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brizzo

Non-physician prescribers–the new marketing frontier

Published by Brenda Rizzo on January 9, 2012.

We seem to forget about this very influential group of prescribers who make independent decisions based on their assessment about how to treat a condition. Across all 50 states nurse practitioners (NP) and physician’s assistants (PA) are able to prescribe. Each state has their own specific rules that can limit or expand those roles, but they are all able to prescribe. So now that you have considered this audience, how do they want to be marketed to?

That depends on their specific specialty. An NP who works in long term care may be more focused on reimbursement channels and routes of administration, given the population they serve. NP’s who work in family practice may be looking for educational support for a busy and varied practice. NP’s who work in women’s health may be looking for assessment tools as they manage health concerns of women in transition to menopause. We don’t know until we have asked.

Here at GSW we have assembled a group of NPs and PAs to consult with a variety of specializations that we can contact to get their opinion. Sometimes it can be as easy as a phone call, or we can survey them as a whole. We can even get them together on a chat room online or do a focus group. This has become a very valuable tool. We have found insight into the way they practice, how they make prescribing decisions and how they would like to get information on new drugs. We have asked them to suggest tools that would be helpful to their practice and evaluate tools along the way as we develop them. We had nurses involved in advising us about an online educational tool that has been valued by several of our clients, and adapted for their use.

Our panel includes NPs and PAs from all across the country with areas of specialization from neonates to geriatrics, from inpatient settings to outpatient clinics, from doctor’s offices to operating rooms. It is a temptation to guess what they need or want from a pharmaceutical company, but when we ask them we are often surprised at what they really value. This has helped us to stay focused on creating value added materials/benefits that help them to serve their patients as well as see the value of what we are trying to sell.

Some overall themes that I have observed in working with NPs and PAs are:
 • They are very passionate about the patients they serve. It is not enough to put a patient on birth control; they also have to talk with her about how to avoid sexually transmitted diseases. It is not enough to put someone on an anti-hypertensive, they also educate on how to change their lifestyle to improve their blood pressure. It is not enough to treat their acne; they want to know how their breakouts are affecting their self-esteem. They tend to consider the whole patient, not just the disease state they are treating.
• Affordability is a big issue. If the benefits of the drug outweigh the additional expense then they will help the patients to understand this. But if their perception is that there is an alternative that is more affordable then they probably will not consider the more expensive option. Giving a patient a more expensive drug that they can’t fill, due to the cost, when there is an alternative that is generic does not fit well with their point of view.
• Patient Education is an aspect of patient care that they “own.” Tools to help them be more effective are an added value to their practice. They don’t mind if it has a brand name on it or is specifically about a particular product as long as it is not trying to tear down or bring a bad light to competing products/points of view. They do not expect all educational tools and support to be unbranded.
• They value being viewed as experts in their area of specialization. Anything that can promote acknowledgement of that expertise is desired. Train the trainer, speaking engagements, certifications, or awards are valued. They feel a lack of recognition in general and when they obtain recognition it elevates their visibility in their community.

Finally each area of specialization utilizes NPs and PAs in a very unique way. You don’t gain insight in asking a NP that works with adults what a NP in pediatrics would need. Asking a PA that works in palliative care would not know what a PA in the operating room needs. So seek out insight from NPs or PAs that actually work in the area where you are interested in influencing.

NPs and PAs are organized; they belong to professional groups, both locally and regionally. Many participate in online chat rooms, or visit educational websites. But ask them, “where do you get your information?” Then you know what they want or need and where they will look for it.
Have you created any programs for non-physician prescribers? How did you develop it? Any insights from your programs that you would be willing to share? This is a rich area that needs to be explored for effective communication.

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leigh.householder

Slideshare highlights iQ’s 2012 predictions

Published by Leigh Householder on January 5, 2012.

Our crazy-talented innovation team here at GSW (iQ) spends a lot of time looking ahead at the technology and trends that will change our industry. Their work includes analyzing specific categories, emerging technologies, best-in-practice strategies and publishing monthly perspectives that our core teams leverage when creating their next great campaign.

Back in November, iQ collected all our best content and insight and started to formulate what 2012 will look like for the healthcare marketing world.

The result was a presentation highlighting the first moves that healthcare is making to embrace the latest trends and the changes that iQ sees ahead. We were honored when Slideshare recognized the presentation as a Top 12 for 2012 presentation and recently highlighted it on their own blog.

2012 Digital Trends For Healthcare Marketing

We look forward to see if our predictions are correct–to keep up with all the latest in digital healthcare marketing check out www.whatsyourdigitaliq.com.

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pcomber

A chef shows the way forward for the healthcare industry

Published by Peter Comber on August 31, 2011.

A year ago I saw the 2010 winner of the TED Prize, Jamie Oliver’s award speech and was impressed. I came across it again a couple of weeks ago and was inspired.

The TED Prize is awarded annually to an exceptional individual who receives $100,000 and, much more important, “One Wish to Change the World.”

Jamie’s wish; “I wish for your help to create a strong, sustainable movement to educate every child about food, inspire families to cook again and empower people everywhere to fight obesity.”

Watch the video, if you’ve already seen the video watch it again. While you listen to this passionate call to action, imagine that it isn’t coming from a British chef but from a healthcare company.

In a world where consumers increasingly demand more than just lip service to the idea of “social responsibility” and where payers are looking for “value”, any company that considers itself a health provider should be looking at providing complete solutions and brands that can stand for and make a meaningful change.

If healthcare companies don’t rise to the challenge and exploit the opportunity someone else will, maybe even a chef.

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dmarinacci

Introducing UP:ROOT

Published by Dawn Marinacci on August 25, 2011.

Earlier this week we launched a new insights magazine called UP:ROOT, a collection of articles offering our perspectives on the trends that are changing healthcare marketing. We hope you’ll take a read and gain valuable insight and knowledge about how we can better engage with brands and customers. The content was written by some of our most talented strategists, creative directors, planners, project managers, digital and social media experts. Oh, and our president. How’s that for a diverse set of thought leaders? We’d love to hear what you think are some of the upcoming trends in our industry, so let us know some of your thoughts by commenting on this post or by visiting us on Facebook at GSW_Worldwide.

Click on the picture to read UP:ROOT

Categories: Healthcare marketing innovations and Marketing trends and best practices
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bnasal

Social media strategy–do you have one?

Published by Bob Nasal on August 8, 2011.

Social media strategy—definitely a hot topic. Does your company have one? Do you know what it is-and can you explain what it is and how it influences decisions?

Being an editor, I don’t often get exposed to discussions of strategy—but I know that having a strategy  is crucial at many levels of our operations. Without one, how do we know where we’re headed—or where we should head? How do we decide which path to take in the social media world? When our clients’ interests are at stake, we need to be smart. Following baseball legend Yogi Berra’s advice won’t cut it in our fast-moving business. Yogi famously said, “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.” Well, that always works when it doesn’t really matter which fork you take. But if companies are going to survive and thrive in the world of social media, the fork does matter and will be influenced by the strategy.

In a current journal article,* the authors identify four primary strategies that companies are using in the social media arena. They arrived at their results by analyzing strategies and operations at more than 1100 companies and by interviewing initiative-leading executives. They conclude that the type of strategy chosen depends heavily on two factors: the company’s ability to tolerate uncertain outcomes and the level of the results desired. Their four types are described below.

  1. Predictive Practitioner. Confines social media use to a specific area within the company and minimizes cross-functional contacts. This works better if the company wants to avoid uncertainty and wants to get results it can measure with established tools. Example: Clorox created a website to enhance its virtual R&D activities. The site facilitates brainstorming with customers and suppliers.
  2. Creative Experimenter. Embraces uncertainty using small-scale tests to find ways to improve defined functions and practices. Projects are positioned as experiments, with the overriding objective being to learn. There is interaction with employees and customers on Twitter, Facebook, or other platforms. Example: The IT service company, EMC, created an internal test platform to help its 40,000 global employees network and connect on projects. Goal was to reduce the use of outside contractors by locating and applying internal company expertise. EMC estimates that this effort has saved more than $40 million to date.
  3. Social Media Champion. Has a central group and executive leaders dedicated to coordinating and managing social media projects across multiple functions and levels. They also may utilize external influencers. Results and learnings are widely shared within the organization. Example: Ford used this approach in its 2009 campaign to reintroduce its Fiesta model to the US. It lent 100 of the cars for 6 months to carefully selected drivers who then used social media to describe their experiences. The results? 60,000 posts, millions of clicks, and more than 4 million YouTube views—which in turn generated 50,000 sales leads, 35,000 test drives, and a 37% awareness rate among Millennials. The cost? About $5 million, a fraction of what a traditional campaign would have cost to produce these results.
  4. Social Media Transformer. Often involves large-scale interactions that include internal employees as well as external stakeholders such as customers and business partners. Social media technologies are tightly integrated into the business and are used across functions. Centralized groups study ways that social media can inform business strategy and culture. Example: Last year, Cisco launched “a social business platform designed to facilitate internal and external collaboration and decentralize decision making. It functions much as a Facebook ‘wall’” and includes a real-time news feed with broad coverage.

This article provides more information on the characteristics of each of these types and how they operate within the organizations. It also comments on putting social media strategy into practice. One of the more intriguing elements is a small section on pitfalls that can cause stumbles when companies jump into the social media world without a cohesive strategy. There could be some learnings here for us—possible new approaches to using social media that we may want to consider, along with practices to avoid.

But maybe the most important takeaway is the need to take a very thoughtful and focused approach at the appropriate managerial levels to developing, evolving, and managing social media strategies. The authors are not big fans of haphazard, scattershot approaches.

*Wilson HJ, Guinan PJ, Parise S, and Weinberg BD. What’s Your Social Media Strategy? Harvard Business Review. July-August, 2011.

Categories: Healthcare marketing innovations
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leigh.householder

Global trends in digital healthcare marketing

Published by Leigh Householder on April 18, 2011.

I recently had the opportunity to collaborate with colleagues in Tokyo and Freiburg to talk about the trends that are changing digital marketing in each of our really unique regions. The leading tactics to engage HCPs and patients all hinge on the key tenets of relevance and personalization, but beyond that there are deep differences in what our clients are asking for around the world. For all the details, check out our article in MedAdNews:

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brizzo

Why the Biggest Loser?

Published by Brenda Rizzo on February 22, 2011.

I love Biggest Loser. I watch it faithfully every season. My husband wonders why. Is it because of the game playing, or tips on eating or the tips on exercise? Do I watch it faithfully because I love the hostess (can’t even remember her name right now, so clearly that isn’t it)? Do I like the game playing and the strategy? Do I like the advertising, of products useful to healthy living? Is it because weight loss has become a national movement, in the midst of record levels of obesity?

The Dr. and his evaluation are fascinating to me, especially when they have the follow up visit after they have lost the weight and allot of their medical issues have disappeared. You see hope return in their faces. Is that why I like the show? The scenery and locations are beautiful. I travel in that area for business so I like see the locations. I like the different challenges they come up with. But it always seems that one of the players each season wins all of the challenges. That doesn’t seem fair.

And what about those outfits? Why do they make the men take their shirts off to get weighed when they are at their heaviest? And then when they start to lose a significant amount of weight they leave their shirts on? And those sports bras that the women have to weigh in? What is up with that? It clearly isn’t the outfits that compel me to watch.

I do love the make overs, watching people blossom into beautiful and trendy looks, when all they ever considered themselves was fat and frumpy. I do love the amazement in their families’ faces when they see them for the first time.

But the real reason I love Biggest Loser is for the sheer fact that it works. I have struggled with weight my whole life and I just love to see someone have success with weight loss. For the most part – the past contestants have kept it off. Who else has statistics like that? I just love to see someone overcome the life of obesity and all that it entails.

I wonder how they pay the bills while they are off work for 3 months while they are on the show. I wonder how their families survive with them being gone for 3 months. But once I set those concerns aside I marvel in the accomplishments and celebrate with them each and every season. No matter how little or great their success is, they have had success and each pound off is a victory. Now if I could just stop eating, get off the couch, and work out while I am watching it, I too may realize the success.

Categories: Healthcare marketing innovations

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dcaiazza

The role of a pharmaceutical global marketing team

Published by Damon Caiazza on January 13, 2011.

The pharmaceutical industry has established a fairly consistent structure when building out global marketing operations. Generally this structure consists of three levels.

  1. Global Marketing Team
  2. Regional Marketing Teams
  3. Local Marketing Teams

Given the consistency in structure within the industry, one would think there is consistency in the roles and responsibilities of each level. The reality is that each company works differently based on budgets, corporate structure, regulatory/legal risk tolerance, and many other factors. In addition, the globalization trend of centralizing key strategic functions has added to the disparity in approaches.

Under ideal circumstances, what should the role of the global market team be?

There isn’t an easy answer to this question given there are as many layers to a global marketing team as there are to an onion. In order to make the discussion more palatable, I’ve chosen to look at things at three key phases: Pre-launch, Launch, and Post-launch.

Pre-launch: Define and Build the Market
The role of the global marketing team during this phase begins with market research focused on identifying the unmet needs in the market and developing a strategy for entry. Once an entry strategy has been developed, the global marketing team begins work on the development of market conditioning strategies and tactics that can be deployed by each region to be localized and executed at the local level. It is ideal if market conditioning efforts are executed locally 12- to 18-months prior to the branded launch depending on the specific challenges the brand will face.

Launch: Define and Build the Brand
The role of the global marketing team during this phase begins once again with market research focused on brand and message development. Once the brand and message platform have been established, the global marketing team develops a global marketing strategy and core branded marketing assets. These assets include things such as a global brand book, sales force detail aids and leave behinds, direct-to-physician platforms and communications, patient education and support materials, and items for use at congresses and events.

It is important that the global marketing team own the development of these core assets in order to ensure global brand consistency in the messages that are delivered by the regional and local teams. I can’t emphasize this point enough given the global landscape today and the likelihood that physicians will have brand interactions outside of their local market.

Post-launch: Manage the Product Lifecycle
Once the brand has been successfully launched, the role of the global marketing team shifts to a lifecycle management role in which the brand team develops long-term strategies aimed at maximizing the value of the brand. Four key things to consider with product lifecycle management are:

  • Build a global advisory panel early in the life of the drug to gain key insights into where future potential may exists
  • Be flexible and open minded as the world and pharmaceutical markets continue to evolve
  • Be organized and diligent with information management so that key data, decisions, and background information can easily be disseminated
  • Gain buy-in from a cross functional leadership team as lifecycle management will require contributions from everyone in the company as some point or another

Suffice it to say, product lifecycle management is a subject worthy of multiple posts in and of itself. If you are interested in more on product lifecycle management, I’d direct you to seek out some lectures and publications by Datamonitor’s Dr. Neal Hansen.

A few other things to consider:

Here are a few other things to consider with global marketing that apply no matter what phase of the journey your brand is currently in.

  • Brand and message consistency – as mentioned earlier, it is more critical than ever that the brand and messaging be consistent on the global stage. When possible, establishing your agency as the brand reviewer for all local implementations is a great way to ensure that local materials don’t unnecessarily stray from the global brand and message platforms.
  • Global team dynamics – it is important that the global brand team recognize and appreciate the challenges associated with leading global initiatives. Key challenges such as communication, cultural differences, and knowledge sharing should be addressed early on and continually reevaluated to ensure that these things don’t distract the team from the bigger task at hand.
  • New leadership/talent requirements – with the proliferation of global marketing teams at hand, the leadership requirements for this role have evolved to require a unique blend of operational competency, strategic thinking, and relationship management.
Categories: Healthcare marketing innovations
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brizzo

Our job is not to pass judgment but deliver compassion

Published by Brenda Rizzo on December 14, 2010.

Often times we are asked to do something in our professional life that is in conflict with our own personal values. Should we take a stand and not deliver? How do we resolve our internal conflict? As a nurse this came up often. Once we had a patient that was 15-years old. She was getting prenatal care, and this was her fourth pregnancy. She had been pregnant and miscarried three previous times but it looked as if she was going to carry this pregnancy to term. For many of the staff the idea of a 15-year old clearly desiring and trying for a successful pregnancy was in conflict with their own values of what age you should be before becoming emotionally, physically and financially responsible for a baby. However, this patient was not asking us whether or not we thought it was right, she was asking us to care for her and her unborn child for the best possible outcome.

I cared for her and managed her care based on this realization. It was no longer about whether or not she should be having this baby, but about how can we make this a successful pregnancy and prepare her for motherhood. We monitored her nutrition carefully, teaching her how to be as healthy as she can be for her baby. She was genuinely interested and followed our direction to the tee. We got social services involved to make sure her living arrangements were suitable for a new baby, and even identified alternative living arrangements once the baby arrived. We got her enrolled in Lamaze classes and breast feeding classes. She absorbed all of the information like a sponge.

She carried the pregnancy to term and once the baby was born she was prepared to care for it in the best way possible. She was connected to all of the social programs that would support her. She decided to breast feed the baby. And when you observed her with the baby she was very loving, gentle and confident with her. It was a blessing to see. Our job was not to judge her but to give her compassionate care, and that set her up for the best possible outcome.

Now I work in medical advertising. When I tell my colleagues about my job, they make me feel as if I went to the “dark side.” But I do my job with pride and feel that I have a responsibility to keep the information accurate and responsible, no matter what the subject. Sometimes I will be asked big questions about a product or therapy that challenge my thinking and values. People ask could a procedure be considered medically necessary (vs. optional), does is it’s MOA unique in the category? When I consider the patient who has the need for the procedure, and when I consider with compassion how this might affect them, I follow my personal beliefs and present the information about the procedure or therapy in a responsible and reasonable manner. My colleagues and clients are not asking me to determine if the procedure is right or wrong, they are asking me to have compassion for the patient who is considering having the procedure done, what they would need to know, and how they can be informed for the best possible outcome.

And in my personal life, as a parent of adult children now I have come to realize that they too do not want to be judged by me. There are times when they share aspects of their lives with me that I may not approve of but they don’t want to know if I think it is right or wrong. They are making the determination of what is right or wrong for themselves.  What they want from me is unconditional love and acceptance. When they want my opinion they will ask me for it. They are not asking me to “bail them out” when they make a decision that has consequences. They are taking charge of their lives, so I need to keep my judgments to myself and marvel in their accomplishments. What is best for them is to listen with compassion and care.

I have still have values that I treasure and uphold, but I don’t need to apply them to others, they are my values that guide my life. But when it comes to others I must remind myself of what I am being asked to consider, and what is being asked of me. Then my conflict is less important and compassion becomes the focus.

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areinbolz

People are different and diseases are different – why should communication be the same?

Published by Andreas Reinbolz on September 20, 2010.

The healthcare industry is going for the next cycle of evolution. The name: personalized healthcare. Roche has defined this as a key element of future strategy, and the IT business is following, offering solutions to manage all this individual patient data.

But if medical treatment changes, how does healthcare communication follow? It is common sense that patients and physicians do not only differ in their preferences for certain brands. Physicians are looking on treatment options from different angles: Some might be interested in the patient outcome only; others might put as much weight on practical or economical needs. Adding personalized healthcare adds complexity: For physicians, because the cases for a therapeutic regime are becoming much more heterogeneous – there is no silver bullet available any more for a certain indication. And for the patient, as an individual therapy might not be easy to explain with a standard patient leaflet. This is where individualized communication will not only be something “nice to have.”

Individualized communication will be the key, to support this therapeutic approach and help physicians and patients to understand risks and benefit. Extremely flexible and targeted communication that is capable for fulfilling individual subjective needs will be the key for a well considered decision. It is obvious, that pure print communication will not be able to fulfil this need. And this is where another trend in healthcare communication can play to it’s strength: Digital communication is the only channel capable for individualized mass communication. To ensure well informed physicians and mature patients. But also to build brands beyond the “one pill per day”-approach.

Written with: Arno Bock

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