Saatchi Wellness

noreply@blogger.com (Saatchi Wellness) — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 17:37:00 +0000

There is only one Helayne Spivak, and she's ours -- but this month, she also wrote the 'Private View' column in MM&M, in this case about some current & breakthrough print work in Rx and healthcare. The magazine was lucky to get her and we're truly fortunate to have her as our own Chief Creative Officer -- read on!

Is it time yet?

noreply@blogger.com (Ned Russell) — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 16:14:00 +0000

A new PwC survey is showing that 50% of Americans under 35 are using social media for healthcare purposes -- which can range from looking up information on YouTube to registering a complaint.

Yet the FDA continues to drag its feet on establishing clear guidelines for pharmaceutical companies in using social media channels and marketers (and yes, agencies) are still trying to figure out how to employ social media tactics effectively.

Not addressing how people get and channel information through social media is a healthcare issue in the United States: we live in an information-driven society and we're ignoring the very channel where people are more & more getting most of their information. The question is when will it be time to start addressing social media and its role in healthcare head-on?

We think the time is now, and that's why Saatchi & Saatchi Wellness is pleased to be hosting Social Media Week next month for all Health & Wellness forums; we believe it is important to take a leadership role in the discussions that will drive the evolution of this issue, and we plan on doing just that.

Take a look at the PwC findings at the link below, and we hope to see you here on Hudson Street in February.

Ned

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/study_predicts_growing_use_of_social_media_in_heal.php?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+readwriteweb+%28ReadWriteWeb%29

Some Insights About Insights

noreply@blogger.com (Saatchi Wellness) — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 22:56:00 +0000

If that handsome man on today's adage.com landing page looked familiar, it is because it is one of our resident superstars -- Jacob Braude -- giving the competition from unfair advantages by espousing some of his insights to getting to better customer insights. In our business, resonance and relevance equal economic growth, and there is no one better than Jacob in this regard. Enjoy the column and please let him know your thoughts (jacob.braude@saatchiwellness or @rowdybraude).

One of a kind. . . .

noreply@blogger.com (Saatchi Wellness) — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 16:07:00 +0000

I got an email last night from my good friend Andrea Alstrup saying that Pete Tyrrell had passed away.

Pete ran J&J's Corporate Advertising Group for many years and was a vocal proponent for the advertising and pharmaceutical industries at a time when the world was beginning to change. But to me he was an incredibly valuable mentor and friend.

Pete embodied the credo of J&J: his first priority was clearly to the customers all J&J brands served, and he was transparent in his agenda and goals. He knew what he knew -- and he knew what he didn't, and his greatest strength may have been his ability to build trust in others to compensate for what he didn't know and -- in so doing -- create a better product. Pete wasn't one for process -- if it interfered with good thinking or work -- and he was willing to put his own neck on the line and go for it.

For instance, a few months after the national launch of Acuvue Disposable Contact Lenses, we learned that one of the teams in that year's Super Bowl was wearing the product: we took an idea, from concept to airing on the Super Bowl, in 11 days. Pete used his connections to push this through, both J&J corporately and the network airing the game that year, which miraculously "found" the time on the game long-ago sold out (we even got billboards in the pre & post-game shows!). Many believe that the lift in patient inquiries & fits that came from running that spot put Acuvue on the trajectory that made the brand a global success. No one would ever have approved it in an annual plan, circumstances took us to an opportunity and we went for it.

We didn't always agree -- we did a corporate spot called "A Mother's Touch", which Adweek named one of the best spots of the '90's, and Pete pulled it off air just after it started because he felt that the spot made J&J look old (the talent was a grandmother holding her grandchild). No one could understand why he became so sensitive to this (it was, after all, the idea we sold to him), but everyone trusted Pete's judgement enough to leave it alone.

Pete wasn't an easy client -- there was a reason he held that big job -- but he was fair and if you earned his respect and trust, he rewarded you big time. He was a class act. I will miss his opinion, his enthusiasm, his friendship.

Promoting Wellness vs. Illness: It’s All About We vs. I

noreply@blogger.com (Saatchi Wellness) — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 19:34:00 +0000

Marketers are starting to wise up to the importance of the "we-ness" in wellness.

Check out today's Forbes' Leadership Forum where Jacob Braude, Saatchi Wellness's VP of Strategic Planning, discusses the role our friends and connections play in our health and wellness:
Promoting Wellness vs. Illness: It's All About We vs. I

American Business Awards- Acorda.com

noreply@blogger.com (Saatchi Wellness) — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 15:58:00 +0000

We received word this week from our Acorda clients that our Acorda.com site won best pharmaceutical company website at the American Business Awards ceremony held on June 20th in New York.

We have always been proud of our work on Acorda and the passion it has ignited in our team for people living with MS. But I think everyone should take special note that the high level of our work extended beyond the ads, beyond the events and digital programs we created with our Acorda partners for Move Over MS and "I Walk Because",which continue today -- and into a corporate site, which for a start-up company like Acorda is really important to how they attract investments to fund their growth.

The work has been recognized as best-in-industry again. Congratulations to Kim Olson, Paul Schmidt, William Martino, Jacob Braude, Sarah Hall, Tim Mingle and everyone else who had a hand in this work. Nicely done!

Ned

Monkey see, monkey do

noreply@blogger.com (Saatchi Wellness) — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 16:12:00 +0000

Warning! - You might get fat while reading this.

Do you often get the munchies while watching long hours of TV or playing video games? Do you find yourself craving a snack midmorning after a few hours on your computer? Well that’s because activities like these trick our brains into thinking we are being physically active so much so that they’ve been proven to cause fluctuation in our blood sugar and hunger hormone levels. They even agitate our appetite for sweet treats such as cookies and chocolate cake.

So are you getting hungry yet? If not, allow me to introduce you to mirror neurons. About twenty years ago in Italy, a group of scientists were doing an experiment with monkeys to learn how the brain controls our actions and discovered that certain neurons in the monkey’s brain would fire up when the monkey would grasp or manipulate a peanut. They then discovered (by accident) that those same neurons would also fire up when the monkey saw an other monkey grasp or manipulate the peanut i.e. as far as the brain is concerned, seeing can be as good as doing. A number of other experiments have shown that humans have a similar system. We call such neurons mirror neurons. These bad boys can explain why our brains think we’ve worked off many calories requiring replacement when we watch TV, movies, sport, surfing the web etc.

But mirror neurons do a lot more than just trick our brains and cause us to overeat. They affect our day to day lives more than you may realize. They make us empathetic by helping us feel other individuals’ actions, sensations, and emotions as if we were in their shoes. They help us learn by seeing instead of actually having to try something ourselves. For instance, if one of your friends tries a glass of milk and makes a repugnant face, chances are you are not going to make the same mistake. You would probably get grossed out just by imagining the sour taste of curdled milk.

These shared circuits can also explain our buying behavior, and the power that desirable experiences have in advertising campaigns. When consumers see another person using a product or a brand, they share the experience of the person they are watching. Men started smoking cigarettes just by seeing a rugged cowboy in nature enjoying a cigarette (Marlboro Man). The Snuggie was able to net over $100MM just by showing an entire family cozy and happy watching TV while dressed in ridiculous oversized blankets with sleeves. It’s crazy what vicarious thrills we get from seeing others enjoying a product, or a brand.

Another manifestation of this ‘to see is to do’ phenomenon is the application of computer games to improve health related behaviors; for example race car games promoting seat belt protection and safe driving by penalizing the racers if they don’t wear their seat belts. And there are other emerging games that aim to control tobacco use, improve nutritional habits, and even help prevent certain diseases such as HIV.

So, although our mirror neurons have added to our love handles, it’s still inspiring to know that there is something inside each of us that connects us to each other, and causes us to identify with each other, care about each other, learn from each other, and can even help prevent diseases.

Jessica Mendoza
Strategic Planner

Social Media Week presentation now available on SlideShare

noreply@blogger.com (William Martino) — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 18:55:00 +0000

Convergence in technology is all around us—whether it's our mobile phones that serve many purposes (phone, camera, address book, GPS, etc...) or the continued evolution of platforms like Facebook (who announced this week that they were entering the movie distribution business). It's a topic we explored during Social Media Week and one that we will continue to keep our eyes on in the future.

As the expression goes, "You can't know where you're going until you know where you've been." We hope that our event, "Convergence: How Social Commerce and Mobile Change the Way We Make Decisions and Shop," shed some light on the current state of convergence, and are happy to make the presentation available on SlideShare. Enjoy!

Saatchi Wellness - Social Media Week 2011

View more presentations from Saatchi & Saatchi Wellness.

Today's "Snapshot" in USA Today

noreply@blogger.com (Saatchi Wellness) — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 23:14:00 +0000

Everyone is familiar with the little graphs that appear on the front page of every section of USA Today.

Well, this morning's paper had a chart from our very own 2011 Wellness Survey that we fielded with the Time Inc. books. While this exposure is not significant in itself, the fact that we're being sourced as a information base for cultural and attitudinal changes in something like USA Today is exactly what we mean when we say our company will be a thought-leader in Wellness. You should expect that you'll be seeing our name (and our people) sourced for a lot more this year and beyond.

Take a look at our little "snapshot" from today's paper. . .

~Ned

DiGiDAY Live Streaming

noreply@blogger.com (William Martino) — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 20:40:00 +0000

Join our Managing Director, Ned Russell at the DiGiDAY: On Media Conference as he participates in a panel discussion about Creativity in Digital Advertising (And The Lack Of It). Live streaming is available below, and you can also participate on twitter by following the hashtag #DIGIDAY.

Watch live streaming video from digiday at livestream.com

Creativity in Digital Advertising

noreply@blogger.com (William Martino) — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 17:29:00 +0000

Technology has changed the game for advertisers, giving them new media, formats, and means of making their brand known to a desired audience. Next Wednesday (February 23rd), our Managing Director, Ned Russell will join a panel of other advertising professionals to discuss what's working (and what isn't) at the DIGIDAY: On Media conference in Los Angeles.

While we have a few ideas in mind, we want to know what you think: what digital advertising ideas really caught your attention this year? Which campaigns really broke through and delivered against the bottom line? Anything that failed miserably but has a few key take-aways that we can learn from?

Please use the comments below to share your ideas, or you can send suggestions via twitter at @saatchiwellness

For more information about Ned's panel, you can visit the DIGIDAY conference website at: http://www.digidayonmedia.com/Agenda/

Live Streaming of Social Media Week

noreply@blogger.com (William Martino) — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 16:24:00 +0000

For those that can't make it to New York, we're happy to bring you a live feed of the event, Convergence: How Social Commerce and Mobile Change the Way We Make Decisions and Shop, courtesy of livestream. The feed of our event will begin at noon, EST.

Watch live streaming video from smw_newyork at livestream.com

You can also follow the conversation on twitter through the hashtag: #smwsaatchi

Updated February 18 to link to permanent stream

Happy Social Media Week!

noreply@blogger.com (William Martino) — Mon, 07 Feb 2011 14:19:00 +0000

This week, across nine cities around the world, hundreds of thousands of people will celebrate Social Media Week—getting together to share ideas about social media and the role that it plays in our society. In our personal lives and certainly as we work with our client partners, we continue to see ways in which social technologies have changed the way people connect with each other and with brands.

In the spirit of sharing and learning, we are happy to sponsor an event of our own, tomorrow, February 8—Convergence: How Social Commerce and Mobile Change the Way We Make Decisions and Shop. We will be joined by experts from across the world of retail, mobile, and e-commerce to discuss how convergence—the coming-together of different devices, technologies, and the Internet—impacts marketing, advertising, and sales.

If you are in New York tomorrow, registration is still open at: http://www.amiando.com/smwnysaatchi.html

If you can't make it, we'll be streaming the event live here at: http://saatchiwellness.blogspot.com and you can follow us on twitter through the hashtag: #smwsaatchi

You can also check out http://socialmediaweek.org for events in San Francisco, Rome, Paris, Toronto, São Paulo, London, Hong Kong, and Istanbul

Happy Social Media Week!

Who's Keeping You Warm This Weekend?

noreply@blogger.com (Johanna Skilling) — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 16:00:00 +0000

As we head into another cold winter weekend, it seems especially timely to ask who you want to cuddle up with: Your partner? Or -wait for it --your dog?

It was big news this week when a national survey (done for the Associated Press and Petside.com) revealed that about 1 in 7 Americans -- if they really, really had to choose -- would choose the pup (that’s 14% for you math geeks out there, and we mean that fondly).

The good folks at Petside saw that as bad news for pets ... but on the plus side for bipeds, 84% said they’d stick with their (human) better half.

Here at SSW, we found that pets are still pretty popular.

When we asked people in our 2010 Wellness Survey if they’d rather have a new pet or a new partner, 71% said they’d rather have a new pet …which might mean they were pretty happy with their current partner, right? But 29% said they’d rather have a new partner (no pets required). So... maybe they're single.

71% also said they’d rather have a new pet than another child. Which makes sense in these economic times, since pets don’t generally go to college or take years of piano lessons.

I have a sneaking suspicion that for most of us, wellness means filling our homes with all the love we can -- whether it's with pets, partners, kids -- or at least 2 out of 3!

What about you?

Hope this finds you well… and staying warm!

Johanna

On Relationships

noreply@blogger.com (Johanna Skilling) — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 16:01:00 +0000

Advertising agencies are at heart service organizations. Our shops are stuffed with wicked smart and creative people, with people who love solving puzzles and working out what makes others tick. But ultimately the ideas and work developed at advertising agencies are for naught if they aren’t funded by a client in the service of selling their product.

So the relationship between the folks who have the products – and the money – and the creative teams who are hired to sell those products becomes a big part of whether or not we get great work into the marketplace. A brilliant idea that isn’t embraced by the client is a useless idea, and a creative team that pursues their own agenda and loses sight of their job to sell product is just as worthless.

Which makes a recent experiment by Eli J. Finkel and Paul W. Eastwick super interesting to anyone working in the advertising industry – and I would guess anyone in a service industry.

It's about something called the approacher bias.

The researchers were out to test the commonly accepted idea that men were less selective than women when it came to choosing someone to date . Their hypothesis was that this lower standard actually had nothing to do with whether you were a man or a woman, it had to do with who was the approacher and who was the approachee.

You’ve probably guessed by now, but I’ll go ahead and confirm that the researchers proved out their hypothesis. It didn’t matter whether you were a man or a woman, if you were the one doing the approaching, you tended to be significantly less selective and to find the person you were approaching more attractive. However, if you were the one being approached you tended to be much more…judgmental.

All of this happens unconsciously without us even knowing that it is happening. But now that you do know that it happens, whether you are the approacher or the approachee, you can take some steps to neutralize this unconscious bias.

What I like to do to is to make myself at home. I hang my coat in the closet instead of bringing it into the meeting room. I put my bag out of sight. And for those of you who know me, yes, I take my shoes off (don’t worry; I’m wearing a nice clean pair of socks).

These might seem like little things, but they make a big difference in setting the right tone for collaboration that allows great work to flourish. Remember, it’s not just how good your idea is, it’s whether or not you can help everyone to get behind it. Removing the approacher bias is a good step in the right direction.

Hope this finds you well,

Jacob Braude

VP, Strategist

Why We Don’t Work at Work -And How We Can Do Better

noreply@blogger.com (Johanna Skilling) — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 19:42:00 +0000

Have you ever had this experience? You are busy at work all day, and by closing time you’re wrung out and ready to head home, but you realize that – despite all the energy you put out – you didn’t actually get much of anything done.

It happens to me all the time, and I don’t think I’m alone in this. It makes me mad. I like my job, but I hate days when I go home feeling like I just blew nine hours I could have been spending with my kids, and I didn’t even get any good work done.

So I was thrilled when I stumbled on Jason Fried’s talk at TED. Fried is the cofounder of 37signals, and he’s spent years thinking about why it is that we don’t get work done when we are actually at work.

Fried says work is like sleep. When you sleep, you actually progress through three different stages -- and it’s the last stage of really deep sleep when all of the healing and recovery happens that gives you energy for the next day. If your sleep is interrupted before you get to that last stage, then you have to start all over from the beginning. People with infants will tell you that short bursts of sleep here and there, even if it adds up to 6 or 7 hours, wiare not refreshing.

Work is the same way. We progress through stages of focus, and it’s only in that last deep stage when you are in the “flow” that you get your best work done. If you get interrupted, you have to start over from the beginning.

Which makes the modern office pretty much the worst place ever to get work done. Between people wanting to chat, your boss checking in on you, and the endless meetings, solid blocks of uninterrupted time to get work done are few and far between.

Since watching Jason's talk, I stated paying attention to how many times people wander into my office while I’m in the middle of trying to get something done. It happens a lot. And half the time it doesn’t even have anything to do with work. A ten minute talk about your weekend here, fifteen minutes to talk about something cute your kids did there, and before I know it the time I had staked out to get something done has evaporated.

Fried has some pretty out there suggestions to fix the problem – my favorite one is that every Thursday afternoon no one is allowed to talk to anyone else.

I took a simpler approach: I close my door. I have to say, it’s awesome. Sure, sometimes people will knock, but I can choose to answer, or to keep working. It has been so satisfying to go home everyday knowing I produced something, that I find myself closing the door more and more.

If you’re like me, and you get pleasure and a sense of self worth from actually making stuff, I urge you to try the door. If you don’t have a door, then leave. Go to a coffee shop, put your ear buds in, and just focus for 90 minutes. It is a fantastic feeling.

Now if I can just get rid of those dang meetings.

Hope this finds you well,

Jacob Braude

VP, Strategic Planner

Seeing Wellness Through New Eyes in 2011

noreply@blogger.com (Johanna Skilling) — Mon, 03 Jan 2011 18:10:00 +0000

Happy new year!

Americans are starting the new year with a lot of good thoughts and optimism about the months to come: According to our friends at Gallup, 58% say 2011 will be better than 2010 – only 20% say it will be worse.

Of course, New Year’s is traditionally an optimistic time – that’s why we feel emboldened to make all those resolutions (or even for resolving not to make any more resolutions!). With a fresh new take on the year, our efforts seem fated to succeed …. at least this week, while the year is still young!

Marketers are right there with us. If you were watching any TV at all this past weekend, you saw lots of invitations to amp up your wellness, from starting a new love life with dating sites like Match and eharmony, to the latest way to soften your hands while you do the dishes, with the new Dawn dish liquid/Olay Beauty collaboration.

Weight loss helpers were out in force, with a newly svelte Jennifer Hudson belting out the virtues of Weight Watchers new Points-Plus program, and Nutrisystem showcased “real people” who’ve achieved slimming success. Even yogurt made a big showing, with brands like Activia pushing both its “feel good inside” benefit and its new line of dessert-like flavors, for smarter sweet-tooth satisfaction.

There were also plenty of spots for products that help you smoke less, snore less, sleep better, smooth away wrinkles and under-eye bags, strengthen and slenderize, and in general, be a better you.

But there’s something else about the new year’s new take on wellness – more and more, it’s something we want for ourselves. It’s not about being selfish – it’s about being mindful and motivated to achieve your own hopes and dreams for this coming year, whether your wellness goal is physical, social, emotional, financial -- or just to keep your hands feeling soft after you wash the dishes.

It’s all part of what we’ve been calling the Me-Covery, and we’ll be sharing more about it in the weeks to come.

Hope this finds you well!

Johanna

Why We Care About Others

noreply@blogger.com (Johanna Skilling) — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 14:57:00 +0000

The Harvard Business School recently released the results from a new study on generosity (HT @ryandrumwright). As they put it in their press release:

“This research provides the first support for a possible psychological universal: human beings around the world derive emotional benefits from using their financial resources to help others (prosocial spending). Analyzing survey data from 136 countries, we show that prosocial spending is consistently associated with greater happiness.”

In other words, humans are wired to feel happy when we help others.

It’s a bit of a foreign idea to old-school economic thought, which has at its core the assumption that everything we do is motivated by rational self interest. Since the meltdown of the markets and the emergence of behavioral economics (if you haven’t read it yet, be sure to check out Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely), we have all begun to clue in to the fact that a good number of the things people do are not the result of logical thought, but instead are the result of a messy collision of different evolutionary impulses that we have amassed over the millions of years.

As Robert Sapolsky puts it in a recent column in the NY Times, “evolution is a tinkerer, not an inventor.” We are not the result of a quantum biological leap that is unique in the animal kingdom. Rather, the faculties that make us human have been built on the foundation of other capabilities. So for instance, the part of your brain that detects that a piece of food is disgusting is also the part that activates when you read about some morally disgusting act (like the banks just rubber-stamping foreclosures).

In one study Dr. Sapolsky talks about in his column, “Chen-Bo Zhong of the University of Toronto and Katie Liljenquist of Northwestern University demonstrated how the brain has trouble distinguishing between being a dirty scoundrel and being in need of a bath. Volunteers were asked to recall either a moral or immoral act in their past. Afterward, as a token of appreciation, Zhong and Liljenquist offered the volunteers a choice between the gift of a pencil or of a package of antiseptic wipes. And the folks who had just wallowed in their ethical failures were more likely to go for the wipes.”

The scientist Dan Batson applies this thinking to generosity and empathy. In a recent column he wrote for On The Human, he discusses the evidence for the theory that our empathy for others is just an offshoot of the much older evolutionary quality of caring for our children. The same part of our brain that rewards us for nurturing our kids (even when all we want is for them to be quiet and leave us alone – don’t pretend like you don’t know what I’m talking about), is the part that rewards us for being kind, generous and helpful to strangers.

The positive emotions we get from generosity are a human universal, and it is part of what has enabled us to succeed as a species. As companies and marketers, we often become so locked in the transactional nature of our business (I’ll give you this coupon or service, but first you have to buy my product), that this very powerful truth seems completely foreign and unworkable. We should take heed of companies like Toms Shoes and campaigns like the Pepsi Refresh Project.

Generosity at a corporate or brand level requires a leap of faith, but there are big rewards for the teams who are able to make the jump.

Hope this finds you well,

Jacob Braude

VP, Strategic Planner

True Confessions of A Trader Joe’s Shopper

noreply@blogger.com (Johanna Skilling) — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 22:12:00 +0000

I never really saw myself as a loyal grocery store shopper. Aren't all grocery stores the same? Sure, I had my usual store, but that was just because it was close to home and had good product variety. If there was a similar store close by, I wouldn't have any problems switching. It's just groceries after all...

Or is it?

Since I've lived in New York, I've turned into a very loyal Trader Joe's shopper. I go there so often, I can list all of their products and prices. Last weekend, I decided to venture out and try WholeFoods. I spent five minutes cruising the aisles and then turned around and walked to Trader Joe's. I couldn't take it. I needed to feel at home. I needed my TJ fix.

There's something bigger than 59-cent apples keeping me hungry for my next TJ visit. It's the overall Trader Joe's experience.

When you walk though Trader Joe's door, you know what you are going to get. You know where to find your favorite products. The atmosphere is cool, friendly, relaxed and authentic, and employees actually seem happy to help you even though the place is packed like sardines (Trader Joe's sells some great sardines by the way).

So, how can we turn my love for TJ’s into something helpful and beneficial to marketers interested in wellness? It is all about creating experiences.

You don’t have to be a retail grocery chain to create a meaningful experience for consumers. With the popularity of popup stores and consumer experience design, there are infinite opportunities for wellness brands to get into the experiential marketing mix. For instance, Sanofi-Aventis and the Prevent Cancer Foundation placed a 20-foot long inflatable colon in Times Square as part of a cross-country colorectal-cancer awareness tour. The foundation claims they have seen a trend of increases in screenings, and a reduction of mortality rates since the tour’s launch.

There is one key thing that I’ve learned from all of these examples: an effective branded experience needs to be:

• Relevant
• Multi-sensory
• Emotional
• Differentiating

It doesn’t seem to matter if you are selling turkeys for the holidays or encouraging people to take care of their health, the experiences that make the greatest impact includes each of these four elements. So this holiday season as popup stores are popping up everywhere, keep your eyes out for these elements, and see if they include everything on the list.

Until then, let’s just go to Trader Joe’s.

Stay well, be well.

Ryan Drumwright
Junior Planner

Where can you go from here?

noreply@blogger.com (Johanna Skilling) — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 00:26:00 +0000

I was inspired to find out last Friday, as perhaps you did, that there are at least three times as many stars out there in space than scientists had previously thought.

And who knows? Maybe there are more, many more, as the calculation was based on stars astronomers can’t actually see. (For every visible bright star, the team assumed 100 unseen.) And imagine -- we already thought, as the wonderful Carl Sagan famously told us, that there were billions and billions of stars out there.

At the same time, another assumption-busting discovery was reported, based on the behavior of bacteria scraped from the bottom of Mono Lake in California. Experts have long believed that life could only survive in the presence of 6 basic elements (phosphorus carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen and sulfur, if you were curious). But defying expectations, the Mono Lake microbes learned how to exist on another element entirely -- arsenic.

I bring these up because if scientists can still make discoveries that challenge our collective notions of the nature of the universe and life as we know it, surely we as marketers have the same opportunities.

Of course, challenging a long-held assumption means being aware that we have deeply-held assumptions –a step that’s easy to overlook. If you believe there are a certain number of stars set in the sky, you’ll never ask whether there might be more beyond our visual reach.

Tom Friedman, talking yesterday on Meet the Press, made the point that achieving success in a global economy (or as he puts it, a flat world) means revisiting cherished assumptions about how to get what we want.

This year, one of the things Wellness seems to mean is reassessing the truths about how we live our lives, especially moving from "can't imagine" to "can do." Or even, "what if?"

What do you really, really think is true? Could you be wrong?.

Maybe you’ll discover brave new worlds, far beyond, or deep within.

Hope this finds you well.

Johanna

Doctors of the Future?

noreply@blogger.com (Johanna Skilling) — Wed, 01 Dec 2010 13:36:00 +0000

I’ve been following the very active twitter stream of Dr. Victor Montori, who heads up the SPARC innovations and design lab at the Mayo clinic (HT @ryandrumwright). At Mayo he leads a team working to improve patient care through design (my words – not theirs).

Their work is centered on a philosophy that may well change the way medicine has been practiced for the last several hundred years.

Until recently, doctors have focused on making measurable improvements in the illness they are treating. If you have multiple sclerosis, your neurologist measures her success by her ability to control the spread of lesions that can be seen when they scan your brain. If you have diabetes, your endocrinologist does her best to ensure that your A1C levels stay within a certain level.

This focus on measurable outcomes has created a revolution in life expectancy. In the short time between 1900 and 1985, life expectancy went from 30 years to 62 years – an astronomical jump.

But our progress has slowed, and increasingly doctors find themselves frustrated by their inability to make measurable improvements in the diseases they treat. The #1 culprit in this trend is people -- millions of whom ignore their doctors’ orders. We don’t take medication we've been prescribed, eat foods we shouldn't, and generally do anything and everything to frustrate our doctors’ desire for us to get better.

We here at Wellness see this dynamic every day. That’s why Dr. Montori’s work is so important and fascinating.

He is one of a growing number of voices from the medical community who are advocating for a wholehearted reexamination of priorities. By crowning measurable improvement as the central tenet of modern medicine, we have created an antagonistic relationship between doctors who want to make the human body work better and patients whose priorities are often more about living well in the time that they have.

Yes, someone living with diabetes would have better blood sugar control if they adhered to a strict diet and exercise regimen. But for many people, this would be a worse fate than suffering from the symptoms of uncontrolled diabetes.

At the heart of everything is a very personal decision about what makes life worth living.

Dr. Montori, and those like him, suggest that we should put this personal decision at the heart of every medical interaction. -- and that doctors learn to first understand what is important to their patient, and then design a care plan around those priorities.

He calls it Minimally Disruptive Medicine. I call it the wave of the future.

If you’d like to read a moving personal narrative from a physician struggling with this issue in his personal practice, check out this piece in the LA Times by Steve Dudley.

Hope this finds you well,

Jacob Braude

VP, Strategic Planner

A “Me”-covery?

noreply@blogger.com (Johanna Skilling) — Mon, 29 Nov 2010 14:03:00 +0000

Is there something of a “me”-covery in the air?

It turns out that Black Friday was a time for shopping … selfishly. While total dollar volume only edged up slightly from last year, purchases for “me” were coming out on top. Articles this weekend were full of stories about shoppers saying they deserved something for themselves – and at least for a few minutes, were putting themselves first

It’s not that we’re giving up on gifts… even charitable gifts are starting to rise again, after taking a nosedive in 2009. But there’s something encouraging about taking care of ourselves too, something that speaks to a desire to refresh and rebuild.

Lest you think this is a celebration of being selfish, I’m always reminded of that line spoken on every flight, every day, here in the U.S. – in the event of an emergency, put your own oxygen mask on first. Why? Because of course, if you aren’t taking care of yourself, it’s harder to take care of others.

It doesn’t have to be about gifts, of course, or even spending money – which for many of us is still tight. Part of your own “me”-covery might be scheduling an hour of me-time during the week, to take a walk, to start reading the new biography of Cleopatra (oh wait, that one’s for me!), or even “we”-time –-to catch up with someone whose company you always enjoy.

Because everybody deserves a little more Wellness this holiday season. Especially you!

Hope this finds you well,
Johanna

Tribe? Or Community?

noreply@blogger.com (Johanna Skilling) — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 02:08:00 +0000

“Man is by nature a political animal.” – Aristotle

Cavemen wrote on cave walls, today we write on Facebook walls. At its core, social networking fulfills our human need to make a connection - it is the modern iteration of tribal behavior.

Tribes are active, mobile, made up of passionate influencers who drive behavior; these are the opinion leaders and the most important targets for a social media campaign. The problem is, many brands think they're creating online tribes when in fact they're simply collecting a community of passive admirers.

What does this mean for wellness brands?

According to Walgreens' president and CEO Greg Wasson, "as patients gain greater access to health care information…they are increasingly becoming shoppers of health care."

Translation: it’s more important than ever to have a clear strategy for engaging with tribal leaders in social media.

Here are 5 ways I've been thinking about to leverage the power of tribes:

Identify your influencers- they will lead you to your tribes!
Map the points where tribal influencers intersect—these are your best points of engagement (i.e. blog, groups, etc.)
Develop key messages that resonate with the tribe
Engage and listen. Tribes will often tell you how to market to them
Repeat

Hope this finds you well!

Sharon Mandler
Senior Digital Strategist

Another big day for Saatchi Wellness -- and our friends at AZ

noreply@blogger.com (Saatchi Wellness) — Wed, 17 Nov 2010 12:55:00 +0000

I am more pleased that I can put into words, but I'm going to try. . .

On Friday night Saatchi & Saatchi Wellness took home a Silver Clio for our work on AstraZeneca's Seroquel XR. This was a day after we took home the Gold honors at the Rx Club Awards, again for Seroquel XR.

A word about the Clios: this honor carries a lot of prestige given that the Clios are a global competition, so our work was up against 'the best of the best' from all over the world (to see for yourself, please go to http://www.cliohealthcare.com/winners/winners.cfm?medium_id=1 ). Now we received a Silver, but being the proud Managing Director I also have to point out that there were no Gold or Grand Clios awarded this year -- which means, for the second consecutive year, Saatchi Wellness has taken home the highest honor bestowed upon any agency at the Clios (last year we received the Grand Clio for Ambien CR). There is no other agency in the world that can make that claim.

Pretty nice. Congratulations go to Helayne Spivak and the Seroquel XR team -- led by Stu Fink, Jennifer Shirley, Jacob Braude, Paul Schmidt and Steve Pytko. You guys are truly on top of the world.

Please congratulate the entire Seroquel team when you see them for both the Silver Clio and the Gold Rx Awards -- their tenacity and vision for better product is an inspiration to us all. Thank you Seroquel team!

Ned

Norma Kamali Says Wellness is .... In Fashion!

noreply@blogger.com (Johanna Skilling) — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 14:13:00 +0000

Did anybody know that Norma Kamali, the famous and iconic fashion designer, is also a wellness guru? She even has a Wellness Café located at 11 West 56th St -- where you can go every week for Wellness Wednesday.

My eyes were opened recently when a friend of mine invited me to a screening event she was organizing to promote the debut of a new documentary series called ‘Conversations- A Dialogue on Wellness Solutions by Norma Kamali’.

The screening was at a private theater at the MOMA, and began with a brief showcase of each of her interviews with people she believed who were instrumental in the area of making positive wellness choices across the areas of beauty, fitness, nutrition, spirituality and health.

The conversations included such personalities as noted choreographer Twyla Tharp, Horst Rechelbacher- the founder of Aveda, Founders of Physique 57, Joe Cross- director and producer of “Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead”, and a handful of others. Each had a distinct point of view, and that became even clearer at the panel discussion that was organized after the viewing.

To learn more, take a look at http://www.normakamalicollection.com/Shared/HTML/conversations.html to take a peek at some of the interviews and to listen to Norma’s perspective.

Hope this finds you well,
Melissa Gordon
VP, Channel Planning