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dmarinacci

The Well @GSW named as New Venture to Watch

Published by Dawn Marinacci on December 14, 2011.

Health and wellness is quickly becoming one of the most prevalent and hot topics facing healthcare marketers, DTC/OTC, and consumer packaged goods retailers. Med Ad News (MAN) recently named our health and wellness group, The Well @GSW, one of three pharmaceutical marketing ventures to watch that could change the way pharmaceutical products are marketed and sold. Josh Slatko of MAN asked several of our leaders about the impact health and wellness will have on the future of pharma marketing. Marcee Nelson, Chief Creative/Content Officer for The Well @GSW had this to say:

“Our industry thinks in terms of ‘patients’ versus ‘consumers,’” Ms. Nelson told Med Ad News. “The distinction seems inconsequential, but has huge implications in how we feel and approach our audiences. When we think ‘patient,’ we picture a person in a gown being shepherded through the system by healthcare authority figures. Newsflash: Patients are consumers – more demanding, more informed, more unified than ever before. Today, the physician’s opinion is only part of the decision. Due to knowledge-as-commodity and global community, each consumer has a ‘circle of influence’ she/he consults, a phenomenon we call ‘composite decision making.’ With less authority, we must find new ways to influence.”


To read more, click here.

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brizzo

Is your body trying to tell you something? Are you listening?

Published by Brenda Rizzo on December 5, 2011.

Many of us deal with stressors every day. Stressors are confirmation that we are alive! There is no such thing as a stress-free life, but being able to integrate or adapt to stress can help us to reduce the damage that stress can exert on our health. And your body often tries to tell you when you are experiencing too much stress but we often ignore it. Let me explain.

Dr. Hans Selye, an endocrinologist, first began to describe stress in 1936. His observations led to a three-stage model of the body’s response to stress. He called his theory the general adaptation syndrome (GAS). The first phase is an alarm reaction, the second stage is one of resistance or adaptation, and the final stage is one of exhaustion.

  • In the alarm stage the body responds to a stressor, which could be physical or psychological. With the release of adrenaline your heart could begin to beat fast, or you might include butterflies in your stomach, a rise in your blood pressure, heavy breathing, dilation of your eyes, dry mouth, and the hair on your arms might even stand on end.
  • During the resistance stage of a stress reaction, your body remains on alert for danger. When this part of the GAS is prolonged, your immune system may become compromised and you may become susceptible to illness. And with prolonged stress changes take place that weaken your body’s ability to fight off disease.
  • The final stage of Selye’s GAS is the exhaustion stage. As your body readjusts during this period, hormones are released to help bring your body back to normal, to the state of balance called homeostasis. Until balance is reached, the body continues to release hormones, ultimately suppressing your immune system, contributing to illness.

Over time, these hormonal changes can lead to ulcers, high blood pressure, arteriosclerosis, arthritis, kidney disease, and allergic reactions. His seminal work “A Syndrome Produced by Diverse Nocuous Agents” was published in 1936 in Nature.

He described two different kinds of stress, eustress or “happy stress” and distress or “disturbing stress.” We have to integrate and respond to that stress in our lives, we have no choice.  However Selye noticed that changes we feel upset about (distress) cause much more biological damage than changes we feel good about (eustress).

How does stress affect health?

In the short term stress can affect your health by disturbing your digestion (desire to eat more than usual, or eat less, diarrhea or constipation) or affect your immune system (ever notice how you get a cold after a stressful period in your life?). But there can be some not so obvious deleterious health consequences. You may have a rise in blood pressure (which can affect your kidneys, cause a stroke, or contribute to heart disease) or you could have an increase in acid secretion in your stomach (which can cause irritation, or lead to gastroesophageal reflux disease or ulcers). These are just a few examples.

Short-term, the stress response can be normal – the body does this for survival. However a chronic or habitual stress response can lead to a “weak organ response”. For example, some of us have recurrent chronic back pain, while others may notice they go through periods of intestinal discomfort. Chronic hypertension can be your body’s response to long term stress, chest pain, leading to heart disease. Some people get asthma, or are susceptible to lung infections. Everyone has a body system or organ that responds to too much stress over an extended period of time.

What can you do about it?

Start to pay attention to your body. What is your weak organ that always responds to too much stress? When do you know you have had enough? Here are some tips to help you adapt to stress:

  • Journal, this will help you clearly identify your stressors and how your body responds.
  • Exercise increases your ability to handle stress and boost your immune system.
  • Eating healthy can maintain energy and reduce digestive disorders.
  • Keep good sleep hygiene, maintain the same bedtime, the same amount of sleep, and keep your sleep routine calm and similar.
  • Just say “no” when people ask you to do more than you know you can take on, say, “I am flattered that you thought of me, but no I can’t right now.”
  • Identify your support system and use it. Do you have friends or families that can help you out? Sometimes they just need to know.
  • Talk about the stressor, either with a counselor, minister, or close friend that can help you get perspective.
  • Know your limitations, listen to your body and slow down.
  • Set aside time for yourself for a warm bath, or a good book, or whatever helps you escape for a moment.

So what do I do over the holidays?

  • Avoid unnecessary stress, like people who stress you, or unrealistic expectations you set on yourself.
  • Avoid hot button topics that you know could upset you (politics, religion, economy).
  • Be willing to compromise to get along.
  • Don’t try to control the uncontrollable.
  • Try to forgive, long-term grudges can waste a lot of energy.
  • Look for humor, maintain perspective, shrug it off.

Remember stress may be not only having a psychological affect but also a weak organ response that could be even more damaging.

Categories: Health and wellness marketing
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leigh.householder

Rethinking rep tools: best practices for creating a digital detailing plan

Published by Leigh Householder on November 18, 2011.
By Leigh Householder and Sean Cowan. Originally published at www.pharmaphorum.com.

2011 may be remembered as the Year of the Apple in health care. Almost 1 in 3 physicians brought an iPad into the practice.1 The app stores offered 10,000 health and wellness apps. And, pharma and biotech leaders adopted the iPad in amazing numbers.2

Those tools have begun to change both healthcare and self-care. Now, they’re changing the frontline of sales and marketing.

Physicians welcome the shift. Forty-nine percent have already received a detail on an iPad or another tablet. They were able to name the details they remembered most – Pfizer, Merck, AZ, Abbott, GSK.3

Reps know how intrigued physicians are by the new tools – many report that their iPads have been plucked out of their hands by curious doctors who just want a test drive.

“Those tools have begun to change both healthcare and self-care.”

New questions from brand managers

This Spring, Digital Pharma East’s advisory board debated what critical topics attendees would be looking for this year. The conversation kept coming back to detailing: what tools should teams adopt, how will they change frontline conversations, what’s the right ROI model, how do we build our plan?

That got us thinking about the new best practices. We wanted to take what we’d learned launching and supporting e-detailing programs around the world and create a repeatable approach for launching sustainable digital detailing programs.

We identified four key elements at the foundation of the most successful plans:

• Content

• Training

• Measurement

• Integration.

Best practice #1: content – go native in the medium

All too often when a new tool arrives or a channel opens, the first question around the conference room table is: what do we have that we can repurpose?

But, the real opportunity on the tablet is creating something we could have never created before. The tablet details that docs remember have been reimagined, not repurposed.

“The tools we carry are changing the experiences we can create.”

Sixty-eight percent of physicians who have received a tablet detail said they were satisfied or very satisfied with the new experience. Those who were not said the detail appeared to be “optimized for another medium.” In other words – if you’re going to put your print detail on the screen, you might as well just bring the print detail.4

The tools we carry are changing the experiences we can create. Maybe more importantly, they’re changing the experiences physicians expect to have.

So, what can we create that we could have never created before?

Details that are custom, not canned

The iPad can support true scenario selling to allow our reps to customise the detail to the practice.

The rep can use what they know – or ask simple questions to fill in the blanks. That information can generate a more personalised experience.

Figure 1: Physicians can move five slider bars to show what topics they’re most interested in

In this simple example, physicians can move five slider bars to show what topics they’re most interested in.

Their answers dynamically change the content they’ll see on the next swipe. The options can be limitless, or carefully curated to be responsive to specific kinds of med legal review.

Conversations that are about tools, not talk

In digital and mobile mediums, people want to use our brands, not just read and learn about them. In our consumer lives that might mean getting a real-time quote, downloading a recipe or even completing an outfit.

In the practice, it means tools that make running the business easier, make conversations with patients more powerful, or just solve for everyday aggravations.

With a tablet in hand, reps can easily demo the great apps and tools the brand has created. The rep can even show the doc how to immediately install the tool on his own device.

Opportunities to shop, not drop

We think the days of trunk stock are short. Today’s physicians want more flexible leave-behinds – ones that include just the information they want and can be delivered any way they prefer.

The iPad’s touchscreen interface makes it easier to shop and select together. In this example, the rep is sharing a wide range of patient support tools.

Figure 2: The rep is sharing a wide range of patient support tools with the physician

The physician can click into anyone he’s interested in to see more detail and add it to a personalised cart. At the end of the detail, the practice’s name can automatically be added to most of the materials and the physician can choose which to send by email or text message and which to have shipped to the office.

“In digital and mobile mediums, people want to use our brands, not just read and learn about them.”

Interactions that are logical, not linear

Conversations never follow the path we sketch out on a white board. In the field, they’re much more like those ‘choose your own adventure’ books – even when they start in the same place, they have many possible endings.

The touchscreen interface can make navigating those meetings a lot easier.

Hot spots and callouts let reps drill down into the data or ideas the physician is most interested in. Toggles turn on or off levels of detail.  One tap can reorder a map or a chart to look at a question from a different angle.

Multiple paths create a sense of discovery (to replace the page flip). And, make it easier to get to the most relevant answers within the two-minute call window.

Stories we build together, not just tell to each other

The iPad can create a virtual lab, an interactive operating room, or any other space we might want to collaborate in.

That dramatically changes the interaction. Now we can build scenarios together that reflect the practice’s real patients and demonstrate the impact of a therapeutic.

In this example, we use pinch and zoom to pull apart and rotate a device, letting the physician see how it’s built and how it’s implanted.

Figure 3: Pinch and zoom can be used to pull apart and rotate a device, letting the physician see how it’s built and how it’s implanted.

Best practice #2: take the time to train

When an interface is as intuitive as the iPad, it’s easy to think: anyone could do it. But, when we’re rolling out to a diverse sales force, nothing could be further from the truth.

We recently came across this great quote from Dave Mihalik, senior director of marketing at EKR Therapeutics, which illustrates how adoption really works: “We thought we were being so creative in the way that we were delivering the training materials. But, the very first follow-up I got was, ‘Hey, can you send me a Word document with five clear steps so that I can open my iPad?’”5

The reason behind the gap is a little something called the adoption curve. The curve (below) illustrates how new technologies move from early adopters to mass adoption.

Figure 4: The curve illustrates how new technologies move from early adopters to mass adoption

“…if you’re going to put your print detail on the screen, you might as well just bring the print detail.”

Today, only 1 in 20 US consumers own a tablet. Most of us who do have been trained by Steve Jobs for years.  We learned a little about how the iPad would work from our first iPod, a little more for our first iPhone and a lot more from the changing iOS.

When we arm an entire sales force with iPads, we’re connecting with people who would have naturally been at many different points on the adoption curve if they were to buy an iPad themselves.

Another trick of the curve is that, the further we move across it, the harder adoption can become. Think of every single point on that curve as a ‘plus one’ – a person who’s never picked up the device before, trying it for the first time. If you’re an early adopter, it’s easy to admit you don’t know how it works. If everyone around you is an expert in how to use it, it can be a little harder to take the risk.

One successful strategy to help reps feel confident with the tools is releasing the technology before the content. Give reps one to three months to play with the tablet and make it part of their lives before you  mandate it for work.

Training on the content is essential, too. When tablet details take true advantage of the medium, the opportunities to change and guide the conversation can be endless. We’ve seen as much as a 50% gap in adoption between teams that just got an implementation guide and ones that got a guided tour.

Best practice #3: build a measurement plan upfront

There is one critical question brand managers should answer before undertaking any strategy: what do you want to accomplish? The answer will guide both what we create and how we measure.

Return-on-investment models are still emerging for the iPad. Some companies are measuring their cost savings (paperless workforce), others are looking to productivity (particularly access).  Whatever the brand’s larger goal, there are three emerging measurement models we’re tracking:

• Longitudinal measurement: cost per engagement pre-/post-launch

• Test-and-roll modelling: launching the iPad with a key segment first and tracking the test group versus a control group against existing metrics and goals

• Satisfaction tracking: field feedback (from physicians or reps) and overall access.

Best practice #4: create a truly integrated sales kit

The iPad offers new kinds of interaction and interactivity so reps can answer physicians’ questions on demand and engage with both marketing and operations in real time. An ideal sales suite makes the tablet the centre of a full set of tools:

Figure 5: An ideal sales suite makes the tablet the center of a full set of tools

References
1. Manhattan Research, 2011
2. First Word report, The Impact of iPads on Pharma, July 2011
3. Manhattan Research, 2011
4. Intouch Solutions & Harrison Group, 2011
5. First Word report, The Impact of iPads on Pharma, July 2011
Categories: Health and wellness marketing
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mark.stinson

$450 billion worth of unpaid family care – and 5 questions prompted by the AARP study

Published by Mark Stinson on September 27, 2011.

The conclusion of a recent AARP study is that families provide $450 billion worth of unpaid care. That’s how much it might cost for the care that roughly 1 in every 4 adults provide – helping loved ones get dressed, take medications, and myriad other tasks.  You can read the full article here.

With the wide diversity of family settings and career experiences among us at GSW Worldwide, this is certainly a trend that affects us personally and professionally.  So today, instead of just one person’s view, I’d like to offer some questions:

  • Caregiving is getting more medically involved, due to shorter hospital stays and more home-based medical technologies. Caregivers often have little training or preparation for performing these tasks, which include bandaging and wound care, tube feedings, managing catheters, giving injections, or operating medical equipment.
    • What are the implications to bio-pharma brands of a supportive caregiver now becoming an active care-provider?
  • About 42.1 million individuals are caring for relatives and close friends at any time during the year — and about 61.6 million provide care at some point during the year.
    • What is an example of a new communication tool or media channel that might be needed to engage this group?
  • The average caregiving individual is a 49-year-old woman with an outside job, who spends nearly 20 hours per week caring for her mother for nearly five years.
    • This describes a demographic profile, but what word might describe her EMOTIONAL persona?
  • The study includes recommendations for involving family caregivers to improve care for the aging patient.
    • What perils would face the bio-pharma brand manager who ignored this group?
  • AARP is an advocacy group, and this study certainly helps support its position and brand.
    • What other organizations, companies, or institutions could also embrace the cause of caregivers?

I hope you’ll join the “liberating conversation” and share your comments below.

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mark.stinson

Creating an ideal profile of “practice influencers”

Published by Mark Stinson on September 14, 2011.

Among healthcare marketers, we often use the term “KOLs” to describe key opinion leaders.  What we’ve found, though, is that clinical supporters must have more than opinions – they must be able to leverage change in practice behaviors.

A more desirable group of advisors could be described as “KPIs” or key practice influencers.

We’re looking for a far-reaching scope of expertise and decision-making influence in the clinical area.  Further, with the significant variances between protocols and guidelines, it’s key to identify advisors who have the most power to influence change within their institution or organization.

In the search for KPIs, we can define common characteristics among disciplines and between institutions.  So we create an ideal profile from which to assess desired qualifications and criteria of the advisor group.

As an example, the KPIs I’ve been recruiting lately for our N-of-8® research groups fit a screening profile that includes:

  1. Regularly sought out by their colleagues for opinions or advice
  2. Speak often at regional or national conferences
  3. Published articles in a major journal (during the past two years)
  4. Consider themselves early adopters of new products
  5. Help establish protocols (locally, regionally, even nationally)

That’s just the start in your search for KPIs.  Now, we add another component – brand innovation potential.

Strategy prompts us to identify “Where we are” from the customer’s point-of-view.  So, for advisors in N-of-8 groups, you can focus on situation analysis in three areas:

  • How are the products used within the institution?
  • Who are the likely users?
  • What are the key issues in adoption?

Based on our knowledge of the market and experience with identifying experts within institutions, I believe this is quite different from simply conducting a KOL search. The operative difference being the word “opinion” contrasted with “practice.”

In summary, your search for brand innovation advisors will lead you to “application” influencers who can help get your new product on formulary and “protocol” influencers who can impact institution guidelines.

Categories: Health and wellness marketing
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ggoffe

Wanted: temptation free checkout lanes!

Published by Gretchen Goffe on July 18, 2011.

Who doesn’t love a party–time to get together, to chat and to share ideas with like-minded people? But busy Moms don’t always get that chance. So what do they do? Turn to social media and host their own “GNO (Girls Night Out)” Twitter Party, gathering every Tuesday night for some honest, touching and entirely relatable online sharing.

As a healthcare marketer, having all of these women gathered in one place–a natural question comes to our mind, “Tell us about your role as a family health guardian?” or what we like to call WellGuardian. And as we expected, they were off and running.

First of all, and not surprisingly, it isn’t an easy role. When asked what character they best related to, they had several interesting examples. Some women said they would like to be Jeannie (from I Dream of Jeannie)–wishing they had “the power to blink and make her kids like veggies.” Others say they felt like the Little Engine that Could–“always running uphill.” And then there was the always-popular Roadrunner—an example that speaks for itself (beep beep). Bottom line, we’ve got a long way to go!

As the WellGuardian, she’s the family health engine, so how about that family? They can easily derail her best plans. Example: the lightning fast “cart grab” the kids manage to do when you look away for a second. Hey, how’d those cookies get in our cart? Or at the dinner table when the vegetables mysteriously find a way off the plate and into a neighboring napkin (or cup, or pocket or the dog’s mouth).

Surprisingly though, women had better ideas than just “orange coning” the family, instead they wanted to engage them in health-conscious activities. Women found that when they involved their kids in choices, they got with the program. It could be an elaborate plan or one simple change. One family adds fresh spinach to their smoothies—the greener the better!

So how does she feel brands and retailers are doing to help her in her healthy quest? Women said “How can they really be about health if they still sell junk food?” “And place it at checkout?” If she ran the industry, here are a few things she would consider. What if, instead of tempting them with unhealthy treats, the stores offered extra rewards for healthy purchases on her rewards card? Or how about offering a temptation free checkout lane? These women also suggested ways for healthy shopping to become a collaborative and fun event such as a Mom’s shopping night with the ever-important wine samples. Or perhaps a Family Wellness Night–so the whole family can be involved in making healthy shopping choices.

Other Mom’s suggested combo displays in the supermarket like creating a display with soup, cold meds and Clorox wipes promoted together. As one Mom said, “I’m not much on soup, but cold meds next to Clorox will surely hook, line and sinker me!” Hmm, what if retailers organized circulars around health goals as opposed to just grouping similar items?

As our Twitter Party wrapped up, we were reminded how much you can learn when you listen without an agenda, even in 140 characters.

Categories: Health and wellness marketing and Marketing trends and best practices
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bheffernan

Wellness is a choice we make in any state of health

Published by Brian Heffernan on May 9, 2011.

I recently typed the words “health and wellness” into my favorite search engine and about 91 million results appeared. No exaggeration. These famous words– health and wellness– are hitched at the hip and travel everywhere together. Yet, if you ask people to define the meaning of this linked linguistic staple, the responses always vary:

“It’s all about fitness, popping vitamins, exercising and taking care of yourself.”

“It’s a lifestyle.”

“It means you are trying to keep away from the doctor –health and wellness is better than sick and ornery and high medical bills.”

Interpretations of the phrase “health and wellness” ping back and forth as people reconcile the distinct meanings of two different words, while the diminutive “and” ducks for cover in the middle. We sense that health and wellness don’t mean the same thing and that both words are not equally at fault. If you ask someone, “How’s your health?”, they will almost always get your meaning and quickly oblige with an inventory of their personal afflictions. If you ask people, “How’s your wellness?”, they will ask you to repeat the question.

Our research shows clients and consumers alike lack a fundamental understanding of what “wellness” means. In our work, which included both secondary research as well as primary research with consumers and professionals, we discovered a simple way to help people better understand how the concept of wellness relates to personal health. Most people (and it turns out most formal definitions) describe health as an outcome. For example, The American Heritage Dictionary defines health as “the overall condition of an organism at a given time.” This helps explain why most people have a reasonably good understanding of what health is and can describe the condition of their “personal organism” when asked, “How’s it going?” On the other hand, wellness is not an outcome. It is a way of being that involves choices we make. We can choose to live “well”, regardless of the specific state of health we experience at any one time.

We discovered this notion resonates with people across a wide spectrum of self-described physical health. The idea that “wellness is a choice we make in any state of health” is as true for athletic people in their 20s as it is for people seeking to live “well into” their 80s. When we begin to understand wellness as a choice that is relevant to a large swath of the population, it opens up exciting, new possibilities.

Interviews with patients across a variety of illnesses demonstrate that people become increasingly aware of their wellness choices as they cope with ill health and are interested in wellness support as they manage everything from rheumatoid arthritis to diabetes to cancer. Of course, there are many dimensions to wellness and the type of support required, and it varies across conditions and patient types. However, as the population ages, there is a growing need to take wellness seriously and to pursue new approaches. Why?

  • As health care reform advances and focuses on improving outcomes (the health part), it is not surprising that key initiatives include affecting better wellness choices for all.
  • As new technology and media enable truly interactive educational forums and personalized content, our ability to affect wellness choices has never been greater.
  • As health care professionals, employers, insurers, government and other stakeholders come together to address the needs of society, our understanding of wellness and its profound impact in our lives will only increase.

For all of these reasons, this is an exciting time to be working in the two, connected worlds of health and wellness. It is important work, even if we succeed in only small ways to help people aspire and choose to live as well as is humanly possible.

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