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Meta Ads often don’t make the shortlist in life science marketing. LinkedIn and Google typically get the budget and the attention, with Facebook and Instagram often written off as consumer channels with no place in B2B. 

But the reality is that Meta can provide scale and high engagement, particularly for B2B growth initiatives, HCP campaigns, and compliant patient recruitment strategies.  

So when do Meta Ads earn a place in a life science media plan? And how do you get the most out of them?

In this episode, Eric Southwell sits down with Robin McArthur, Senior Manager, Paid Social (Supreme Optimization) and Ally Dolezal, Senior Strategist, Paid Social (Supreme Optimization), two of the most experienced Meta specialists in the life sciences industry, to discuss when Meta earns a place in the mix and what it takes to build a campaign that performs.

If you are a senior marketer in life sciences or healthcare, and Meta has been sitting untested in your channel mix, this episode is for you.

What you'll learn about in this episode

- The four pillars of building a successful Meta Ads campaign for life sciences from scratch, including setting benchmarks

- The mistakes that show up in almost every Meta account audit and how to avoid them 

- Why consolidating campaigns and ad creatives beats spreading budget across parallel tests

- Tips to avoid creative fatigue or MLR bottlenecks 

- What Andromeda actually is, and how to make it work for your business

- Which of Meta's AI creative features are worth turning on and which aren’t

- A case study showing a clinical trial recruitment playbook that delivered fully eligible, geographically qualified registrants at around $15 each

- How Value Rules restores demographic control without switching off AI targeting, and the bid-down approach used on a trial with strict eligibility criteria

Links

- Science and healthcare digital marketing: Paid Social Advertising for Life Sciences | Supreme 

Timestamps

00:00 Intro

01:14 When the audience is bigger than a job title

01:55 The case for Meta as the second platform alongside LinkedIn

03:24 Retargeting website traffic as the lowest-hanging fruit

04:31 The two mistakes that kill Meta campaigns

06:00 Creative fatigue and the fastest fix for it

07:33 The most expensive mistake: six figures a month on link clicks

08:09 The four pillars of a Meta account built from scratch

09:00 Fifty conversions per ad set per week, and what to do when you cannot hit it

09:30 Consolidate: why spreading yourself thin costs performance

10:30 Creative variety and the Advantage+ options worth using

11:27 Does Meta reward early adopters of new features?

12:10 Why a Meta account needs checking every day

13:04 What to settle with a marketing VP before launch

13:55 A creative system that survives MLR

15:04 The Good Nature Program: the recruitment playbook that worked

16:15 Get Paid to Poop: the tagline that won, at $15 per eligible registrant

16:42 When a registrant costs less than a click

17:13 The one quick win: consolidate, then vary the creative

17:59 What Andromeda actually is

18:57 AI slop, overlays, and where human judgment stays non-negotiable

21:56 Input quality as the next battleground

23:00 Value rules and getting demographic control back

24:49 Targeting the person most likely to start the conversation

25:45 Rebuilding processes with AI instead of bolting it on

27:36 No silver bullet, just faster and better

28:30 Closing thoughts and where to find us

Keywords

#metaads #metaadsforlifesciences #facebookads #instagramads #lifesciencemarketing #healthcaremarketing #pharmamarketing #biotechmarketing #patientrecruitment #clinicaltrialrecruitment #paidsocial #paidmedia #performancemarketing

One-size-fits-all paid media strategies rarely work for life science companies, where audiences are often highly niche and deal sizes range from $50 reagent orders to million-dollar CDMO contracts.

So, how can you build a paid media channel strategy that suits your life science business and delivers results?

To unpack how to build a program that works, Paul Avery sat down with three of Supreme Group’s most experienced paid media strategists: Irene Lecker, PhD, Director of Performance Marketing at Supreme Optimization; Mihaela Pupavac, PhD, EVP of Operations at Supreme Optimization; and Eric Southwell, Chief Growth Officer at Supreme Group. Between them, they have decades of experience in building effective paid media programs for life science and healthcare organizations.

If you're a marketer in pharma, biotech, medtech, or diagnostics and you've been running paid media campaigns that aren't delivering the outcomes you need, this is worth a listen.

Key takeaways from this episode:

→ Audience size and company maturity drive strategy more than price point. A $100K microscope and a $50 reagent need completely different channel mixes, but not for the reason most people think.

→ Bing is the most underused channel in life science. Half the cost per click of Google, and your ads show up in Microsoft Copilot, where locked-down university and pharma laptops are doing most of their searching.

→ Video is the highest-ROI awareness play, and AI has made it more cost-effective. One team cloned a CEO's voice from a kickoff call recording, built three awareness videos, and 10X'd their LinkedIn following in four months without him lifting a finger.

→ Lab influencers are the next big arbitrage opportunity. Grad students and post-docs with growing audiences influence every purchase in the lab, and almost no life science brand is tapping them yet.

→ Upper-funnel attribution is still unsolved, and that's okay. The danger is tunnel vision. If you optimize only for what you can track and starve awareness spend, you'll eventually damage your bottom-of-funnel results.

→ Programmatic isn't just a buzzword. Modern DSPs like StackAdapt have no minimums, offer LinkedIn-level ABM targeting, and reach across CTV, OOH, and premium web, including NPI-free physician targeting.

Chapters:

(0:00) — Intro & guest introductions

(5:00) — Matching channel strategy to company type: reagents vs. microscopes vs. CDMOs

(8:00) — "We can't run paid search — our market's too small." Is that true?

(11:00) — Are Google Ads really too expensive? The real reason CPCs go up

(13:00) — The case for Bing: Half the CPC, and your ads run in Microsoft Copilot

(18:00) — Auditing a new client: What to look at before picking a platform

(22:00) — LinkedIn vs. trade shows: The real awareness comparison

(26:00) — Solving the awareness problem: Why video is still the answer

(27:00) — Case study: 10X followers in 4 months using AI voice cloning

(31:00) — Attribution in 2026: What we can and can't measure

(33:00) — The tunnel vision problem: Why bottom-funnel ROI hides upper-funnel decay

(36:00) — How to help your internal champion defend the spend

(41:00) — Thought leadership as a channel: The Supreme Pod origin story

(42:00) — Why thought leadership works — and why finding the face is the hard part

(46:00) — Programmatic demystified: What it is and when to use it

(50:00) — Is programmatic right for every life science company?

(56:00) — Trends prediction: Where paid media in life science is headed

Subscribe for more content on life science and healthcare marketing strategy from The Supreme Pod.

Supreme Optimization is a life science and healthcare digital marketing agency.

Links

Supreme Group: ⁠⁠https://supremegroup.ai⁠⁠

Supreme Intelligence: ⁠⁠Supreme Intelligence | AI-Powered Services for Healthcare & Life Sciences⁠⁠ 

Supreme Group LinkedIn: Supreme Group

What have been some of the biggest challenges facing pharma marketing teams in 2026 so far, and how can commercial teams adapt to ensure a competitive advantage?

In this latest episode Eric Southwell, CGO at Supreme Group, sat down with Olly Johnston, EVP of Platform Growth and Transformation at Supreme Group, and Kelli Gauss, Director of Marketing and Growth at Pivot Design (a Supreme Group company), to discuss how they are tackling some of the industry’s biggest challenges.

Together they dig into AI adoption and how to actually realize its value, weigh in on when omnichannel is the right fit for a business, and look ahead to the looming drug patent cliff.

They also touch on staying creative amid tightening regulations and possible solutions to the shrinking access sales reps have to HCPs.

If you are a senior marketer or commercial lead in pharma or biotech setting direction for the remainder of 2026 and beyond, this episode is for you.

What you'll learn in this episode

Why a small, ‘safe’ AI pilot often costs as much time and resource as a more ambitious, infrastructure change, and where the disproportionate value actually sits

How a modular content approach lets a brand adapt fast when regulatory rules change

Why untitled letters are showing up more often, and how to treat compliance limits as a creative brief rather than a ceiling

How to determine if an omnichannel ambition is realistic for your organization and where to get started

How to differentiate your therapy post-patent cliff and why starting after exclusivity runs out is too late

Reaching HCPs with a data-led, digital-first approach as rep access continues to decline

Links

Supreme Group: https://supremegroup.ai

Supreme Intelligence: https://supremeopti.com/supreme-intelligence

Timestamps

00:00 Welcome and introduction (Olly Johnston, EVP Growth and Transformation, Supreme Group, and Kelli Gaus, Director of Marketing and Growth, Pivot Design)

01:24 Sprinting toward omnichannel and creating new silos on the way

02:27 Doing more with less, and pressure to use AI without knowing how

04:39 Managing the AI fog, and why small AI pilots can defeat the purpose of innovation

07:17 Untitled letters, and using compliance limits to push creative strategy

08:12 Atomizing approved creative into Lego pieces

09:21 Starting with what the patient actually needs

11:51 Four things to get right before omnichannel is realistic

14:34 The Super Bowl AI ads and content with no soul

15:45 Moving DTC toward end-to-end care coordination

17:53 Marketing into the patent cliff as categories commoditize

19:56 Data strategy for HCP targeting as rep access declines and the rise of synthetic AI reps

20:54 Digital-first strategy to drive patient demand

23:49 The value of in-person connection and clients asking to meet the team before they sign

27:25 Wrap

Keywords

#pharmamarketing #lifesciencemarketing #healthcaremarketing #omnichannelmarketing #pharmacommercial #hcpengagement #aiinpharma #pharmacompliance

How can a pharma brand earn the attention and trust of patients, physicians and other stakeholders in an industry filled with skepticism, AI generated noise and an overwhelming array of media channels?

In this episode, Paul sits down with Nicky Battle, President of Supreme Communications, to discuss why pharma brands need to get real in 2026 and lean into honesty and authenticity to cut through and build trust.

If you are a senior marketer, communications lead, or commercial leader in life science, healthcare, or pharma trying to figure out how to build a successful strategic communications program in 2026, this episode is for you.

What you'll learn in this episode

• Why the rigid 1 year comms plan produces volume without breakthrough, and what should replace it

• How being too risk averse and over-sanitized can undermine successful strategic communications

• The value of open data access when it comes to building physician and patient trust

• Why compliance guardrails don't have to kill authenticity, and how brands can find the "Goldilocks zone" between the two

• The importance of listening in strategic communications, including an example of mirroring a community's exact language to build a connection

Links

Supreme Group: https://supremegroup.ai

Supreme Communications: https://www.supremegroup.ai/science-healthcare-communications 

Supreme Intelligence: https://supremeopti.com/supreme-intelligence

Timestamps

00:00 Welcome and introduction (Nicky Battle, President, Supreme Communications)

00:55  Why "PR has a PR problem," and reframing strategic communications as earning permission rather than reputation

02:50 The old playbook: Fractured frameworks and rigid, milestone-driven annual plans that create volume without breakthrough

04:05 From 7 touches to 7,000: why fragmented attention means brands must repeat themselves consistently everywhere

05:45 The point of care as pharma's most vulnerable moment, and the mistrust pharma faces 

07:10 What Netflix's unapologetic price hike and Nike losing its "share of cool" teach pharma about brand complacency

10:00 Why "Big Pharma" became a negative term despite undeniable innovation, and the cost of skipping community-level trust work

12:10 Listening sessions, ad boards, and a Reddit-scraping example of mirroring a community's own language back to them

14:25 Why AI slop is part of pharma's trust problems, and the case for showing real, reflected life instead of a sanitized "polo shirt and khakis" image

17:10 Real regulatory guardrails in pharma, and finding the "Goldilocks zone" between compliance and authentic engagement

17:40 Radical transparency: giving physicians open access to full data sets

21:45 Coaching risk-averse clients, and why the best comms work happens when clients are willing to be "gladiators" for a tested message

22:45 The power of chopping the rigid annual plan into quarters

26:50 The four operating systems of modern PR

29:40 Inside the SG thought leadership mapping tool that matches message, messenger, and medium, and drafts the pitch itself

32:05 What excites Nicky most about the future of earning trust in pharma communications

Keywords

#lifesciencemarketing #healthcaremarketing #pharmamarketing #strategiccommunications #pharmapr #publicrelations #healthcarepr

In life sciences, buyers are now more likely to find your brand through an AI-generated summary than through a traditional Google blue link in the search results page. Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) is an evolving marketing tactic that addresses this shift and focuses on optimizing content for answer-first experiences via AI. But how does AEO actually work in life sciences marketing and how do you know when it’s working? 

Recorded live at Supreme's annual offsite in Punta Cana, host Eric Southwell (Chief Growth Officer, Supreme Group) is joined by Paul Avery (EVP, AI Adoption, Supreme Group), Dean Hallam (Scientific Digital Marketing Strategist, Supreme Optimization), and Lauren Whitehead (Managing Director, Supreme Optimization) to give an honest, data-backed picture of the current role of AEO in the marketing mix and how to ensure your organization can be found by AI.   

What you'll learn in this episode

• AEO and SEO share the same foundations, the technical bedrock hasn't changed. What's changed is how content surfaces and what winning looks like (citation vs. ranking).

• AI traffic converts 4.5x better than organic, but it's still less than 1% of traffic for most life science clients. Proportional investment matters.

• Your biggest AEO risk might be invisible content. JavaScript-rendered specs, interactive maps, gated PDFs. LLM bots can't read any of it.

• Digital PR is more important than ever. How your brand appears across the web directly influences AI citation frequency.

• Quick wins and where to start if you’re overwhelmed

• Strategies based on your audience. Pharma and patient audiences need different AEO strategies. Branded vs. unbranded, HCP vs. patient, the approach and expectations must differ.

Links

Supreme Intelligence: https://supremeopti.com/supreme-intelligence

Supreme Group: https://supremegroup.ai

Supreme Optimization: https://www.supremeopti.com/ 

Timestamps

0:00 — Sizzle Reel

1:00 — Intro & Guest Introductions

3:00 — AEO vs. GEO vs. LLMO: Settling the terminology debate

5:00 — How AEO differs from SEO (and what stays the same)

8:00 — AI referral traffic: 4.5x conversion rate & branded search trends

9:00 — Why SEO still has a place in life sciences

11:00 — Google's revenue incentive to protect paid search

13:00 — Query fan-out: Why 80%+ of AI answers don't pull from page one

15:00 — Risks of ignoring AEO — and the "arbitrage panic" problem

19:00 — Agentic AI and second-order consequences for marketers

20:00 — The omnichannel content play that covers all your bases

22:00 — AEO content tactics: Expert quotes, citations, data-backed content

23:00 — Technical AEO: JavaScript, crawlability, schema markup

27:00 — Why AEO is additive to SEO, not a replacement

29:00 — Schema markup and author bios for LLM trust signals

30:00 — FAQ schema: The easiest AEO win most companies skip

32:00 — Where to start if you've done nothing with AEO yet

34:00 — The PDF problem: Why gated content is invisible to LLMs

35:00 — AEO metrics: Visibility, citations, sentiment, and share of voice

40:00 — Designing prompts that actually work for AEO measurement

41:00 — Unexpected learnings: Digital PR and earned media's new role in AI

47:00 — AEO for pharma branded vs. unbranded vs. patient-facing sites

Keywords

#AEO #AnswerEngineOptimization #LifeSciencesMarketing #PharmaMarketing #HealthcareMarketing #SEO2026 #AISearch #GenerativeAI #DigitalMarketing  #AIOverviews #GenerativeAI #ChatGPTMarketing #DigitalPR

AI-Native vs AI-Dependent. There's a massive difference. AI-native means using tools to amplify your expertise and AI-dependent means handing off your thinking entirely. The team at Supreme Group unpack this distinction and much more in the latest episode of Supreme Pod.

Recorded live at Supreme's annual offsite in Punta Cana,  Paul Avery (EVP, AI Adoption) sits down with Sheldon Zhai (Chief AI Officer and Founder), Paulo Simas (Head of AI Growth), and Ramon Felciano (Board Member and Strategic AI Advisor) to discuss the benefits and considerations of becoming an AI-native organization in complex, regulated marketing environments such as those found in life sciences and healthcare.

If you are a senior marketer, agency leader, or commercial lead in life science or healthcare trying to understand what meaningful AI adoption and deployment looks like from the inside, this episode is for you.

What you'll learn in this episode

• The distinction between AI-native and AI-dependent, and why using AI to amplify domain expertise is very different from outsourcing your judgment to it

• The biggest potential AI efficiency gains for life sciences and healthcare commercial teams including fully automated, reliable MLR review  

• Why top-down AI mandates fail where peer-to-peer learning and sharing succeeds

• Practical examples of an AI-Native agency in practice, including a website created in five days and a buried dashboard experiment that became a viral capability

• Why becoming AI-native starts with reinventing workflows from the ground up

• How AI efficiency gains in non-personal promotion could fund a meaningful shift back into personal promotion, and what that rebalancing means for commercial teams working in life sciences and healthcare

  
  

Links

Supreme Intelligence: https://supremeopti.com/supreme-intelligence

Supreme Group: https://supremegroup.ai

Timestamps

00:00 AI-native in life sciences: what it actually looks like

00:37 Welcome and guests (Sheldon Zhai, Paulo Simas & Ramon Felciano)

01:45 AI as a first Photoshop session: the discomfort of learning something genuinely new

05:00 What it actually takes to lead AI transformation across an entire business

07:00 Pitching by prototyping: the new way of communicating ideas to clients

09:00 The 7-day pharma website: what a curious, AI-native team can actually deliver

11:10 Curation over accumulation: knowing what not to use is a competitive advantage

12:52 Hours instead of weeks: collapsing MLR review cycles with verified brand data

14:30 The superpower of client proximity: in-house expertise meets AI-enabled delivery

16:20 AI puts every workflow in question, starting from the ground up

18:17 The Knowledge Lake: why brand-specific data beats general AI in regulated marketing

22:00 What AI-native actually means, and what it is not

23:10 AI-native vs AI-dependent: a distinction that matters more than most leaders realize

27:00 Culture of curiosity and the usage scoreboard

28:00 Solutions from the coalface: the diversity of what curious people build

30:47 Why bottom-up adoption sticks when top-down mandates fail

33:00 Leadership in the ring: leading by doing, not by directing

37:00 The reports feature nobody planned: viral innovation and the end of big roadmaps

40:00 Speed as a differentiator: deploying a voice tool to 300 people in five minutes

43:00 What AI can do today that it genuinely could not a year ago

45:00 From bullet points to clickable experiences: communicating through experiment

49:10 Domain expert meets 100X leverage: building what you wish existed

50:30 The scientific mindset is an AI mindset

52:00 Predicting the next two years: agencies, efficiency, and what fundamentally changes

55:00 Humans at the edges, AI in the middle, and the personal promotion shift

57:00 Wrap and where to find us

Keywords

#lifesciencemarketing #healthcaremarketing #pharmamarketing #biotechmarketing #aitransformation #marketingai 

Ninety percent of generative AI pilots fail, often because the technology is disconnected from data, workflows, and anyone accountable for results. As a fix, some AI providers now offer Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE) models to build custom AI solutions from inside a company.

Before choosing an FDE partner, healthcare and life sciences organizations should ask: does this company understand the complex realities of regulated healthcare commercialization? And will they recommend what's best for my company’s needs, or what's best for their platform? 

In this episode, Sheldon Zhai (Founder and Chief AI Officer, Supreme Group) digs into the considerations and opportunities of an AI deployment model in regulated healthcare and life sciences commercial environments.

If you're a senior marketer, commercial lead, or AI decision-maker in healthcare or life sciences trying to figure out how to make AI actually land, this episode is for you.

What you'll learn in this episode

• What a FDE model is and what it means in practice for a healthcare and life sciences company

• The benefits of a healthcare specific FDE model vs a generic FDE model 

• Why platform agnosticism matters in a market where most AI partners have a platform agenda

• How to identify a commercialization partner that is genuinely AI-Native 

• Data security and compliance considerations, and what pharma companies should ask before committing to a FDE provider

• The 20/60/20 model for human-AI collaboration, and why the human contribution may shrink in time but grow in impact

• How a patient website project went from a three-month, six-figure quote to five-day delivery at thirty percent lower cost, with full legal and regulatory sign-off

  
  

Links

Supreme Group: https://supremegroup.ai

Supreme Intelligence: Supreme Intelligence | AI-Powered Services for Healthcare & Life Sciences 

Timestamps

00:00 Opening and lead-in
00:37 Welcome and intro (Sheldon Zhai, Founder and Chief AI Officer, Supreme Group)
01:00 What is Supreme Intelligence FDE+?
03:30 Why model agnosticism matters: the Trojan horse problem with vendor-deployed AI engineers
07:00 The five-day website: three months and six figures vs five days at thirty percent less
10:00 Personalization at scale: AI-powered campaigns for 30 personas, and what the performance data showed
13:00 Why consultative depth matters: clients don't know what's possible
17:00 What IT and procurement actually ask: AI councils, SOC 2, and why the conversations go better than expected
20:00 Pitching by prototype: showing AI-native competency before the conversation starts
25:00 Supreme Intelligence: the infrastructure layer that powers FDE
29:00 The human's role in an AI-native world: the 20/60/20 model
35:00 Custom at scale: AI-native workflows vs templatized shortcuts
38:00 What makes FDE+ unique: 70 PhDs and hands-on pharma backgrounds
39:00 Wrap and where to learn more

Keywords

#pharmamarketing #lifesciencemarketing #healthcaremarketing #AIinpharma #forwarddeployedexperts

The first breath of a pharma brand is the moment a company stops thinking only about the molecule and starts asking what that molecule needs to mean to physicians, patients, caregivers, institutions, payers, and the communities around it.

In this episode, host Paul Avery sits down with Elizabeth Yi, Doug Tischler, and Meredith Pugh from Broth to unpack what happens when a biotech or pharma company begins turning science into a market-ready story.

The conversation covers when brand work should begin, why market preparation takes longer than teams expect, how to translate complex science into simple communication, and why launch success often depends on experience, infrastructure, and adoption pathways as much as the brand itself.

If you are building, launching, or preparing the market for a pharma, biotech, rare disease, or healthcare brand, this episode is for you.

What you'll learn from this episode

• How the "first breath" moment shifts a company from molecule thinking to market, HCP, patient, and community meaning
• Why pharma brand planning often needs to begin years before launch, even while clinical data is still developing
• How scientific platforms help build confidence, comfort, and readiness before a brand is available
• Why a single, choiceful brand idea matters more than trying to communicate every possible product advantage
• How to use market research without letting the safest answer flatten the work
• Why early-stage companies need to think beyond brand into experience, process, access, and digital infrastructure
• How patient and HCP insight can change the story a launch team needs to tell
• Why first-in-category status is not enough without community trust, education, and market preparation
• How AI is changing agency workflows without replacing the need for strategic judgment and client stewardship

Links

• Supreme Intelligence: https://supremeopti.com/supreme-intelligence
• Supreme Group: https://supremegroup.ai

Timestamps

00:00 Sizzle intro
00:40 Welcome and guest intros (Liz, Doug, Meredith from Broth)
03:00 What it means to give a new pharma brand its first breath
07:00 Finding what's "ownable" in the science before clinical data lands
10:30 Why market prep takes years, and why humans don't realize they have a pain point
13:00 Phase 3, target product profiles, and the right moment to start brand work
16:30 Translating deep science for every audience, from KOL to child
22:30 Crafting the one core idea and message-mapping each audience
26:30 Why getting everyone's opinion makes it generic, and "to evoke, you have to provoke"
28:00 When brand isn't first: experience, pre-mortems, and the long view
30:30 Selling polarizing work to the client: 2% vs 50% of the market
36:30 Educating a competitive market vs a market with no treatment
44:00 The antifungal aha: seeing the patient's whole life, not just the infection
46:30 The mistakes early-stage biotechs make: silos and fractured CRM
53:00 How AI native agency work is reshaping early commercialization at Supreme Group
58:00 What separates launches that work from those that don't
1:00:00 Turning the biggest patient barrier into something patients fell in love with
1:02:30 Four moments when a brand truly comes to life
1:04:00 Wrap

Keywords

#pharmamarketing, #biotechmarketing, #raredisease, #pharmalaunch, #pharmabranding, #lifesciencemarketing, #healthcaremarketing, #HCPmarketing, #omnichannelmarketing, #scientificplatform, #pharmaagency, #AIinpharma

Most life science companies are already running LinkedIn ads with great content and strong creative. So why aren't the leads coming in? Usually, it's because the strategy is broken.

In this episode, Eric Southwell (CGO, Supreme Group) and Irene Lecker (Director of Digital Strategy, Supreme Optimization) pull apart real LinkedIn campaigns from MilliporeSigma and Roche, showing exactly where each funnel breaks down and how to fix it.

What you'll learn from this episode

• Why LinkedIn's member skills and professional profile data make it the only platform where you can target with the specificity needed for life science advertising
• Case Study: How MilliporeSigma's ads have strong creative and a compelling free sample offer but lose prospects through a broken click path and mobile-unfriendly forms
• The three-stage funnel Eric and Irene would build from existing content: video for awareness, gated PDF for consideration, lead gen form for conversion
• Case Study: Why Roche's thought leadership ads are a standout, and why this ad format can deliver 10x the click-through rate of standard promoted posts
• How to layer LinkedIn audiences using geography, industry, job function, seniority, and member skills to find the right scientists without inflating your cost per click
• Why LinkedIn lead gen forms consistently outperform external landing pages, and when the one exception applies (live webinars)
• The weekly optimization habits that turn a mediocre campaign into a lead generation engine within three months

A quick disclaimer: all information in this episode is publicly sourced, opinions are our own, and we have no affiliation with either MilliporeSigma or Roche.

Links

• Supreme Intelligence: https://supremeopti.com/supreme-intelligence
• Supreme Group: https://supremegroup.ai
• LinkedIn Ad Library: https://www.linkedin.com/ad-library

Timestamps

00:11 Welcome to the Supreme Pod and episode intro
03:58 The case for LinkedIn: quality over quantity, real profiles, and brand safety
09:22 Why Eric shifted 75% of Supreme's ad budget from Google to LinkedIn
10:49 How to find competitor ads using the LinkedIn Ad Library
11:14 MilliporeSigma ad analysis: gorgeous creative, unclear funnel stage
14:25 The disconnect between "Learn More" and a free sample landing page
17:30 Hidden treasure: great video and rich content buried behind the wrong ad
19:59 Rebuilding MilliporeSigma's campaign as a three-stage funnel
24:19 Roche ad analysis: thought leadership ads and real scientists on camera
25:14 Why thought leadership ads get 10x the click-through rate
27:19 The live webinar exception for lead gen forms
30:34 Creative noise messaging vs. actual product benefits
36:36 The pattern: great content, broken strategy
41:58 Audience layering: geography, industry, job function, seniority, and member skills
50:34 Optimization: weekly check-ins, A/B testing, and lead quality reviews
53:54 Biggest mistake: underutilizing LinkedIn lead gen forms
54:52 Magic wand: you already have enough content for LinkedIn
57:23 Wrap-up

Keywords

#LinkedInAds, #LifeScienceMarketing, #HealthcareMarketing, #LinkedInAds, #LinkedInAudienceTargeting, #ThoughtLeadershipAds, #BiotechMarketing, #PharmaMarketing, #LinkedInAdvertising

In life sciences and healthcare, stepping into leadership is about finding the right environment, the right mentors, and the courage to invite yourself to the table.

In this special International Women's Day episode, Eric Southwell sits down with four of Supreme Group's most senior women leaders — Nicky Battle (President, Supreme Communications), Liz Kanter (President & Executive Creative Director, Pivot Design), Shannon Carlson (President & Founder, C24), and Elizabeth Yi (Co-Founder, Broth) — for an honest conversation about what it actually takes to grow, lead, and thrive.

What you'll learn from this episode

• Why the culture you work in matters more than the title you hold, and when it's time to walk away

• The critical difference between mentors and sponsors, and why you need both

• How to stop waiting to be noticed and start inviting yourself to the table

• What organizations need to do beyond assigning titles: real authority, intentional time, and passing the mic

• Why leadership isn't just about managing people, it's how you show up in every small moment, every single day

• How to tighten your story and project confidence, even when you don't have all the answers

• Why standing up for yourself requires leading with facts, not emotion, and the importance of addressing conflict fast

Links

• Supreme Group: https://supremegroup.ai

Timestamps

00:00 Episode summary sizzle

00:41 Welcome and introductions (Nicky Battle, Liz Kanter, Shannon Carlson, Elizabeth Yi) 

02:20 What most enabled your career growth? 

02:53 Shannon on culture, authenticity, and finding the right environment 

04:06 Advice for those who don't feel supported at work 

05:22 Liz on relationships, trust, and the mentor who changed everything 

07:46 The power of mentors vs sponsors 

08:57 Shannon on how you show up and the small moments that build trust 

10:08 Elizabeth on advocates who played both roles 

11:14 What if you don't have a mentor? How to find one 

14:04 Nicky on finding "expanders" early in your career 

14:44 Shannon on carving out time for yourself 

16:08 Elizabeth on the challenge of speaking up and projecting confidence 

17:16 Nicky on inviting yourself to the table 

19:08 What organizations can do to support women in leadership 

21:39 Elizabeth on redirecting the room and passing the mic 

22:20 Nicky on allyship and giving credit in meetings 

24:02 Advice for women early in their careers 

24:45 Shannon on proactive feedback and leading without a title 

26:49 Liz on stretching beyond your comfort zone and choosing your circle 

28:46 Communication and standing up for yourself with confidence 

31:48 Closing wisdom: don't be scared of this space, be intentional, embrace discomfort

Keywords

International Women's Day, women in leadership, life sciences marketing, healthcare marketing, mentorship, sponsorship, career growth, leadership development, women in pharma, women in healthcare, professional development, executive presence, allyship, career advice

In life sciences and healthcare marketing, most AI adoption still revolves around a simple chatbot and looks like “prompt, draft, redo.”

In this episode, Paul sits down with Sheldon Zhai (Founder and Chief AI Officer, Supreme Group) and Leigh Wasson (SVP AI and Innovation, Supreme Group) to break down what actually drives value: using AI as leverage across the full marketing workflow, not a series of disconnected point solutions.

• Why “AI strategy” is overhyped but "AI as leverage" is not, and how to think in terms of business leverage

• Why AI adoption stalls in regulated teams: the pace of change, the drag of recontextualizing, and security/compliance risks

• How point tools can speed up one step but create downstream bottlenecks (including MLR), and why end-to-end workflows matter

• What an AI Platform (AIP) actually is, and how it moves teams beyond chat into a connected marketing stack

• How curated business context (strategy, personas, proof points, approved assets) and live performance data turns AI into an insight machine and performance optimizer, not just a content generator

• Why regulated marketing should prioritize accuracy, traceability, and governance over speed 

• Supreme Intelligence: https://supremeopti.com/supreme-intelligence

• Supreme Group: https://supremegroup.ai

00:00 AI leverage, 100x improvements, and “humans tell you why”

00:37 Welcome and guests (Sheldon Zhai & Leigh Wasson)

01:18 Is AI overhyped? Or is it having a real impact?

02:41 Why AI adoption stalls: pace of change and tool churn

05:01 Agility vs security in a regulated industry

06:12 Why point solutions fail: bottlenecks and recontextualizing 

07:54 The data unlock: curated content and live data for real-time optimization

10:29 What an AIP is (and why it goes beyond chat)

13:01 Can we really 10x our impact?

16:32 AIP vs ChatGPT

19:54 End-to-end life sciences workflows 

26:34 The security risks of unmanaged AI experimentation 

28:53 Application example: sales won analysis yields unexpected insights

35:34 Vibe-coding inside the platform and a “white glove” last mile

46:48 Accuracy over speed in regulated sectors

49:08 Why AI pilots fail: forced top-down vs pull-based adoption

52:45 What’s next: context graphs, platforms over point tools

58:40 Wrap and where to learn more

AI adoption, life sciences marketing, healthcare marketing, AI governance, MLR workflows, AI platforms, ChatGPT vs AI platform, marketing operations, human-AI collaboration

In this episode of The Supreme Pod, hosts Eric Southwell and Paul Avery, Ph.D., sit down with Supreme Optimization’s EVP of Advertising Mihaela Pupavac, Ph.D. and biotech media founder Joachim Eeckhout to discuss 5 life science marketing trends to watch in 2026: Bing ads as an underused growth lever, modern thought leadership, why podcasting is a trust engine for your audience, AI without the hype, and the fight for bottom-of-funnel visibility. Listen to find out what you should prioritize in your marketing efforts and tactical takeaways for 2026.

If you found the episode useful, we’d love it if you could leave us a review or share it with a colleague.

Want to hear more from our guests? Check out Joachim Eeckhout’s podcast The Science Marketer (https://thesciencemarketer.com/podcast) and his accompanying newsletter.

You can find more from Paul Avery through his podcasts Life, Science and Marketing (https://rss.com/podcasts/life-science-and-marketing/) and Artificially Intelligent Marketing (https://rss.com/podcasts/artificiallyintelligentmarketing/).

And if you want more great content from The Supreme Pod, subscribe to our channel on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@SupremeGroupPodcast

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-supreme-pod-life-science-healthcare-marketing/id1832593114

00:00:00 Intro

00:00:47 Meet the Panel

00:06:10 What We’ll Discuss Today

00:07:33 Trend 1: Why Bing Ads Matter

00:10:58 Why Teams Ignore Bing

00:12:46 Where Bing Works

00:18:13 The Automation Trap in Paid Search

00:21:17 Trend 2: Thought Leadership

00:23:07 How to Build Thought Leadership That Works

00:32:34 “Modern” Thought Leadership = Say Something Real

00:35:34 Trend 3: Podcasting Is a Growth Channel

00:38:26 Podcasts Build Trust Before the Sales Call

00:44:35 How Clips, Posts, and YouTube Work Together

00:48:52 Trend 4: AI Without the Hype

00:50:10 Avoiding “AI Slop”

01:00:22 Trend 5: Bottom-of-Funnel Visibility

01:14:10 Q&A

In this episode of The Supreme Pod, host Eric Southwell sits down with Jodi Amendola, President of Amendola Communications, a veteran in health tech and digital health PR with over 30 years of experience. Together, they dive deep into the evolution of thought leadership in healthcare marketing, from defining it in today’s social-first world, to using tools like LinkedIn, podcasts, and newsjacking to build authentic, educational visibility. Jodi shares timeless strategies for building trust, consistency, and authority in a crowded health tech market.

If you found the episode useful, we’d love it if you could leave us a review or share it with a colleague.

And if you want more great content like this, subscribe to The Supreme Group Pod channel on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@SupremeGroupPodcast

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-supreme-pod-life-science-healthcare-marketing/id1832593114

00:00 Cold open: People follow people

00:28 Welcome + guest intro

01:10 What thought leadership really is and why it matters

03:21 How to build a thought leadership program: messaging, cadence, repurposing

10:15 Who should be a thought leader?

15:10 Challenges in health tech communications

18:22 The biggest mistakes in thought leadership and health tech PR

24:07 Navigating the health tech landscape

31:04 Newsjacking explained and real life examples

33:09 Future trends and using AI for health tech communications

In this new episode of The Supreme Pod, hosts Eric Southwell and Paul Avery, PhD talk with Liz Kanter, President of Pivot Design, about what actually works in rare disease marketing. From active listening and advocacy partnerships to co-creating resources with patients and HCPs, Liz explains how she breaks through the pharma marketing “sea of sameness.”

Liz also shares a beloved rare disease marketing case study: a therapeutic play kit complete with a stuffed animal “patient friend” that went viral in the children’s primary immunodeficiency community, transformed internal company culture, and is still in use 15 years later. Read more about it here: https://www.pivotdesign.com/work/igi/

Our mission is to provide the types of insights and inspiration from across the worlds of life science and healthcare marketing that you cannot find anywhere else. If you found this episode useful, we’d love it if you could leave us a review or share it with a colleague.

And if you want more great content like this, subscribe to The Supreme Group Pod channel on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@SupremeGroupPodcast

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-supreme-pod-life-science-healthcare-marketing/id1832593114

0:00 — Opening & Introductions

1:28 — How Liz Found Her Calling in Rare Disease

3:29 — What Makes Rare Disease Marketing Unique

7:49 — The Role of Empathy & Emotional Intelligence

11:49 — Building Trust With Rare Disease Communities

17:17 — Pivot Wins Rare Disease Agency of the Year

24:44 — Breaking Out of the Pharma “Sea of Sameness”

31:00 — Liz’s Favorite Campaign (Therapeutic Play Kit)

43:38 — Measuring Impact & Rethinking Budgets

The FDA has raised the bar for DTC pharma ads and marketers must act now. Shannon Carlson and Olly Johnston explain plain language, fair balance of benefits and risks, linking ads to patient support, and full audits. Learn when to pause media, rebuild assets, and use AI for claim filters and modular content. Get the concrete steps and CMO playbook to protect your brand and build patient trust. Subscribe now to The Supreme Pod for more insights.

Can ChatGPT outsmart a PhD in life science marketing?

In this Google Ads experiment, AI faces off with human expertise across keyword research, ad copywriting, and campaign setup. While ChatGPT offers helpful ideas, it misses key scientific and strategic nuances.

Learn where AI stumbles, where it shines, and why human insight still leads.