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Marcee Nelson

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A Wellness Advocate in action: LYSOL Mission for Health

Published by Marcee Nelson on January 17, 2012.

As Advertisers, we’ve been taught to look for the right buyers for our products–intersecting the right individuals at the right time with the right claims to convince them to buy.  In today’s health and wellness marketing landscape, brands become relevant not by simply being different but by making a difference—by behaving as Advocates. That means finding a shared purpose with our consumers, proving it through actions and interactions and connecting stakeholders around the purpose. The goal: to create not just buyers, but ambassadors of the brand who will self-multiply.

Many brands today are saying the right things…telling consumers they have a “higher purpose.” What separates the LYSOL effort is how the brand is backing up the words with actions.  LYSOL’s campaign, Mission for Health, is a great example of applying the principles of an Advocate brand.

Like many health and wellness brands, LYSOL has a science-based differentiation: it kills 99% of bacteria.  But through Mission for Health, the brand truth is laddered up to a greater shared purpose with moms.  The campaign easily allows for new products and product improvements that continue to prove Lysol’s mission for health. It uses mass media as a mass invitation to a more involving online and grassroots experience.

How LYSOL Mission for Health puts Advocate principles into practice:

Shared Purpose: Reducing the spread of flu and colds at home and at school.

Action: Along with education around prevention, LYSOL proves its commitment to the purpose through acts of generosity, such as a $5 rebate on flu shots.

Serving: LYSOL is empowering schools, through a program endorsed by a leading pediatrician, to teach healthy habits to children and increase school attendance through the Lysol Blue Ribbon School Attendance Challenge that rewards schools for low absenteeism.

Connecting: LYSOL brings advocates for health together through its efforts in schools, humanitarian efforts and through online forums and community.

Dialogue: On lysol.com/missionforhealth, consumers can join dialogue around the greater purpose of health (including products) or can ask questions of experts from the healthcare and science community.

Citizenship: LYSOL has partnered with Save the Children, a non-profit humanitarian and disaster relief organization to support the needs of children and their families whose health and safety are affected by disasters. The difference between this effort and adjunct cause marketing is that it is directly linked to Mission for Health, so it is meaningful proof of the purpose, not just general goodwill.

Authenticity: First-time moms are provided with educational resources on keeping themselves and their infants healthy with information available at OBGYN offices, pediatrician offices, on www.lysol.com/missionforhealth and other online communities.

Ambassadors: Joining the Mission for Health cause allows moms to review products and get health tips they can pass on to others. Also, the Mission program includes a Community Heroes Contest, with winners judged on improving the health or happiness of a community, and the possible impact of a community improvement effort.

Without these Advocate principles in action, LYSOL’S Mission for Health campaign would just be another pretty Advertising tagline.  Kudos to the Advocate brand builders behind it.

*For more information on health and wellness visit thewellatgsw.com.

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mnelson

Every time an Rx is written, it’s another New Year’s Day.

Published by Marcee Nelson on January 3, 2012.

Right now we’re all thinking about starting a brand new year, ready to put our good intentions into action—you know, our plans to work out more, eat less.  Form new good habits.  Break the bad ones.  It seems to be human nature to need—or at least like—a trigger point for change.  So every January 1, we declare our intentions to make daily wellness choices in the new year.  And we all know what happens next.  By June a few of us are still at it, but many of us are back where we started.

That 6-month mark is a familiar theme for pharmaceutical marketers.  Because that’s the time the average persistence curve takes a dramatic dive south, especially for chronic conditions. If we think like Advertisers, we rely on mass media DTC campaigns to tell people “ask your doctor” and we consider the box checked. But when our consumers walk out of the doctor’s office with a new Rx and some good intentions in hand, it’s like another New Year’s Day.  Six months later, where will they be?

Advocate brand-builders understand that ROI for long term commitment is return on involvement. So they focus more of their time, attention and investment post-script—they ask themselves not “how can we get consumers to adhere?” but “how can we stick with our consumers?”  The Advocate definition of DTC is Do, Teach, Connect.

Here’s why:

1) Because mass media offers no utility to us as consumers except to make us aware, and awareness is the most superficial level of involvement.

Do means taking action vs. sending messages:

  • Adding utility to media –making it somehow useful, not just interruptive
  • Creating tools and personalized support systems
  • Showing up to solve problems where and when it matters most
  • Using mass media instead as a mass invitation to an involving, personalized experience

2) Because, as we learned in Pink Tank’s 2010 She Says Survey of 1300 women, consumers want more transparency from pharma companies when it comes to risks and benefits.

Teach means empowering choice, not preaching information:

  • Improving their “health literacy” about therapies and procedures
  • Tying rewards and risks together in a complete, logical and honest story
  • Giving them ways to visualize what’s happening inside, especially in chronic and preventive conditions where they may feel no cause/effect

3) Because now a physician’s opinion is a lesser part of the equation.  Over 40% of She Says Survey respondents told us that before filling a prescription they gather consensus through their Circle of Influencers both online and off.  Consumers are now taking a bigger role in their own care and self-navigating their way, armed with knowledge and community.

Connect means finding new ways to bridge disconnects and dead-ends healthcare consumers meet as they try to self-navigate:

  • Correcting misalignments or gaps in their Circle of Influencers
  • Helping to start or facilitate conversations between influencers
  • Thinking outside the industry for innovative partnerships to form new continuums of self-care

So how about this:  On January 1, 2012, let’s resolve to involve healthcare consumers more by redefining and redesigning our DTC efforts with the goals of Do, Teach, Connect.  The result could be a happier and more involving New Year for all of us.

*For more information on health and wellness visit thewellatgsw.com

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Advertiser to Advocate: Does your brand feel like the perfect gift?

Published by Marcee Nelson on December 19, 2011.

It’s the gift-giving season.  Which brings to mind the quest for the perfect gift.  We’ve all received the not-so-perfect gift…it feels generic it doesn’t make us feel special.  We’ve all given not-so-perfect gifts, too…usually when we’ve got to “get it done.”

A perfect gift doesn’t have to be asked for.  It comes from listening, observing, understanding what we value and anticipating our needs. When we receive the perfect gift there is surprise and delight. It makes us feel cared about and cared for.  The perfect gift says, “you are important to me.”  A not-so-perfect gift could be really expensive.  A perfect gift could cost next to nothing.  What gives a perfect gift its value is the thought and time that went into it.

Creating a great brand experience is like giving the perfect gift.  By truly understanding what matters to our consumers and by investing our time and thought to solve it, we can create the kind of brand experiences that surprise, delight and involve them.

Six ways to make a brand feel like a perfect gift:

1) With thoughtful design

 Even the subtlest details in design can make our consumers feel more understood.  GE has put little touches in its appliances like a dishwasher with Smart Dispense that holds up to 6 months of dish soap.  This small time-saving gesture is a thoughtful feature for time-pressed moms.  Similac infant formula listened to new moms before designing the Similac SimplePac® with features like a one-hand grip so they can prepare formula with one arm while holding baby in the other.

2)  With delightful tools

We can offer tools that make our consumer’s life simpler.  Charmin shows its understanding of how hard it can be to find clean public restrooms with global sponsorship of SitOrSquat, an app that helps users find the cleanest restrooms wherever they are.

But tools don’t have to be literal tools.  Tylenol generously uses its media space to give simple tips to help people “Feel Better” that don’t include taking the medication.  The brand spends to pass on tips like eating cereal before bedtime.  Or demonstrating exercises to avoid getting a stiff neck while on long flights. Because they are not self-serving, these suggestions feel thoughtful—and make us feel Tylenol really does want us to feel better.

3) With acknowledgment

The simplest act of kindness a brand can give is attention.  It can be an unexpected thank you like the Starbucks barrista who tells a regular customer, “Today it’s on us.  Just because.”   Or Luna Bars reserving a space on every package to allow women to make tributes to other women they admire.  Or the ongoing support shown to nurses every year by Johnson & Johnson.

4)  With service

As Advertisers, we focus on selling, but ironically we might sell more by thinking about serving.  Especially in commodity categories, thinking like a service company can make a meaningful difference.  Department stores all carry similar merchandise, but Nordstrom’s has always differentiated itself through its customer service.  Pop Secret’s website has a fun movie finding guide that makes film suggestions based on mood, family type and occasion.  Topiaz is the OAB therapy that also comes with a program and a plan.

 

5)  With the gift of giving

By finding a shared purpose with our consumers we can help them to make a difference.  Pampers gives new moms the gift of caring for other new moms by donating 5 cents per pack to buy 45 million tetanus vaccinations for pregnant women in developing countries.  Buying Dawn dishwashing liquid is a way to save animals caught in an unhealthy environment.  From Gardasil moms are given the gift of giving to their daughters and sons, as HPV vaccination becomes protection from cancer.

6)  Most important, without “strings” attached

A perfect gift can’t be created with compromised generosity.  What the brand is giving in the way of support, tools or other value must feel worth more to a consumer than what the brand is asking of her.  If a “gift” feels self-promoting or inauthentic in any way, or if she has to give to get, all credibility is lost.

As Advertisers, we think of offering incentives as a way to get consumers to buy our brands. If that is all we do, we are simply buying buyers. Instead we need to put our efforts, our thinking and our spending into creating surprisingly delightful brand experiences.  Because that has the lasting value to build meaningful long-term brand/consumer relationships.   A value greater than any coupon.

The Advocate brand builder knows that through giving the brand will receive.  Happy gift-giving!

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mnelson

The What-Ifs vs. the Buts.

Published by Marcee Nelson on July 7, 2010.

The list of can’t-dos in our industry is getting longer and longer. As brand builders and marketers we must look for bold new things we can do. The need for true innovation is greater than ever. That dynamic makes it easy to get caught up in round after round of the What-Ifs vs. the Buts.

We’ve all witnessed this face-off in conference rooms, in hallways, in brainstorms, in strategy sessions, in brand reviews. It usually goes like this: someone lobs up a big What-If idea into the room where it twinkles like pixie dust in mid-air for a glorious moment while everyone visualizes it and then POP! It explodes like a clay pigeon. Shot down by a But.

Well, you might argue, not every What-If is a good What-If. Some What-Ifs are unconventional, implausible or downright crazy. Yes, that is true—like when Tamiflu partnered with the Warner Brother’s movie, Happy Feet: unconventional, implausible. And crazy? Like a fox.

Just think. Every time we can reduce the But-to-What-If ratio, we can tilt our teams toward can-do innovation. So, to that end, since there is no med-reg slapdown for negative thinking, now there is the But Citation:

But Citation

Feel free to download as many But Citations as you like and hand them out to offenders, especially those you work with who are on Auto-But.

And if you have any other ideas to keep the can-do going in your team, please share!

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mnelson

What if the only cells we brought to meetings were brain cells? (UPDATED)

Published by Marcee Nelson on June 2, 2010.

(Originally published on 4.27.10)

We have a new client on the west coast who has a wonderful policy for working back to the future—meetings with no cell phones or Blackberrys allowed!

Imagine actually focusing on one subject—the subject you are sharing with people across the table from you. Imagine your mind in the same conference room with your body. Imagine actual eye contact.

The irony of our digitally enhanced work lives is that in the effort to be multi-tasking and multi-achieving we often end up being virtually productive. Not to mention, just plain rude. I have a feeling this electronic-free meeting policy will move eastward. At least I can dream. Until then, I will be left without my own devices in conference rooms to come.

Update: It looks like I’m in good company on this idea. In a recent post on Harvard Business Review’s blog, Peter Bregman wrote:

“A study showed that people distracted by incoming email and phone calls saw a 10-point fall in their IQs. What’s the impact of a 10-point drop? The same as losing a night of sleep. More than twice the effect of smoking marijuana.”

Multitasking is a myth. Moving your attention from one thing to another is really interrupting yourself. (Not just your meeting). We lose focus, concentration, and – potentially – some of our best ideas.

(Article via Mark W)

Categories: New ideas and approaches
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