Photo courtesy of exlpharma.com
There is nothing like spending a few days among smart, articulate healthcare PR people to get the creative juices flowing. The first two days of this week I attended the ExL Public Relations & Communications Summit in Long Branch, NJ with communicators from corporate, advocacy, government and agency worlds.
While there were many robust discussions over the course of the meeting, one of the most compelling themes that emerged was pharma’s opportunity to seize the moment to become a part of a larger healthcare solution in managing chronic diseases.
The pharmaceutical industry has struggled with a reputation issue for many years. In the 2011 Harris RQ reputation study, pharma ranked 14 out of 17 industries ranked. Reputation research presented on Tuesday by APCO Worldwide (a summary will be posted in the next week or two on www.rorindicator.com) showed that among providers, healthcare opinion leaders and policy leaders, pharma is doing a bit better than we think: 8 out of 15 … but middle-of-the-pack isn’t good enough. APCO’s study identified that we have an opportunity to change perception of our industry by advocating better ways to manage chronic conditions.
Nearly every presenter at the conference talked about the focus being on the patient. Based on what I heard earlier this week, I think the opportunity for pharma is to go beyond what we are currently doing and create more comprehensive partnerships with the government, advocates and HCPs to focus holistically on helping patients lead healthier lives. The federal government’s current fiscal crisis may be the catalyst to open up opportunities for partnerships with government agencies. In fact, the CDC attended the meeting to attract new industry partnerships, similar to the new anti-tobacco partnership with Pfizer that was announced at the meeting. (Will CMS be the next organization looking for partners?)
For these new partnerships to work, we need to expand our focus from being the providers of medicine to the providers of health. By changing our perspective from a transaction to a service, this approach can pay dividends with customers, regulators as well as patients.
No one can do it alone. But if we can tap into the brainpower of the great communicators I met this week, it definitely is possible. What do you think?
The second day of the M2W-HC conference got me thinking about ROI. It’s a topic that came up several times and in several ways. Kickskirt’s Mary Dean held up a man’s wallet and asked the women in the audience to hold up their purses. She made the point that women’s purses are bigger due to our outsized buying power and influence. Yet, corporate healthcare marketers were under represented at this conference. This tells me that we have an opportunity to help healthcare marketers to better understand the power of marketing to women. We can help improve their ROI by making the case that appealing to this important healthcare consumer — through choice of language, images, outlets and partners — will payoff.
Separately, in a discussion about social media vs. traditional advertising, the panelists mentioned that you cannot apply standard ad ROI models to social media efforts. I think most of the PR people in the room looked at one another and mouthed the word: duh! We all are striving for better ways to quantify the value of relationships we build with traditional and social media. We need to take the step back to remember what the goal of the effort is and how the use of influencers helps to build brands . Again, PR has an opportunity to lead the way.
I am attending the M2W-HC conference in Chicago today and tomorrow, and I’m enjoying hearing from others how they approach the challenges of marketing to women. Here are several observations:
1. Keynote speaker Dr. Janet Taylor, a health contributor to NBC and CBS, noted that with the passage of healthcare reform legislation, healthcare will be even more focused on relationships: who you know and how they can help you navigate the system. This means influencing the influencers of women making health decisions for themselves and their families will continue to grow in the year ahead — a role I think PR is particularly well suited to do.
2. MMC has a presence at the M2W-HC conference, even without a formal presentation. Just this morning, three of MMC clients / campaigns have been mentioned in talks as outstanding examples of marketers who are approaching women in an impactful way. The Poise campaign we launched earlier this year with Whoopi Goldberg was cited as “share worthy,” and two efforts for P&G were called out: the Dawn saves wildlife campaign which we launched, and Secret deodorant for the way the brand engages with women. Proud moments.
3. No one disputes women as Chief Medical Officer for their families. Based on today’s sessions, many are looking at changing the nomenclature … Chief Decision Officer, Chief Lifestyle Officer, Chief Health Officer have all come up. Given women’s role in making more than three-quarters of all health decisions, what do you think the title should be?
Savages by Don Winslow is the best pop fiction book of the summer. Hands down. How did I find it? The power of PR. A great review in the New York Times convinced me that I needed to order this book … despite the fact I have stacks of unread books scattered throughout my home. And I’m glad I did … from the first two-word chapter, the book grabs your attention and doesn’t let go. Its characters jump to life off the page. And the action is non-stop. I could hardly put the book down. So if you’re heading to the beach this summer, you may want to give it a try. And kudos to the publicist who got the review that got me to buy the book. Job well done.
For most of us, traveling on business means we get to see the airport, a hotel, a conference center and then the sights back to the airport. Whenever I can, I like to see something with local charm or significance. Here are a few worth investigating the next time you’re on the road and have a bit of downtime:
Cincinnati: The National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, conveniently located in downtown Cincinnati, is an inspiring place to visit. Telling the story of the struggle for freedom in the US, the museum includes exhibits that make you think and feel about the experience of slavery in this country and the continuing struggles around the world. www.freedomcenter.org
San Francisco: Located 11 miles north of the Golden Gate Bridge is Muir Woods, an oasis of green and tranquility
and a place to walk off a few of the calories you’ve consumed from San Francisco’s great restaurants. A visit to this national monument lets you walk through an old-growth redwood forest, viewing the tallest type of tree in the world, the Coast redwood (sequoia sempervirens). You’ll also see countless other plants and animals, including tanoak trees, ferns, redwood sorrel, stellar jays, black-tailed deer, and banana slugs, to name a few. http://www.nps.gov/muwo
Princeton: Getting off Route 1 in New Jersey and heading into downtown Princeton is a nice treat for New Yorkers traveling to see our pharma clients. Not only do you get to see the beautiful campus of Princeton University, the town has many shops and restaurants. One historic site is the Yankee Doodle Tap Room at the Nassau Inn. The restaurant was named for Yankee Doodle after Norman Rockwell painted a thirteen-foot mural about the historic figure for Nassau Inn in 1937. Today, this piece of American art history continues to hang behind the bar in the Tap Room, where fine pub food and drink is served daily. www.nassauinn.com
Please share some of your favorite places to go when visiting clients or traveling on business.
I love the idea of thinking about ideas as sticky. Images ranging from post-it notes to taffy apples pop into my head. More than anything else, however, I obsess over how we at MMC can do a better job of creating ideas that have stickiness. With all the restrictions and restraints that we have in marketing pharmaceutical products in a highly regulated environment, what are the steps and processes we can take to make sure we offer our clients ideas that stick? To help me in this quest, I recently picked up Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip Heath and Dan Heath. They created six principles of sticky ideas that I think all of us should use when considering whether the ideas we propose measure up:
1. Simplicity: This is about finding the essential core of an idea. The authors sum it up brilliantly by saying we must be “masters of exclusion.”
2. Unexpectedness: While we can use surprise, in order for the idea to have true stickiness, our idea must generate interest and curiosity. The authors recommend that we can do this by systematically opening gaps in our audience’s knowledge and then filling those gaps.
3. Concreteness: This is all about making ideas clear. To do that, the Heaths talk about explaining them in terms of human action and sensory information. As we all know, many business communications are ambiguous to the point of becoming meaningless.
4. Credibility: Here the authors talk about how to provide authority for your ideas. Many of us go straight to statistics. But for ideas to be sticky, they go beyond the numbers to create relevance. The example in the book is how Ronald Reagan, in his debate with Jimmy Carter, decided against using statistics to highlight the sluggishness of the economy but instead asked, “Before you vote, ask yourself if you are better off today than you were four years ago.” History shows us the success of this approach.
5. Emotions: At MMC, finding a way to appeal to the heart is a cornerstone of our Marketing to Women expertise. In Made to Stick authors point out that it is also about finding the right emotion to harness. They talk about the fact that teenagers won’t be discouraged from smoking by telling them about health consequences. But you can impact them by “tapping their resentment of the duplicity of Big Tobacco.”
6. Stories: This is where PR can shine. We tell stories and that’s the key to getting people to act on ideas whether that’s to buy a product or go to a Web site for more information. The authors talk about stories as a “kind of mental flight simulator, preparing us to respond more quickly and effectively.” Well said.
At MMC, we have been recognized for our sticky ideas. We are a finalist for the 2009 Silver Anvil, one of the PR industry’s highest awards, with our Head & Shoulders clients at Procter & Gamble. 2009 Silver Anvil Finalists. To get sticky, we helped shift the conversation around Head & Shoulders from dandruff (the problem) to a healthy scalp (the goal for beautiful hair).
What do you think are the best examples are of sticky ideas that demonstrate these principles? I look forward to your thoughts.
