By Sven Larsen (@svenplarsen)

Watching the big game last night,  I was struck by the diversity of products being advertised. Domain name registration and e-trading as well as the old reliables like packaged goods and automobiles. But one category was conspicuous by it’s absence. Where were the Pharma Superbowl ads?

It’s not like big Pharma companies don’t have the marketing budget for a Superbowl spot. And Pharma agencies certainly have the talent to pull off something as compelling as bungee jumping cars or Danica Patrick in a jumpsuit. So why no creative or splashy spot advertising a big name OTC or prescription product?

I can understand not wanting to spend the money on giving over half an uber expensive Superbowl spot to Fair Balance. But I also think it’s indicative of the way we sometimes approach Pharma marketing.

Pharma agencies have struggled for years with the perception that healthcare marketing is a “creative ghetto”, a place where fresh and original ideas are smothered by regulatory review and conservative clients. Of course, anyone who has been to the Mannys or spent any time in the industry knows this isn’t true. But, at times, I think we do suffer from an inferiority complex. A belief that spots like “1984″ are for cool, hip brands like Apple and not for boring old Pharma.

It’s an attitude we need to shake off. Whether it’s digital media, social marketing or more traditional outlets like television and print, Pharma needs to stand toe to toe with any other type of product and service and we need to use all the weapons in the marketing arsenal. Because, at the end of the day, our message is just as (if not more) important than Coke or Toyota’s. What car you drive or what soda you drink may enhance your life. But what drug you take or what healthcare behavior you modify may save it.

And if the message is that important, isn’t it time we got as creative as possible when it comes to spreading it?

By Sven Larsen (@svenplarsen)

What giant technology company is conspicuously absent from the healthcare business?

Reading Brady Olsen’s article on this blog last Friday got me thinking more about healthcare devices and who’s really doing it well. Yes Fitbit, Up by Jawbone and the like are gaining positive buzz. And Nike’s new Fuelband will just up the activity in that category. But the most popular device in that category remains the Nike+ devices they produce in partnership with Apple.

Why has Nike+ been successful? Partially because Nike is such a respected name in the sports and fitness community. But I think even more of it’s success has to do with its integration with the iPod device. The seamless marriage of technology with a near ubiquitous device (who doesn’t own an iPod at this point) are what attracts so many.

So why couldn’t Apple do the same for non-runners? Why couldn’t they create technology that integrates with the numerous iPhones, iPods, and iPads that we all have in our lives to help us better track our health?

The fact that Google and Microsoft have both made efforts in this area with limited success should make the challenge even more attractive to the braintrust in Cupertino (heck, Steve Jobs would have gone after this in a second). Reading Walter Isaacson’s recent biography of Jobs, it’s readily apparent that Apple’s seamless integration of hardware and software would give them an immediate advantage over other players in the field. And the App store is a perfect delivery vehicle for delivering software customized to specific patient conditions and concerns.

Adoption and compliance are like any other consumer behavior. Removing friction from the “purchase cycle” of healthcare will increase conversion and lead to better patient outcomes. And no one delivers a frictionless experience like Apple.

So come on Tim Cooke, join the party. Yes I want my new iTV. But what I really want is my iDoc, technology and software that will keep me fit and healthy so I’ll be buying Apple devices for the next forty years!

Who else is missing? What other companies need to make healthcare an important part of their business?

Today’s guest post is from Brady Walcott, VP of Strategic Marketing and Development at imc² health & wellness.

825. 750. 622.

This is not a phone number.  Or a GPS location. But one of those numbers could be your credit score. And while the majority of Americans don’t know their credit score by heart, many can tell you they know how to find it. As we live our financial lives, the good folks at Experian and Equifax silently assemble a wealth of information from multiple sources to let the guys down at the car dealership know if we’re worth the risk.

Imagine if you could do that for your health? Management guru Peter Drucker once famously said, “You can’t manage what you can’t measure.” And while a few diagnostic numbers are readily available to us—BMI, PSA, LDL, HDL and the rest of the alphabet soup—we have yet to find a way to measure holistic health and wellness. But we might be getting close.

At industry events such as Health 2.0, mHealth, TedMed—even CES—I’ve seen a proliferation of health and wellness products in the start-up phase or recently launched in market. As a self-professed health nut and gadget guy, I have personally tested many of the most popular on the market. Each with their own coolness factor, I often wonder if any have the ability to change my health behaviors, facilitate a deeper dialogue with my healthcare provider or improve my health. They definitely empower us to measure our behavior, but that doesn’t necessarily lead to measurable outcome.

Now is the time for the industry to align and move toward using data collection platforms to help proactive consumers understand how to use this information to make more informed decisions about their personal health and wellness. Doing so is a daunting task and will require the following:

1. A holistic predictive model. Can we start to merge the diagnostics used in major therapy areas to form a broader assessment of overall health risk? Successful evidence of this is available in the cardiovascular and endocrinology categories —can we create a more holistic view based on known and quantifiable numbers?  A view possibly inclusive of genomics data and wellness related sources such as fitness devices and applications.

2. An understanding of subjective factors. How do we recognize the impact of environmental factors like stress, geography and workplace settings? How does our psychology impact our physiology?

3. A simplified scoring system. Despite the complex algorithms that determine our credit score, the result is something so simple it has become universal. Can we achieve an analog in preventative medicine that would make discussing health risks and opportunities an accessible conversation?

I realize many Americans aren’t as inclined to take this proactive approach to their health – some may even fear it. But maybe that’s because the whole issue of health and wellness seems to be an overwhelming onslaught of test results and to-do lists rather than a portfolio of decisions you can actually impact. Regardless, I believe there is great opportunity to advance the way we view our personal health as a preventative measure and am optimistic about the advancements that have been made in recent years.

ABOUT BRADY WALCOTT

As a practice leader for imc² health & wellness, Brady pulls from his 20+ years of          experience in the healthcare sector to provide guidance to an array of industry leading    health and wellness companies. He strives to deepen relationships with stakeholders using  a sustainable approach that leads to measurable business results, long-term value, and an  overall positive impact.  To hear more from Brady, follow him on Twitter @BradyWalcott or  connect with him on LinkedIn.

By Krissy Goelz

Between the ongoing debate about U.S. healthcare reform, rising costs and an explosion of new technologies, what does the future hold for nursing?

It’s a vital question. The nation’s millions of nurses are front-line caregivers; virtually anything that impacts healthcare impacts nursing, and vice-versa. Figuring out changes to the profession based on healthcare reform and cost cutting goes beyond our expertise. But technology? On that, we’ve got opinions!

Nurses will become the lynchpin of the patient/caregiver experience. To a great extent, this is already true. The shortage of primary care physicians, combined with the shift to out-of-office, at-home care means that nurses are increasingly the main interface between a patient and the healthcare they receive. Technology is both an enabler and a challenge as part of this brave new world: On the one hand, nurses have access to more information at their fingertips than ever before. On the other hand, those same technologies mean that nurses face more pressure than ever before to accurately record patient data and, often, help patients themselves master health technologies.

The growth of technology will create a whole new field. Nursing informatics combines nursing and information management skills to support and enhance patient care. Informatics nurses develop and improve systems for telemedicine, telehealth and telemonitoring. Nurses working in consumer health informatics assess patients’ needs for health information and treatments, conduct research on how to meet a patient’s need for health information and self-management of health issues, and integrate their preferences into information systems. It’s a growing field with a lot of demand: The Bureau of Labor Statistics and HIMSS reports that the average salary in the nursing informatics field has risen substantially over the past several years.

Technology means caregivers are also, increasingly, coaches. Yesterday’s nurse taught the time-tested methods of insulin injection, catheter insertion or other personal medical tasks. But today – and even more so tomorrow – nurses will be teaching patients how to download and use smartphone medical monitoring apps, or giving them a tour of their electronic health records. While the specialists in nursing informatics will be important in helping the healthcare establishment better connect new technologies with patients, nurses of all stripes will likely have to master the process of teaching these consumer-facing innovations.

Against all three of those trends is a fourth: It’s all about the team. With medicine increasingly specialized, technology and teamwork are necessary to improve health outcomes. Nurses will be more mobile and, aided by technology, will be making care decisions in untraditional venues. For example, patients often need help deciphering complex medication regimens and in some cases nurse practitioners may help to simplify regimens. Nurses will need to coach patients and their care givers during transitions, easing the process from hospital to discharge, assessing them in their homes, and helping to coordinate home-based services. Here too, technology will play a growing role, as the rise of tablet-based and smartphone technologies for both patients and healthcare professionals are starting to show.

The common thread to all of these trends and predictions is easy to see: Technology will enable game-changing advances in patient care and healthcare administration. And nurses – long the front-line caregivers – will lead the way in this revolution,

by Sven Larsen (@svenplarsen)

Got $2000 to spare?

Never mind, I think I already know the answer.

In this “do more with less” decade, the idea of “spare budget” or discretionary funds is pretty much non-existent. And companies that are continually slashing sales forces and other key parts of their organization aren’t normally inclined to shell out a lot of cash for their employees’ professional development.

Unfortunately, no one seems to have told the Pharma conference organizers this.

Now we’re not trying to cut off our noses to spite our faces here. Pixels & Pills is well known for our conference coverage and we couldn’t bring you the videos and other helpful content we do without the strong support of companies like EXL, IXI, and BDI or folks like Kevin Kruse or Shwen Gwee. We see the best (and the worst) conference content that’s offered every year. And it pains us to realize  that when there’s a really standout presentation from someone like Tom Goetz or Ceci Zak only a very limited amount of the Pharma community are going to see it. Worse, our current “pay for play” model means that small startups who have great ideas but limited budgets aren’t even a part of the conversation. It doesn’t have to be that way and it hurts growth and innovation in our business.

One of the best conferences we attended over the last year was the PSFK conference in New York City. This conference, focused on innovation and the latest technologies is relatively cheap to attend (under $400) but full of the kind of people you want to hear from. Artists and entrepeeurs, technologists and designers, the people who are shaping our future before we even know it. Past speakers at the conference have included Shepard Fairey, Andy Spade, Dernnis Crowley (founder of FourSquare) and Richard Fine. Yes, only one of those speakers is directly related to healthcare but the mix of different disciplines and individuals is what gives conferences like the PSFK event, TED and SXSW the opportunity to identify what’s coming before it reaches the mainstream. And that’s something we’re sorely lacking in Pharma conference programming.

The low admission price also ensures that attendees are not just senior personnel from attending companies. Your organization could send five people to a PSFK conference for the same price as a ticket to an average Pharma event. That means you could take along that bright young junior manager or even that intern who shows such promise. The kind of people who might really embrace some of the new ideas being discussed and figure out how to apply them to your business.

There are alternatives of course. TEDMED and the main TED conference have created a terrific model for sharing highly educational content online. And free events like New York’s upcoming Social Media Week (with it’s Health and Wellness hub) provide a valuable alternative to traditional Pharma conferences. But ultimately we need to democratize both the speaker and attendee process for our industries major events. Conferences were never meant to be about spending thousands of dollars to hear paid speeches by big Pharma companies. They were meant to be an opportunity for the best and the brightest in our industry to come together and share ideas and best practices.

And that’s a model we need to return to.

What do you think? What would you do to make Pharma conferences better?

by Jason Brandt (@jasondmg3)

Mad Men protagonist Don Draper works in the show’s fictional advertising agency, but the challenges he faces are real, and not much different than what many healthcare marketers face on a daily basis – meeting deadlines, incorporating new technologies, managing perceptions, and influencing behaviors all while ensuring personal growth.

The pharmaceutical industry and Mad Men’s advertising world have a lot in common: both include vibrant and competitive industries, have major players that influence standards and rely on a targeted audience to boost their business. What can pharma learn from Mad Men?

The devil is in the details. Producer Mathew Weiner pays meticulous attention to every detail from casting to the story line as well as ensuring the props and the set accurately reflects the time period. Creating an authentic and engaging experience with every dialog, interaction and visual is why fans flock to the three-time Emmy Award-winning series. Pharmaceutical companies looking to create that same level of customer loyalty should incorporate that same attention to detail, whether that’s using an authentic voice when communicating on social networks, creating intuitive, customer-friendly applications and services or delivering outstanding customer experiences.

Pick a job and then become the person that does it. Bobbie Barrett delivered this little pearl over cocktails with ex-lover Don Draper. Explaining how she became her husband’s manager – a man who wouldn’t have a career without his wife’s revealing bust line and shrewd wheeling and dealing – she tells him she invented the job.

Ten years ago there was no need for an HTML5 programmer, social media strategist or elder care services coordinator – those jobs didn’t exist. With technology and increased access to information changing everything, companies need to have their pulse on what skills will be needed in the future and recruit a workforce with the right skills to support growth. Individuals also need to develop skills that continue to add value and take control of their internal career path.

Don’t overlook the value of reinventing yourself. Don Draper is a chameleon. Born Dick Whitman, he’s no stranger to reinventing himself, whether it’s changing his name or leaving an established New York advertising agency to launch a start up.

Pharmaceutical companies may find themselves needing a reinvention with the expiration of drug patents expected to affect drug pricing, marketing and patient usage. Surviving patent expiration will require pharmaceutical companies to refocus their marketing messages to ensure they don’t lose significant market share to generic competitors. Shifting the strategy from brand loyalty to one that includes a more life-cycle branding and consumer education emphasis can deliver a competitive edge.
If you don’t like what’s being said, change the conversation. When a New York City developer didn’t like how he was being treated in the press, Don Draper suggested changing the conversation.

Brand management today is a two-way engagement with consumers often having louder share of voice than company-issued messaging. Putting processes in place to monitor online conversations is no longer a nice-to-have but a business necessity. Before things go south, develop strategies for how you’ll respond to negative or inaccurate information. Changing the conversation doesn’t necessarily require hijacking a thread, but paying attention to what is being said and offering truthful information can help consumers maintain a positive perception of your brand.

While we may not wear the narrow ties or hair pomade of Don Draper, we can still follow in his footsteps by keeping track of the details, owning the conversation and being unafraid to innovate when reinvention is the best option.

Like my image? You can get yourself one over at Sterling Cooper.

by Jason Brandt (@jasondmg3)

Can two of the hottest organizational and operational trends from the last 20 years – Lean Manufacturing and Six Sigma – be adapted to pharma? That’s a trick question: They already have been, and quite successfully.

But, how about online pharma marketing? It’s a more interesting proposition.

First, some definitions for the majority of us who aren’t steeped in business-optimization methodologies: There are differences between Lean and Six Sigma methods of business, but both emphasize continuous improvement and a formal process of review and correction. Lean is sometimes seen as less time-consuming than Six Sigma; the easiest way to boil it down is that Six Sigma seeks reduced process variation, and Lean strives for improved process flow.

All of which sounds great if you’re running a manufacturing facility – who wouldn’t want fewer variations from an optimized process or an improved process flow? And they’re proven: Top-flight Six Sigma implementation is one of the factors that helped General Electric become a leader across many industries.

Applying these principles to digital pharma marketing isn’t quite the stretch you’d imagine. And while implementing a full Lean or Six Sigma strategy in your marketing efforts requires more than a lone blog entry for guidance, you can grasp some of the broad brush strokes pretty quickly:

Get good at measuring, and then measure everything. Whether you’re drawn to the Lean or Six Sigma model – and there’s a case to be made for both when it comes to pharma marketing – you’ll want to figure out how to measure things, both more comprehensively and more accurately.

Anyone exposed to social media or Web analytics knows you can measure online activity, but don’t be lulled into a false sense of security by these easy numbers. The sort of comprehensive measurement that these processes call for cover things like median and mean sales growth per sales rep in the weeks following an advertising campaign’s launch, or ROI per dollar spent on paid media in category-leading drugs (which might have much higher public awareness) versus secondary drugs.

Bottom line: You can’t track what you can’t measure and you can’t improve what you can’t track.

Round up your black belts. Six Sigma relies heavily on small groups of professionals, sometimes called black belts or green belts, empowered to review data, brainstorm improvements and then implement them. They operate with management’s approval, but they are also empowered to suggest changes outside of their department or division if that’s what it takes to improve quality.

Note a couple of key differences from many marketing processes: First, there’s an understanding that solving a problem might mean changes outside of the department or area of business operation – a big change for some marketing operations. Second and equally important is the idea of the small force of change agents, something that is necessary for breaking down organizational silos and stimulating overall movement of social initiatives.

Bottom line: Even if an organization’s social media strategy is centralized, training the entire organization can mistake-proof social execution.

Commitment to the process matters more than implementing it everywhere. Make no mistake: It’s a huge commitment to undertake either Lean or Six Sigma methodologies. That’s why it’s acceptable – advisable, even – to dip your organizational toe into the water slowly, with project-level and department level test projects. Try, fail, analyze, iterate and try again – get the process right for your team and your challenges, and then you can roll it out to more of your digital marketing efforts.

Bottom line: Every business is different. As new technologies, platforms and devices expand the digital experience, flexibility is necessary for managing a fast-moving, changing environment.

Marketing has always been a simple proposition: Deliver value in order to capture value. Within that context, business-optimization regimens like Lean and Six Sigma not only have a place in digital marketing, they’re just one more step in a long tradition of figuring out the most effective, efficient way to get the right value proposition into the right prospect’s hands so they can take action.

Last week Pixels & Pills’ editor Briana Campbell had the pleasure of sitting down for a Skype chat (so the quality is a little lower than our normal, professional videos) with Dr. Darshan Kulkarni (@FDALawyers) of the Kulkarni Law Firm in Philadelphia. And while the questions answered in the conversation don’t constitute legal advice and should not be constructed as such, we were very happy to get the thoughts of a lawyer on the recent FDA draft guidance. And to have him address some questions that you all had put forth on Twitter.

Further information on some of the things Darshan touches on can be found in the following sources:

The Park Doctrine

Par Pharmaceutical versus the FDA

FDA’s Cease and Desist to Triple Flu Defense

One more time, Jonathan Richman’s handy flow chart

He also mentioned to us, after we’d turend the camera off, that the FDA uses draft guidance as a way to express their thoughts on certain issues without the rigor of regulations. There is much draft guidance out there that never becomes finalized. To us, this means that we should take the guidance for what it is – all we are getting on emerging electronic/social media platforms at this time. And maybe ever.

Do you have questions for Dr. Kulkarni? Thoughts on this conversation? Leave them in the comments and we’ll continue the discourse.

By Sven Larsen

These days everyone is familiar with e-commerce. And our more social media savvy readers are probably all clued up on f-commerce (that’s Facebook commerce folks). I’ve even heard Google’s Adwords and Adsense business referred to as g-commerce. But what about the next letter in the alphabet. How come no one is talking about h-commerce?

Make no mistake; healthcare commerce online is big business (A Forrester research report projects 2012 Healthcare spending online will reach $8.7 billion). And the traffic for online health retailers is pretty impressive, too. Drugstore.com, a pioneer in the space nets 4.66 million unique users a month (and a not too shabby $416 mm a year in annual sales). But their traffic pales next to more traditional drug retailers like CVS (6.37 mm uniques per month) and Walgreen’s (10.6 mm uniques per month). And then, of course, there is the 800-pound gorilla of health info online, Web MD with a whopping 16 million unique visitors per month (to put that number in comparison, the New York Times website average 17 mm uniques per month). It’s clear that Americans are more than comfortable obtaining health information online and they’re also comfortable with online purchasing of the drugs and other healthcare products they need. So why aren’t we doing a better job of selling those products to them?

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not advocating digital snake oil sales or anything similarly distasteful (or anything that might get anyone in trouble with the FDA). In fact, quite the opposite. As an industry, it’s a real black eye for us that most people associate online drug information with spam e-mails offering cheap Viagra and that most of the discussion of drug sales online revolve around things like obtaining cheap Canadian pharmaceuticals. No wonder the Pharma industry has such a bad reputation with many consumers. While drug manufacturers have sat in their ivory towers doing their best to ignore conversations with consumers, the digital space has been ceded to shady characters who have no interest in preserving brand integrity or serving patient’s needs.

Yes, we’re bound by strict regulatory requirements that preclude us using some of the traditional methods that other consumer marketers use to tout the features and benefits of their products. But that doesn’t mean that we can’t find new and better ways to educate consumers about their health and help them maintain positive lifestyles. Or even just make their lives a little easier.

Consider the plight of a young mother who has just relocated with her family to a city where she doesn’t know anyone. She needs to find a GP she can trust for her family. She needs to find a pharmacist she can trust as well. Maybe one of her children has special needs and she needs to find a local support group. Maybe she just needs to know where that 24-hour drugstore is located. Perhaps she has a prescription that has run out and no one to authorize a refill. What does she do now?

She probably looks at Yelp or one of the many sites that publish HCP reviews. She may type the name of a national drugstore chain into a search engine and find a store at random. And she will spend a lot of time online looking for resources to help her and her family. Not a problem, right? We all know young moms have nothing but time on their hands.

How much better would it be if she were able to go to a one stop portal that contained tons of information about the healthcare resources available in her community? A site that listed HCPs, local specialists, pharmacists and patient support groups. A site that also provided links to educational resources online and e-commerce partners who could help with issues of supply and cost. A site sponsored by one (or several) Pharma companies that provided a real service to the community and a positive representation of our industry online. And, not for nothing, a site that increased compliance and by extension benefitted both the patient and the Pharma company.

The above, is just one example, of ways we can interact with and benefit the end consumer, without violating FDA guidelines. I’m sure our readers could come up with numerous other ideas. The key here is to once again step outside the narrow confines of our traditional industry thinking and to learn from other players in the market. A good start would be for Pharma companies to become more active in the general conversations about online marketing and retailing that take place at sites like INTERNET RETAILER and SHOP.ORG. Ultimately, the end consumer for Pharma is a consumer and we need to realize that despite all the rules that bind us, the purchase funnel for our products is no different than any other.

What do you think? Is this the year we finally start talking about h-commerce?

This post is part of a series of point/counterpoint arguments proposed by different members of the Pixels & Pills staff. We’re strong believers that healthy arguments can yield the best solutions, and we hope that you enjoy our series. Feel free to add your own arguments in the comments section below!

by Krissy Goelz (@krisgoelz)

In The Godfather Part II, Michael Corleone lambasts a Mafia crime family member following an attempted hit on his life.

“In my home!” he rages. “In my bedroom, where my wife sleeps! Where my children come and play with their toys.”

Even in the mob, business doesn’t belong in personal quarters. The same is true for how professional communicators should handle their social media presence. If your business role requires you to participate in social media, you need to lock down your personal profile, tailor privacy settings and keep what you do on the off hours separate from your job.

In my father’s day it was easier to compartmentalize work. You left the office at 5 p.m. and your personal life was your own. In the digital age, segregating personal details from professional ones is harder, and it takes a great deal of diligence. But, it’s worth it if you want to build an image as a thought leader, trusted advisor or esteemed professional.

When participating in social media you have to enact the grandma rule. In the fields of Behavior and Psychology, this is known as the “Premack Principle.” What it means is conduct yourself properly and never post anything that you aren’t willing to shout from a rooftop or say in front of your grandmother. This is true of all social media users, but especially those who post on behalf of their organizations.

To borrow again from The Godfather, when participating in social media you also have to keep your friends close, and your enemies closer. There’s always danger of putting information into the wrong person’s hands – whether that’s competitive details, revealing personal health information or posting personal messages on Facebook during business hours. Even messages that are meant to be private sometimes find their way into the public arena. If you share too much of yourself, you may be surprised when it comes back to haunt you.

Blurring the lines between work and personal life can cost you reputation or financial damage. Just because you qualify something you post with the caveat “the views reflected are my own and not that of my employer” doesn’t mean that a reader is able to maintain that separation. In fact, the more the lines between work and leisure blur, the harder it is to separate our identities.

One way to manage a clean division is to use different platforms for different purposes. For example, keep business relationships and professional content on LinkedIn or Twitter. Use Facebook to connect with college roommates, neighborhood or childhood friends or other personal connections. If you want to use platforms like Facebook or Google+ for both purposes then make sure you create two profiles and work the privacy settings.

While you could argue that we’re all multidimensional human beings and everyone knows people have a work personality and an after-hours persona, there’s still no reason to mix them together.

We’re at work to work and do great things on behalf of our employers. How and when we socialize needs to be kept separate. Also, judiciously parsing information is never a bad thing. It’s good to keep a little mystery about yourself.

There’s no way to know how even the most inane things will be perceived by an outsider, whether it’s having a bad day or not being able to relate to your training for the New York City Marathon or sharing feelings about the NRA. Connecting with others online is critical, but as with anything, perception is reality. Shaping and controlling how you’re received requires a disciplined approach to managing your digital profile.

How are you handing your online presence?