dance, and I still do,” she said. “So I thought, ‘Why not?’”
For Keenan, it’s a way to unwind from the day-to-day pressures of a busy career, but she also sees parallels to her pharma marketing role.
In a Q&A for Fierce Pharma Marketing’s “Rising Stars” series, Keenan discussed how she landed on the tech side of pharma marketing, how lived experiences can influence campaigns, and what spinning tunes and serving up ads have in common.
Responses have been edited for length and clarity.
Fierce Pharma Marketing: What inspired you to pursue a career in pharma marketing, and what keeps you motivated in your current role?
Elizabeth Keenan: I was a global studies major in college, so I interned in nonprofits and thought I wanted to do that. But I think where we start our career is never really where we end it—every experience builds on the next. My first job was working at Bloomberg because they were a multinational corporation that offered so many different disciplines. I figured if I started at a company like that, it would give me the foundation to figure out what I wanted to do next. Ultimately, being on the tech side there led me to the agency side and now back to the tech side.
I had a lot of different stints at different types of agencies, but I always wanted to be close to the technology, and I always helped build technology at all of the agencies I’ve worked at.
My first foray into healthcare marketing was doing audience extension at Amnet, working on the programmatic trading side. We would run those audiences on behalf of doctors, OTC drugs and even Rx drugs. And when I was coming over to The Trade Desk, they said, “Oh, this is going to be a health-focused role.” I was thinking fitness brands and things like that, but it actually wound up being Rx and HCP marketing.
What has kept me in it, and what has made me so interested in it, is all of the data that we have access to in the healthcare space. I think it’s so fascinating. In the current landscape, with all of the regulatory privacy adjustments that are happening, we’re constantly having to evolve our strategies to keep up. That allows us to be even more creative. The CMOs at almost all the big pharma manufacturers today are coming from verticals that are really innovative, and they’re bringing that innovation into the pharma landscape. So it’s cool to be on the technology side of that and to be at the forefront of co-designing solutions that drive business results.
FPMK: What has been the most rewarding or challenging project you’ve worked on?
EK: I would say it’s a toss-up between our HCP product and our DTC product. When I first started, we didn’t have an HCP product. I got to help build that from the ground up. On our DTC side, we have integrations with both Crossix and IQVIA, where we can directly optimize and platform, and they’re constantly looking at ways that we can continue to evolve that. And we’re really getting creative with how we can target HCPs in non-endemic spaces. It’s really been incredible to see the performance that we’re able to drive for our clients. When you see the MMM [Marketing Mix Modeling] readouts at the end, it’s so impressive. So those are the two that I’m most proud of.
FPMK: What advice would you give to people who’ve worked in pharma marketing for decades?
EK: I would say even though you’re a specialist, the most innovation I’ve seen has been sparked from other verticals. Are there ways for you to think outside the box? Maybe there’s a through line you can pull from an activity or something you do outside of marketing, where it can spark a new mindset or a new way of thinking about healthcare marketing. If we’re being asked as an entire vertical to do more with less, are there ways in which you can think about other verticals or other things in your life where you’ve come into similar issues? How did you handle that challenge, and can you apply that to the way that you think about pharma marketing?
FPMK: What do you like to do when you’re not working?
EK: I love to DJ. I DJ on the side, not necessarily in club environments, but at wine bars and listening room environments. And I find a lot of parallels between programmatic media and DJing because it’s very tactile, hands-on, where you get to see things like frequency, but it takes on a very different meaning in music than it does in campaign management. In campaigns, frequency is how many times you serve an ad, and in music, the frequency and BPM [beats per minute] are how songs blend together. So knowing the ideal frequency in both music and programmatic media creates the ideal harmony.
I also love to cook and bake, and I play soccer. My grandmother was a seamstress, so I’ve also gotten into sewing recently. And I love spending time with my family and friends.