Cannabinoides: strategies and tactics in pharma marketing.

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The strategies and tactics in pharma marketing are highly applicable in medical cannabis. Most of our marketing and sales team comes from pharma.

Amanda Daley, VP, medical sales and education, Canopy Growth, recently joined MM&M’s executive editor Marc Iskowitz on MM&M’s Transforming Healthcare webcast, which offered a sneak peek into some of the cutting-edge educational content in store at May 8’s Transforming Healthcare event. 
The following interview has been condensed and edited.

Marc Iskowitz: As VP medical sales & education, for Canopy Growth and Spectrum Cannabis, you oversee the commercial medical strategy for Canopy, including the medical sales team, and the creation and implementation of CME programs. Lay some context on that.

Amanda Daley: I’m responsible for the Spectrum Cannabis commercial business in Canada. Spectrum Cannabis is Canopy Growth’s international medical brand. It’s our healthcare professional and patient-facing identity in medical markets in Canada and around the world. Spectrum Cannabis is focused on the simplification of healthcare interactions, and my role is to oversee the team efforts around the work we do with the healthcare community, patient and professional organization partnerships in addition to overseeing our Customer Care function that we provide to our medical clients here in Canada.

Canopy Growth, for anyone who isn’t familiar with us, is a world-leading diversified cannabis and hemp company, offering distinct brands and a collection of cannabis varieties in a variety of product forms—presently dried, oil and softgel capsule forms. We’re listed on both the Toronto and New York stock exchanges and have operations in 15 countries across five continents along with 10 licensed cannabis production sites with over 4.3 million square feet of production capacity, including over 1 million square feet of GMP certified production space.

Iskowitz: In Canada, is “medical sales” the equivalent to our “medical science liaisons” here in the U.S., which typically sit under medical affairs along with CME and scientific communications?

Daley: Not quite. Our medical sales function consists of our field team who are developing relationships with healthcare practitioners and providing support and education to help these medical professionals navigate the complexities of medical cannabis. We do have a CME team involved in medical education through partnerships with clinical experts and scientific organizations, and the intent is to expand our medical affairs team in the near future in order to continue to meet the needs of HCPs and the medical community.

The way doctors learn 

about medical cannabis 

is very different 

compared to other medications.

Iskowitz: Your background includes 15 years in the pharma industry, including a decade at Pfizer Canada. Why, and how, did you transition from pharma to the cannabis industry?

Daley: It was about five years ago when new regulations were introduced in Canada that allowed for companies like Canopy Growth to participate in the medical cannabis industry. What was missing at that time was the ability to deliver evidence-based education for doctors, which is something I had many years of experience in at Pfizer. I had worked in the field of pain and after doing my own research, medical cannabis seemed like a promising space. It felt like it was time for a change and I decided to make the leap into cannabis.

Mas