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After more than three decades in pharmaceutical marketing research—moderating interviews with doctors and patients nearly every working day—I’ve reached a clear conclusion: the traditional 45- to 60-minute interview format may no longer serve us, or our clients, as well as it once did.
In a world that champions "customer obsession," why are we still rushing conversations with the very people we claim to care most about?
Like a slow-simmering stew, meaningful insights don’t rise to the surface right away. It takes time for physicians to shed their professional filters, for patients to lower their guard, and for the moderator to absorb, adapt, and steer the discussion toward the most revealing cognitive and emotional tributaries. The most illuminating moments? They rarely arrive in the first half-hour. More often, they emerge around the 45-minute mark—or later—when the respondent finally feels seen, heard, and safe enough to speak with candor.
Consider, if you will, the conversational architecture employed by long-form interviewers like Joe Rogan, Lex Fridman, or Shawn Ryan. Regardless of one’s stance on their ideological leanings, what these interviewers do well is simple: they allocate time—liberally and unapologetically. This elongated format creates a liminal space where the interviewee can shed performativity and meander into cognitive and emotional tributaries often unexplored in shorter formats.
The analogy is apt. In pharmaceutical research, particularly in domains such as the patient journey—arenas fraught with complexity, expansive timelines, emotional valence, and psychological nuance—a brief interaction might not suffice. These are not bullet-point narratives. They are layered, iterative, and often non-linear.
As someone who has utilized open-ended approaches such as the Open Mic interview format, I’ve observed firsthand how conversational latitude can elevate authenticity. Given the space to roam, respondents articulate not only their decisions but the subterranean beliefs, anxieties, and heuristics that underlie them. These are the truths that often cannot be excavated in a perfunctory hour.
Pharma companies talk a lot about being customer-centric. Here’s a simple but meaningful step: give research teams the green light to go longer when the topic demands it. Not every interview needs to be 90 minutes—but some do. Especially those that involve high emotional stakes or complex decision ecosystems.
And now, thanks to ever-improving AI tools for analyzing qualitative data, we’re in a better position than ever to make use of this expanded content. Why limit our insight pipeline to a trickle when we could have a full reservoir?
Imagine being able to analyze not just what was said, but the pacing, the pauses, the emotional spikes across a longer arc. These are signals that machine learning thrives on. But only if we give it enough data to work with.
If I had one magic wand to wave over the current state of pharmaceutical marketing research, it would be this: give us the time we need to really listen. To get past the scripted, the sanitized, the surface-level answers. To earn the truth.
Because the truth—especially in healthcare—is rarely delivered in a tidy soundbite.
It takes time to hear it. And more importantly, it takes time for people to feel ready to say it.
Let’s build that time into the process.
