The Ad Age Digital Conference took place in NYC the week of April 12th. While much of the coverage and discussion was focused on digital strategy, one article in particular struck me as highly relevant to our business. The article was different because it focused on striking the right balance of “old” and “new” communications channels.
Within the piece, the president-CEO of NPR (yes, National Public Radio), Vivian Schiller, discusses their approach to embracing and adopting digital channels such as blogs and smartphone apps and how a strategy of striking a harmonious balance between the use of “old” channels (e.g. TV, radio, print) and “new” channels (e.g. social, blogs, Apps) has delivered success.
“Ms. Schiller tries to strike a balance between going ‘back to basics’ and jumping on ‘every bright, shiny object that comes along’.”
NPR has realized that they have to be extremely selective when thinking about the channels they use to promote and distribute content related to their stations and the network as a whole. Let’s face it, they rely on the public for their operating budget so they cannot be wasteful or mesmerized by every new digital idea or tactics that presents itself to them.
Each and every channel idea whether “old or new” is approached in the same way and they ask the same questions:
- Is it useful to the NPR consumer?
- Will it produce quality content to engage that same consumer?
So, how do we take this best practice into action within our pharma-focused world where, let’s face it, things are just more complex than in the consumer advertising world.
As complex as we tend to make our work, the same two questions that are asked above can and should still be applied to everything we do:
- Is this or will this be useful to oncologists?
- Will it help to produce quality educational or brand-specific content to engage oncologists and oncology nurses?
Answering these questions at the inception of the planning process when we are thinking about appropriateness of channels will help focus our efforts and will even help answer the burning client question, If we only had one dollar to invest, where would you put it?
When we adopt the mindset of our target audience we have a much better chance of building a cohesive, connected communications plan where the recommended channels and tactics are most relevant to our audience versus a list of 350+ tactics that have minimal connection or foundation to what our audience wants or needs and instead are based on the hot marketing trend or are trying too hard to include the newest channel on the block.
Throw out these two questions and see what happens. At a minimum, your colleagues and clients will appreciate being re-focused. At a maximum, we can improve our ideas and output.
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