How Agentic AI Changes the OTC Marketing Playbook, With IQVIA CH’s Volker Spitzer

In the second part of HBW Insight’s interview with IQVIA Consumer Health’s Volker Spitzer, we turn to the commercial implications of agentic AI, and what they mean for how consumer health brands compete, communicate, and manage risk. Spitzer – vice-president, global R&D/RWE services at IQVIA Consumer Health – argues that as AI agents increasingly mediate product discovery and purchase decisions, the traditional marketing model faces a structural shift. Visibility, emotional storytelling, and share of voice do not disappear, but their influence moves upstream, into the evidence packages, product data, and formulation transparency that AI systems use to evaluate and rank products. Brands, in effect, will need to become legible to machines as well as consumers. We also chat about the uneven state of industry preparedness, the accountability questions that arise when AI recommendations cause harm, and whether the scale of current AI investment warrants caution. Spitzer closes with a realistic assessment of timelines, suggesting the full agentic model in consumer health is most likely a five-to-10-year transition, but one that companies would be unwise to treat as distant.