Welcome to Frictionless Marketing, where we explore the latest
trends and challenges in the world of marketing and beyond.
In today's episode, we are joined by Tanya Wymer, Executive Director of
Enterprise Communications at Biogen.
With a wealth of experience in corporate communications, Tanya's
renowned for her ability to engage both internal and external stakeholders
through compelling brand campaigns, digital and social channels, and
organizational communication.
As an inclusive and empowering leader, Tanya excels in global roles, aligning
communicators and business leaders across multiple cultures and geographies.
She is a strong advocate for transformation and change communication,
emphasizing the importance of starting with employees to create a
unified and impactful brand message.
Join us as we dive into Tanya's insights and strategies for fostering
creativity, independence, and effective communication in the corporate world.
Welcome to Frictionless Marketing.
I'm your host, Paul Dyer, CEO of /prompt, and today I'm thrilled to be joined
by Tanya Wymer, Executive Director of Enterprise Communications at Biogen.
Welcome, Tanya.
Thanks so much for having me, Paul.
Thanks for joining us.
Tanya, you've had an impressive career in corporate communications.
You wanna start out by just maybe telling us what inspired you to enter this field?
Well, thank you for that.
I don't know if it's all that well engineered.
I think a lot of people come into communications by happenstance, and I
think that's definitely the case for me.
So I grew up in a farming community and there weren't a
lot of inspirational people in terms of corporate communications.
But I had always loved storytelling.
I'd always gravitated towards that.
Actually in high school I had a teacher who taught this course
called Philosophies and Literature.
It was the first time that I really learned about how you could
perpetuate an idea through creativity.
So that was really an interesting moment for me.
Not that I thought, oh, corporate communications,
this is the next path for me.
I didn't even know it existed.
But always followed what I liked and that ended me in a career
in corporate communications.
So creativity, persuading people, moving things forward in a really
interesting and creative way, visually, with words, that's always been
something that's very appealing to me.
Now, now, hang on, I didn't know this background of growing
up in a farming community.
So where was this farming community?
If you think about where the Great Lakes are and you throw a dart right in the
middle, just about there in Ontario, Canada, and I grew up on a poultry farm-
Ah.
Two parents, immigrants, and then went to school in Toronto.
Wow.
Well, you may not know this, but I actually worked two summers in cornfields.
It is interesting in that it, it draws all kinds in terms of learning
how you're gonna communicate with people down the road.
So, it may not have been all that engineered as you described it, but it
has been a successful career already.
You've received several prestigious awards, including the CEO Elements
Award at Biogen in 2022, the Circle of Excellence Award and the
Change Communications Global Award when you were at Nova Nordisk.
I'm curious, have these awards either directed or shaped the
way that you approach the craft?
It's interesting.
When I think about what I got those awards for, they were always for times
when we were really trying to transform a culture and transform an organization.
So I guess, inadvertently, that seems to be my sweet spot as well.
Being a change agent within an organization, finding those opportunities
to really engage people across the company and also externally with a new
value proposition for the company or a new direction, or even celebrating.
But appreciating where we've come from, and then also moving forward.
So in each of those instances, that's really been core to what was
the award-winning work at the time.
So there's a red thread there as well.
Again, leaning into what I love, being excited about that.
That's always been core, and I think that's where the success has come from.
That all makes sense, and I love that you've opened this door to
transformation and change communication.
Certainly a thread, as you called it, a red thread in your career.
Also, a red thread in just the story of Biogen over the last,
maybe five, even ten years.
A lot of ups and downs at Biogen.
In your role today, how do you balance the many competing interests when it comes
to transformation, change, communications and all the different stakeholders and all
the different expectations they have about exactly what message is delivered to whom?
You're balancing all of that.
So how do you approach that?
My, my boss and I, we always joke that we're gonna write a book
about Biogen because it has been so storied over the last five years.
Absolutely.
But Biogen has a long history.
We're actually in the next few years, we're coming up on our 50th anniversary.
We're one of the first biotechs in the world, which is pretty exciting.
So we have a lot to draw on that's really positive and I think that
is always core to who we are.
While we've made some decisions as a business over the past few years that
were unpopular or maybe didn't take in those multiple stakeholder preferences
or really thinking through all of those pieces necessarily, I do think that we
are coming to a place - we have a new CEO.
We went through a huge restructure last year.
At the same time worked on our culture.
So we really started the inside first, engaging with our people.
And it's really tough to be going through a restructure.
We were very transparent about it and spoke about, in advance
of when it was happening, we actually told our employees first.
Then we told the market that we were gonna make that change, which is not
necessarily how it is done normally.
So I really have to appreciate our leadership team for wanting to go in that
direction, and also as a communications person, knowing how much disruption is
going to be for employees, they're the ones that need to hear first, right?
And then from there, at the same time, we did a culture program.
And we said, okay, we want to create a new Biogen, what are we going to be?
Who do we need to be?
How do we need to show up differently?
We've learned some lessons over the last few years.
What will help us not repeat those lessons?
So we, at the beginning of this year launched a new culture program.
But we had engaged employees all along the way, asking them what
do you think needs to change?
What do you think we should be doing differently?
And then, what do you wanna keep from our existing culture
and what do you want to change?
So building those together and then launch the culture at the beginning of this year.
And now we're at a point where we're thinking about the external world
much more and saying, okay, this new Biogen that we're creating,
what is our new value proposition and how does that come through?
And really who are we?
Without too much navel gazing, we do wanna start to think about
who are we now in this world?
Of course, the world has changed significantly around us.
What is it that we wanna say about ourselves to the rest of the world that
is also valuable to the rest of the world?
So, for me, getting back to your question, being congruent with your identity no
matter what, especially as employees.
I started my career when I was faxing press releases.
Today, we're at a point where any employee will communicate about your company.
So to me, if it doesn't resonate and it isn't the right message for them,
then it's not the right message.
And we shouldn't just be looking at one stakeholder group, investors.
It has to work for all of our stakeholders and figuring out who you are and hopefully
if you can come up with something that's simple enough but reflects who
you are, then we'll be successful.
So we're just really embarking on that journey on the outside now.
What I love about everything you just walked us through is
how employee-centric it is.
We've all, of course, seen these examples where a culture is defined at the top
and then rolled out to the employee population, and the employees look at
it and say, that's not our culture.
And instead, you said, of course you have to take all stakeholders into account,
but it's really clear you're prioritizing employees as a stakeholder group first.
I think that that's really pretty special.
Obviously, employees have also had some difficult times to go through at Biogen,
and you talked about some of those difficult decisions at the beginning
of your response to that last question.
I'm curious, was communications part of the decision making process there?
Is that something where they said, look, we had to make a
business decision, it's been made.
Now it's time to communicate about it.
Or was it more of a, you know, fulsome conversation around what
the potential outcomes or impact of this decision from a communication
standpoint were taken into consideration before the decision was made?
Yeah, I think as with many things, results may vary, and that's certainly the case.
I think we are getting more into a place where communications, and I know we've,
for years had this communication and a seat at the table, and I almost think
that's an irrelevant conversation now.
To me, we see the communications people being involved all the time in the
business, and that's a big change from when I started my career, immensely.
And I think we are at our best when we are in the project.
So for example, we did our restructuring project.
I, as a communications person, was part of the project team, not just
thinking about the communication for the program, but what were the decisions?
We know so many times in communications, all the decisions on how things are
going to go are being made, and then it's like, hey, can you communicate this?
And we've all lived that.
And that still happens, of course.
Sometimes that has to happen that way.
With materiality, or sometimes we have clinical trial results, we
won't even know what the results are until sort of last minute.
So that happens.
But when we can and when we are in the room designing the
program, making the decisions, I think it makes a big difference.
And I've gone through a number of restructurings in my career, and the ones
that work best are when you're as open as you can be with employees and with all
stakeholders, which is difficult, right?
But what I found is, by designing the program, being clear about what it is
that's going to happen, telling people in advance, that you're actually able
to move through the change quicker.
So you can wait, not tell them anything, people are behind closed doors.
And when I started at Biogen, that was actually, there was folklore about a
previous layoff that had happened in that what I call old school way, where,
rooms suddenly get paper on the glass.
Mm-Hmm.
And HR's meeting with people and there was all-
And the whispers.
The whispers and then you know, the security, and the this happened.
And that's the kind of thing you don't want to have, especially today.
You know, maybe ten or fifteen years ago that was pretty okay
and it wouldn't get out there.
But anything like that now is definitely gonna be on social media.
People are gonna be talking about it.
I don't wanna be designing things or the way that processes are going to be run
in a way that is going to give people an opportunity to question what we're doing.
And so for me, it's almost like an insurance plan for
the communication to go well.
This time around we were pretty transparent.
And it is painful.
It is super painful, and you're always doubting throughout the process, did
we communicate too much too soon?
And can people handle it?
And it's very uncomfortable.
And having leaders who can say, yes, this is uncomfortable, but ultimately we're
going to get through the change faster.
Versus if we wait till October and then it's D-Day, and then
everyone has to pick up the pieces.
By the time our October came, everyone was just sick of it and was ready to move on.
[Laughs]
And they already started to adopt new work practices, right?
So it wasn't just that they put down tools and said, I'm not doing anything.
They're like, okay, I need to start thinking about things differently.
And I think that's really a smart way of working with people in
a very human, transparent way.
Is this a new communications, internal communications strategy?
Is tell people about some bad news until they're sick of it, and then it's almost
like, you just get to move on then, right?
It's maybe transparency to the nth degree.
But I do think there's value in having those conversations
and being really open about it.
We have a CEO who's very open to that and he talks about things very openly
and also knows what the boundaries are.
I think that that really helps.
So we are blessed to have that support from the top.
That's great.
So let's move onto something a little more positive.
So we've had difficult change communications, and then you also have,
obviously, positive change communications.
You've referenced an updated brand refresh that's been in development.
And I think you just said you're just now going external with it because
it started out internally focused.
We're really kicking off the project as a way to engage our
employees around our vision.
So in addition to the culture work, there's new strategy work happening.
And so all of this is pointing in the direction of where the new Biogen's going
to be and where are we going to be in the next five, ten, twenty-five years.
What's exciting about that is everyone has an opinion about the brand, and we
really wanna hear what those opinions are, so we are designing - Actually,
at the request or suggestion of our CEO, how can we get employees to be
engaged in the process around our brand?
Because who needs to believe in that brand more than your employees?
No one.
And that's new for me as well.
Where, in the past we may have worked on corporate branding
projects and then ta-da, look what the communications department did.
That's a way that we've worked or we just look at external data,
we don't really think internally as much in the design process.
Maybe at the end you're like, okay, and then you, employees, will be the
brand ambassadors, but that's not really successful, I would say, in today's world.
And so we're creating as we go through this brand process, and I can't wait to
see what it's going to be at the end.
[Chuckles]
We're building in opportunities to test with employees.
We're building a website where they can go in, learn about the project,
and then give us feedback real time.
And our creative team is actually really excited about this.
For instance, just as an idea, we're thinking about, okay, how
wild or mild do we want to be?
Like some of those things and having employees give us feedback,
maybe on a sliding scale.
We've done that in the past where we, as the creative team, have come
up with something we thought was really clever, and then when we put
it in front of the scientists who actually reflect our stakeholders,
they thought it was too wild.
So that's a part of checking ourselves.
But also, our employees are the ones who are talking to those stakeholders who
understand them and often share a similar mindset and they know what's going to fly.
So having that immediate feedback is actually a real
gift in the creative process.
And it's a nice reminder that you really do value the employees and you
really do want them to feel a sense of ownership of the place they work.
Now, what happens when, inevitably, your employee population is not representative
of your full stakeholder group?
You, undoubtedly, have your employees over index in some way or another
against what the national population is.
And so how do you make sure that the brand you're bringing forth is something
that's gonna be well received nationally, representatively, by America as it is
today, and not just by people who are similar to the people who work at Biogen?
Yeah and globally, as well.
So that's the other factor to it.
Two things come to mind.
One to me is well then we really need to think about diversity and inclusion
in our organization and how important that is and having that representation.
And of course we are going to have the external research that's gonna back
up and we'll be testing it with our audiences as well as we move forward.
The second thing that I think is really important is spending some
time with those customers as well.
So, you know, research, absolutely, and the other thing, without
going too vanilla, 'cause I think that's also a risk.
We still wanna have something that we put out there that's inspiring.
Even though I would say, even from an organizational perspective, we're
probably becoming more conservative.
I think there's always core principles that are believable no matter who you are.
There's sort of those core human principles.
That's what I'm trying to get to with this brand refresh project is
what is the core thing that drives every human that you believe in?
Everyone believes in resilience.
Everyone believes in change and the need for change.
What those changes may be will differ.
And the other thing that I think is an opportunity for everyone in
pharma and biotech is to really show the action related to these things.
There's a lot of lofty words out there of how we describe what we're here to
do, and I get it because you do wanna be inspirational, but I also think you
need to deliver on what you're saying.
So, as we think through this brand refresh, whatever those words
are on the page, it's gotta be something that we can deliver on.
How will that look?
Maybe we'll be talking in a few months and we'll have that answer.
Well, that credibility is obviously critical.
It's something of course, that I'm sure that as you counsel your executives that
you partner with and as agencies counsel clients, is you can't set a bar too high
and then fail to deliver against it.
You lose your credibility in the process.
That obviously applies internally and externally.
There's been a lot of conversation here - we're at Fierce Pharma today.
And it's been a lot of conversation here about this idea
of having a seat at the table.
You brought that back up.
And I love the tongue in cheek way that this morning's panel addressed that topic.
It sounded like most of them felt like they have a folding chair that they
get to bring to the table sometimes.
But they're not always, they're not in a permanent seat.
They don't have the "upholstered" seat.
They bring the folding chair.
And to some extent, I feel like that's maybe not such a bad thing.
It's okay to pick and choose where it's gonna make sense.
But something you just said stood out to me.
As you were saying, you were trying to find the core values of what
really matters to the company.
That doesn't sound like communication strategy to me.
That sounds like corporate strategy.
That sounds like the company's strategy.
Am I misreading that?
Am I overdoing it?
That is central to the company's mission.
There's certainly the corporate strategy aspect of that, but I think there's
one layer, maybe under the iceberg level, that I would think about, which
is more like the human aspect of it.
And it's interesting how you're talking about having a folding chair at the table.
I think that's great.
You don't actually wanna be fully at the table because then you're not - like
you're drinking the Kool-Aid too much.
And I think it's so important for communications people to
bring that outside perspective, to bring the unpopular opinion.
Sometimes it's an unpopular opinion from employees.
Sometimes it's from patient groups.
Sometimes it's from patients.
And if you are part of that executive team fully, I wonder if you are
able to challenge in the same way?
Of course, having data is very important and that is something
that you should be feeding into the organization all the time.
But I also think things are happening so quickly that you can't
always have the data and you need to be a little further out front.
And it's a little bit like being a Cassandra in the organization.
You're out front, sometimes seeing things that other people aren't seeing.
And that's because you're connecting with all kinds of different stakeholder groups.
And that's a privileged place to be, and I wouldn't want to lose that kind of edge
that you have within the organization.
I think it's a really smart point and an interesting way of thinking
about this is if it's a folding chair, you can bring it with you.
So you can go and take it to other tables to listen to the
employees and you can take it out and listen to the patient groups.
Of course, it seems like maybe this should be obvious, but as communications
professionals, that does imply we should be the ones listening for the company
in addition to speaking for the company, and yet you don't hear that very often.
When we, and we do a lot of these kinds of conversations, so much of our emphasis
is put on what are we gonna say, as opposed to what are other people saying?
Absolutely.
There's all kinds of folklore, or, you know, jokes about two ears
and one mouth, and, all of those things that you hear throughout your
career, especially in communications.
And I do think that's a challenge for me, for everyone, especially you
get into the grind of the day to day and you're running so fast that you
forget to take some time to listen.
Our CEO has, one of the new parts of our culture is think broadly.
Well, how are you gonna think broadly?
You don't think broadly sitting in a room alone.
So you need to be inspired.
You need to talk to other people, and he models that.
He's out there.
He is so well connected and understands people in our space.
Last week he was in Brazil visiting employees.
He'll be in the middle of a biotech conference before you know it.
He's out there also living that and understanding what's important to
people and being on that cutting edge.
And I think that's an inspiration and it's very easy for communications people
to close in because there's so much of a grind to just deliver all the time.
Sometimes I find that you're delivering, delivering, delivering,
but what impact are you having?
And I think that that's an important piece that we need to be stepping back
and saying, okay, all of these activities that I'm doing are incremental, but
where are they going to actually?
Like, where's the real opportunity?
And I don't think you see that by just delivering, delivering every day.
Well, and you've mentioned several times now the global nature of your roles and
the organizations that you've worked in.
This becomes even more complex when you're trying to communicate to and
listen to people all around the world.
For those who might be listening to this and have not sat in a global function
or have been in a single country, maybe a US centric function, how would
you describe that experience to them?
And what learnings you have about how to be successful in a global role?
Yeah, no, and it's interesting because I didn't start in a global role.
I started my career actually in an agency in Canada.
And then at one point I worked for an affiliate for a large global company.
Then I went and worked for their headquarters.
Then I went and worked for their US affiliate, which is almost harder than
working in a headquarter, frankly.
Just because you're both large and you're close to the market,
so you're getting that instant feedback, which is interesting.
And I think the global function, what I love about it is you're
connected into everything.
And so that can be wonderful and it can also be super intimidating.
I like to see how all the pieces fit together.
For me, that's really inspiring.
It's not for everyone.
Where I worked in a US affiliate, it was more clear what you're delivering.
You're tied directly to the KPIs.
It's a little bit more nebulous when you're in a global role and you're
talking about corporate branding.
Well, what is that?
And is that important and who is that important to?
And as a communications person, you're thinking of course you need this.
But you do need to sell it in a little bit more because you're not doing
those things that are so core to the business and delivering on those KPIs.
Reputation.
What is that?
Reputation is driven by behaviors, but it's also driven about what people say
about you, what you say about yourself.
So having that larger story is really important when you're
thinking in a global role.
Yep.
And what about when you're thinking about creating the environment for your team?
Let's bring all these things together.
Global role, global organization.
Tremendous change in transformation the company's been going through.
You're inside out.
Employee first is a clear mandate from the top being lived by your leadership.
But as I'm sure, like you said, deliver, deliver, deliver.
A lot of pressure to just hey, get this thing drafted and out the door.
How do you create the space for the team in that kind of an environment
to actually do their best work?
To think creatively?
Yeah, it's a great question and maybe you should ask it to some of
them who are at this conference.
[Paul laughing] We'll get a follow, we'll get a follow up answer here.
Exactly.
There may be some better ideas from them.
I think there's a couple of things for me.
One, and by no means is this perfect, and we also have gone through a restructuring,
so we're getting our sea legs as well.
So the beginning of the year we kind of knew what our goals were and they,
there's certainly pivoting and changing and we're seeing where the organization's
going, where the priorities are.
We've made a couple of acquisitions.
Those are all things that kind of come onto your plate and you don't
anticipate, but add to that strain.
So, I think we need to do a better job of stepping back and saying,
okay, what here is incremental and what is transformational?
When can I do those big plays?
'cause you can just get into the day to day and do things or oh well the
this person or this stakeholder wants this thing and carving out time to
step back and think and be inspired.
It's nice to be at this conference.
I just heard one of my employees say, oh, I got so many great ideas.
I'm a little overwhelmed by that.
But I think it is also an opportunity for us to think, okay, what is
really going to fix a problem?
Versus just continue to go through that daily ground.
I also think empowering people, psychological safety, those are all the
buzzwords, but it's really important to not freak out when things go wrong.
And that's really hard when you're going through so much change yourself.
So, grounding the team, reminding ourselves why we're here.
All of those things that one therapist says to them they need to be doing
is really important for the team, and we don't get it right all the time.
Yeah, you're right.
It's definitely difficult sometimes to be the one who has to project
calm when all of this change is impacting you personally also.
We're getting close on time here, so I want to just ask in closing here,
are there any upcoming projects or any initiatives at Biogen that you're
particularly excited about, that you think people should hear of?
Well, hopefully we've talked about some of them.
Certainly the corporate brand refresh is very exciting.
I'm very future focused.
That's just my personality and so I'm really excited about how that's the next
step in the evolution of the company.
We've been around for almost fifty years.
So that to me, I can't wait to celebrate our 50th anniversary and
imagine what we've accomplished as an organization for patients.
What we've moved forward.
We have some really interesting things in our pipeline.
We have some opportunities to fill our pipeline more.
I think that's super exciting.
So being part of the company and being able to shepherd the
organization through that change.
I don't know, I was joking with my boss, I can't wait for our 50th anniversary.
We're revealing a new logo and it's a great moment and we can
celebrate that we've been able to move the organization through this.
So to me, I'm thinking really long term and that's really
what keeps me going every day.
Sounds like another chapter in that book you're gonna write.
I think so.
Think so.
Well, Tanya, thank you very much.
This has been incredible.
I'm sure our listeners are gonna really enjoy hearing all of your insights and
it's been great getting to share a little time with you here at Fierce Pharma.
Great.
Thank you very much.
Appreciate it.
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