The Unlimited Possibilities of Biotechnology – a Conversation with Lothar Boensch
Lothar Boensch began his career in corporate technology, working for global system integrators in the US and Europe before moving over to the agency side. He founded and led the European business for the digital marketing agency Blast Radius in 2000 and, after WPP acquired it, served as managing director in Canada and the USA. Lothar joined Quigley-Simpson in 2020, where he was responsible for developing new client business, expanding agency capabilities, and leading overall agency marketing (including helping launch The Continuum). Last year, Lothar left the agency world to become the Head of Marketing and Growth for NanoSpun Technologies, a biotech innovator with a revolutionary new technology to create tissues composed entirely of virtually any type of living cells, with a disruptive potential across many industries. For example, NanoSpun will launch the world’s first live and active probiotic skincare tissues in early 2024, with future medical, bioprocessing, pharma, and energy applications.
The Continuum recently talked to Lothar about the big jump to the brand side, how he combines decades of experience in technology, marketing, and sales, the possibilities for this new biotechnology, and how it feels to find a renewed sense of purpose.
Before we talk about your new role, one thing you did while you were at Quigley-Simpson was help start this very publication. Why did you think The Continuum was a good idea?
I wanted this to be a relevant tool to share strategic thinking with people across the marketing and advertising industry. It’s easy to get tunnel vision and focus primarily on researching topics explicitly related to the type of work you are doing at any point in time. This is fine and helpful, but I believed that if we could attract some of the best thinkers in the industry and capture and curate their ideas, the platform could help people better understand important and groundbreaking aspects of the business that weren’t necessarily on their radar. And it was good for the Quigley-Simpson brand to be at the forefront of this effort. I think it has worked really well. I love that The Continuum gathers all these different perspectives from the industry to help expand our viewpoint, share new ideas, and empower us to apply new ideas to complex problems that we face in our businesses.
Thanks for the compliment. Can you tell us about your new work on the brand side?
I feel a great sense of gratitude to have had the opportunity to join such an amazing biotech innovator. I’ve worked for several start-ups within the agency and technology space, but Nanospun Technologies is one of the most compelling and exciting companies I've been involved with. Because our products are so unique and have a wide application across many industries, we are continuously introducing new capabilities and disrupting the status quo. We were founded in Israel over a decade ago and continue to operate our R&D and production in that location. Our corporate operations are in Palo Alto, California. We have spent a decade developing a very powerful technology to encapsulate living cells within hair-like threads to create living tissues, ensuring the integrity and efficacy of the cells over long periods. We control every aspect of the process, from the types of cells used to the distinctive properties of the tissues. Our technology has solved many of the challenges faced by the biotech industry when working with living cells, and we are now releasing our first commercial products for the cosmetic and skincare industry: live and active probiotic skincare tissues.
The user activates our live and active probiotic tissues to initiate the secretion of enzymes, vitamins, peptides, proteins, and amino acids, which are known to be extremely effective in boosting the skin microbiome and supporting healthy skin. We just finished clinical trials, and the results were amazing. The possibilities of what we can do with this technology in the skincare space are endless – for example, I can see us developing personalized skincare solutions to treat chronic skin conditions, wounds, or burns. Imagine taking your stem cells, creating a personalized tissue, and using that for healing. The technology exists. It isn’t that far away before you’ll see this as an available treatment solution within hospitals and clinics.
“Being part of an organization that is disrupting and changing industries is very exciting. I know this may sound like an old cliché, but I feel like I’m doing something in my career with great purpose, and this is a real motivator for me.”
How do you market something like this? Is it different than what you’ve worked on in the past?
We are a B2B company, and our go-to-market strategy is to partner with global cosmetic companies that want to offer the next generation of skincare products using our technology, customized and marketed under their brands. However, awareness is key. Our marketing efforts are focused on educating industry stakeholders to help them understand that the next generation of skincare is harnessing the power offered to us by nature in the form of live and active cells. Often, timing plays a significant role in successfully bringing new products and services to market, and we have arrived at just the right time. The industry is aware that certain probiotics are extremely beneficial to the skin, but they have been unable to find an effective way to deliver fresh and unoxidized nutrients to the skin. Brands have been experimenting with probiotics, but what is currently on the market does not deliver on the promise of probiotic skincare and has yet to be commercially successful. We are offering an entirely new approach to skincare, and this message is something we bring to every trade show, every business meeting, and every investor discussion.
You know all about brand and demand from your Quigley-Simpson days; do you still look at marketing efforts through that lens?
I do – the customer acquisition funnel is alive and well! Every good marketer knows you must build brand awareness and differentiation to get people even remotely interested in what you have to say. To do this, you need to deliver your story by offering relevant content in the most valuable channels to move them from consumer to customer. I am finding B2B more complicated than B2C as there are many more stakeholders to consider to move a prospect to a customer, the channels to engage are not as clear, and each stakeholder has a different perspective and different needs and requires another message and format. One of our main challenges is competing with the flood of new products in the skincare space and, honestly, the lack of any real differentiation. I spend my time finding ways to rise above the noise to disrupt existing skincare knowledge, educate key stakeholders, and indirectly debunk largely ineffective products.
Because of this, our marketing activities are designed to provide very personalized engagement to move stakeholders through the acquisition funnel. As a start-up within the cosmetic space, we must constantly balance our priorities, investments, and time. Do we build multichannel campaigns? Do we evolve our website? Should we focus on social? Paid or organic? Do we test new forms of media? Or do we just concentrate on the trade shows and field marketing? We are still playing with each channel at different maturity levels and measuring where we get traction. We have had great results at trade shows, and this continually reminds me of the power of presence and the importance of face-to-face interaction in a post-COVID world. Personally, I am excited about the possibilities of social, TikTok specifically. Social is the holy grail for skincare, and as soon as we are in-market, we’ll be testing how best to use social in a B2B context.
“Every good marketer knows you must build brand awareness and differentiation to get people even remotely interested in what you have to say.”
You mentioned that you are in startup mode. Tell us about your current focus.
Although we have been around for over a decade, our technology has applications across many industries, so we always feel a sense of start-up urgency. Right now, we are in start-up mode within cosmetics and skincare. I have had the opportunity to use some business planning frameworks to better understand the skincare industry and where we can best disrupt current practices and deliver the most value. The Business Model Canvas, developed by Alex Osterwalder, was instrumental in understanding our value in the market and where our focus needed to be. We used this model at Quigley-Simpson to help frame the business strategy for a client launching a pool water monitoring device and service, and it was beneficial in focusing my go-to-market mission for skin care.
Currently, we do most of our marketing and sales work internally – brochures, websites, campaigns, tradeshows/experiential, social media – but this is pretty typical in similar-stage companies. We are very cautious with our resources, but as we begin to expand into skincare, we must focus on growing our team to develop and execute new marketing strategies and manage important partnerships. Right now, we are very creative in how we get it all done. Because we are a science-based company, it is critical that our content is extremely accurate. I’ve experimented with AI to develop different angles on copy, but we don’t rely entirely on services like Chat GPT to create marketing content. It can spark new ideas or create a starting point, but we vet everything in great detail and remain conservative and cautious on product claims, even though we have excellent clinical results. I am currently using a disparate toolset to run campaigns, primarily leveraging Linkedin as my main targeting tool, but we recognize that we need a more integrated marketing solution in 2024. With products launching commercially, things will accelerate quickly.
It sounds like you’re working really hard right now. What keeps you going?
Being part of an organization that is disrupting and changing industries is very exciting. I know this may sound like an old cliché, but I feel like I’m doing something in my career with great purpose, and this is a real motivator for me. NanoSpun is creating products with the potential to positively impact people’s lives in many different ways. I've had the opportunity to work with amazing people over my career, and I’ve gravitated toward work that’s been new and challenging yet also strategic in nature. Starting something new is always exciting, but this feels different. There’s so much purpose in what I’m doing, and it feels great.
October 3, 2023
