BOSTON, April 13 /PRNewswire/ -- Observant LLC has announced the appointment of two senior executive positions to support the company’s rapid growth as a marketing research consultancy to the pharmaceutical, biotechnology and healthcare industries. These appointments reflect Observant’s commitment to attracting and promoting experienced leaders who bring a passion for research excellence and a commitment to client service.
The company is pleased to announce that Vice President Erik Coats, Ph.D. has been made a full partner of the firm. A social psychologist who joined the firm in 2005, Dr. Coats has focused on assisting pharmaceutical clients bring new products to market, including new products to help prevent cancer, heart attacks, strokes, and kidney disease. The disease prevention theme runs through Dr. Coats’ work. “Pharmaceutical companies are going beyond products that simply treat disease. They are applying cutting edge sciences to identify agents that will help people avoid disease from developing.” Critical keys to effective “preventive medicine” include vaccines and better understanding of risk. Vaccines have long been used to prevent childhood illnesses. However, the vaccines of today and tomorrow may prevent adult illness, including cervical cancer, HIV, shingles, and meningitis. Pharmaceutical companies are now moving toward developing preventive care programs and initiatives. “Beyond the PR benefits in terms of rehabilitating a tarnished reputation in the community, such efforts and reprioritization reflect an improved scientific understanding of biological markers and other personal factors that put people at risk for disease such as cardiovascular disease and diabetes.” This focus will aid drug development in terms of agents that may directly play a role in preventing disease and also facilitate better resource allocation. “If we ‘treat’ these risk factors we may be able to prevent millions of people from ever developing these deadly conditions.”
The company is also pleased to announce that Robert Ramirez, MBA, has joined the firm as a Director. Mr. Ramirez will focus on strengthening the company’s alignment of marketing strategy with business processes and have global responsibility for market research and consulting engagements. Mr. Ramirez joined Observant LLC from Pfizer, Inc. He has extensive experience developing multicultural operating plans, sub-national sales and marketing research as well as in-line product strategy development. “As pharmaceutical companies face the pressures of limited pipelines and shareholder demands, marketers need to identify new approaches to maximize product launches. Large pharmaceutical companies and smaller biotech firms only have one chance to launch a product. The long-term success of a product is often determined in the initial 12 months of post-launch marketing activity. Often attention is focused at the national level, but developing local sales and marketing approaches is highly desirable. It is my experience that if product teams spend additional time in the pre-launch planning phase and conduct high- quality market research expressly addressing variations in local healthcare drivers, launches can go more smoothly with more rapid product uptake.”
Observant LLC is a marketing consulting and research management company serving clients from leading organizations in the pharmaceutical and life- sciences industries worldwide. The firm offers a full spectrum of research and consulting services including analytically sophisticated quantitative studies and best-in-class qualitative research studies. Observant LLC supports its clients by conducting strategic research worldwide in North America, Europe, Asia, South America and Australia. Observant LLC principals and personnel have cross-industry backgrounds in consulting and public health and have published extensively on research methods and health science. For more information, or to contact Dr. Coats or Mr. Ramirez, please visit: http://www.observant.biz .
Observant LLC
CONTACT: Dylan Johnson of Observant LLC, +1-781-642-0644 ext. 29,djohnson@observant.biz
