Jo McDonald
Partner
Jo has over two decades in healthcare market research with the last 12 years spent predominately in oncology and rare diseases helping clients to develop global brand strategies, communications and track the success of their brands. Jo has a strong focus on qualitative research and innovative approaches to meet clients ever changing needs. She is passionate about research and more specifically bringing the voice of the patient into client’s strategy and thinking. Jo is known for her strong client focus and building long-term strategic partnerships.
People describe Jo as creative, strategic and energetic.
She is a qualified NLP practitioner and is keen to ensure we incorporate this and behavioural science into the research we conduct especially in Oncology, as it becomes more competitive and harder to carve out clinical differentiation. This means greater emphasis needs to be placed on understanding behavioural drivers, using approaches which dig deeper to understand drivers and barriers to prescribing or more accurately segmenting to identify early adopters / priority patient types for a brand.
Key achievements
- Jo started the oncology division of HRW growing it to a team of 10 oncology specialist researchers
- Led the growth of the oncology business, when she left HRW this accounted for over £5 million in sales and third of all the HRW revenue
- Successfully helped her clients to launch over 20 successful oncology brands and worked on two launch oncology assets in her time at GSK Oncology
- Winner of BOBI award for Best Patient Insight 2021 for our work with MSD on Keytruda in Lung cancer, alongside other colleagues at HRW
- Developed new approaches to positioning research, concept testing and patient research
- Volunteers with teenagers and young people with mental health issues, supporting them to find methods and strategies to live with and help and overcome their problems
Roles and qualifications
- Partner at Day One Strategy, having previously held roles as Board member and Head of Oncology at HRW, Research Director at The Planning Shop International in the oncology team and Global Insights lead at GSK Oncology
- 2:1 degree in Business and Marketing from the University of Brighton
- Qualified NLP practitioner in adults, NLP and EFT practitioner in children and teenagers
- Mental Health First aider
Connect with Jo on Linked In