PFIZER’s Sally Susman on Adaptability and Taking the Leap into Social Media with Pharma

“There have been times when my team has proposed something, and I say, ‘Let's do it,’ and then we get blow-back very swiftly. Do you know what we do? We take it down, and we move on. You can't succeed in this realm if you're not willing to fail in this realm.”

Sally Susman is the EVP & Chief Corporate Affairs Officer at Pfizer, U.S., where she leads engagement with all of Pfizer’s external stakeholders overseeing Communications, Corporate Responsibility, Global Policy, Government Relations, Investor Relations, and Patient Advocacy. She also serves as Vice Chair of The Pfizer Foundation.

Before joining Pfizer, Sally held several senior Communications and Government Relations roles at Estée Lauder and American Express. Earlier in her career, Sally spent eight years on Capitol Hill focused on international trade issues.

Sally also serves as co-chair of The International Rescue Committee, one of the world's largest humanitarian aid organizations. Sally has been named a Top Voice on LinkedIn, a PRWeek Influencer 50, a PRovoke.com Influence 100 member, and was ranked as number two on FastCompany's Queer 50 List, in addition to many more top industry lists.

Being at the forefront of the fight against COVID with Pfizer's vaccine efforts, the past two years have marked a series of unique challenges for Sally and the Pfizer team, culminating with the brand achieving top ten brand status and becoming a favorable household name across America. In this interview with Lippe Taylor CEO Paul Dyer, Sally discusses these challenges and how she and her team were able to overcome the adversity of the past twenty-four months.

Planning is Important, but Adaptability Moreso

President Eisenhower once said: "In preparing for battle, I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable." The past couple years have been a whirlwind for Sally and the entire Pfizer team, but they weathered the storm and came out as a top ten brand in the world. Sally attributes it to adaptability, stating: "You can write the best plan in the world, but it's really about being able to be nimble and move with what's happening, and planning is a sort of continuous process."

It may be easy to say that Pfizer’s reputation skyrocketed because, well… they kind of saved the world. However, Sally reminds us that Pfizer stood the risk of becoming a political tool when Presidential candidates began making vaccine promises in hotly contested debates and news cycles. There was every opportunity for this to become a year of crisis rather than positivity. According to Sally, Pfizer was able to transform from “a brand with a reputational struggle to a top ten brand” during this time because, in addition to doing the right thing, they were able to dynamically course-correct and modify their plan as it unfolded. 

Stay Thirsty, My Friends

After Pfizer was named a top ten brand, Sally's immediate instinct was not to celebrate but to ensure the company didn’t rest on its laurels. “I always think the greatest threat, both externally and culturally, is any sense of self-satisfaction or really arrogance and complacency," she explains. Therefore, instead of allowing the recognition to breed complacency, she challenged her team to keep their foot on the gas. As a result, Pfizer hasn't slowed down its innovation, as evidenced by their recent TikTok campaign combating vaccine misinformation - a first for Pharma. “There have been times when my team has proposed something, and I say, "Let's do it," and then we get blow-back very swiftly. Do you know what we do? We take it down, and we move on. You can't succeed in this realm if you're not willing to fail in this realm,” she explains.

It’s Ok to Own your Narrative

Sally recounts a story where she felt frustrated that media outlets preferred to politicize the vaccine debate rather than publicize the sound byline she had drafted with Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla. In the absence of editorial opportunities, Sally and her team decided to publish the byline on their blog. In rubbishing the idea that Pfizer would speed up or down vaccine development to fit a political party’s timeline, the editorial brilliantly stated that Pfizer was moving at the speed of science, thereby sparking a viral wave all on their own. Many news outlets that refused to run the byline were now covering the news cycle generated by Pfizer’s owned media.

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