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.

You’ve told us that you want to see more about what goes on at Zemoga, the sponsor of this media property, so we thought we’d give you a quick look in at a recent project that the team is especially proud of. Maria Rueda gave us the lowdown on one of Zemoga’s new babies, the HeartBeats app (which was created for the Adobe AIR App Challenge), and the thinking behind it, as well as her thoughts on the competition.

Here’s what she had to say:

Originally, the goal was to have HeartBeats be a digital tool for surgeon training, simulating heart surgery with all of its inherent risks and complications. Since that’s obviously complex, creating it will require a lot of knowledge, investigations, permissions and reviews. To begin the process, and to be able to submit an app to the contest, we decided to turn the idea into a game.

This app is designed for everyone, of any age, who has ever dreamed about becoming a surgeon, or who has an interest in medicine. The goal is to demonstrate what a real surgery looks like and what all the tools are that heart surgeons use.

We hope to add difficulty levels to the app, different procedures and other types of surgery. In the long term, it would be great to turn the app into a real training tool; that’s a big challenge we’d love to take on.

While we’re disappointed we didn’t place in the contest, of course, it’s great to see how strong the winning applications are. They all share a high level of polish, creativity and innovation. Conqu, in particular, is a very clever take on the often-visited subject of task management, and Tweet Hunt – the overall winner – presents a fresh and fun way of reading tweets while playing a video game. Something that stands out is that the concepts themselves are not very complex or elaborate, but rather elegantly simple. It goes to show that in today’s mobile market, innovation, creativity and solid execution are the most important qualities.

Out of all of the winners, we’ve been particularly surprised by Level, which we believe succeeded in something that none of the other apps did: it managed to take advantage of the two screens on the Sony Tablet P by integrating it to its core mechanics. This shows the ability of the developer to harness the particularities of the device and use them to their advantage.

As more and more medical schools are handing their students a tablet computer on their first day, we expect to see a lot more applications like Zemoga’s HeartBeats. While it will never take the place of real life experience, it will be interesting to see how this technology will play a part in the future of medical education.

If you’re an Android user, download the free HeartBeats app yourself, and let us know what you think!

We’ve entered conference season and there are a lot of great ones on the horizon in the next few weeks. Our friend John Mack has a fairly comprehensive list over on his website, but he’s missing one that we’re particularly excited about.

The Life Sciences Innovation Forum, from Microsoft and our friends at ExL Pharma, promises to addresses how to excel in this shifting global climate, with the rise of the emerging technologies in the healthcare and pharma world, along with globalization and shifts in demographics, we’re seeing a change from the traditional model – and doors being opened to previously unthought of opportunities.

This is the first time this forum is being held and we’re happy that we’ll be there, interviewing attendees and speakers alike, bringing in as much information and content that we can, for you, our readers.

The forum will address questions like:

• What is the role of eHealth in clinical research?

• FDA is encouraging technology solutions to capture source data electronically – what does eSource really mean?

• How can we enhance collaboration by having the ability to access, share and analyze data more efficiently?

There will be presentations from Johnson & Johnson, Sanofi, Microsoft Health and Life Sciences, Eli Lilly, Pfizer and more.

Will we see you there?

Date: January 26 & 27, 2012
Location: Marriott Forrestal Village Conference Center, Princeton, NJ
Website: http://www.lsinnovation.com/
Discount Code: C210PPS

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?

by Briana Campbell (@MsMatchGirl)

By now, you’ve all had time to review the FDA’s draft guidance on Responding to Unsolicited Requests for Off-Label Information About Prescription Drugs and Medical Devices. And you’ve had time to read the multitude of responses that came after (if you didn’t, Fabio Gratton has compiled many of them for you). And, as this is something we’ve been talking about for over two years now, you’ve probably been waiting for our response.

We were disappointed in Advertising Age’s write up calling this Social Media “Guidelines.” While this draft guidance should clear some things up for pharmaceutical companies surrounding responding to unsolicited off-label inquiries via electronic media, without being the definitive guidelines that we’ve been waiting for since 2009 (head’s up, those are not coming anytime soon, if at all), it should be used as just that – a guide. We’re not lawyers (we’ll be getting you insight from one ASAP!), but we’d guess that keeping social media responses in line with these guidelines should keep pharma companies out of hot water for at least the near future.

As recently as December 2011, we posted a piece, “Shoot First, Apologize Later: Why Pharma Needs to Proceed Without Social Media Guidelines,” that offered up the idea that, with a bit of thoughtfulness behind it, pharma could easily embrace social media platforms, not only for the benefit of their own brands, but the patients that are searching the social web for answers.

Companies that want to change, lead or influence need to take calculated risks and proceed even without formal guidelines. Often, a permissible approach results in delays, obstacles and stagnation. For companies waiting for permission, by the time they get it, it’ll be too late. Someone else will lead the pack and they’ll again be reduced to playing catch up.

That doesn’t mean to proceed without caution and strategic foresight, but it does mean the time to act is now – not at some undetermined point in the future. Consider how the U.S. Navy has embraced social media for recruiting. Realizing that conversations are happening online, with or without guidelines, they chose to not fight it and instead promote social media usage throughout the ranks.

There are loads of heavily regulated industries joining in online. Why shouldn’t pharma be amongst them?

In lines 338 through 351 (on page 10) of the draft guidance, the FDA lays out some of the thought behind the draft guidance release, writing that “the Internet has revolutionized communication” and that it has “spawned a variety of social media tools that host online content primarily created and published by users other than the intellectual property owner or product manufacturer.” Given the nature of online communities and the public’s growing reliance on the social web to gather information about their personal healthcare via internet communities, web pages, social platforms and discussion groups, it makes sense that the FDA should offer some thoughts on how their already stated policies for responding to off-label inquiries (first laid out in 1982, and restated many times after) can be applied to trends in emerging electronic media. From lines 207 through 209: “This draft guidance sets forth FDA’s current thinking on this topic consistent with Agency’s past policy statements about responding to unsolicited requests.”

Many have mentioned, and we agree, that the language, as laid out in this draft guidance, seems a bit confusing. Our friend Jonathan Richman at Dose of Digital has you covered, with a handy flow chart explaining what pharma can and cannot do in responding to these requests. We’d recommend printing it out and hanging it eye-level, for easy reference.

The internet, web sites and the social web as we know them are constantly changing, evolving and growing. This draft guidance, while maybe not the set-in-stone policy so many marketers and the pharma companies they work with – so many of whom are terrified to dip a toe in the water of social media, for fear of drowning in misunderstood or mis-handled regulations and red-tape – were hoping for, are a nice step forward in clarifying how pharma can respond to inquiries, public and private, via the web.

So. Next steps?

Let’s keep moving. Let’s keep innovating, building, growing and pushing forward as the social web continues to do the same. With an eye to this guidance, and some strategic thinking before jumping on the bandwagon, there is no reason that pharma companies can’t join finance and insurance in finding out the all the good that can happen from participating in social media.

We say, listen to the conversation, develop a plan around it and go forth. Stop running scared. Be smart and you’ll be okay.

Here at Pixels & Pills, we like to push the envelope (or, better, encourage all of you to push it) when it comes to innovation in the healthcare space. That’s why we were so excited to have the opportunity to cover the Life Sciences Innovation Forum, produced by our friends at ExL Pharma in a partnership with Microsoft.

From the website:

The Life Science business environment and model is in a state of accelerating change. More drug approvals occurred in 2011 than any other year in the past decade. This brings some very exciting new opportunities to our industry. The traditional operating model separating Payers, Providers, and Government Health Agencies is under increasing pressures from globalization, healthcare reform, demographic shifts, and emerging healthcare technologies. The Life Sciences Innovation Forum addresses how to excel in this shifting global climate.

There is untapped potential for Pharmaceutical, Medical Device and Biotechnology companies to reap the benefits of the post-reform healthcare market. From discovery to product marketing, from manufacturing and distribution to patients, there are enormous opportunities to better leverage technology to create new business models, further differentiate your organization, and thrive in this dynamic environment.

At the upcoming LS Innovation Forum we are enlisting industry recognized experts and thought leaders to lead engaging sessions that provide you with strategic information to help you achieve goals in areas including:

• Patient Engagement
• Leveraging Enterprise Content
• Global Regulatory Collaboration
• Innovation Networks
• Leveraging Health Information Technology

Please take this opportunity to participate in the dialogue and be part of the exciting changes that our industry will experience in the coming months and years.

Register today for this exciting new event.

Date: January 26 & 27, 2012
Location: Marriott Forrestal Village Conference Center, Princeton, NJ
Website: http://www.lsinnovation.com/
Discount Code: C210PPS