Calvin Hwang, Director & Producer, SUPRE Films, on Bringing Health Stories to a Wider Audience.

Meet Calvin Hudson Wong

Sure. Uh hello. My name is Calvin Hudson Wong. I am a, I suppose to frame that, I could be an executive producer, a director, filmmaker, and I guess a retired marketing executive. Oh, I thought I still do marketing though. I it's still part of my life.

I feel like you've given me uh a fantastic softball intro there to uh to jump in on. So uh first of all, thank you for for joining me. We were just talking about how gorgeous it is outside and uh the the option to get some sunshine versus talk to me. Uh I appreciate you talking to me.

It's my pleasure.

Um okay, so so uh lots of stuff as you described, uh kind of what you do right now. One of them is is uh kind of like retired marketing executive. Um you've had a very interesting career, um, kind of like uh in and out of of uh similar professions, sort of like bouncing back and forth. So I want to start with uh a little bit of like let's ground ourselves in uh what are you doing now? Then I want to do a bit of like uh kind of how did you get here? And then I have a million questions about just sort of filmmaking and long-form content and health, and why don't we do more of it and um really good stuff. But let's start with um what are you doing, what are you doing now?

Building A Health Documentary Company

Well, this is a great way to talk about myself. Uh I am primarily uh a documentary filmmaker. Um I'm I've started my own production company. I can tell a little bit more about that and its design a little bit later, but um that production company focuses largely on topics of health, health access, and health equity. Um I've been doing that for eight years now. And um we do award-winning documentaries across the board from educationally focused um short forms to feature length to television documentaries. Um, and coincidentally, uh a couple of our films are up for a number of awards this season. I'm gonna quietly brag about those, but our film uh that we did for the passionate eye for CBC, uh, also picked up by Netflix, is up for a Canadian Screen Award for best social political documentary. That one's called The Ozempic Effect. And then another film I did around it's a feature-length film about an icon of Canadian uh sports um uh athleticism and his family. Uh, that one I'm up for a best director award for the Golden Sheaf 2026. So um quite proud of the work that we've been able to do um for practice of eight years. We've come a long way, and uh and uh I feel we're still loaded with a lot of purpose and with a lot of potential to tell some um stories that that need more attention.

Well, I will I will I will first say, Calvin, that for the next hour you do not need to brag quietly. So you have you have full permission to brag as loudly as you as you like. So you have a really um, I think, uh, you know, unique background to set you up to do the work that you're doing now. So maybe we'll kind of go back to the beginning a little bit and talk about um you know your career because because again, it feels like you've had kind of uh two feet into uh uh film and then sort of back over to two feet into uh uh pharma or health, and and you've sort of gone back and forth a little bit. So maybe take us through you know some of the twists and turns and and and maybe the sort of what kept drawing you back and forth to these

From Music Videos To Advertising

two almost parallel tracks that you've now brought together uh to be one.

Yeah. Um, so I originally, just as a small child, um, I was always very interested in a combination of music and filmmaking. Um, and that was something that I would have loved to pursue. And this gives you an a sense of what era I grew up in, but I wanted to be like a music video director as a kid.

Oh, yeah.

Uh cool stuff, you know, great music, great image building, you know, incredible storytelling and very innovative medium. Um for sure.

Hoping to get on Toronto Rocks, I imagine.

So much music, MTV, you know, a whole kind of generational um image and iconography. Uh that as a vocation was really kind of killed by Napster, which really took a lot of the the wind out of how much investment um uh was being put into artists and and their records. So um, and on top of that, my parents are very practical people, you know. Father's is an engineer, PhD in engineering, my mother's a registered nurse. Very much like get a real job. That's that's a hobby. So I translated that love of storytelling and image building into a career in advertising. So I actually went to business school and learned the craft of marketing excellence. Um, I was very fortunate that um I was also kind of a bit still curious around music and culture, that when I graduated university, I got myself a visa to work in England and I worked in London at an advertising agency doing incredible, you know, fun creative stuff, still very entry-level, but in essentially a center, which I saw as coming um to the global forefront of culture, music, fashion, design, uh, you name it. It was really, it was really that cool Britannia area and era, and London was really kind of the place to be. So I spent a couple of years doing that and having a lot of fun and you know, really emerging my sense of taste and stuff while still working in a more corporate-y or business um profession. When I left England, I was fortunate to get a job with Procter and Gamble, which is considered, at least at the time, I think it still is ranked very highly, but you know, one of the preeminent consumer packaged goods, brand management companies, known not just for its prowess in you know creating these incredible international brands, but also as a training ground for really top-tier, you know, brand management, uh, marketing management types of professionals. So very fortunate to have that opportunity. Um, as I was working there, uh, we were going through something called globalization, which was you were starting to see um centers of excellence uh geographically consolidated in certain areas, and you were starting to see different tiers of markets emerge. Canada kind of fell into the second in some regards, maybe even the third tier market, where a lot of the strategic, you know, brand creation, you know, the core of the marketing planning began shifting to global centers. And then Canada became much more of a localization and an executional hub. So as those changes were happening, I kind of thought, okay, well, one of the things I love so much is around original storytelling. So if I can shape my career to be in a sector of marketing that was still somewhat protected from this global structure, then let's make some of those choices. So I ended up moving to Warner Lambert, which got acquired by Pfizer, their consumer group, which was an OTC essentially company, which has regulations that say, okay, it's you can't necessarily duplicate exactly from market to market because there are local regulations, federal relations that require a specific lens. And um, and also there was historical legacy around some of these bands, brands being more dominant in other countries than in, say, the US or other major markets. So we still had a level of brand autonomy, which I was really fortunate to be able to continue to thrive and shape a lot of those core strategic um branding and marketing skills. And then as that company got acquired by J, I decided, you know, it's time to kind of bow out for a bit. And I didn't really want to work um further in that sector. So I ended up um going down to Silicon Valley and working in tech for a bit, consulting with some big startups and dot coms and applying those disciplined tier one marketing skills to kind of the tech sector and how that's interfacing and creating. I think at that stage was like Web 1.0. So uh a lot of interesting stuff there. I ended up getting a job back in Canada, which I was a little bit hesitant to do, but um, I had to relocate to Montreal. And so I worked for a French food company called Danon or Group Danon, or in the Americas, Danin. Uh and that one also, because of the nature of food, food regulation, as well as very localized taste, there was still some, I'd say, leverage for local markets to really add value to their brand story and market development. Um, and also was an interesting, I worked entirely in French. So I at that stage I was reasonably bilingual. Um, so there were a number of reasons where I ended up saying, okay, I will finally accept this role and and run the marketing there. I was there for about three years and then again kind of saying, okay, I feel like I've really maxed out where I want to go in this country. What other markets would I want to go to? And I think with most corporations, multinationals, there's a rotation path for your career. I was being offered regions that I wasn't really interested

Big Brand Training And Globalization

in, you know, having a major sort of life shift, having already sort of moved to Montreal and and learned a new language. And I was hoping to go to more of a, I think you would call it like a tier one market or tier one city. Um, those things didn't quite materialize. So I said, okay, it's time to go back to film school. So I had a moment where so I enrolled myself in a very, I'd say, practical and for-profit school uh that was attached to Universal Studios in LA. So I went down and I did this film program. I learned all the craft. Um, we ran around all the you know universal studio lots, got in all the costumes and shot all these crazy little short films and came up with a film, like a film diploma or film degree or whatever. And I'm like, oh great, now I've got enough. I've got a real, I can apply to a real film school and blah, blah, blah. And then I kind of got called back into Toronto um to join an ad agency to be like their chief client officer. I was interested in that role because it was I was being asked to by a friend who um I very much respect what he does. And then they got acquired by a big network. So, and I think we all know the stories what happens with bank acquisitions and agency. Neil, I'm sure you have many stories to tell in that. Um, but then that that position didn't even materialize, it had to be rescinded. And so I found myself back in Toronto having my student visa lapsed to go back and work in the US. And then um I coincidentally got called by Headhunter who said, Johnson and Johnson, then Janssen Pharma was looking for someone to um run their digital center of excellence. This is my since all of my background in consumer and tech, um, they thought this could be a good fit. And so I applied for that job. Apparently, I got the job. And when I showed up to take the job, they said, well, we have an opening for the head of dermatology, which is the it's a biologic agent division. And so they said, We see you as a better fit there, it pays more, it's more responsibility, and it's kind of a better career pathway. Um, if you want more leadership within JJ. So that's a hard hard list to say no to. Yes. So I ended up taking that role. Um, I so just to be clear, I was very apprehensive of joining the pharmaceutical industry, having come from consumer and having all the tool chest of you know direct consumer and brand and television advertising and all that type of stuff. And also reputationally, I think it it just for you know, tier one marketers, classical sort of brand managers, it wasn't one that was really sort of in my mindset. And I had not like there was that option with with Pfizer to go to Montreal at that stage of the farmer division, and it's not one that I really explored. So trepidatiously I said, okay, I'm gonna take this job. It's it's good for what I need right now. Um, it's a great big company. Um, if I like it, it sounds like there's great career pathways. Um, I didn't anticipate I would stay for maybe more than three years. I ended up staying over six and a half years. Um, I guess I did pretty well at the company. They I kept getting bigger portfolios and more responsibility. Um, the last portfolio I had was in the GI slash um is GI and new business development for immunology. So very, very large portfolio. Um, really, really some inspiring leaders and stuff like that. Like I was feeling my groove there, and then I just ended up not liking people don't leave companies, they leave their bosses. So I just didn't find anymore that it was that interesting to me. And while I was working there, I was also incubating this notion of how do we introduce storytelling to more effectively educate and um have you know people consider behavior changes, adoption changes, um, introducing different therapeutic options to their patients through storytelling. So we were innovatively through through my my team and um my efforts there, we were able to bring documentary film like getting it to JJ.

Um I'm gonna pause you. I was gonna say the same thing, girl.

I am on my mic is just the um Sinheizer.

Yeah, I was gonna say the audio quality is not bad, but it's just me, I can hear it rubbing on your shirt.

Oh, okay. Um I w Yes, they're in both ears. I think it's the collar that might be rubbing against it, so I'm just gonna take I'm just gonna take that shirt off and just have a t-shirt. Is it better? Okay. Uh do I have to redo any of that? Apply apply the filter, yeah.

No, it's a really good flow. Okay. Okay. Perfect. Awesome. Okay, so you've actually you've actually brought us sorry, just one second. I'm gonna have a glass of water. Okay, so you've brought us to your uh Janssen now, J and J time, which it uh coincidentally is is where you and I met uh some time ago. Um and and I will say, uh, you know, for for what it's worth, there was a um sort of like one of these things is not like the other one um sense about working with you as a marketer. You you very much felt um like you were uh uh you know, I think sort of uh pushing at the edges of of what you thought was possible. Uh, you know, I very much there was there was a um there was sort of a like a creativity in your DNA that um you know isn't always uh present um in in in pharma. Like pharma is, you know, there's it's it's a bit of a different discipline. So I

Film School Detour Then Back To Work

I very much got the sense working with you that um you know, well, this is this is someone who's who's here but also is is is getting signals and and is being influenced by um you know by by stuff that's you know well outside of the heavily regulated marketing space.

Uh I I would say I two comments on that. I'd say, yes, I acknowledge I am a bit of a more of an individual. I think people who tend to be in the creative space are less concerned about necessarily conforming across all boards. I think you kind of know the rules of the game and you try to navigate within that. But also acknowledging part of creativity and part of strategy is how do you break out from systems? And I think that that as a discipline has served me well within generally the creative, the storytelling, and the marketing space. I'd say in pharma, when I was told as I was a hire, I was told I was specifically a quote unquote, and I don't know how good this term is to use anymore, but a quote unquote diversity hire to meant to bring and stimulate you know external points of view and bring different business models, different perspectives, um, and hopefully inject um a little bit more inspiration, a little bit more um, you know, friendly uh I don't know, friendly tension maybe around some of the things that are are viewed as as um you know sacred cows or or dogmatic. So that's what I was told. I would say um pharma as a general culture though, and I think that still round rules today, is one that does highly um prize um I guess the word is uh what's the right word? I was gonna say, okay, Calvin, what's gonna come next? Um it's the it's a specific function that we have. Um compliance. They they reward, they seek, and they respect compliance because that's around keeping the pharma company or the entity out of legal trouble. And I think that's obviously something you have to learn and something you have to be able to be okay with, and something that you need to show great reverence for because you don't want to tank your own company or get get anyone particularly in trouble with any law. That's one that I never had a problem with when it came to specific rules. And quite honestly, that's fundamental to our practice now. Our number one thing is how do we ensure not just our own compliance to the regulation and the bylaws, but how do we also ensure that our stakeholders remain compliant? So it's it's funny that the sort of visual cues or the impressions, vibes, or energy of someone can be painted across the board being like, Oh, yeah, you seem unconventional. You may not be a rule follower. But I think if you're intelligent enough, you understand the systems enough, you need to know which ones you can pressure test and which ones you need to. Absolutely lock in and deliver against. So I would say it's one where I don't revel in the label, but I acknowledge that those perceptions can be formed.

Yeah, but I and I also meant that in a in a very positive way, right? It wasn't a, you know, this is someone who's operating. Um, hold on a second, sorry. I meant that in a really positive way. I didn't get the sense that this is someone who's operating, uh sort of, you know, ignorant of the constructs that we're working in. Um, I thought you were a very savvy, but also uh sort of you know curious and somewhat critical of like, you know, how do we do this, you know, a little bit, a little bit differently. Well, I probably did that.

Yeah, I appreciate that.

So, so, you know, interesting that you go in your career kind of like deeper and deeper into the regulated health space. And that's where you that's where you end off and make the jump to say, um, I'm I'm going off and I'm gonna start up your current business, and I'm gonna um kind of tell these stories, and I'm gonna do this in a really meaningful way. What I find a bit curious is is you know, your last spot was was maybe the one where you know there's there's the lowest appetite for what I would say, you know, sort of marketing risk taking or creative risk taking. And uh, you know, long-form content, documentary films, uh, you know, these stories where the brands uh would help fund but don't have a lot of control, like that feels, I think, to a lot of uh marketers, maybe quite risky. So I'm I'm interested in um, you know, what was the thought process? Because it feels like your current uh uh company is very focused on telling health stories. Um uh, you know, tells them in concert and in partnership with manufacturers. Um, you know, that's a tricky thing to sort of navigate. What was what was the impetus or the motivation or the thinking to say, hey, I'm gonna step out of this uh you know, senior leadership role and I'm gonna start an organization that specifically does the thing that um uh you know some

Joining Pharma And Pushing Format

of these brands are maybe a little bit scared of?

I I would say the the apprehension is largely the unfamiliarity with it. Um it's on two levels. One is we don't really engage with education or direct-to-consumer or direct-to-physician in this format in a broad way. So that's probably where the greatest unfamiliarity is. I think we assuage a lot of those fears by a showing our track record. We've been doing this for eight years. We've never, I mean, we've we engage directly with with Health Canada on a number of things. Uh, we always try to do pre-consults with all the pre-regulatory bodies or the pre-approval bodies. Um, we can talk more about that as well. Um, but we do everything to the T to ensure that our product, i.e., our films, are ethically, they can pass ethics review for different hospital boards or uh teaching institutions, um, which means they pass all the barriers, not just from what Food and Drug Canada says, but also around disclosure, around uh impartiality, journalistic integrity. So we do everything with that in mind to make sure that what we can produce is usable by all of our stakeholders. And there are a lot of stakeholders, doctors, you know, hospitals, universities, teachers, even pharma uh to a degree. Um so again, we stand by that track record, and base over the years of grinding this out, we have now quite a robust um uh catalog and acumum in that field. Really no complaints. Like everyone's been fantastically uh appreciative of the work that we do. Uh, number two is that um once they typically see the film, like if we just show them one of our products, the intrinsic value of it on a liminal, on an almost like emotional level, the connection is it's it's it doesn't need to be explained. Like it's something that people, once they experience it, they understand that it's not just informational and knowledge exchange, but it is truly an emotional attitude shifting perspective and um invitation into some of these very vulnerable moments that you know the patients are going through when they're making these big decisions, whether it's facing a diagnosis for the first time, um going to a scenario where there are too many treatment options and they don't know how to navigate or what types of attributes or features are important to them, or if it's they're on a failure of a of a treatment and they now need to reconsider what that new option may look like. Um those are all really powerful stories that when introduced into that right moment, whether that's through a physician or whether they're finding it online when they're looking, or when they're being educated as a practitioner, those are core things that inform their behavior or their behavior changes. And those are things you're not gonna get from a cell sheet or a detail aid or you know, by adding call frequency, right? So we focus on massive sort of attitude shifting moments and less on frequency, which is typically the pharma model.

Um and and and I have to imagine, I mean, you know, you and I have talked about this but before, like the this is not kind of you know manufactured uh uh sort of you know drama and authenticity. Like these are these are these are really incredible, life-changing, powerful um, you know, perception-shifting moments that are occurring that that you are telling with a combination of you know creativity, grace, care, and a high degree of sensitivity for the regulatory environment, like a a literacy uh um uh with respect to sort of how to get this content out to the other side in a way that keeps all the stakeholders happy. But this isn't, you know, this isn't necessarily a um, you know, how do I take something benign and and and make it uh compelling? This is about compelling human moments that you you guys are bringing to life with a very special type of care.

Yeah. And thank you for saying that. I mean, obviously, this is something we care deeply about, and I think it's also with the sensitivity of dealing with people who've gone through medical trauma. So that's that's very that's great to be recognized because we do put a lot of work into that, and it requires a lot, I think, a lot of our learning and our approach to make sure that we enter these spaces into these communities with the right approach, with the right sensitivities and the right um empowerment of those individuals to tell the story that they feel comfortable telling it in. I think the other component of that, um, of what you mentioned is that it's not just the story and the narrative, um, which has to be authentic and genuine, it's also a component of the storyteller. And I think this is where our the way we've set

Compliance Without Killing Creativity

up our organization can deliver in that gap. Um statistically, and I don't think I'm talking out of turn here, but the pharma industry is considered one of the lowest trust industries amongst every trust index poll that has been published. Um, so stories, if and if they ring very, very authentic, they're done with the care. If it's seen as coming, originating, influenced, or you know, being promoted by overtly by pharma interest, pharma stakeholders, or pharma with a pharma editorial lens to it, the audience will immediately reject it. And it's it's kind of a horrible thing because we as not just me as an individual, but we as a as a company do see the tremendous value that the pharma industry contributes to individual and population health through their products, but for for many, many reasons, the trust is not there. So um it's important that you know when you wish to engage on these types of stories that you do keep it at that editorial distance so that we have the flexibility to tell those stories in a way which is reflective of the community without a lot of interference from the pharma. In fact, for the majority of it, the only conversation that we have with pharma companies is really what therapeutic area would there be of mutual interest for them to participate in these. So those are really important metrics that is not just respecting the story, but also how the story is told by the storyteller themselves.

So I I'm gonna, I'm gonna um I'm gonna sort of drill down on on that part a little bit because I I you know I think about I've been I've been doing this for a long time, and um uh you know, I've had I've had clients in in and out of of healthcare. And uh, you know, I would say that my healthcare clients are uh much more passionate about what they do and who they do it for than my um uh sort of non-healthcare traditional sort of B2C clients, right? Like um, and so if you said to them, most of them, uh uh, you know, can you think of of amazing stories where where you know your product, uh, you know, either now or in the in the in in other um uh you know sort of therapeutic areas has been you know incredibly impactful to patients. Um uh you know, they would they would almost all say yes. And and and most of them would actually um you know have some example uh that's actually has a high degree of specificity in terms of like, here's an actual uh you know, a person that was impacted, right? Um and then if you said to them, hey, you know, do you want to um build trust? Like, do you think that there is a trust perception issue or a trust gap, uh, you know, almost across the board they would say yes, right? They they uh I think sort of you know working in pharma has become uh in a lot of instances is sort of this this kind of you know dirty dirty word a little bit, right? So, you know, you have this installed base, I think, of um, yes, we want to tell our stories, and like yes, we would love to rebuild trust. And then, but no, we're not gonna, you know, we're not doing a movie. Like, so, so how do you um and it's just I I think it's again probably not a lack of desire, but it's a you know, I don't even know how to get there, I don't know how to sell it. So, so how do you help uh uh either you know farmer companies or marketers like activate on that desire to tell their stories? How do you help build that kind of you know business case almost when part of the business case is there will be editorial distance, right? Like how how do you navigate that?

Well, I think that is in itself a trust building exercise between myself and that organization. Um and it's not just presenting what credentials we we have already accomplished and you know, whatever testimonials we want to bring from partners or or other individuals along that value chain. It's really just here's how our outlook is, and this is why we do it, and this is for the purposes of why you should do it. Um, we don't tell every potential pharma company or health institution that they should do a movie. It's strategically not appropriate in all situations, and quite honestly, I will be the first person to tell them that's kind of a waste of your money if your market or your your um you know your life cycle or landscape looks like this and prioritize a different line of business or come back when you have new innovation to talk about. But the most, I'd say important interfaces for us to engage with them is when they are largely at the you know pre-market um to either a new product launch in a new category or to a new indication for an existing molecule, or to um a new diagnostic tool that would enable a greater um visibility to how um certain patient types can filter into a

Trust Gap And Editorial Independence

desired treatment pathway. Um it all again is from that educational level, um, where it's not promotional specifically to a brand or product, but it understands the altitude of what is ethically and regulatory compliant to educate against. Because even if we wanted to push something that was remotely promotional, which we don't, um we wouldn't be able to get it through ethics review with our stakeholders that would screen these films to their patients or to their faculty or whatnot, right? So there are many sort of correction mechanisms that would logically dictate of the utility of this as well as the altitude of which it needs to look into this educational subject.

So you just mentioned screening, and I I have to admit, um I I print I pretend to know a lot about a lot of things, but I don't know a ton about uh the um sort of mechanism of uh distribution for films. So when you're speaking to uh you know early, early days, right? You are conceptualizing a new uh project, you're speaking to stakeholders. Have you pre-sold that project from a distribution standpoint? Like what are you able to commit to? Because there's there's a bunch of parts of this, right? There's like uh you know, we're gonna create this uh you know amazing piece of content that is you know compliant and but you know, compliant and compelling, right? Um uh but but people need to see it. So so what are you able to uh commit to, if anything at all, in those early days around uh you know where this may show up?

Right. So it's again, it's project specific. Um and they're different um entry points either way. But the one thing that we do guarantee almost almost completely guarantee, because it's we still have another stakeholder which is exactly this is being recorded of it. Yeah, yeah, no, I'm being very I'm being very mindful. Uh but what we almost unanimously get um support for is distribution across educational, um the educational market. So depending on the film and its target, it can be K-12, university, post-secondary. Um, and that's I don't know how many 12 million patient population across Canada. We also have US distribution, but for most of the funders in Canada, they typically don't care about other markets explicitly. Um, and then I mean our number one distribution, if it is a direct to consumer and education and mass population type of um film, is to really just put it on our YouTube channel. Our YouTube channel is relatively small, but it's still growing quite fast. It's got 8,000 subscribers, but we get multiples of that in monthly traffic, unpromoted monthly traffic, largely because the number one place people are going to look for their symptoms is the internet.

Yeah.

And so our SEO, we don't have to do too aggressive any mechanics on SEO. A lot of those are built baked right into YouTube and Facebook. Um, and that's where a lot of the audiences discover our films. And that's honestly, and those those, if there are specific objectives of like, yeah, we want to hit X percent of population by whatever, we can also say, well, can we also get a grant around amplification? Yeah. And let's distribute it that way. But the internet is really important in healthcare a lot more than I'd say people realize. And it's circumventing the traditional care pathway. Like no one's going directly to the doctor first. Absolutely no one. And I think the other thing that is very, very important for pharma companies to understand the quote unquote lack of um influence or editorial control is actually a good thing for them. A, because we actually super, my the company, my company, we actually own the IP of our film. So it's our film, it's our content, it is an educational documentary. It is promotable as content on YouTube and Facebook. Whereas if it was promotional content, it would not fit into algorithms because they want you to pay for it. You want to amplify it, you gotta pay for it. So we can tap into SEO, which a lot of other content that is brand sponsored, what have you, cannot. Um the other component is um with our films, we bear all of the legal and regulatory responsibility because it's our property. So in that way, we are the ones that have to champion the film. We are the ones pushing it to get PR coverage, we're the ones um pushing it to get it listed at in medical factories as part of case study or different type of curriculum. We're the ones leveraging that. We're the ones

Distribution Through Schools And YouTube

who can be frontline also in getting organizing screenings across different medical centers and hospitals. Uh, we can work on those types of things with a pharma company if they want to sponsor it, provided anything they do sponsorship related is outside the screening studio, um, and that it's not specifically trying to promote a product. Um, so there's lots of different flexibility things that allow us to say, hey, this market is really underdeveloped in this type of treatment option. Let's maybe do some screenings there that around our film that talks about a patient pathway where they had to make some tough choices about what treatments they wanted to, and they had some apprehensions around some of these things. Those types of narratives really help shape uh not just the consumer landscape, but also the caretaker as well as the prescriber and uh care providers. Um, and again, those are not promotional of a product, but they are shaping attitudes around what are the right questions to ask, who are the right people to ask, and what my options, what can my options potentially deliver?

Well, and and thinking about what you said a few minutes ago, and we're you know, thinking about the uh like the the the craft of creation, right? The craft of this storytelling and and and bringing the story to life and creating that narrative, you know, you were uh uh you know a quote unquote diversity hire uh at Jansen, like because of your of your creativity, right? You know, and and so you know, part of this sort of editorial distance uh and and and the appropriateness of that, yeah, for sure, regulatory, you know, making sure that on the other side this thing can be promoted in it in a way that makes sense and it tells a story in a way. The other thing is is this is not typically pharma's superpower, right? Like, like, you know, pharma is is great at uh uh you know, I think conveying uh messages that are deeply rooted in data. Uh, but the minute you start to to tell stories, everybody gets a little bit anxious. And so there's also just kind of a Like a skill set appropriateness to um, you know, we're gonna have the people in the room who are best at doing this, um, because it's going to create a finished product that that exceeds the uh the the sort of imagination of of the folks who are, I think, on the manufacturer side. And that's that's gonna be the thing that compels the audience too, right?

Absolutely. So uh a couple of the notes that we got when we screened these in audiences, and again, I'll use the example of healthcare professionals, they recognize this as a very novel breakthrough um tool in their arsenal to both educate themselves as well as their peers as well as their patients. So that having some connection to a sponsoring pharma company who's like, yeah, we're gonna help do some screenings and we're gonna present this film, blah, blah, blah. Even though it's not directly their film, they also are recognized as someone who's using something very breakthrough. Like this is stuff that you don't see in pharma or medical school to really change and open their mindset. And remember, the narrow, the narrow experience of what many practitioners have in the office, they've got the five minutes that they see of their patient and they have a chart, right? Yeah. To be invited into their patients' lives, to say, when I counsel them this way, or I introduced shared decision making around these treatment options, and seeing how that patient walks away is a massive feedback loop into them, which they don't necessarily have the time. There's no structure and there's no visibility into how that affects their work. So even for things around like, yeah, I'm a prescriber of this drug, I've been prescribing for 20 years, and a patient's like, yeah, I heard about this option. I talked to my physician about it, but he didn't talk about my needs, he talked about his comfort level. As opposed to, you know, so that behavior change around how does that impact, you know, their relationship with their patient? Has that how does that visibility around their preference and not being so patient-centric can really shape how people um operate in the in their practice? Another one, this is a dermatological uh dermatology example. We had a number of, I guess you call them KLLs, um, fairly prominent prescribers or practitioners in the country. They came to one of our screenings, and pharma is kind of a split between medical or sorry, dermatology is a split between medical as cosm and cosmetic dermatology. And the person, after seeing our film on medical psoriasis, said, this really shaped my interest and how I structure my practice. I was kind of getting dissatisfied with the medical practice, and I thought the cosmetic would be more lucrative, but seeing how much I've impacted these patients' lives, that really meant a lot to me. So I'm now restructuring and I'm thinking about doing more psoriasis uh clinics uh and getting greater access and encouraging more patients to come into practice. Another physician said for the first time after watching our documentary in psoriasis, that they felt that the public would see that dermatologists

Clinician Behaviour Change Through Story

actually save patients' lives. It's like everyone dismisses us as, you know, cosmetic, pimple popping, what have you. But we've saved people's trajectories around not just on their medical condition, but on their self-esteem, on the way they look at themselves and whether they want to continue living based on us being able to introduce these treatments for the first time to these patients. So there's lots of change management that's that are more holistically looking at the system and how the system can operate as opposed to just here's a product sell message. Because you're your sales reps can do that, great. You don't need that. But you need people to say the consideration, my consideration set is changing, my attitudes are shifting. I'm opening, I'm open to now consider novel, you know, quote unquote, newer, maybe not as law enough long-term data, if I can reconciliate that um that benefit risk profile um based on what I'm seeing, how patients are responding to them. So it's really, really powerful, but again, very individualized for each um each sort of scenario. I think as a final comment though, of what you were saying around the risk, like I think this is kind of where a bit of my background and profile comes into play. I'm not just a filmmaker who you know makes documentaries. I'm someone who actually understands the industry. Someone who's actually had to work on the commercial side and really understand the needs and concerns as well as the metrics of how people are awarded for performance. So even as we're developing these programs, we have a full understanding of what our stakeholders need, but also we're trying to frame a lot of uh deliverables that we're able to produce to help them manage in their internal um, you know, people who are evaluating what the investment of these things look like. But around metrics around, yeah, these are what uh our impression rates look like. These are how many activities that we've gone after. We don't usually ask for like, oh, you send us your physician list so we can let you know how many physicians are exposed to our phone. We don't really do that because that's seems a little too creepy. Yeah. But we do recognize that, you know, in certain practices, there are, you know, people who are key opinion leaders that if we put them on a platform because they have more experience with a clinical trial and they have greater experience with this type of um attribute or this diagnostic tool, by you by leveraging their expertise to help educate the broader population, including their peers or patients directly, those are also really important tools for in the change behavior. Um, you know, that whole mechanism of how do you really orientate your business to, you know, have all these leverage uh benefits, because now the market, the attitude and the awareness and education is now inclusive of what your your new proposition could look like.

Well, and that that's what I was thinking earlier when I said, you know, sort of the the literacy that you have in the sort of you know the world in which the the you know pharma marketers uh exist, um, you know, you you can go in and and you know you know the secret handshakes and you know the acronyms and you know that and that just puts everybody at ease. I think about these scenarios where like pharma companies hire you know marketing agencies that don't know pharma and they get uh you know, I think they they sort of, you know, there's a gravitational pull towards this, oh, there's like such creativity, and then like almost every single time the bottom falls out because uh uh you know stuff just can't, it's it's wonderfully creative and absolutely not compliant, and then it becomes problematic. But my my my thought is you know, you're describing uh you know the psoriasis film that you did and the experience of those physicians coming up. Like filmmaking is from what I understand, I know some folks in the industry, like quite a lonely craft at times. Like there's quite a lot of of um you know you know, small team editing, uh, you know, trying to get this thing sort of out into the light. It must be so uh impactful and meaningful to be doing this work, you know, with such care, uh, but also like with with with you know, sometimes very much sort of by yourself or with a very small team, and then all of a sudden be in this room with people coming up to you and talking about the impact. Like that must just be such a powerful thing just for you as a person.