Pamphlets, Bodybuilding and Lab Mice: Gerrica Frankfurth’s unconventional path to influencer marketing bliss

At every step along her professional path, Gerrica Frankfurth has made it her mission to ask as many questions as she can muster.

When she worked in the nightlife industry, that meant tapping club owners and bartenders for advice about venues and customer relations. When she took up bodybuilding, that meant quizzing coaches and competitors alike about nutrition, technique and mental agility. And when she landed at a biotech company, that meant openly embracing her lack of experience – Frankfurth hadn’t been exposed to science in any meaningful way since high school – and bombarding her colleagues with questions about everything from clinical trials to regulatory bodies.

“I came into the pharma world very green, so I wanted to know what every single person and every single role did and how that contributed to the bigger picture,” she says. “I went out of my way to ask about anything that came to mind.”

She pauses for a second, then adds, “I was probably pretty annoying. But I needed to feel like I could contribute, so I did everything I could to get up to speed.”

That innate curiosity and drive have fueled a quick ascent in the rapidly evolving sphere of HCP influencer marketing. As VP, digital opinion leader services at HealthCentral, which snapped up her employer MedFluencers earlier this year, Frankfurth has become a go-to resource for pharma brand teams hoping to run compliant, creator-driven campaigns on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube. 

Thermo Fisher Scientific digital media and partnerships manager Gianna Sheppard, who started working with Frankfurth three years ago, calls her the real deal. “She’s an exceptional listener who takes the time to understand our goals and business challenges before offering solutions,” Sheppard says. “She’s personable and collaborative, and has built one of the strongest vendor relationships I’ve had throughout my career.”

‘I need a plan B’

Frankfurth grew up in Lake Isabella, California, which she describes as a “one-stoplight town.” This, she stresses, is not hyperbole: “When I was 16, we got another stoplight and a McDonald’s. It was the talk of the town, because we all had a second place to get lunch.”

Frankfurth didn’t lack for interests as a child. She did some modeling (later she would audition twice for America’s Next Top Model, both times unsuccessfully) and excelled in sports, training as a competitive gymnast and adding basketball and volleyball during high school. She also dabbled in acting, collaborating with her drama club colleagues to write and stage a play that was later performed at the Odyssey of the Mind world finals at Iowa State University.

What Frankfurth didn’t do was plot out a long-term career plan, at least not until she started studying communication at California State University San Marcos. This choice was motivated in part by her upbringing, she says.

“There was a lot of distraction at home and I went through some stuff with my family. Looking back on it now, that’s what made me want to have better communication skills.”

Frankfurth soon learned that those skills would serve her well in professional endeavors. She held a series of jobs and internships during college, including modeling gigs and retail work, and quickly grasped the need to communicate efficiently and effectively across a broad range of audiences.

That ability proved especially useful during her time in the nightlife industry, during which she booked venues and hired DJs. But when the late nights and early wake-ups started to wear on her, she knew a change was in order. “I woke up one day and was like, ‘Okay, I need a plan B,” she says.

Frankfurth stresses that the biotech world was not a fallback option. She came into it at Samumed (now known as Biosplice), which at the time was pursuing a range of anti-aging treatments. Starting at the company as an executive assistant, she rose to office manager and then marketing and medical coordinator. Her quest for learning about all facets of the business led her down some unexpected corridors: She was the person at Samumed responsible for procuring lab mice.

Frankfurth departed Samumed after four years and joined Impact Biomedicines as operations manager, staying through the company’s acquisition by Celgene and Celgene’s acquisition by Bristol Myers Squibb. She returned to the clinical-stage biotech world in early 2021, serving as manager, marketing and patient advocacy, at Endeavor BioSciences.

Meeting people where they scroll

It was there she experienced the epiphany that led her toward influencer marketing. While working on a patient pamphlet designed for physician waiting rooms, Frankfurth started to wonder why, in the era of YouTube, some organizations continued to prioritize analog content.

“There’s a generation of leadership that still thinks, ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,’” she explains. “I don’t want to bash anyone, but when I’m in a waiting room I sit and scroll on my phone. That’s more true to how we live today.”

When Frankfurth shared her frustration with a friend she was working with – one who happened to be a well-regarded HCP content creator – he told her more about the influencer world. Frankfurth joined MedFluencers shortly thereafter and quickly rose to VP, HCP influencer marketing.

She believes deeply in the value of her work. “There’s an incredible need for not just more information, but accurate information. The creators we work with – most creators in this area in general – they’re driven by wanting to push back against all the misinformation that’s out there. They’re not in it to get brand deals.”

Frankfurth is equally passionate about her activities outside the office. A mother of two young children, she reads avidly (“after being on screens all day, there’s something very restorative about a physical book”) and, after a hiatus, is resuming her bodybuilding career with a pair of competitions later this year.

She admits to being nervous about her return to the stage. “The first time I did it, I was like, ‘Wait, what am I doing up here in a bikini?’ I’m not somebody you want walking around in high heels,” Frankfurth says. “I still find it exhilarating. I love doing the hard work and then getting all pretty and sparkly.”

As for what comes next, Frankfurth’s colleagues predict big things. “I wouldn’t be surprised to see Gerrica in a C-suite marketing role within the next decade,” Sheppard says. “She has a deep understanding of what healthcare and pharmaceutical organizations need, and she combines that expertise with the strategic thinking and partnership mindset that great leaders possess.”

Frankfurth, for her part, says she’d be happy to stay at HealthCentral for as long as the organization will have her. Beyond that, she hasn’t charted out a course – and has no intention of doing so anytime soon.

“Ten years ago, I would have answered a question about the future with a detailed five-step plan about everything I planned to do and the order I planned to do it in,” Frankfurth says. “But I’ve learned to pull back a little on the planning. Once I stopped trying to architect my entire life, good things started happening for me.”

This profile is part of the solli Elevate series, celebrating the Next Generation of Pharma Media Leaders. View all profiles here.