Pete Mehr has more than 13 years of experience leading and supporting marketing programs for pharmaceutical firms. Pete is responsible for developing and overseeing the execution of Merkle’s customer strategy development for the healthcare industry. These customer centric initiatives include physician relationship marketing programs, consumer/patient relationship marketing programs, managed care integration, promotion “media mix” allocation approaches and market research initiatives.

Prior to this role, Pete was responsible for one of Merkle’s client teams, managing relationships with P&G, Bose, AARP and Life Line, among others, both from a strategic marketing view as well as a tactical perspective. These areas include segmentation, response modeling and other strategic analyses; database development and enhancement; and content solutions.

Before joining Merkle, Pete was Vice President of Health Products Research, Inc., a division of inVentiv Health. At HPR Pete was instrumental in doubling the size of the company while expanding the company’s product portfolio. Pete supported clients in developing and implementing marketing and sales strategy, including sales force size and structure analysis, segmentation, promotion mix analysis, promotion optimization analysis, sales force territory alignments, and direct-to-consumer advertising tracking and optimization. Pete’s clients included GSK, AstraZeneca, Sanofi Aventis, Shire, Abbott Laboratories, Pfizer, and numerous divisions of Johnson and Johnson.

Prior to HPR, Pete worked at AT&T in the Consumer Marketing Organization, where he was a leader in the customer retention marketing and customer acquisition marketing areas.

Pete holds a Ph.D. in Econometrics from Rutgers University, and had his dissertation published in the Journal of Econometrics.

Deb has more than 15 years of experience working with FT500 companies to drive growth through innovative customer relationship strategies. Deb is responsible for healthcare client management, strategy and solution integration and has significant experience working with top pharmaceuticals and biotechs on professional and consumer marketing with companies such as Merck, Boehringer-Inglelheim, Sanofi-Aventis, Shire, Abbott, Roche Diagnostics, Medco Health, Aetna, Bristol-Meyers Squibb and Pfizer.

Prior to joining Merkle, Deb was a Managing Partner leading Fair Isaac’s Pharmaceutical Marketing Practice where she oversaw strategy, execution, sales and client management for Consumer and Physician direct marketing programs. Deb has an Ed.M. in human cognitive development and educational media from Harvard Graduate School of Education and a B.S. from University of Massachusetts.

Ashish has 20 years of experience in sales, marketing and management consulting. For the past three years, he has been leading Merkle’s foray into customer centricity and multi-channel marketing in the healthcare industry. He has led strategic assignments with key clients in the healthcare industry, leveraging Merkle’s core strengths: strategy, CRM/database technology and analytics.

Prior to joining Merkle, Ashish served as a Vice President of Analytics at HPR (Health Products Research) and Sr. Vice President of Strategy and Global Alliances at inVentiv Strategy and Analytics (parent group of HPR). In that role, he advised a large range of pharmaceutical companies in the U.S., Europe and Canada on sales force size and structure, portfolio optimization, sales force mergers, market segmentation, promotion response, and incentive compensation and ROI analysis.

Ashish has published papers in pharmaceutical industry publications e.g. Product Management Today (PMT) and presented at industry conferences – PMSA (Pharmaceutical Marketing Science Association) and EyeforPharma conference.

Larry Blum has more than 25 years of experience in consulting, marketing services, and in direct corporate management. His experience spans between the Consumer Packaged Goods and Pharmaceutical industries.

The past 8 years he has worked with pharmaceutical, CPG, and diagnostic clients in: CRM Strategy, direct-to-consumer, managed care, direct-to-physician, online, in-office, and in-pharmacy strategies and tactics. Larry is responsible for expanding Merkle’s Agency solution set to the pharmaceutical and consumer packaged goods clients that include a suite of Integrated Customer MarketingTM (ICM) solutions.

Prior to joining Merkle, Larry was Managing Partner at Vertical Consulting, where he performed strategic consulting on in-office solutions and digital ROI for CPG & Healthcare clients. Previous to Vertical, Larry was SVP, Business Development, Catalina Health Resource for 6 years, where he led a team that sold a targeted pharmacy solution and longitudinal analytics that included all of the top 20 Global Healthcare clients.

Kent has been consulting in healthcare for more than 10 years in the areas of healthcare provider segmentation, brand channel integration, CRM, marketing analytics and direct-to-consumer. Kent is published extensively in a variety of journals including, Research in Social and Administrative Pharmacy, Formulary, the Journal of Clinical Pharmacy and Therapeutics, and the Journal of Database Marketing. Kent is recognized as an expert in the area of factors influencing physician prescribing, and was the author of the chapter on Prescribing Behavior in Social and Behavioral Aspects of Pharmaceutical Care, 2nd Edition, released in March, 2009.

Kent has worked with a number of clients in the healthcare vertical including Sanofi Aventis, Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Genetech, Gilead, Johnson & Johnson and Proctor & Gamble.

Kent has a BS from the University of Guelph, an MS from the University of Saskatchewan, and a PhD in Pharmaceutical Strategy and Policy from Dalhousie University. His PhD dissertation focused on the influence of pharmaceutical marketing strategy on physician prescribing behavior. Additionally, he holds the position of Adjunct Professor, College of Pharmacy, Dalhousie University, in Halifax, Nova Scotia, is a former Professor of Marketing at Acadia University in Nova Scotia, and holds the designation of Chartered Chemist.

Rita joined Merkle in 2009 with more than10 years experience in pharmaceutical insight mining and strategic development. Prior to joining Merkle, Rita held senior positions in the Business Insights and Commercial Analytics organizations at Endo Pharmaceuticals, a smaller specialty pharmaceutical company and at GlaxoSmithKline pharmaceuticals. In both companies, Rita worked directly with the marketing and sales organizations as well as the broad commercial operations group.

Rita has experience in strategy and promotion development for brands ranging from billion-dollar assets with broad direct-to-consumer programs to under 100-million-dollar assets with smaller budgeted promotional efforts. She has worked on 7 product launches in her pharmaceutical career.

Rita has a BA in Mathematical Economics and a MA in Economics.