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plannertarium

Shopping a Sales Aid

Published by Plannertarium on February 21, 2012.

Written by Connie Esler

Having had some experience in Shopper Marketing, I realized that certain aspects of shopping in retail are like detailing a sales aid.

It may sound odd since shopping and being detailed are such different experiences, not to mention shopping can be more fun than presenting a sales aid….sorry.  However, understanding the similarity of key functional needs of both situations allows that comparison, and putting shopper principles to use could be helpful in providing a more engaging experience for the physician when the sales rep is presenting a sales aid.

There are three functional needs a person has as they experience a shopping environment:

  • Navigation
  • Education
  • Inspiration

Let’s think about a time when you are new to a store.  Navigation is about a retailer supplying clear signage, store layout and good direction that help you easily get around the store and to the product you’re looking for.  Once you’ve found the item, how can the package, category, environment or personnel provide additional information to clarify or support your decision (Education)?  Once you’ve made your selection, you have time to relax, pause and look around to become Inspired by finding something new or unexpected.

Often the shopping experience is not as fun or engaging as it could be because there are barriers in one or more of these “need” areas.  If solutions aren’t created to address the barriers, shoppers may leave the aisle or store and not even get to where they were headed, much less be educated or inspired.  An example of this is the cereal aisle, which in most stores is long, massive and sometimes takes up both sides of the aisle.  Other than a sign above the aisle highlighting “cereal,” there are usually no other points of navigation guiding shoppers to their desired products.

Thus, the shopper is left to their own methods of navigation, and most have learned through experience that cereal is grouped by manufacturer, kids’ cereals are on the bottom shelves, healthier cereals are on the top, and Cheerios are usually found in the middle of the aisle.  People go to the brand they’re looking for, grab it, and leave because nothing else about the aisle is capturing their attention or imagination.  Cereal manufacturers and retailers are letting consumers set their own course rather than helping to improve their experience by;  providing more information to help educate, creating a more engaging aisle through imagery or layout, or making it easier to see what’s new rather than simply reading “new” on the box or relying on the end aisle display.  In the end, any of these changes would translate into more money being spent.

Instead, manufacturers and retailers allow the barriers of little signage, long aisles, and a confusing multitude of flavors to negatively impact shoppers’ experience and shorten their time in the aisle.

So how does this apply to a sales aid?  In grocery shopping, a person thinks about what they want to get or writes a list, then decides which store(s) to visit to accomplish the task.  Reps have to plan out their day and think about what they need to cover with each HCP visit.  When in the store, a person generally wants to be as efficient as possible, to easily navigate through the aisles and find what’s on the list, relying on signage to guide them when the store is new to them.  A sales rep has to navigate through a sales aid to be prepared for the discussion, particularly with a first time call, or move to the right piece of information to make a point or answer a question.

Quickly and easily covering the key points a rep wants to make, the rep can talk about or show something else that furthers the HCP’s knowledge of the drug or device.  Similarly in the grocery aisle, if a shopper easily finds their item, there is time to read the package or gather other information nearby which educates the person on the brand or even other products.

The last functional need is inspiration.  Manufacturers and retailers love it when a shopper finds what is on the list, gets the information needed, and then takes a breath, relaxes and looks around to see what’s new and adds an unexpected item into the cart.  A sales rep feels rewarded when after making an initial point and successfully answering questions, the doctor has a moment to reflect about his or her patients, and is openly inspired by the conversation with a final thought.

If any barriers arise during the detail, for example; the entry into the discussion isn’t as relevant as planned, the sales rep can’t quickly get to information to answer a question, the doctor doesn’t have time to talk or quizzes the rep, the process breaks down and the three functional needs of navigation, education and inspiration will suffer or not be met.  Ideally getting to the point of “inspiration” allows the sales rep and HCP to feel good about what was accomplished.

So the next time you are out shopping, you might observe what is really helpful, or what barriers you come across in your experience, and think about how those things could apply to developing a better sales tool.

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wpoma

Social Shareworthy: From social strategy to action

Published by Whitney Poma on February 16, 2012.

This post is part of our celebration of social media week!

The thought of managing the day-to-day communication that will be required with a social media strategy can seem daunting. Common questions:

  1. How will we know what to say and when to say it?
  2. Who’s responsible for publishing content to the profiles?
  3. How do we measure our success?

It will be essential for your team to identify someone, or a couple of people, to serve as the community managers of your social profiles. They will be responsible for tackling the above three questions but there are some tools that can make these tasks easier than you think.

1st: Create a content calendar:

The goal of the content calendar is to force the community manager and the brand team to plan a week or a month’s worth of content in advance. This calendar can be as simple or complex as you like. The process of creating a content calendar is to round off your brand team including a copywriter or two and sit down with a calendar. Discuss the month ahead and identify potential shareworthy events that will be happening:

  • Your brand: Is your brand launching a new indication or releasing new information?
  • Your industry: Is anything happening in the industry (an awareness month, a congress, etc. . .) that affects your brand?
  • The public: Are there any holiday’s or current events that relate to your brand?

Make a list of all of these things, choose which of them are the most valuable to address and write content to compliment them. Next assign the content to corresponding dates on the calendar.

Tips for content planning:

  1. Stick to your strategy: ask yourself “does this help us accomplish our social media goals?”
  2. Be consistent: consistency in tone of voice, vocabulary, emotion and timing all create a better experience for your community
  3. Have a call to action: make sure all of your content includes a call to action or the answer to “So what?”

2nd: Use a community management service

There are several free services available that help you manage your accounts all from one place. My personal favorite is Tweetdeck, but HootSuite is also good –

These services help you:

  • Schedule your content publishing down to the minute
  • Alert you when someone talks to you or mentions you online
  • Manage multiple social profiles in one dashboard

Hootsuite and SproutSocial offer premium accounts that are affordable and include metrics and analysis of your social engagement.

These services are easy to learn and simple to use. The first step beyond setup is to grab your content calendar and schedule the posts that you created with your team. Once they’re scheduled, the tool does the rest of the publishing work for you. It’s up to you to monitor the consumer response to your post and craft a reply to the requests from your community.

3rd: Measure success and optimize for the future

Your content has been planned, and executed. Now it’s time to take a look back and see how you did. Key things to measure:

  1. Conversion: the number of comments per post
  2. Amplification: the number of re-tweets or shares per post
  3. Applause: the number of likes, favorites, etc. . . per post

Simply measuring the ratio of the above items is not enough. A deeper dive into the posts that generated the most return and the posts that generated the least return will identify patterns of success and failure. These patterns can be used to optimize the content you share in the future. Ideally, you’ll look at these metrics on a weekly or monthly basis, but no matter what – be sure to have the insights from these metrics on hand while planning your next wave of content so that you’re optimizing the level of community engagement.

Categories: Social media marketing
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wpoma

Social Shareworthy: How to play cupid with your company’s medical, legal and regulatory (MLR) committee and social media

Published by Whitney Poma on February 14, 2012.

This post is part of our celebration of social media week!

It’s easy to dismiss the suggestion of a social media strategy by saying “our MLR committee would never allow that” or worse yet, you’ve invested in building a strategy, are nearing the launch date, and your MLR committee identifies an issue that derails the entire strategy. A few common reasons are the root cause for an MLR review gone wrong:

  1. The length of time for their review and approval renders the content outdated
  2. Your MLR committee is unsure of the risks and benefits associated with each type of social media
  3. General anxiety about the adverse events appearing on the proposed social media channels

These are all valid concerns that need to be addressed before engaging in social media but they’re all able to managed – all you need is a little collaboration.

One of the best ways to conquer these hurdles is to involve your MLR committee in social planning from the start. Here at GSW, we conduct on-site bootcamps and workshops with our clients when they’re beginning to pursue a social strategy.

BOOTCAMPS:

Our bootcamp session is themed “social media for pharma 101” and is used to quickly build alignment and understanding of social media’s definition, what can and can’t be done, and how it is being used by pharma. The bootcamps are a chance for your brand team, agencies, and MLR committee to come together and focus on three key topics:

WORKSHOPS:

Now that everyone is on the same page about what social media is and how it can be used, it’s time to begin putting this knowledge to work for your brand. Our planning workshops focus on the social media opportunity that is to be found at the intersection of your marketplace’s values and brand goals:

We work to identify at least 4-5 social media tactics that warrant further research and thought. The best part of this workshop is that all stakeholders have had a say in crafting these ideas and thereby, are already in support of them.  We leave this session with the action steps of applying more thought about how these ideas will be implemented, measured, optimized, and of course – work within the MLR committee’s guidelines

BUSINESS CASE PRESENTATION

The last step of our process is to re-group after having the chances to work through some of the aforementioned tasks. We present the ideas again, make any last comments and then decide which of the ideas we want to implement.

In closing, the beauty of this process is that MLR has been included from ideation to conceptualization. There shouldn’t be any surprises during the formal review of your program since they’ve had the opportunity to voice their concerns during the planning phases.  Collaborating in this manner helps all stakeholders of the social media strategy to have confidence that its tactics and content are valuable yet reside within the existing regulatory environment of our industry.

Categories: Social media marketing
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wpoma

Social Shareworthy: Is your product ready for social media?

Published by Whitney Poma on February 14, 2012.

This post is part of our celebration of social media week!

There is a common misperception that social media marketing is easy and free. While creating accounts on the world’s largest social networks is free and relatively easy, this is just one step of a social media strategy and can be likened to the wedding that marks the beginning of a marriage. In reality, there are a lot of questions to consider when evaluating the opportunity of investing in social media for your product. Taking the time to discuss these questions before engaging in social channels can lay the foundation for a rewarding venture:

Does your company have social media guidelines in place?
Your company’s social media guidelines serve as a great foundation for building a social media strategy. Good guidelines are built to serve as the rules of engagement and should include everything from their definition of social media to how to handle negative comments. They help protect your team, your product, and most importantly, your consumers and as such, it’s very important that your company enact guidelines before you begin engaging with consumers in these channels.

Have you established a social media workflow?
Before engaging in social media it’s important to establish an appropriate workflow to handle any of the various requests that may be asked by consumers engaging with your social profiles. It’s questions like these that require your team to have a workflow that:
a. Provides an accurate and appropriate response to the request
b. Responds to the request in a timely manner
Not having these workflows in place will create an experience for your consumers that is frustrating and thereby damaging to your relationship with them.

Do you have a clear reason for being in social media?
Before entering social media, it’s important to know the answer to one very important question:
What do you want to accomplish?
If the answer to this question cannot be achieved through a social strategy, then social media marketing is not right for your product at this time. Avoid being too quick to conclude that social media cannot assist in reaching brand goals though, an integrated social media strategy can accomplish much more than someone who is unfamiliar with social media channels beyond just Facebook and Twitter might expect. Participating in social media without a defined target accomplishment will result in your social media efforts lacking a call-to-action and thereby be of little value for your target audience. Likewise, having a target accomplishment will give your social strategy a purpose that will serve as a guiding principle for all of your content and actions within the social space.

Are people talking about your product online?
The answer to this question is undoubtedly “Yes!”. The underlying question is how much or how little, and just what are they saying? A quick search for your product on Google or any of the popular social networks will quickly direct you to conversations that can be eye opening. It’s important to understand this existing online conversation before entering the discussion. You can determine the current environment by conducting or contracting a social media listening report that will provide insights about social environment surrounding your brand.

Are these social conversations translating to real-life decisions?
The presence of people making decisions about your product or marketplace based on their social interactions is a positive indicator that you should be involved in social media. How do you know if this is happening? Observe the conversations already happening online – are people taking each other up on their advice? Do you see mentions of action having been taken? Things like “So, I asked my doctor about what you told me….” or “Do you know where I can buy the product you mentioned?” These actions speak to the degree of value your target audience finds from their social discussions; they’re taking suggestions from their online peers and acting on them in their daily lives.

In closing, there’s no denying that some products lend better to social media than others but even the most introverted of products can conduct a successful social media campaign if the proper questions have been answered thereby laying the foundation for a social media strategy that resides at the intersection of bringing value to the brand and bringing value to the consumers.

Editor’s Note (2/14/2012): In late December, the FDA released it’s first-ever social media guidance for pharma brands that would like to respond to unsolicited requests for off-label information via social networks. We researched, analyzed and consulted with our digital and social strategists to develop the following perspective: Inside The FDA’s Social Media Guidance.
Categories: Social media marketing
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dmarinacci

Social Media Week 2012

Published by Dawn Marinacci on February 13, 2012.

It’s social media week and we are celebrating at GSW Worldwide. All week long we will have content, contests and answers to your burning social media questions. As healthcare marketers, we know that engaging in social media amid Pharma’s regulated environment can be a challenge. We hope the activities we have planned will encourage you to interact with GSW on social media, and equally as important, we hope it helps you, as marketers, to be more knowledgeable on the topic. We encourage everyone to join in the conversation.

You can interact with us on Facebook, Twitter, iQ’s Twitter, Brand Liberator’s blog, iQ’s blog, iQ’s Youtube Channel, and  iQ’s Slideshare.

Here is a rundown of our week’s agenda:

Monday:

  • Check out our hashtag #GSWsocial to keep up with all we are doing.
  • Social Shareworthy: How to know if your product is ready for social media.

Tuesday:

  • Why our employees <3 GSW! Check out our FB page to see why our employees love working at the world’s most award winning healthcare advertising agency.
  • Social Shareworthy: How to address your promotional review committee’s concerns about social media.

Wednesday:

  • Ask a question. Tweet/Facebook us a burning social media question that you have. We will have a panel answer it on Friday and will live-tweet the answers.
  • Social Shareworthy: What does a social media campaign really look like?

Thursday:

  • Guess the Heartrate. One of our employees will test out an app that claims it can test your heartrate. Play the guessing game to see if you can beat the app!
  • Social Shareworthy: How many brands are turning health and wellness technology into a social experience?

Friday:

  • Live-tweeted panel: get your social media questions answered from 3PM-4PM.
  • FDA Guidance: Get an in-depth look at the newly released social media guidelines from the FDA and what it means for you.

So join us in celebrating social media week!

Categories: Social media marketing
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tdurbin

How Near-Field Communication Can Improve Healthcare Marketing

Published by Tyler Durbin on February 9, 2012.

As healthcare marketers, we work hard at creating memorable brand experiences for our clients. Our work spans from the frontlines with the sales force into exam rooms with the doctor and patient and even as far as working to create healthy lifestyles.

As we continue to create more and more brand experiences that are delivered digitally, it is important that we make the information valuable, memorable and easily accessible.

Over the last several weeks, iQ, the innovation lab of GSW Worldwide, has been experimenting with new ways to reduce the time it takes reps, physicians and patients to access our clients key messages when they need it most while also improving overall comprehension.

Near-field communication—or NFC—is an easy and intuitive way to add value to GSW’s work by creating a faster way to transmit marketing data and an efficient use of mobile devices to deliver better brand experiences.

The video demonstration below highlights 4 ways we can bring more value to our clients through the use of NFC:

1)      During a sales call, physicians can bookmark specific information by tapping the sales reps materials with their mobile device to reference at a later time.

2)      In the exam room, a patient or doctor could tap a visual aid with a mobile device to save or view a visual explanation.

3)      When an office runs out of samples, they could use a mobile device to tap an empty container to automatically request more samples.

4)      At home, patients could tap their pill bottles with their mobile phone to confirm that they are about to take the correct medication and dosage at the prescribed time.

If you would like to learn more about NFC or other mobile applications that could add value to your clients, visit www.whatsyourdigitaliq.com.

Categories: New ideas and approaches
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mark.stinson

What’s it like to be a PCP today–and what does it mean to our brand strategies?

Published by Mark Stinson on February 8, 2012.

Our job in Strategic Planning is to help clients gain a real-world insight into the customer’s world.  It’s easy to get too focused on our particular product category and forget how diverse, complex, and challenging today’s primary care practice has become.

To get an idea of what it is like to be a PCP today compared to 10 years ago, here’s how one physician described his daily schedule then and now:

Then:

7:00 a.m. — Meet your colleagues in the doctor’s lounge at the hospital for coffee, donuts, and conversation

7:45 a.m. — Made rounds to see patients

8:30 a.m. — Back to the lounge for more colleague interactions

9:45 a.m. — Saw patients in your office

Noon — Lunch with colleagues or a sales rep

1:45 p.m. — Back in the office to see patients

5:45 p.m. — Saw last patient

6:30 p.m. — Dinner meeting or meet up with colleagues for more interactions

Now:

7:00 a.m. —  Start seeing patients in your office

6:00 p.m. —  Conclude last patient of the day

After 6:00 p.m. —  Try to catch up with . . .

  • Paperwork
  • More paperwork
  • Case notes
  • Patient calls
  • Reading articles
  • Search for info on specific patient problems
  • Time with family

To understand the changes taking place, our Strategic Planning group worked with our colleagues at sister company, Campbell Alliance, to conduct an environmental scan that revealed 12 trends affecting PCPs today:

  1. The average face time for each patient is not always optimal.
  2. A generational gap among physicians leads to different treating behaviors.
  3. Sales reps are too product-focused and biased.
  4. Limited sales rep access to physician offices has a detrimental impact
    on sampling.
  5. The diabetes explosion has tremendously impacted the role of the PCP as well as their workload.
  6. The diagnosis and treatment of depression is very subjective and complicated, with a lot of trial and error.
  7. PCPs are expected to know more.
  8. There are more treatments for previously ignored conditions than ever before.
  9. Legislation will mandate the use of EMR, yet the systems are expensive and cumbersome.
  10. Public health policy and pressure to develop Accountable Care Organizations (ACO) continues to grow.
  11. Supply and demand will force PCPs to change the way they deliver patient care.
  12. Retail health clinics are encroaching on the PCP market.

To gain further insight, we conducted primary market research.  The purpose of the market research was to validate the impact (both emotionally and practically) of these current macro trends facing physicians.  We wanted to understand how their practice has changed, and also explore barriers to future change.  We uncovered their level of comfort within various therapeutic areas.  We also documented gaps and unmet needs of the “underserviced” physician.

Here are a few important observations that can be leveraged in solution development:

  • PCPs feel that less is more. They want to be better at what they do, but they don’t need more barriers to get there.
  • PCPs believe there is no single great source of credible, practical, and cutting-edge information on diagnosis and treatment they can access in a  timely manner
  • PCPs feel the primary value of sales reps is realized when a new product is introduced but could live without them. It’s the therapeutic approach they value.
  • PCPs want to do the best job they can for their patients in the limited amount of time they have to spend with them
  • PCPs are feeling more isolated than ever from their colleagues, limiting their learning from each other

photo credit: jasleen_kaur via photopin cc

Categories: Marketing trends and best practices
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lmcdougald

To Generate or Evaluate… good question

Published by Leah McDougald on February 6, 2012.

How lucky are we as professionals to be witnessing the evolution away from the old mentality of lobbing an idea or brand over the fence—and into a shared process of emotionally driven brand experiences?

Well, that depends… has the process evolved enough to allow you to exercise this strategy? Maybe not, but it will.

The idea of generative research has been around for a long time. Long enough for doctors to have a say in how the design of a surgical stapler should be optimized to avoid fatigue. Long enough for pilots to express the need for information hierarchy in the cockpit. Certainly long enough for the average “consumer” to learn that when a brand hasn’t engaged them in the thinking process from the get go the result can be disastrous … publicly (see the Motrin Mom Babywearing Ad ).

Evaluative research can’t go away, in fact quite the opposite. Asking someone “Did we hit the mark you helped us to identify?” is a powerful question and far more streamlined than “So… did we hit the mark? No? How about now? How about this one? Still no?! Ughhhh!”

If that sums up your experience listening to focus groups or message testing scenarios then you are not alone. Don’t beat yourself up. The marketing world is catching up to what product designers have known for decades. Why guess at what your users want? Ask them.

But don’t just ask, give them tools to express themselves in a way that is engaging. Participatory design research methodologies are one way to do just that. Participatory design research is loosely defined as a way to help you design WITH, not FOR, the end user.

Engaging an end user in a conversation that is grounded in their emotions can result in functional implementation. How? By providing stimulus to elicitt response including metaphorical imagery, physical, and sensorial objects such as fur, bells, a laundry dryer sheet, or anything that may be relevant to the experience you are trying to understand.

Take the dryer sheet for a minute.

Breathe in deeply for me… do you smell it?

Somewhere in your brain you do, and along with that comes a memory.

Is it of the dryer line that your grandmother used for her linens? Or of your first-born’s baby blanket?  Or like a warm summer night and fresh cut grass? Whatever comes to mind, if captured correctly can lead to an emotion, a story.

What is a brand? It’s a story. So, how will yours resonate like the dryer sheet? What emotions do your messages have to bring to life to make a lasting impression?

That is generative research.

For the last two years, I have been lucky enough to be a guest lecturer at the Austin Center for Design (www.ac4d.com) on the topic of Participatory design research. This is an innovative educational institution dedicated to transforming society through design and design education.

Categories: Healthcare marketing innovations
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mhallett

Just because it’s virtual doesn’t mean it’s not real

Published by Maggie Hallett on February 2, 2012.

As a psychotherapist, I’ve generally been of the mindset that a good ol’ face-to-face conversation is the most effective way to connect with another human being on an emotional level.  Like many therapists, I’ve been wary of the way communication has changed throughout the digital era, which is to say I’ve been mindful of what I perceived to be surface-level connections through 140-character text limits, or time taken away from connecting with the people who really matter—those sitting next to you on the couch—as you check out a friend of a friend’s trip to Hawaii on Facebook.  I found myself judging those whose online personas completely outshine their in-person personalities, assuming it’s easier for them to be sparkly, witty, and overly opinionated when they don’t have to see the faces of the people with whom they are communicating.  I thought about how empty their lives must be, not being able to connect in the flesh.  I patted myself on the back for being able to have real conversations with people.  And for not joining Twitter…

Well, I was knocked off my high horse pretty swiftly this week.

I sit on the board of directors for a fantastic non-profit organization called POEM, which helps new mothers suffering from postpartum depression and other perinatal mood disorders.  Our board meetings start and end with a “mission moment,” during which the executive director shares how moms using POEM’s services have been helped since our last meeting.  This week, the mission moment was about the increase in attendance of the monthly support group meetings.  I, of course, felt smug; this is how moms should be seeking help—in a face-to-face setting so they can see, hear, and feel, firsthand, others going through similar difficulties.

Then she shared the reason for the increase in attendance…

Facebook.

The support group leaders have recently created a closed group on Facebook for the moms seeking help from POEM to connect and chat in between meetings.  What they weren’t expecting was for it to be a major catalyst for real relationships.  Women were joining in droves, and they weren’t just writing encouraging posts of support and understanding; they were making lunch and play dates with one another.  Thanks to this online group, they all felt more compelled to go to the actual support group meeting because they had “tested the waters” and felt comfortable with the other women in attendance.  Plus, they were going shopping afterward!

Also, thanks to the online group, there were not only more moms in attendance at the support group, there were more moms being helped by POEM.  Women who were unable to make it to the group because of physical distance, transportation, or babysitter issues were still able to get the support they were seeking through the Facebook conversations.  And the online group has become so popular that the support group leaders now have a bimonthly moderated online chat—a virtual support group in real time.

In an e-mail to the support group leader, one mom noted (paraphrased), “Although I don’t post on the boards, just reading the other posts and knowing others are experiencing what I am experiencing is enough to get me through the day.”

So, a big lesson learned.  It’s time for me to embrace the inevitable and allow myself to see the emotional benefits that can come from connecting virtually.  Though I still believe that online connections cannot fully replace face-to-face connections, they certainly can enhance and enable them.

Categories: Health and wellness marketing and New ideas and approaches
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ceblin

No such thing as bad publicity?

Published by Cendi Eblin on January 31, 2012.

If you aren’t privy to the controversy surrounding celebrity chef Paula Deen’s recent announcement that she not only has type 2 diabetes—but that she is also the new spokesperson for a diabetes medication called Victoza—I am truly surprised as to how you wound up at this blog posting.

Basically, you’ll find both criticism and support all over the Internet from fellow chefs, healthcare providers, and concerned people.

One perspective you won’t find much of is toward the drug company that hired her, prompting her to “come out” with her condition. This is both curious and disappointing.

The pharmaceutical industry has historically been painted as a profit-driven, insensitive villain—a credibility crisis that has, only in recent years, been somewhat softened through the tireless efforts to provide authentic support and advocacy for patients and healthcare providers through funding for research, education, and community development.

I recently read an article that summed the Deen situation up with the words “there’s no such thing as bad publicity,” in terms of her (however slight) change of branding, and promotion for Victoza. Maybe this is true in other categories…is it true in pharma?

I’ll bet that fellow drug marketers are still trying to figure out how this can be interpreted as a good thing—how hiring a celebrity chef who would be attacked for her decision to “sell out” and be a spokesperson (c’mon, who wouldn’t have seen it coming) can cast a light that is anything but negative for the pharmaceutical industry. Perhaps some market conditioning could have prevented all this backlash.

Apparently, when Novo Nordisk contacted Deen, they did not know she was diabetic—they merely asked for lighter recipes for their “Diabetes in a new light” initiative. But when she responded with “how did y’all know I had diabetes?” their choice of partners (or at least their timing with Deen) might have been reassessed.

With several successful diabetes products on the market, Novo Nordisk is already a well-known name in diabetes care. So are they really worried about product awareness?

Or could this be a master plan to stir up awareness for the disease-state itself, which could be prevented with the right lifestyle choices?

Mmmmaybe. But in the midst of such controversy, no one seems to be making that connection—and it isn’t doing any favors for the reputation of the industry as a whole.

As for Paula, she’ll be fine. After all the dust settles and the news is no longer sensational, she will have lost some followers who find her hypocrisy and irresponsibility distasteful, but she will have gained new ones, namely among the millions of Americans with type 2 diabetes who can relate, as well as those who previously dismissed her because of the unhealthy nature of her otherwise delicious comfort-food recipes. For this, the publicity is necessary for awareness.

As drug marketers, we need to create a sense of advocacy and support for patients, healthcare providers, and their respective disease states. Simply put, the pharmaceutical industry has been trying to earn as much good publicity as possible. So we have to wonder, is this one step forward or two steps back?

Categories: Health and wellness marketing
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