Is 2011 Really “The Year of Mobile”?

By DJ Edgerton (@wiltonbound)

The crossroads of pharmaceuticals and digital technology: Its a fast-paced, fascinating intersection of complexity and creation, regulation and ideas, strategy and innovation. This juncture is exactly where weve planted Pixels and Pills, here in our online home as well as physically here on the East Coast. And were looking forward to the last week of June, when this crossroads will move for a week to beautiful San Diego for the second annual Digital Pharma West conference. Well be there livetweeting and providing you with video coverage from speakers from Amylin, AstraZeneca, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Celgene, Cephalon, Daiichi Sankyo, Gilead, Jazz, MedImmune, Shire, Takeda and Watson, alongside many leading technology and digital innovation firms.

One of the sessions that has especially piqued my interest is a pre-conference workshop called “The Importance of a Mobile Strategys Integration Into Your Overall Strategic Marketing Plan, Not as a Standalone Strategy.

This is part of the basic conversation we have with all of our clients on mobile products, so Im very much looking forward to more people being educated on that point. Its become a bit of a cliche, “we need a mobile strategy. Its become the 2011 version of “we need a social media strategy.

The problem is, you cant just order up a mobile strategy like a take-out pizza. Its a good deal more like pairing a wine with a great dinner: you have to take into account everything else thats making up the experience to find the right one that will properly compliment everything else. Certainly, it might take a little more thought, but the result will be so much more worthwhile.

I especially like that that workshop precedes the conference, and then an entire day on mobile pharma follows on June 30. Thats excellent planning by the conference organizers, to begin by putting such an important issue into perspective, and then to give people a full day focused on it at the end, allowing the attendees enough time to really consider the elements that were brought up in the first session.

I do believe that 2011 will prove itself to be the year of mobile, but weve got to make sure that its a new door opening in digital opportunities, and not just a trendy-tech fad. Educational opportunities like this are exactly what we need to make sure that happens.