Why creative insight matters in science marketing: A conversation with Marina Hop

What if I told you that poor business performance often comes down to a lack of creativity? That’s what Marina Hop, Managing Director of Viveo Consulting, discovered through her extensive work with life sciences companies.

Nearly eight years ago, she founded Viveo, a life sciences marketing agency focusing particularly on smaller companies with limited resources. Today, a core element of Viveo’s approach is the six-part framework Marina uses to spark creative insights in the organizations she works with.

In this interview, we discuss why many life sciences companies struggle with performance, how Marina’s framework brings creativity back into marketing, the role of AI in creativity, and more.

The interview below is a transcript of our conversation, lightly edited for clarity and conciseness.

You've identified that life science tools and service providers are facing significant market challenges. What are those challenges, and how can these companies improve their performance?

Marina Hop: Revenue across the top 20 companies dropped by over 7% last year, and unfortunately, in the first half of this year, revenues have continued to decline. Sartorius is down 19%, Oxford Nanopore 15%, and Revitty 13%. So, there's a real performance issue.

These companies are facing the same economic pressures as others—rising inflation, energy costs, etc.—but they also have a unique challenge: overstocking post-COVID. So it's really hard to get labs to buy right now.

Interestingly, there’s one exception in the top 20 that’s growing by double digits, and that's Bruker. Last year, they grew their revenue by about 15%, with 12% of that being organic growth—not due to acquisitions or other external factors.

Their philosophy is really interesting because they talk about two factors: operational excellence and disciplined entrepreneurialism. So, they're actually an example of a company that is, on the one hand, optimizing their performance, but also balancing it with creative and generative growth.

To improve performance, think of it like an equation with two sides.

First, you can optimize—improve cost structures or processes. That boosts the bottom line but doesn’t necessarily drive revenue.

To really improve the revenue part of the equation, you have to generate something new, whether it's a new approach, a new business strategy, or a new product line, it has to be generative. And that's a sort of creative process.

Right now, the focus seems heavily on optimization, with less attention on generating new growth. Without both, it’s tough to turn things around, and that’s what might be missing for many life science companies.

What is the role of creativity in improving performance?

M.H.: It applies in a number of different areas—whether you are creating a business strategy, a marketing campaign, or developing a new product. All of those processes require you to be creative, to come up with something that's going to be differentiating.

We began exploring creativity after being asked how we could make marketing more creative for our clients. That led us to the question: where does creativity come from, and what is it?

I’m very lucky that my art director and my marketing director both come from ad agencies—so I sometimes refer to them as the Mad Men, like the TV series. I'm from a scientific background, so very different.

We sat down and looked at how creativity is taught in art school. It isn't a sort of aha moment that just happens—it's actually a process. It's very counterintuitive to think of creativity as a process, but when you actually break it down into steps, you can analyze what those steps are, and it becomes teachable and you apply it within organizations.

Why do you think creativity is lacking so much in life sciences marketing?

M.H.: It's actually crazy because scientists, by nature, are quite creative. The whole scientific process is a creative process.

I really think there's a pressure that begins to get applied to companies as they get bigger. Everything becomes more formal, there are more processes, and hierarchies come into place. There's a lot of pressure on the marketing department to deliver tactics that will deliver leads. And it's really difficult within that environment to keep the creativity going.

But it doesn't mean that they can't bring it back in.

Can you explain the process you use to help companies be more creative?

M.H.: What we discovered in our research is that it's not creativity that's lacking—it’s the steps leading up to it.

Creativity begins with analysis and observation. It’s interesting because when we talk to companies, especially their marketing departments, they often jump straight into creating content and materials without spending enough time on analysis.

And when they do analysis, it's very quantitative. So they look at the data because often people feel a little bit uncomfortable with the “fluffy” qualitative stuff. But that's really often where the insights are, thinking about how people behave, thinking about the human side of what scientists do.

So, when we started to unpack that and develop the framework, we realized we actually needed to roll back a few steps in order to move forward. By starting with proper observation and analysis, creativity almost flows on its own.

Let's explore your six-step framework in more detail. Can you explain each step?

M.H.: We divided it into three steps with two parts to each: “what,” “why,” and “how.”

The “what” part begins with defining a clear problem statement. Everyone needs to be aligned on what we want to achieve. Then, it starts with observations. We rely a lot on something called phenomenology, which involves deeply describing and explaining experiences. We really encourage people to go into the lab and watch what scientists are doing, record it, and really interrogate it to find those deep observations that are going to give them the insight that they need.

Next, we focus on why people do what they do. This involves writing a narrative. It's not a set of bullet points on a PowerPoint slide. Narratives are powerful storytelling tools that help bring out the context, emotion, and sequence of events. Writing a narrative is core to collecting your observations in an orderly way. Then, we move on to what insights can be drawn from that. Usually, they flow quite easily once people understand the narrative process and know what they're looking for in terms of insight.

Then we move into the final phase, the “how,” which is pinpointing the key challenges: what is the real problem at the bottom of all of this that we're trying to solve for our customers? Can we craft a solution around that?

Having a process that people can understand and can work through in a systematic way really helps to improve the outcome at the end of the day.

Do you recommend any exercises to get more creative?

M.H.: One exercise we recently used with a company involved getting the team into a “safe” environment before sending them out to observe customers. We asked them to go down to the canteen during lunch and observe—what happens over lunch, where are the bottlenecks, what do people enjoy, and what would they miss if it were taken away? After an hour, they came back and wrote a narrative based on their observations.

We had polled the group before we sent them off to do the exercise and we asked them about what generative or creative pursuits they have outside of work—things like crafting, brewing beer, baking, or gardening. We were really looking for things that resulted in some output, some generative activity. Then, we divided them into two groups. After they completed the exercise, we noticed something interesting: one group, with more people engaged in creative pursuits outside of work, had a much easier time writing their narrative. They focused more on the emotional aspects, while the other group, with fewer creative hobbies, stuck mainly to the facts and struggled more.

This showed us that the broader your interests and the more creative activities you engage in outside of work, the better you are at connecting dots and thinking creatively.

How long does it take to run a mission with your customers using this framework?

M.H.: The last workshop we ran was just over a half day, and then we gave the customer exercises to do on their own. We came back a month later for another half-day session.

What we really wanted the customers to do once they'd done this little exercise in the canteen was to go out and do this with some real customers. They did that on their own, and we encouraged them to go in pairs—one person asking questions, the other filming.

We wanted them to really watch the scientists doing the process that they were interested in and then sit with the customer and discuss it while watching the video. This technique is valuable because scientists often perform steps unconsciously, and only by reviewing the video do they realize subtle differences in what they actually do versus what they describe.

Once the teams gather their observations, they create a narrative. We get involved again after that to help them work on the insight part because that's often very challenging.

When you interview scientists in the lab, how do you know if you’ve spoken to enough people?

M.H.: Talk to as many people as you need to until you start getting similar answers. When you're starting to get the same sort of answers from the fifth, sixth, and seventh person, you're probably on the right track. I don't think you need massive quantitative studies but do look for consistency.

And where you have inconsistencies, start asking the question: why is this person telling me something completely different? Are they just an outlier? Can I find any more people like that? How representative are they of the broader community?

Can you share an example of where you applied this framework with an actual customer?

M.H.: One of our customers developed an instrument for sample preparation in next-gen sequencing (NGS), designed to process eight samples simultaneously and eliminate the pain of manual preparation. They had an enormous amount of interest when they first launched, but nobody bought it. They approached us, asking what the issue might be.

So we said, okay, let's go into some labs and have a look at what's actually happening. During our observations, we noticed that scientists typically prepared 10 to 20 samples, sent them to the NGS lab, and then waited for bioinformaticians to analyze the data. It could be weeks before they get the results, and then they could do another iteration of experiments. When we later asked how they felt about the manual prep, many said the initial pain had faded. They had adjusted to it over time.

We also learned that scientists frequently tweaked their processes. So they might change the quantities of the reagents, or they might change the number of PCR cycles. There's a lot of art involved, and it wasn't something that they felt a standardized box could do for them. If something went wrong, it could jeopardize the expensive and time-consuming NGS results.

So we were able to tell the client that, actually, it's not about taking away the pain of manual preparation or saving time; the concern that they really have at the heart of this thing is the uniform quality. Scientists wanted to be confident that their NGS results would be reliable each time. So, we shifted the focus of their positioning to emphasize reproducibility.

Without going in there and actually watching what people were doing, it would have been very difficult for us to uncover that.

It's also maybe why there are so many issues or challenges in life sciences: a lot of the marketers are former scientists, and they know how to do science, so they think they know how to use the product. This could be creating a bias against them and against the marketing of their company.

Scientists often dismiss marketing as "fluff." How do you face that barrier?

M.H.: Scientists have a kind of fluff radar. The moment they see something in an ad or in a piece of content, it sets their radar off, they just won't look at it. The key thing is finding something that's meaningful for the scientists and then talking about that.

One of our clients is in a very new and emerging area, and they've spent a lot of time talking about how their solution is a very innovative and very exciting new technology. And again, there's a lot of engagement, but there's very little commitment to buy. We advised them to shift their messaging away from simply promoting the technology's novelty.

You have to start talking about it as something that's making a meaningful difference. You have to start saying, it's here, it's now, it's real and start giving examples of where it's being applied and stop saying how innovative it is. And that's really made a difference to how they do their marketing. It seems quite subtle, but it's impactful.

Whenever marketers propose ideas without quantitative data, they often face questions about the return on investment. Can you link creative ideas to ROI?

M.H.: I think this is a malaise that marketing is suffering from at the moment. Everybody wants to see a return on investment on any marketing dollars spent. And it's really difficult because you do need a balance between branding, which probably isn't going to give you any kind of return, and more tactical lead-generating marketing activities.

We're in the fortunate position that we can show some case studies and examples of clients who have spent some time on their branding message and also spent some time on their tactical lead generation. And that helps. But when you're inside an organization, and you're trying to convince them that they should be spending money on what they see as just branding stuff, it's incredibly difficult to do.

What’s your opinion on the use of AI in the creative process?

M.H.: We feel quite ambivalent about AI, to be honest. I certainly don't think it's going to take my job, which is good. I think it's a great tool if used in the right way. I do worry about its truly generative ability because it's basing everything on inputs it’s already had, so there's a risk that everything is going to move towards the mean. It's going to give you the average of all of the inputs that it's received, which means what you get is going to be very similar to what I get if we put the same query in. And that's not going to be very creative.

How do you translate creative insights into concrete marketing tactics?

M.H.: At the end of the framework, when you start crafting the solution, you do so around a specific challenge you aim to solve.

I'll give you an example. A Danish customer wanted to sell LC-MS (liquid chromatography with tandem mass spectrometry) services for host protein analysis and was really struggling to persuade people that ELISA wasn't any good. The feedback we received was that people were quite happy with what they’ve got and they didn’t know why they should trust this company.

So, it really came down to a trust issue. If you can really put your finger on what the problem is, then you can get a message that's meaningful. Once you've got the message, you can start looking at what content will carry that message and make sure that's right for the message. And then, finally, you can think about what channels you need to be able to get that content out.

Can you share an example of a creative tactic you’ve used for a client?

M.H.: Recently, we ran a competition asking people on social media to share their lab essentials. The underlying branding message for our client was to position their technology as a "lab essential." So again, we were tying the tactic to the message that we were trying to give and having a little bit of fun along the way. We gave a prize, people got into the conversation, shared the ideas that they'd come up with. We heard crazy things like, “It's the coffee machine, without it, we wouldn't be able to get motivated,” or, “I love my pipette, it's just the best thing ever, and I'm never ever going to lend to anybody.” Scientists love interacting and participating, so I think we need to make life science marketing more experiential.

How hard is it to get small companies to sign when they are not used to marketing?

M.H.: It really comes down to identifying what’s valuable to them. You need to pinpoint those critical moments when they genuinely need your expertise. We find that some of those moments are when they're going for another round of funding. The investors have told them they want to see a marketing roadmap so we come in and help them. Or they've got a product launch, they've just been gifted something by R&D, they have very little marketing resource, and they've got to take the thing to market.

It’s about finding those pressure points, and once you've built the relationship up, most of our clients stay with us across numerous assignments where we might then go on to help them with the rebrand, or we might go on to help create a marketing campaign for next year and so on. But there's always a catalyst, and it's about finding those catalysts.

I think companies also don't appreciate enough the fact that someone coming from outside of the company will have a less biased view of the value proposition. You know, it's kind of easier when you're not in the day-to-day operations to actually take some distance with the company and really appreciate the values they're offering.

Is it important for you to personally resonate with the company's value proposition you work with?

M.H.: I think it is. Scientists are probably the most skeptical audience you will ever have to deal with. I think it has to be authentic. We do a lot of value proposition work because it's hard. You have to describe the situation the customer is facing and the problem that they have.

They might have a multitude of problems, but your product should be solving the biggest problem they have. And it should be solving it in a way that they can't get from what they're doing now or from a competitor. So that's where you really need to be unique. And then you've got to have the proof to back it up.

This concludes my interview with Marina. Her insights into unlocking creativity within life sciences marketing were inspiring and resonated strongly with my experience working with similar organizations.

If you're interested in exploring how to promote creativity and implement effective marketing tactics in your organization, I encourage you to reach out to Marina on LinkedIn or visit Viveo’s website.

Stay tuned for more interviews!