Posted by Ellen Hoenig Carlson on Tue, Oct 25, 2011 @ 01:46 PM
Day 3 of ExL's Digital Pharma East Conference [#digpharm] focused exclusively on mobile and was co-chaired by Bob Allen, Director of Mobile and Social Media, AstraZeneca and Brendan Gallagher, SVP Emerging Technology and Channels, Digitas Health.
Speaking first was Bob Allen who offered up this definition of #mhealth: “the practice of medical and public health, supported by mobile devices.”
While a smaller turnout than the previous two days for the general digital conference, the Mobile health day was jam-packed with seven strong speakers who had lots to say about why Pharma needs to “Think Mobile First’ and how Pharma can best execute mHealth strategy:
To read the full article " Think Mobile. Think Small. 14 Mobile Musts From The Mobile Experts. ExL Digital Pharma East -Day 3 Mobile Wrap-Up" click here to go to ExL's Digital Pharma blog.
Related posts:
Loaded For Bear: Day 1- ExL Digital Pharma East Conference
Transform or be Transformed. ExL Digital Pharma East Conference- Day2
Med Ad News Pharmalive's YouTube Interview with Bob Allen at ExL Digital Pharma East Conference
Kevin Nalty's Mobile Workshop at ExL Digital Pharma East Conference- What's Next for Pharma in Mobile?
Posted by Ellen Hoenig Carlson on Mon, Oct 24, 2011 @ 07:04 PM
If I were allowed but one word to describe Day 2 of ExL's Digital Pharma East Conference #digpharm, it would have to be the urgent need for transformation—the need for Pharma Co's to work faster than ever to effect internal change and to jump start meeting current and evolving customer expectations.
Throughout both days actually, speakers talked about the industry having to move from brand marketing to customer marketing, to move on your own with change or risk getting moved by others… and creating your own ‘Kodak moment’ or worse yet becoming a dinosaur…
To read the full article "Transform Or Be Transformed. ExL Digital Pharma East Conference- Day 2 Wrap-up", click here to go to ExL's Digital Pharma blog.
Stay tuned for Day 3's Digital Pharma East- Mobile Day Wrap-up...
If you missed Day 1's Digital Pharma East Wrap-up, "Loaded for Bear", click here
Posted by Ellen Hoenig Carlson on Thu, Oct 20, 2011 @ 08:47 PM
Pharma, are you ready to leverage customer insights and closed loop marketing (CLM) in your iPad and mobile initiatives to help support customers?
To read the full article "Loaded For Bear: Day 1- ExL Digital Pharma East" click here to go to ExL's Digital Pharma blog.
Stay tuned for Day 2 and Mobile Marketing's Day 3 summaries...
Posted by Ellen Hoenig Carlson on Wed, Oct 05, 2011 @ 07:14 AM
We are intrigued by the launch of Is My Cancer Different? and its potential impact on both patients and the business.
Is My Cancer Different? is an unbranded educational website that promotes a movement of sharing, with the intent of prompting patient dialog with their oncologist. The simple -but compelling- question is designed to raise awareness that each person’s cancer is different and to get patients to ask their oncologist to see if their cancer might respond to a more individualized cancer treatment.
You can click on the image below to visit the Is My Cancer Different? website and learn more from their numerous- but simple -patient and physician testimonial videos.
The site supports Clarient, a GE Health Company’s new molecular test that may help doctors identify which treatment can best target a person’s particular breast cancer. Interestingly, Clarient chose to share the official website launch during the 2011 Social Health Summit #SXSH that we attended, along with many other pharma/healthcare social media enthusiasts, ePatients, and Patient Opinion Leaders (POLs). [Be sure to read Shwen Gwee's recap: The 6 P's of Healthcare]
During the conference, Is MY cancer different? received twitter support; following the conference, ePatient’s wrote blogs. Here are a few examples of the word of mouth generated over the last few weeks:
Blogs: Cancer Hawk , Diabetes in Spain, Chronic Babe, Where We Go Now, Aaron Outward, Stem Cell Transplant, Social Media Club
This campaign reflects many of the points we raised in our complementary eBook: 2011 Brand Champion Health Check.
- Are you working to deliver more personalized treatment, content and experiences? [pg. 8]
- Given smaller targets, how can you leverage existing social networks and dialog to online or virtual communities, to extend messaging to low incidence patient groups in a cost effective way? To create buzz? To enable 'peer-to-peer' healthcare? [pgs. 8-9]
- Are you speaking with a voice that reveals humanity—in a conversational tone, with personality, empathy and true emotions? Are your choice of words simple, using the language of your patients and caregivers? [pg. 10]
- Are you doing your part to stimulate patient learning and involvement; to encourage patients to be their own best advocates and health team partners? [ pg. 10]
- How can your brand help to encourage greater trust and dialog between doctors and their patients and families, to help improve patient outcomes? [pg. 15]
Is My Cancer Different? is a great example of brand champion leadership. They have committed to a challenge of 1 million shares in 1 million minutes. What do you think? Will they make it?
Feel free to join the movement and help spread the simple question that can make a huge difference in the fight against cancer. Follow @ismycancerdiff on twitter and/or facebook.
You can also learn more about the ePatient movement at epatients.net and join The Society of Participatory Medicine.
Posted by Ellen Hoenig Carlson on Mon, Jul 25, 2011 @ 03:40 PM
Here is my recent presentation, Digital Strategy in the NOW Economy: Proactive and Real-time as presented at The Social Media in Pharma Online Summit Conference. While this digital strategy presentation is geared to Pharma and Healthcare, it is quite relevant for all marketers with an eye to reconsidering their digital approach in the NOW Economy which demands both new skills and changes in our marketing mindset.
Slide Content Overview:
- The NOW Economy Demands...
- Kick-Ass Digital Brand Strategy- It's not about technology. It is about creating opportunities for the brand/company to build deeper relationships. Digital strategy must integrate into the brand strategy and strengthen the brand's core promise.
- Creating and Leveraging a Digital Brand Strategy requires new skills and a discipled, fluid process. Follow these six steps to greater success.
- Five Imperatives to Boost Your Digital IQ- Concentrate your learning on these five critical success factors for today's marketplace, starting with 1) designing content strategy, 2) delivering 'perfect fit', 3) thinking digital ecosystem, 4) fostering community and 5) getting over 'lack of control'. Are there are others that you might suggest?
- Go. Initiate. Enchant.- Health is Social- Try something new!
The challenges of INTEGRATION and how to best keep the brand's core promise front and center appear to be top-of-mind to Pharma right now.
During my webinar, while there were many great questions posted, the majority seemed to center around the challenges of INTEGRATION and how to best keep the brand or company's core promise front and center--and to ensure that technology changes are incorporated without becoming distractions. While this has always been a marketer's dilemma, the need for greater focus and integration is now at it's highest point ever as suggested by the many questions:
- Integration within brand teams and across internal support teams i.e. digital, data base, PR, social media, customer service
- Integration across outside agency partners spanning offline and online, web, mobile and social media platforms
- Integration of digital web and social media with brand objectives, strategies and brand positioning/branding elements
- Overseeing a strong brand core throughout the online and offline marketing process, including prioritization of consumer (and physician) digital communications and tactics that work hardest to build customer relationships within the context of the core brand promise.
Here are a few initial thoughts to consider. Each company and brand must establish an internal brand champion that 'owns':
- protecting and ensuring that the core brand promise is upheld
- is responsible for making the tough calls across specialists after team input
- helps prioritize the most important strategies and tactics to achieve brand objectives and to strengthen the brand promise.
While this sounds a lot like the old consumer brand manager job I used to have way back, the old 'hub and spoke' brand manager role popular in the 80's and 90's has been largely abandoned as many companies moved to a more politically acceptable 'shared ownership' mindset. I believe that this is now leaving a marketing and leadership void with current brand heads not really seeing their role as champions of the brand promise, and many of whom see themselves as too senior to be involved in execution...(but isn't this exactly the place where the strategy meets the customer?) This suggests that a course correction may be in order to encourage brand marketers to step up and lead with tighter vision and perhaps closer to the traditional brand management role. Read a recent and interesting article from the New York Times called: The Auteur vs. The Committee.
Growing marketing specialists are working on each brand, in a world with multiple customers. Brands need a champion more than ever; someone to protect and drive relevance and resonance of the brand promise as their primary responsibility- along with highly tailored metrics- in a spirit of collaboration and trust. And I recommend that company senior management re-establish expectations for brand leads to champion a brand. If it continues to fall in the middle, brands will be weakened by brand leads not wanting to step up and deal with the political ramifications of saying no to someone or some group or some agency...
This is further exasperated in the pharmaceutical industry, where brand teams are often large and span multiple customers, physician and consumer. This creates situations with many same-level brand team members working across different channels and platforms, often with not enough oversight in the area of whether their strategies, tactics and execution are strengthening the brand core promise. The continued move away from block buster drugs may help to refocus and resize brand teams, but there still needs to be a greater focus on ensuring a strong brand promise is well established in all processes, across all disciplines, including offline and online education, communications, clinical development etc.
How do you develop and integrate digital strategy? I hope that you'll leave your ideas and comments below!
I hope to write more on the changing role of marketing managers in future posts.
Posted by Ellen Hoenig Carlson on Mon, Jul 18, 2011 @ 09:08 AM
For those of you like me who were unable to attend ExL Pharma's Digital Pharma West (DP West) Conference June 27-30, 2011 (#digpharm), you missed a fascinating presentation by Jeff Bauer, Ph.D., a health futurist and medical economist, called Forecasting the Future of Health Care: Challenges & Opportunities.
Fortunately, I had a chance to speak with Jeff and delve into his presentation and insights. Trained as a meteorologist, an economist and a medical professor, he is uniquely qualified to “forecast-not predict” the future of healthcare…
To read the full article and five key takeaways that we'd all be wise to integrate into our thinking, click here to go to ExL's Digital Pharma blog.
Posted by Ellen Hoenig Carlson on Wed, Jul 13, 2011 @ 04:25 PM
On July 12th, I participated in a virtual Panel Discussion: The Rules of Engagement – Can Regulated Businesses Like Pharma and Healthcare Embrace Social Media? This is part of the Social Media In Pharma Summit that is taking place online from July 12-August 4th (#socialpharm).
I was one of four panel members representing a mix of experience and geography:
We were charged with speaking to these four questions:
- Is social media right for Pharma?
- How can pharma get started in social media? What are the first steps?
- Who in pharma is doing a good job of using social media?
- What are some industry best practices navigating the complex regulatory environment?
Here are 10 key discussion points and best practices discussed by the panel:
- Social Media is her to stay…health is social. It’s now part of doing business in today’s rapidly changing world. It’s not if Pharma should proceed, but how…The ultimate goal is “collective action” (great term by Alex Butler).
- Social Media is not the strategy but a tactic and needs to be fully integrated with other brand and company efforts.
- Getting started with Social Media means first focusing on the “why”—What are goals and objectives? Objectives may be big and/or small, but will drive KPIs and measurement.
- Selecting which SM tactics to focus on requires thinking through how well a SM tool fulfills objectives and other key criteria: Meets media/SM habits/savvy; Disease and Competitive considerations; Resources/skills needed to establish and maintain, and Fit with company values/risk appetite.
- Discuss product promotion vs. disease education upfront (US only)—but panel strongly suggests that disease education not be a distant second to brand sell.
- Evaluate internal and external risk tolerance…honestly!
- SM demands a rapidly changing environment – need to be able to quickly adapt and evolve.
- An iterative approach can work well—it is OK to ‘dip your toes’; no need to try to launch with every SM tactic all at once!
- Partner with Regulatory and Medical/Legal teams in developing strategy and tactical plans and do so early in the process. Ensure that processes are in place before going live. Maintain effective lines of communication across all internal and external constituents throughout the development and implementation process.
- Use strategies and lessons learned from other areas of oversight and review—but don’t wait for too many case studies or you’ll be too late!
BTW, if you haven’t yet signed up, you may want to check out the agenda which includes many interesting presentations still to come, including a Facebook Case Study by John Pugh, Boehringer Ingelheim; Leveraging SM Platforms to Enhance Patient Relationships by Eileen O’Brien , Siren Interactive; Are You Mobile? The Impact of Mobile on Social Media by Xavier Petit, Shire; Digital Brand Strategy in the NOW Economy by me, and Online Social Presence in the World of Pharma by Chris Brogan of Human Business Works.
Note: slide presentation was created by Eileen O’Brien and Ellen Hoenig.
Posted by Ellen Hoenig Carlson on Fri, Oct 30, 2009 @ 09:10 AM
Hats off to Kevin Kruse for kicking off an exciting new conference called e-Patient Connections 2009 that will no doubt be the start of a long tradition in e-Patient Marketing and Learning. It was a productive two days marked by a strong range of excellent speakers and content, a well run conference and focused leader, and a broad group of engaged attendees. Read posts by @ericbrody, BioJob Blog, PharmaExec Blog and Steve Woodruff for other good summaries of the two-day e-Patient Conference (You can also read the Twitter stream: #epatcon)
Why Team e-Patient?
Driving home from the conference, my head swirling with ideas, this is what emerged for me:
"It may take a village to raise a family, but it takes a team to heal a patient."
...A team of doctors and nurses, patients and their families, friends and others who share their condition, hospital care, pharma treatments, insurance companies, employers, pharmacists and so on...actively participating and working together.
Reflecting on the presentations, they seem to converge around five essential themes for working towards patient-centered, participative marketing and healthcare...Highlighted below are but a few:
Trust and Authenticity:
While the Mayo Clinic may be the poster child for building trust in the hospital environment, it continues social media expansion under the leadership of @LeeAase. Slides here. Another example of building and establishing trust, is the partnership of JDRF and Novo Nordisc in the creation of Juvenation, a type-1 diabetes community. There was also Dr. Val Jone's (@drval) heartfelt limerick: 'A Tale of Two e-Patients'. Jones used the limerick to raise the issue of what can happen to e-patients who trust the wrong people for the wrong information, which she delivered in 20 slides, each 20 seconds for a total of six minutes and forty seconds via the Pecha Kucha method. (More proof that doctors can also be amazingly creative!)
Dave deBronkart, also known as @epatientdave, gave a tremendous talk on Authentic Value: Being Known in e-Patient Communities, and the importance of being real and contributing value. Following his incredible story of cancer, Dave is now an evangelist for "participatory medicine" and founding director for The Society of Particpatory Medicine dedicated to bringing together e-patients and healthcare professionals. (I urge you to check out their work.)
To sum up trust, Kevin Kruse said it well, "Personality leads to authenticity which leads to TRUST"
Engage and Educate:
Good presentations here: Facebook ADHD Allies by Tricia Geoghegan, McNeil Pediatrics. Her advice: listen to the consumer...let them tell you what's working (or not). There was also Facebook Strong@Heart Lisa Tate, WomenHeart & Robert Schumm, from Bayer. Their presentation demonstrated the value of using a good mix of traditional and new media, and an interesting offer to both raise awareness and incite action among women for their heart health. Marc Monceau @JNJComm also spoke: To Twitter or Not To Twitter, and shared his tips for organizational success. Key takeaways: take the time to create a personality in social media, and establish 'guardrails' of what you can and can not do to help smooth the process internally while you build trust and experience. (More on the concept of guardrails and Marc's presentation here).
Yet another way to engage e-patients may be in the form of games for health. Jay Ong of EA Sports presented "Driving the Fitness Revolution: The Development and Launch of EA SPORTS Active." EA Sports uses a process that focuses on 4 pillars: 1) make them sweat with true exercise and workout, 2) provide a guided experience-make it easy, 3) deliver a personalized experience and 4) incite competition. They also bring in experts to add credibility.
Action: "Before I was an e-patient, I was e-impatient" (@sixuntilme)
Sixuntilme's Voice of the Patient presentation began, "I'm Kerri Morrone Sparling and I'm not the voice of THE patient. I'm just the voice of A patient"... "POL's (patient opinion leaders) like me don't blog because they have to, but because it helps us heal...Until there's a cure, there will be a blog..."
Or Joe Shields, Product Director at Pfizer, who spoke about Adherence. "The empowered patient will be a collaborator and an active participator...Adherence is starting to elevate the role of everyone in the community, and like health care, is a team sport."
Meaning: Adding value beyond the molecule
Branded Tweets for Levemir by Ambre Morley, Novo Nordisk and Charlie Kimball, showcased how a broader strategy can add meaning to a prescription product. While there has been much emphasis on the 'first' branded tweet, twitter is a small part of how Novo Nordisk is collaborating with Charlie to help educate and engage diabetic patients and their families. The goal moves beyond product to showing diabetic patients that they can continue to live a full and active life. (I also have to say, that meeting Charlie in person was a real treat--His enthusiasm is infectious, and he came across completely genuine and dedicated.)
There was also Jonathan Richman's Marketing With Meaning presentation which he delivered Pecha Kucha style, urging Pharma Marketers to ask themselves: "Is your marketing as good as your product?" (You can also read my review of the book here and how current DTC print stacks up)
"We need to stop thinking patient and we really need to start thinking people," said Urbaniak, vice president of innovation and new customer channels at Sanofi-aventis.
So I end where I started: "It may take a village to raise a family, but it takes a dedicated, collaborative and empowered team to heal a patient." Are your e-Patients part of the team? Really?
Posted by Ellen Hoenig Carlson on Thu, Oct 22, 2009 @ 12:54 PM
There's a reason why there was such a great turnout for the Digital Pharma Unconference this week...Hats off to Shwen Gwee, Jason Youner of eXL pharma, and all the speakers and participants. (#DigPharm)
Before I talk about Guard Rails, here are three other good reads from fellow bloggers: Steve Woodruff's I Was There (Digital Pharma 2009), Jonathan Richman's Dose of Digital How Pharma Overcomplicates Social Media, and John Mack's Pharma Marketing Blog: Pharma Social Media Crips vs. Legal/Regulatory Bloods. Also check out the tools that Fard Jonmar and Jonathan Richman used in their social media workshop. Or Digitas Health Social Media POV given by Sarah Larcker of Digitas.
So what do we mean by Guard Rails? The Wikipedia definition reads something like this:
"Guard rail, sometimes referred to as guide rail or railing, is a system designed to keep people or vehicles from (in most cases unintentionally) straying into dangerous or off-limits areas."
So what does this have to do with Pharma and Social Media?
First, I'd be remiss not to credit Marc Monseau (JNJComm) who used this term in his presentation: "We're doing It and So Can You. J&J's Use of Twitter". Creating 'guard rails' was part of his 7 suggestions to Pharma: 1) Create your business case, 2) Connect SM with other initiatives, 3) Establish your personality--interesting people are followed, 4) Set guides around what you will and won't discuss...guard rails, 5) Gain legal/regulatory support for guard rails, 6) Create processes and tap into existing processes e.g. reporting AE's, 7) Tweet, tweet, tweet. Advice from JNJ; More lessons from JNJ (pictures courtesy of Steve Woodruff). (You may also want to read a great interview with Marc Monseau: J&J On Twitter)
Guard rails can help provide a 'safety net' to Pharma social media tactics and those running them by helping to insure that clear and simple guidelines are set up around certain areas to help frame conversation and engagement, and to keep social media efforts on safe regulatory and legal ground...
Other key takeaways and discussion points from #DigPharm:
Is your brand a lovemark? Is it irresistible to your consumer? Does it provide the right empathy to patients? At the core of every lovemark is RESPECT. How does a Lovemarks compare to a trademark? Trademarks are 'owned' by marketers--Lovemarks are 'owned' by their consumers. (Watch the T-mobile video: "Life's For Sharing")
What are consumers saying about your prescription product? Check out iGuard.org to read patient reviews. Monitor other social media venues.
"A patient is an unwilling customer". They are 'buying' your medication to help their condition, but they're not happy about the disease/condition that they have, often for life...(courtesy of patient blogger and tweeter: @amblass) This was part of 5 suggestions for Pharma: 1) listen 2) be honest 3) think big- beyond marketing a product 4) a patient is an unwilling customer. 5) be there for me.
"Just like soccer, Social Media is about moving the ball up the field....until we can put the ball in a strategic, favorable position" (courtesy of Fabio Gratton of Ignite Health and Xavier Petit)
BTW, if you're looking for a community to continue the Pharma Social Media conversation, join Shwen's Social Pharmer.
Other recent Pharma conference blogs that may be of interest:
Pharma: Dip Your Toes And Other Tips From DTC Perspectives Conference
Pharma Marketers: A Few Takeaways From the PharmaMed Conference
Posted by Ellen Hoenig Carlson on Wed, Oct 21, 2009 @ 05:24 AM
We're in the midst of conference-frenzy. Last week I was able to attend day two of DTC Perspective's Fall Conference: Reform & Refocus (For twitter followers: #dtcfall). Here are some of the key themes that I picked up:
Dip-your-toes approach. This was said over and over about social media. Get started, and evolve as you learn and your company becomes more comfortable with the effort. (This is also a common theme in Digital Pharma's conference taking place this week. #digpharm)- Remember your overall marketing strategy--Before you clarify objectives for social media and start running with tactics...
- Give the team TIME. Initiating new social media programs took many more hours and resources than originally planned. And there is always the unexpected...
- The Internet is for marketing-not just advertising. This also requires a shift in mindset. (Bill Drummy of Heartbeat Digital)
- Technology is moving oh soooo fast-Mobile, video, ‘smart' advertising using behavioral data, gaming and of course social media are musts to be more than experimenting with in 2010.
During day two, two presentations stood out to me:
Hologic and Greater Than One: How Social Media Can Become Real in Healthcare. Marnie Rosenberg, Partner, Greater Than One and Mary Pietrowski Director of Consumer and eMarketing of Hologic did a great job presenting four case studies, including a branded YouTube video. This is also where the infamous twitter tweet: "60% consumers don't care who sponsors health info- just want good info, community-value". (Turns out it's based on Infomedics Survey.) They also presented iCrossing data showing that of the online tools and websites, social media is used by 34% to locate healthcare information.
The On Demand Brand (book due out spring, 2010) by Rick Mathieson: Digital to Consumer-- The 5 Top Trends in 2010
- Social Networking of course...Regarding video, Rick presented data saying that nearly 50% of US adults say online video is a key way they research DTC drugs. His suggestions for pharma: use Social Media more for event based marketing, keep it social and targeted.
- Smart Advertising using behavioral data, but being careful not to target too well or to become invasive
- Mobile, especially texting, apps and use of QR codes
- Video Games For Health and Advergaming (See my blog covering 2009 Games For Health Conference and PharmExec article Video Games: Key To The Future of Healthcare?)
- Augmented Reality. The rules: Entertain, Educate and Engage
Wrapping up the conference, there was a good panel discussion with Pharma Marketers and Industry experts on The Use of Online Video in DTC Marketing led by Raj Amin, CEO, HealthiNation. Monique Levy @monasante also reviewed some recent Manhattan Research data. One of the points she made was that 25% of consumers view video on product.com sites.
Overall, the discussion centered around the big opportunity of video and suggestions to optimize its use e.g.: keep it moving (no more than 2-3 minutes) and tell an interesting story with great content. Saatchi Wellness talked to their successful rooster campaign and the move from unbranded to branded. Nike was also discussed as a great example of parceling out video info depending on a consumer's interest. They keep initial video short, but enable additional video watching for those who want more info etc.
Any other thoughts? Overall, day two was a good day!