Notes from the Back of the Book

Pharma Marketers: Eight Things We Might Learn From Zappos.com

Here’s my take after reading Delivering Happiness:  A Path To Profits, Passion, and Purpose by Tony Hsieh CEO, Zappos.com, Inc. While it’s true that Zappos lives in a less regulated business environment than the pharmaceutical and healthcare industry, Tony’s standards for communicating with consumers are now part of the context of our work. Patients have come to expect Zappos- level experiences.  This blog accepts that challenge:  what might a pharma company or hospital might look like if Tony were CEO…

Eight marketing insights for Pharma (or any healthcare or consumer business for that matter):

1. Are you sitting at the right table? If not, it’s never too late to change!  It’s easy to get caught up and engrossed in what you’re currently doing, and forget that you even have the option to change tables. It’s also easy to overlook that the game starts even before you sit down in a seat… Don’t let inertia win, be sure you’re playing in the right game—one that you can both win at and fulfills your goals.

 While Tony learned this lesson during a phase of heavy poker play, he switched tables quite a few times during his life, and certainly for Zappos, they switched tables when they shifted the company strategy to focus on customer service and experience as a brand differentiator. It caused a shift in their business model from one of drop-shipping to one of carrying their own inventory so that they could be in control of their customers’ experiences…What’s the game your pharma co is playing?

2. Be patient and focus on what’s best for the long term.  Poker teaches that you may win or lose individual ‘hands or games’, but it’s what happens in the long term that matters…Zappos has a track record of making decisions based on the longer term. Tony provides numerous examples of this e.g. free shipping in both directions, shipping upgrades to high potential customers,  turning down skilled new hires because they didn’t fit into the Zappos culture…Focusing on the long term and making the necessary tradeoffs is not a new concept, but one that Pharma and all companies bump up against every day.  Unfortunately, all too often, most decisions are made with a short term view and little thought for the long-term impact or consequences on the brand and/or the patient's health …

3. Never outsource your core competency.  Zappos learned that if they were going to build their brand to be about the very best customer service, that they shouldn’t outsource that department.  This meant that core competencies that they had built as an e-business, like inventory management and warehousing and/or customer service, couldn’t be outsourced. 

What are healthcare and pharma companies' core competencies? What happens when a new drug is licensed-in, but the clinical trials have not been done with the insights to optimize claims and information for physicians and patients?

4. A Brand’s critical success factor (CSF) must be the responsibility of the entire company, not just a department.  For Zappos, when they decided that they wanted to build their brand to be about the very best customer service and the very best customer experience, they believed that customer service shouldn’t be just a department, it should be the entire company. For pharma, customer service is largely not considered a true success factor let alone the responsibility of each and every person in the company.  Further, how many pharma cos like to call themselves patient –centric, yet we see inconsistent decision making, demonstrating that patient-centricity  isn’t the responsibility of each and every person in a pharma company ….it's usually the responsibility for a few members of a brand team, but is this enough to ensure consistency and success?  (What does it take to truely be patient-centric? Read Pharma: Is Your Brand Patient-Centered? 5 Critical Success Factors)

5. Culture is the best way to build a brand for the long term.  At Zappos, they believe that if you get the culture right, most of the other stuff—like great customer service, or building a great long-term brand, or passionate employees and customers—will happen naturally on its own.  It’s Zappos belief that your company’s culture and your company’s band are really just two sides of the same coin.  The brand may lag the culture at first, but eventually it will catch up.  Your culture is your brand.  Zappos takes it a step further…core values are only core values if you can commit to them—and by commit, they mean that you’re willing to hire and first based on them…

If pharma cos had strong cultures of patient- centricity, and/or transparency, would we have situations where safety or clinical data was held back?  Is your company  guided by ‘committable’ core values?

6. Deliver WOW!  At Zappos, anything worth doing is worth doing with WOW.  "To WOW, you must differentiate yourself, which means do something a little unconventional and innovative.  You must do something that’s above and beyond what’s expected.  And whatever you do must have an emotional impact on the receiver. ..Whether internally with co-workers or externally with our customers and partners, delivering WOW results in word of mouth. “

When was the last time that a doctor or patient felt a WOW and personal connection from a Pharma company?  How could Pharma achieve more WOW from more customers and patients? Every brand wants to achieve consumer buzz or to have patients advocate on their behalf…but what is the brand’s responsibility to help instigate this? Word of Mouth or WOW doesn’t just happen, it can’t be bought— it has to be earned…  Ask yourself:  What are things you (your brand or your company) can improve upon in your work or attitude to WOW more people?  Have you WOWed at least one person today?

7. Build Open and Honest Relationships with Communication. Transparency is no longer a nice to have, but an imperative in today’s world. With the internet connecting everyone together, companies are becoming more and more transparent whether they like it or not. Both the good and the ugly can spread like wildfire by e-mail or with tools like Twitter and Facebook. Zappos lives in a world of transparency…Why can’t pharma and healthcare companies act with greater transparency and openess? Really?

8. It’s not just about the money, but about happiness. Cliché but oh so true!  Tony reviews different frameworks for happiness.  All roads lead to greater happiness based on an individual world filled with more passion and purpose—being part of something bigger than yourself.  Is there a greater purpose than helping people to live healthier and happier lives? Then why aren't pharma companies and the people in them happier?

Having had positive purchase experiences at Zappos.com in the past, I decided to revisit Zappos the other day when I realized I still needed hiking boots for two of my sons for camp.  When I hit the send button for free shipping I knew that I might not get the order in time, but I decided to put my faith in the Zappos culture and hope for a 'surprise' shipping upgrade…to my ‘joy’, I received a ‘fun’ email letting me know that my order had been upgraded!  Thank you Zappos! 

Here's the email I received:

5 Marketing and Social Networking Lessons from the Dead...

In honor of my "Deadhead" hubby and the millions of others out there, and the pending Grateful Dead Archive soon to open at the University of California at Santa Cruz, it's a great time to recognize the Grateful Dead for their marketing and social networking prowess.

But even if you're not a Deadhead, the Atlantic's Management Secrets of the Grateful Dead  is a must read article.

The Grateful Dead Archive, scheduled to open soon at the University of California at Santa Cruz, will be a mecca for academics of all stripes: from ethnomusicologists to philosophers, sociologists to historians.  But the biggest beneficiaries may prove to be business scholars and management theorists, who are discovering that the Dead were visionary geniuses in the way they created "customer" value", promoted social networking, and did strategic business planning. -by Joshua Green

Why Should corporate America or Pharma and Healthcare Marketers care?  The Dead pioneered ideas and practices that were subsequently embraced by business and 'Internet business models'.

Here are 5 Marketing and Social Networking Lessons that I took away from the Grateful Dead's incredible marketing success. They are masters at:

1. Creating and delivering superior value. This is evident by their great music (content), their sprawling repertoire and well-loved improvisation, long concerts, sophisticated sound system, radical at the time, and widely emulated today. They treated their fans well. Treating customers well may sound like common sense. But it represented a break from the top-down ethos of many organizations in the 1960s and '70s.
   
2. Promoting social networking--forming friendships and deep bonds across distance.  As early as the late 1980s, a sociologist at the University of North Carolina noticed deep bonds between Deadheads.The bonds seemed to belie the idea, then popular among leading social thinkers, that communities based on common interest, whose members do not live near each other, lack emotional and moral depth, and couldn't possibly form meaningful relationships.Today, everybody is intensely interested in understanding how communities form across distances, because that's what happens online.
3. Giving away stuff free. Giving something away and earning money on the periphery is the same idea outlined by Wired editor Chris Anderson in his recent best-selling book, Free: The Future of a Radical Price. Writing in Wired in 1994, Barlow, the band's lyricist, posited that in the information economy, "the best way to raise demand for your product is to give it away." What Barlow recently explained to the author:  "What people today are beginning to realize is what became obvious to us back then--the important correlation is the one between familiarity and value, not scarcity and value.  Adam Smith taught that the scarcer you make something, the more valuable it becomes.  In the physical world, that works beautifully.  But we couldn't regulate taping at our shows, and you can't online.  The Internet doesn't behave that way.  But here's the thing: if I give my song away to 20 people, and they give it to 20 people, pretty soon everybody knows me, and my value as a creator is dramatically enhanced.  That was the value proposition of the Dead." Interestingly, voluntarily or otherwise, it is becoming the blueprint for more and more companies doing business on the Internet.
4. Focusing intensely on loyal fans  The Dead established a telephone hotline to alert fans to its touring schedule ahead of any public announcement, reserved for them some of the best seats in the house, and capped the price of tickets, which the band distributed through its own mail-order system.
   
5. Being able to turn on a dime--strategic improvisation.  It is precisely this flexibility that many scholars believe holds the greatest lessons for business.The Dead's team of musicians were anything but naive about their business.  They incorporated early on, and established a board of directors (with a rotating CEO position).  They founded a profitable merchandising division and, peace and love notwithstanding, did not hesitate to sue those who violated their copyrights.  But they weren't greedy, and they adapted well.  They famously permitted fans to tape their shows, ceding a major revenue source in potential record sales, on the shrewd assessment that tape sharing would widen their audience, a ban would be unenforceable, and anyone inclined to tape a show would probably spend money elsewhere, such as on  merchandise or ticket sales. The Dead thrived for decades, in good times and bad times, and due to their strategic improvisation and flexibility became one of the most profitable bands of all time.

So it seems obvious as we continue to move in the direction of an Internet Economy, that the Management and Marketing secrets of the Grateful Dead may turn out to be almost as enjoyable and important  to us as  their music has been these last 40 or so years...Thoughts?

 

Image credit: hippieshop.com

 

 

 

Marketers: What Would Jake and Rocket Do? 13 Imperatives for 2010 (part 3 of 4)

What Would Jake and Rocket Do?
This is the third of a four part series for Consumer and Pharma/Healthcare marketers looking to tame the rigors of 2010... In case you're just coming in now, here is the first of the series: What Would Steve Jobs Do? And the second: What Would Google Do?

Who are Jake and Rocket you ask? Jake and his trusty dog Rocket have become icons of optimism, and Life is good ® America's little clothing brand that could-that is trying to spread good vibes all over the world. Having recently returned from a few days of holiday skiing in Vermont, and the proverbial t-shirt buying with ‘my three sons'... Life is good was all around us spreading their optimism and good cheer.

Here are some of Jake and Rocket's insights that all marketers-Consumer, B2B and Pharmaceutical/Healthcare - may want to pay attention to in 2010.

What Would Jake and Rocket Do?

1. Run like a dog. Dream on. High end destination.
Optimism, hope and dreams are crucial for human beings, healthy and/or sick...If you forget what it feels like to ‘run like a dog', take a look at: 19 Seconds of Pure Joy and Steve Woodruff's young dog experiencing snow for the first time! Or listen to Dr. Groopman speak about Hope and Medicine on NPR. You can also read Jen McCabe's blog on the importance of hope.

2. Consider yourself a lucky dog.
Go deep. Think out of the box. Don't knock something, build something. Create your own happy hour. This is not a year to wish you had more. Use any financial or human constraints to innovate...to build something big, to go deep. Constraints are not something to fear, but often spur innovation. Read 37 signals Getting Real: Embrace Constraints; a concept duly noted by Tim Brown and Matthew May's Change This Manifesto on Elegant Solutions (no.6 p 22)

3. Whatever you are, be a good one.  Style points count. Get dirty.
Successful people and companies raise the bar, and continually strive for excellence with every move they make...If you take nothing else away from What Would Steve Jobs Do?, think about the bar of excellence he sets and expects for himself and others at every step of the way.

4. Get outta town. If you don't go, you don't see. If you don't live it, it won't come out your horn. Who feels it knows it.
Reading Tim Brown's book Change By Design, I was stuck by this quote: "Good design thinkers observe. Great design thinkers observe the ordinary." How true it is that you have to get out to see and experience what your customers are doing and thinking, and how they're interacting with the world. Yet how many busy executives actually do? And then actually take the learning and insights and share them across the organization and find rightful ‘owners' to turn them into action? (Brian Solis often speaks to this very need of leveraging what you hear in social media throughout the organization by insuring rightful owners.)

5. Mix it up.
We seem to be stuck in a world of X OR Y, TV advertising or web, traditional advertising or social media, facebook or twitter, branded advertising or value-add conversations...when we could be mixing it up and thinking AND...The consumer mixes it up, why don't marketers?

6. The little things in life are the big things.
How true it is that what we most often remember is not the big things or the big/expensive presents, but those little special gestures that let us know that people really appreciate us, trust us, care about us, and know us. (You can also read Linda Kaplan and Robin Koval's Power of Small)

7. Takers may eat well, but givers sleep well. Sometimes the best conversation is a game of catch.
We all know that building relationships is a give and take. What better analogy for two-way conversation than a game of catch? When your catching the ball, you can't be throwing at the same time...it's a rhythm of give and take... While it's never this simple, much has been written about how the new world of marketing is no longer about ‘sell and tell' or ‘push', but give and take (with more emphasis on giving than taking), remembering to listen first - sell later, adding value via marketing with meaning), earning trust a la Brogan's trust agents, and ‘earning' customer love and word of mouth.

8. Hold a true friend with both hands.
This is the year for quality over quantity and this goes for relationships as well. Only those that add value to your life will get your time and attention. Who are your true friends? Who are your most loyal customers? What do they need and want? How can you help? How can you bring them value?

9. The best things in life are free.
If you are around kids, how many birthdays and holidays need to go by before we realize that it's not the most expensive present that people/kids like, but the box that it comes in...The concept of Free is everywhere and shouldn't be overlooked or taken lightly. The web is full of content... so it's critical to create content with value or to organize content to bring value: ‘elegant organization'...Think free or the minimum you must charge or take out of the system if you want to maximize growth and usage. Read Jeff Jarvis' What Would Google Do? or Chris Anderson's Free: the future of radical price if you're still are unsure....

10. Change your perspective.
Experts in education suggest that adult learners should "jiggle their synapses a bit" by confronting thoughts that are contrary to their own..."bump up against people and ideas" that are different. (NYTimes: Neuroscience-How to train the aging brain) If you are a ‘social media' guy, look at the world through other lens...most of the world still doesn't know what RSS feeds are, let alone use them...email is still the most widely used way to send others information...Marketers, look outside your industry for ideas, seek different perspectives that may bring new value to your customers' and patients' lives. Look to other disciplines, from science to design, for new thinking.

11. Write on. Read ‘em and reap. Keep Growing.
They say 2010 is the year that Content is King. We know that Links create value. Creating valuable content and acting as a ‘content curator' are critical new marketing and leadership skills...think "elegant organization".

12. Simplify.
With the number of emails, blogs, tweets, friends contacting us, more and more it will be critical to simplify and focus on what's most important. Only a few can stand out. Focus on less and make each ‘friend', ‘contact', ‘tweet', 'program'  more impactful and valuable...both simplify and 'elegance' are at the very core of both Steve Jobs/Apple and Google's success. Do You Have a Stop Doing List? (Also read Power of Less or Mathew May's The Elegant Solution)

13. Laughter has no foreign accent. We will never know all the good a simple smile can do. Celebrate.
Let's promise each other that we won't overlook a little laughter and smiles in our busy lives this year...(You can also read Dave Murray's 11th Lesson of Life)

 

Marketers: Which ones are most meaningful for you this New Year?
Which ones would most help spur growth and innovation for your brand and business?

Pharma and Healthcare Marketers: Which ones would most bring growth and innovation to our industry? Which ones would help bring back hope and trust? Value to our patients?

Stay tuned for part four of 4...What Will Pharma and Healthcare Marketers Do? What Will Champs in New Marketing Do in 2010?

Marketers: What Would Google Do? Ten Imperatives for 2010 (part 2 of 4)

What Would Google Do? What would the fastest-growing company in history and a model for thinking in new ways do? Even this week, Google makes waves with their launch of their new android-based Nexus One (MIT Says Yes).

Welcome to the second of a four part serious for Consumer and Pharma/Healthcare Marketers looking to tame the rigors of 2010... If you missed post 1, read: What Would Steve Jobs Do?  And by all means, I hope you'll stay tuned for What Would Jake and Rocket Do? And What Would Savvy Marketers Do?

"Once upon a time, all roads led to Rome. Today, all roads lead from Google." - Jeff Jarvis

What Would Google Do?

1.    Focus on the user and all else will follow. Design with simplicity. Google strives to provide the best user experience possible—from the user/customer’s point of view.  Google often forgoes paying for marketing and instead focuses on creating something so great that customers distribute it—it goes viral.

2.    Don't try to control content and distribution. Instead think about creating open networks that sit on platforms. Think in distributer ways. Go to your consumer whenever and however you can. This is the opposite of most companies (even still) that think centralized and make consumers come to them. They spend large dollars to advertise to attract consumers. Many try to make their home pages into destinations. In sum, while many internet sites think of themselves as an end- Google thinks of itself as a means. While many see the job of their home page is to take you to where they want you to go, Google sees its home page as the way to get you to where you want to go. Google distributes itself. It puts its ads on millions of web pages it does not own, earning billions of dollars for these sites and for itself. Google enables others to use tools as they wish. They know their own needs.

Think of your site as ‘answers for every question you can imagine’. 

3.    See yourself not as a product, but a service, a platform, a means of enabling others. Help others build value.  Google has many platforms to help its customers. e.g.: Blogger for publishing content, Picasa for pictures, Google docs etc.

4.    Cede control. Embrace ‘Publicness’ and openness. Transform your relationship with the public in every quarter in the organization. You may extend this new relationship in many ways from blogging, interacting with bloggers, enabling customers to critique your products or services (hard to do in Pharma) and sharing ideas.  Overtime, you may even truly involve customers in the real-time design process for products and/or services…

But 'Publicness' is about more than having a web site.   It's about taking actions in public so people can see what you do and react to it, make suggestions, and tell their friends. Living in public today is a matter of enlightened self-interest.  You have to be public to be found.  Every time you decide not to make something public, you create the risk of a customer not finding you or not trusting you because you're keeping secrets. Publicness is also an ethic.  The more public you are, the easier you can be found, the more opportunities you have.  (For more on privacy (and publicness) read this insightful blog by Jeff Jarvis.   

5.    Bring them "elegant organization". Ask how you can bring constituents, customers, community-even your competitors- elegant organization. Create value through links. Replace focus on mass market with focus on mass of niches. Understand that the economy is made up of a mass of niches-the aggregation of the long tail. Small is the new big.

6.    Extract the minimum value from the network so it will grow to maximum size and value.  In other words, charge as little as the market will bear.

7.    You don't need to be at your desk to need an answer. Google is looking to fuel greater innovation for mobile users everywhere with Android, their free, open source mobile platform. It sure feels like 2010 will be the ‘year of unprecedented mobile growth'...

8.     Move faster-not slower. Most companies say this in reference to making sure they move fast to develop new products and services. Google means this from a user experience because they know how valuable time is to their customers.

9.    Do one thing really, really well. Google does search, and in their continuous focus for improvement of search, it spurs other applications and new products/services. But they never seem to forget the role search plays in their business strategy.

10.    Great just isn't good enough.... Being great is a starting point, not an endpoint.  Ultimately, our constant dissatisfaction with the way things are becomes the driving force behind everything we do.

Is Google the only one who knows how to survive and prosper in the internet age?  Stay tuned.

My 13 Favorite Business Books of 2009

As 2009 comes to a close, I want to share my thirteen favorite biz books from this year that I found myself writing the most "Notes in the Back of the Book", and stimulating the greatest new thinking and ideas. The list of books covers social media, marketing and new marketing models, and innovation and leadership. For reference, here are also business book favorites by Fast Company, Mashable, Amazon and The Brand Bubble (John Gerzema).

If you're looking to better understand and excel in today's social media and web 2.0 worlds, here are four: Inbound Marketing is a must for anyone who wants to be found online, and is especially helpful for anyone who is actively considering how to get started with inbound marketing. Written by the leaders of Hubspot, they know what they're talking about. Trust Agents by Chris Brogan and Julian Smith shows how people use online social tools to build networks of influence and how you can tap into the power of these networks to positively impact your business. Because trust is essential to building online reputations, those who traffic trust are "trust agents" and key people for any business.  Putting the Public Back into Public Relations shows how to reinvent PR around two-way conversations with traditional and new influencers, bringing the "public" back into public relations. Both are consistent thought leaders in the area of PR. Web Analytics 2.0 by Avinash Kaushik begins to bring accountability to web 2.0 online programs with focus on customer- centered thinking and measurement, and builds upon his 2007 book.

Of course, to participate in our ever changing digital and social world, strategic marketing and a deep customer focus are still paramount.  How is marketing evolving? In Marketing with Meaning, Bob Gilbreath outlines the next evolutionary step in a progression following direct marketing and permission marketing. The book calls for the end of "push and sell" marketing in favor of adding value to customers' lives. Excelling in marketing also starts with listening...In Listen First. Sell Later, Bob Poole outlines the benefits of listening FIRST. And to remind us about customer- centered marketing, I Love You More Than My Dog by Jeanne Bliss is a great read. Who can argue that companies like Lands End didn't get it right early on?

Eating the Big Fish still feels as relevant today as it was when it was first published. The 2009 edition is packed with new examples and Morgan's eight credos still worthy of consideration-especially for small specialty and biotech Pharmaceutical brands. In FREE: The Future of a Radical Price, Chris Anderson (Long Tail) argues that in the digital marketplace, the most effective price is no price at all. He illustrates how savvy businesses are raking it in with indirect routes from product to revenue with such models as cross-subsidies and freemiums.  But when you stop to think about the real changes in expectations that the web has brought about, this is a book to think hard about.

Tim Brown's Change by Design suggests that innovation in today's world means taking a design thinking approach, and one that is human-centered. The CEO of global design consultancy IDEO offers a guide for thinking and organizing our everyday creative processes.  A great book and a nice break  from so much focus on social media...

The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs is a must read for anyone looking to improve their own presentation skills. Why not learn from a master, who is consistently voted the most important CEO of the decade?  Knowing how to present is critical today, but this book goes beyond just presentation tips...Power of Less is a very useful reminder to focus (and act) on what is most important and forget the rest. It's simple and direct without the fluff. Born to Run, while not a business book per say, provides lessons in mind and body, and shows the advantages of anthropological learning from others, in this case a special Indian tribe from Mexico.

Favorite Business Books of 2009

1. Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google, Social Media, and Blogs (The New Rules of Social Media) by Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah

2. Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation and Earn Trust by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith

3. Putting the Public Back into Public Relations: How Social Media is Reinventing the Aging Business in PR by Brian Solis and Deidre Breakenridge

4. Web Analytics 2.0: The Art of Online Accountability and Science of Customer Centricity by Avinash Kaushik

5. The Next Evolution of Marketing: Connect With Your Customers by Marketing With Meaning by Bob Gilbreath Listen First Sell Later

6. Listen First Sell Later by Bob Poole

7. I Love you More than my Dog: Five Decisions That Drive Extreme Customer Loyalty in Good Times and Bad by Jeanne Bliss

8. Eating the Big Fish: How Challenger Brands can Compete Against Brand Leaders by Adam Morgan (2009 reprint)

9. FREE: The Future of Radical Price by Chris Anderson

10. Change by Design: How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation by Tim Brown

11. The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs: How to be Insanely Great In Front of Any Audience by Carmine Gallo

12. Power of Less The: Fine Art of Limiting Yourself to the Essential...in Business and in Life by Leo Babauta

13. Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes and the Greatest Race The World Has Never Seen by Chris McDougall

Other books you think should be on this list?

 

Books I plan to read in the New Year:

1. Viral Loop: From Facebook to Twitter, How Today's Smartest Businesses Grow Themselves by A Penenberg

2. Googled: The End of the World As We Know It by Ken Auletta/What Would Google Do? By Jeff Jarvis

3. The Social Media Marketing Book by Dan Zarella

4. Chief Culture Officer: How to Create a Living, Breathing Corporation by Grant McCraken

5. Presentation Zen Design: Simple Design Principles and Techniques to Enhance Your Presentations by Garr Reynolds (due December 28, 2009)

6. Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel Pink (due out December 29, 2009)

7. Lynchpin: Are You Indispensible? by Seth Godin (due out January 26, 2010)

8. Rework by Jason Fried (due out March 9, 2010)

What about you? What's on your list to read?

 

Other blogs to read related to these favorite books of 2009:

If You Charged For Your Content, Would Anyone Pay? By Jonathan Richman Dose of Digital blog

Marketing With Meaning: Is there any other way? Advertising Age

Pharma: Are Current DTC Ads Meaningful? By Ellen Hoenig Notes From the Back of the Book blog

How Marketing With Meaning Can Save Pharma (3 Part Series) by Jonathan Richman

Book Review: I love You More Than My Dog - Small Business Trends

Pharma: Say NO To More Bullets! and Presentation Tips  by Ellen Hoenig

Pharma: Is Your Marketing Designed to Engage and Educate or Sell?  By Ellen Hoenig

For my list of top books of 2008 and 2007, click here.

Happy New Year to all! See you in 2010!

 

 

 

Pharma: It's All About a People-Driven Economy, Stupid!

All summer, I've been watching a nearby farm's crop of sunflowers grow and reach for the sun...In taking some pictures this weekend, I couldn't help but notice all the bees busy pollinating these sunflowers. Interesting, it is estimated that one third of the human food supply depends on insect pollination, most of which is accomplished by bees, especially the domesticated European honey bee. (Wikipedia) How does this relate to Pharma and Social Media Networks?

Bees may be solitary or may live in various types of communities. The most advanced of these are eusocial colonies found among the honey bees, bumblebees, and stingless bees.

Eusociality (Greek eu: "good/real" + "social") is a term used for the highest level of social organization in a hierarchical classification.

1. Reproductive division of labor (with or without sterile castes)
2. Overlapping generations
3. Cooperative care of young

So where do we humans fit in? How social are we really? Is Social Media a close cousin of Eusociality?

1.       Division of Labor:  Social Media pundits often say that social media actually helps us to be more efficient by reducing overlap of work and creating more effective division of labor... "Social media is not a waste of time; it actually makes people more productive. We no longer look for the news or things of interest-they find us,"  says Erik Qualman in his new book Socialnomics.  How many patients prefer to learn from each other? Trust advice from friends, family and other patients?  How much time does this save each new patient or their family?

2.       Overlapping generations:  Chris Anderson's groundbreaking book, The Long Tail,  describes the ability of the Internet and Social Media to easily and effectively service small interest groups...to reach and impact people with common interests (and overlapping generations) vs. the traditional demographic targeting of mass media.  Even without the Internet, overlapping generations has existed for centuries in social communities, bonding common interests passed down by word of mouth...When sickness takes us, we share a common bond with others--having less to do with age and more to do with common medical experience and learning potential of patient and/or family caregiver...

3.       Cooperative care of young: I'm a huge believer in the common African proverb:  "It takes a community/village to raise a child"...or to raise a new generation of marketers and community builders? Social Media is all about original content, learning and sharing what we learn from others and staying in touch with the people that we trust and can help us care for ourselves and our families...How does social media help you care for others?

So, if insect pollination accounts for 1/3 of our food supply, how much do we think social media connections accounts for in our economy?

According to Erik Qualman's Socialnomics: it's no longer about the economy stupid...

It's all about a people-driven economy, stupid...

Pharma continues to take 'baby steps' into the world of social media--What are Pharma's next big steps to get closer to a people-driven economy?  Sounds to me like social media is only part of the answer.  Pharma must also include a move to greater, genuine patient-centered marketing...putting the needs of the consumer and their family at the center of decisions throughout clinical development and commercialization, and encouraging greater dialog and shared responsibility between the doctor and their patient...

Any thoughts?

Pharma and Social Media: What Role Should Personas Play?

Last Thursday, I attended Business Development Institute's Social Communications & Healthcare Conference. There were a number of good presentations for Pharma social media. One that stood out was the folksy talk given by Pfizer's VP/Worldwide Communications Ray Kerins. Ray ingratiated the group by acknowledging that Pfizer still has a long way to go, but promised to listen and try to get it right... Or listen to Rick Wion, VP of Interactive media at GolinHarris, co-creators of McNeil's two ADHD social media sites, speak about how to work within the regulatory environment.  Jonathan Richman also presented Healthcare and Social Media: Know the Rules.  And for conference takeaways, read Sally Church's Pharma Strategy blog The Challenge of Social Media in Pharma as well as Steve Woodruff's Impactivity Blog Pharma and Social Media Progress!.  Or follow the many tweets at #BDI.

As part of the conference, I also attended a round table session on Personas led by Carol Banks Setter, SVP of Strategy, WHITTMANHART. Interested in the use of personas in marketing, I wanted to hear what was new...

WHITMANHART uses personas primarily for web design to maximize the user experience- using real insights so that design is aligned with deep understanding of the audience.  This allows them to make ‘swift and accurate' decisions throughout a project's design based on each Persona's needs. 

Other discussion during the round table centered on whether personas can be helpful tools to integrate on-line and off line brand communications and product design...and whether personas complement, replace and/or extend the traditional segmentation work most often done in pharma today. 

Implications for Pharma Marketing

While the use of Personas has its detractors (37 Signals), I am of the mind that-when done well- personas can be an important tool for all brands, including healthcare ones, to:

• Build empathy and increase their ability to deliver patient-centered solutionsby incorporating real needs and usage into the design and functionality of all key marketing initiatives; for many pharma brands, this would take websites and social media activities to the next level...
• Help leverage and execute segmentation strategies beyond their current state; Market Segmentation is an invaluable tool for identifying the groups of people most likely to ‘purchase' your product or use a website and why. However market segmentation is not designed to provide deep insight into how the website, for example, needs to work and how it is best designed to full fill user expectations and needs. Personas drive understanding of how people will actually use the site or product/service. (KM Column: An intro to Personas; Cooper Journal: Reconciling Market Segments and Personas)
• Communicate and integrate all brand design activities(I'm thinking design in the broadest sense here across off line and on-line advertising, relationship marketing, social media, and product/clinical planning); Personas can lead to better decision frameworks for strategy (offerings, channel usage, features), marketing (branding and communications, market research) and design (information architecture, interaction design, visual design, content, user testing).
• Provide a means to consider and test the potential impact of different scenarios against user needs and actions.This can help teams express product/service imperatives for clear prioritization of product requirements and deliverables;
• Facilitate productive brainstorming for cross-functional teams; Personas can help bring focus, channel creativity and encourage consensus.
• Avoid the "sum of all desired features", the logical approach if you canvas the user community, but one that results in weak and inappropriate interaction design (Alan Cooper: The Origin of Personas)

What Makes for a "Real and Productive" Persona?

• Personas are based on real data- quantitative, qualitative and ethnography, field studies/usability testing...Traceable details that researchers heard or observed firsthand
• Personas describe people's current behaviors in the context of their lives. Good descriptions capture: attitudes, work or activity flows, environmental factors, skill level, current frustrations and goals, including end goals, experience goals and life goals.
• A human face and picture adds to the power and credibility of the tool; don't give them funny names-dilutes empathy.
• Maximize usefulness of sets; show how the persona set describes a range of user behaviors. Embody context of entire product/service work flow involving separate individuals.
• Use the personas as a tool within a scenario-based approach to interaction design and communicate design solutions.
• Personas weren't designed for one-time use, but work best as an on-going tool

Times Not to Use Personas

• Product space and target users are extremely well understood by you and all of your decision makers
• You're designing for a very narrow group of users to which you have direct and easy access
• Your users are your stakeholders

Personas are a tool...a means to an end. They are not an end in and of themselves. Good personas aren't fictitious, abstract, or a replacement for user research.

What's your thinking or experience using personas? Could well thought-out personas help Pharma brands deliver a more consistent and superior customer-experience?

 

For additional reading:  Death to Personal! Long Live Personas!E Bacon & S Calde; Cooper Journal: Reconciling Market Segments and Personas; The User Is Always Right: Making Personas Work for your site by S Mulder

Photo credit: iStock

 

 

How Many Customers Would Bring You Soup If They Knew You Were Sick?

Soup metric...is the number of people in your social network that you know would bring you soup if they knew you were sick and/or get your back in any other real friend way - to help you feel better OR help your career.

In her blog, Tara Hunt writes: "There is a misconception that there is some sort of delineation between your close-knit friends and those who are in your business network. I believe this is the result of extending the concept of bonded and bridged social ties that was first distinguished by Robert Putnum and more recently extended and discussed in business concepts by people like Ronald Burt. Though I see value in both building close (bonded) ties with people while extending the reach of your network and expanding your loose (bridged) ties, I am perplexed by the notion of dismissing the power of those connections closest to you.

You see...as I've experienced online communities, the same people who would bring me soup voluntarily when I've been sick have also been instrumental in moving my career forward. These are the people who will go to bat for me no matter what. I need these people ESPECIALLY during times like these: an economic downturn. As the number of people who would bring me soup when I am sick grows, so does my career, business and ability to accomplish really great things. Of course, all my close bonds have to start somewhere. They come to me through the looser ties and slowly grow more bonded. However, if I only concentrated on branching out and failed to build and grow deep, strong connections, I wouldn't get very far at all...

Of course I should add that the soup metric has to be reciprocal to work: the soup offer has to work both ways...This number is the only metric I, personally, give a damn about. It's the core of whuffie IMO," says Tara Hunt author of the WHUFFIE Factor: Using the power of social networks to build your business.

So it seems pretty obvious that building deeper relationships with our friends and network is pretty key...engaging, adding value, building trust...

How many of our customers would bring us soup if we were sick? Would help us in times of need?           

How many customers would watch our back when we need it? Would continue to support us and even defend us should we make a 'mistake'? e.g. J&J's Motrin campaign, Tropicana's package change, Pfizer's Lipitor Jarvik association, Daytrana patch voluntary withdrawal...

How can we best measure the equivalent of the soup metric for our best customers?

Here are some thought starters for possible measurement:

• Customers that go that extra mile to call or write-in to tell you something positive (or something helpful) about your brand/company? ...Or bring you a new opportunity?

• Customers that speak (or write) to others on your behalf (and without pay)?

• Customers that provide a testimonial on your behalf?

• Customers that consistently return to your website and/or co-create content?

• Customers that have stuck with you even during times of product 'issues and opportunities' you were working through?

How do you measure your soup metric for your best customers? Thoughts?

 

Photo credit: flickr.com/photos/Daniel Greene

Pfizer Takes A Page From Hyundai Marketing With New Recession Offer!

Yesterday, Pfizer announced a FREE Medicines Program for newly unemployed Americans.  The new program will help eligible unemployed Americans and their families who have lost their health insurance maintain access to their Pfizer medicines for free for up to 12 months or until they become re-insured (which ever is first).  

More than 70 Pfizer primary care medicines will be available through the program, including such chronic medications as Lipitor, Celebrex and Lyrica, but not some of the costly specialty drugs for diseases such as cancer. A key requirement is that a person must have been prescribed and taking a Pfizer medicine for at least 3 months prior to becoming unemployed and enrolling in the program.

The inspiration for the new program, called MAINTAIN (Medicines Assistance for Those who Are in Need), was generated by Pfizer employees who were witnessing friends, family and neighbors struggle to make ends meet after losing their jobs.  "We thought there must be some way we could help recently unemployed people who are taking Pfizer medicines to continue treatment during theses challenging economic times," said Dr. Jorge Puente, Pfizer's regional president of Worldwide Pharmaceuticals, a leading champion of the initiative.

Pfizer employees proposed the idea of MAINTAIN to the company's senior leadership team just within the last month. Pfizer employees also asked to be able to do their own part by donating their own money to the program, and the Pfizer Foundation will match their donations.  Unlike most pharma financial assistance programs, which are aimed at low-income patients, Pfizer's new program doesn't have restrictions involving enrollee's incomes prior to their job losses.

Sounds a little bit like the groundbreaking Hyundai "Assurance" offer --to cover monthly payments in the event that a person becomes unemployed --which received tremendous publicity during this year's Superbowl coverage.

Across pharma, the barrage of free prescription offers continues to escalate. BMS' Orencia (Rheumatoid Arthritis) introduced a rich offer Qtr. 1 to help fight the recession--6 free months and one month co-pay for a competitive product if the patient isn't satisfied with Orencia.  Other Pharma companies have also recently expanded patient-assistance programs to help Americans combat the recession.

With nearly 46 million Americans lacking health insurance coverage, and the number increasing as unemployment rates reach their highest levels in 25 years...the steady growth of generics continue to create intense pressures on branded pharmaceuticals...

"Pfizer is counting on word-of-mouth to bring attention to the new program. It will not advertise through traditional media, and it won't need to," according to Advertising Age.

This is a smart  and calculated move given the political pressures on the industry right now!

Beyond drawing some favorable publicity to itself, and perhaps even to the broader pharma industry, will Pfizer's program dramatically help it to keep patients from actively switching to lower cost generics?  How many Americans will actually take advantage of this program and will it have a noticeable impact on prescription trends?

Pfizer's new program is sure to set off more action across the industry...but true to a leader, they've taken a bold first step-- trying to stay current with today's customers.

 

The New Marketing: Leading A Tribe to Create a Movement?

Every once in a while, it's good to take a step back...

The Ted Tribe Talk: "Tribes are what matter now" just went live.  In 17 minutes, Seth Godin bring to life his story: the Internet has ended mass marketing and revived a human social unit from the distant past: tribes. Founded on shared ideas and values, tribes give ordinary people the power to lead and make big change... Everyone and anyone should step up--find something worth changing and start a movement by asking the tribe to spread the idea...

 

 

Seth speaks to the evolution in marketing from factory, to mass market and "push" advertising,  to the growth of the internet and the idea of tribes as a way to lead and connect people and ideas. He believes that tribes are what people want now--tribes can create movements that can help change the world-- not because of force, power or money-- but because people want to connect especially to something worth changing. Seth makes the point that its not about the numbers, but creating a movement among the people that care--the true believers--and as little as a thousand believers is enough.

In his Ted talk, Seth outlines 4 key steps that move in a continuous circle:

1. Tell a story
2. Connecting a tribe
3. Leading a movement
4. Make a change

Seth believes that leaders today:

1. Challenge status quo--"they are heretics"
2. Build a culture through their curiosity and ability to connect like-minded people
3. Gain charisma by leading (and not the other way around)

(You can find the book and more information here.)

My friend Sophie is just embarking on starting her own movement. She's trying to incite awareness, funding and greater use of the many miles of open space trails right here in Princeton, NJ--the most populated state in the country--with a new book that outlines 16 great walks. She's not doing it for the money (all the profits go to local land preservation organizations), but to bring the simple joy of using and appreciating our local open space land to as many in our area as possible. For years, I've enjoyed many a morning walk with Sophie and friends--a few moments of connected friendship, health and activity surrounded by nature and beauty. (Yes, there really are a few trails that you'd be hard pressed to think you're in 'jersey'...)

In 1998, Jenifer Estess, her family, and friends, started Project A.L.S. when Jenifer was diagnosed with the fatal brain disease (also known as Lou Gehrig's disease) at the age of thirty-five. Upon discovering that there were no effective treatments, Project A.L.S. set out to put medicine into place.

The mission today is to bring the best science to ALS patients in the form of effective treatments and, ultimately, a cure. Project A.L.S. has raised over $37 million, directing 81% to research programs. The hallmark of Project A.L.S. research is collaboration. Researchers who were competitors now play on the same team, meet regularly, share data openly, and work rationally, constructively, and aggressively toward shared goals.

My childhood friend Valerie and her sisters never asked for permission, and have accomplished incredible success with no formal pharma marketing or product development experience...just intense focus and the belief that status quo wasn't good enough...

Seth argues that leadership is the best marketing tactic for any organization--and a marketer's role today is to find, connect and lead tribes in order to make change happen.

In thinking about pharmaceutical and healthcare marketing... who will take that leadership role?

I hope to contribute to changing the role of marketing in pharma and healthcare today from one historically based on "push" (and I don't just mean DTC advertising but also the whole R&D Development and Salesforce selling approach) to:

• one of greater customer and patient focus at every step of the way

• authentic product and marketing differentiation, and

• simplicity in design and execution (more emphasis on the "elegant solution" vs the shotgun approach). 

• This would mean that the consumer/patient is not only fully integrated into the development and business model, but actually has a seat at the table at every important decision (which unfortunately is still not the case across the industry). This would also mean leading change in how we engage and collaborate with customers and consumers...which includes, but goes beyond the use of social media...DTC in the 21st Century (DTC 21)

What are you not happy with? What do you want to change? What is worth starting a movement about?