The Suit Magazine

   As a keen entrepreneur she serves as the eyes and ears for her high-end clients, and often times uses her impeccable communication skills to get the word out in the medical world.  As a result, her company, CME Acuity, is unique to the industry in terms of the scope and quality of its services.  It is a marketing service company serving both the biotech and health care communities.  CME Acuity provides specialist support services in market research, marketing, business intelligence and business analytics.  Areas of specialty include oncology, central nervous system health, infectious disease, cardiovascular disease, rheumatology and pulmonology.  CME Acuity is on the cutting edge of technology. The company is involved with the exciting new potentially cancer-fighting Listeria Vaccine, which is currently in stage two of the research and development process.

  Peppard brings a passion to her work. As a young child she loved math and art. “My family and I [saw] the Russian satellite Sputnik go across the sky…since then I wanted to be an astronaut, I even wanted to travel to Mars”, she chuckles, “that experience converted my goals to medicine and science.“  In fact, with due diligence she worked towards realizing her dream of becoming a respected medical and scientific professional.  Armed with a summa cum laude undergraduate degree in biology from St. Lawrence University, training in laboratory medicine at Upstate Medical University (magna cum laude), and certification as a Medical Laboratory Scientist from the American Society of Clinical Pathology, Peppard began her career in the research departments at both Johns Hopkins and the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.  There she did work in immunology and bone marrow transplantation involving children and adults.  However, after 10 years Peppard’s career took a dramatic turn.

  “My father died at a young age from cancer.  So I took a leave of absence and got my first break in pharmaceutical advertising and that’s how I became involved in research both in the clinical [area] and [working to] help get drugs approved within the FDA,” she said.  In 1998, while serving as the creative director of Biosys, a division of Ogilvy Healthworld, Peppard met David Rothman, her current partner in CME Acuity.  “[He] and I bring over 50 years of experience at big pharmaceutical companies and major pharmaceutical advertising agencies to the table. We launched 35 new chemical entities combined in fields as diverse as cholesterol lowering agents, multiple sclerosis, neurology, HIV therapies, antimicrobial agents and reproductive endocrinology, to name a few.”  She argues that big pharmaceutical companies have a marketing edge with their huge budgets. “We used our strong strategic thinking, along with creative ways of communicating,” she said, “to reposition and win the Avonex account at Biogen Idec, the leading treatment for multiple sclerosis at the time.” 
   
What is their secret?
    “We bring to the table a personalized and collaborative approach,” Peppard said. “We have a staff that’s composed of very experienced senior level people who either have worked for big pharmaceutical companies or have a communications and advertising agency background.  My partner and I have taught pharmaceutical marketing at the New York University School of Continuing and Professional Studies (NYU SCPS).”  CME Acuity targets small pharmaceutical companies and biotechs. “How we bring the big pharmaceutical thinking to smaller companies is that we both lived it for many years,” she explains, “and we had the experience and were able to translate very complex information and strategic thinking in order to help communicate what’s valuable about their assets and build their businesses.”

          There is also another element to the company’s unique success. “We operate rather lean and mean and we work as cost-effectively as possible,” she said.  “We realized that our clients don’t have the budgets that larger pharmaceutical companies do, so we watch our clients’ expenditures very closely.” Despite the company’s decision to tap the market of small pharmaceutical companies by utilizing cost-efficiency as the benefit, CME Acuity doesn’t shy away from projects involving the largest of pharmaceutical companies.  In fact, the company has gone toe-to-toe with the titans in the industry. She said, “We took on two big pharmaceutical companies that co-promoted a product, and dealt with the issues between them. And it’s hard to get large pharmaceutical companies to agree.”  Peppard said her company has a solid track record, “I worked on Celebrex. We launched in 83 countries in an 18 month period. We also worked on Aricept which was co-promoted by Eisai and Pfizer, Zyrtec which was co-marketed by UCB and Pfizer and Baycol which was sold by GlaxoSmithKline.”  CME Acuity has the ability to handle large accounts, yet still offer cost-effective services.

  The company embraces the Green philosophy in the corporate world.  “Our company utilizes more green ways of communicating rather than using paper. The new green age is here, we must turn more to the internet and stop using printed material.  Our vision is to use the Internet, telemarketing, texting virtual meetings, and web-casting,” Peppard said.
  CME Acuity represents the highest standards in the pharmaceutical industry. “I learned along the way, number one, be open minded and as diplomatic as possible in terms of dealing with different clients,” Peppard said.  “And always keep the best interest of the brand in mind.”  That approach can be traced back to an early mentor, Dr. Robert Crowell, Peppard’s college biology professor at St. Lawrence University. “He took me under his wing and encouraged me not to let anything stand in the way, he treated me as an equal, kind of like a colleague and that was very encouraging,” she said.

  With regard to the recent Health Care Bill, Peppard envisions both negative and positive consequences. “New changes in health care won’t take place until 2014,” she predicts, “but services in the future will be capped and will continue to get capped. Some therapies will have limits…[we feel that there will be] more generic substitution.” 

    Wrapping up the interview Peppard provided sage advice for the next generation of medical professionals.  She said, “Patient care and interaction is still number one, but for the new generation of doctors that are more computer savvy, different ways of learning [apply].  [The key will be] how well they continue their education after residency to keep up with new medical innovations and treatments, [keeping] continuing medical education as a very physical and important part….always learning.”  A further example of the type of thinking that has made CME Acuity a leader in its field.

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