ePharma Summit

Your eLearning Video Is Missing 40% of Its Audience

noreply@blogger.com (James Ellis, Digital Strategist) — Tue, 29 May 2012 16:16:00 +0000

You have a great eLearning program. No, really. I can see every dollar you spent on getting that KOL on film with a killer script that nails your message. The camera work and editing is spot-on. The coding work you did to build a custom interface is delightful. The website is fast, clearly laid out behind a login, and it even remembers which videos I've watched and where I left off last time. Excellent stuff. Kudos to your agency partners for putting it together. I bet you get great traffic, and that everyone involved got a nice pat on the back when it came time for their annual reviews.

This is unfortunate, because I get all my email on my phone, and you guys send me emails all the time. They practically beg me to click on the link and watch the video, but when I do, I get a big grey rectangle. Or an error message (which is funny, because I didn’t do anything wrong). I wonder how much time and money you spent on that pretty video that is completely useless to me.

Suddenly I don't like your website anymore, mostly because it's built around encouraging me to watch a video I can't actually watch.

You've looked at your email metrics lately, right? You know that mobile devices account for anywhere from 40-60% of all email views, right*? Have you looked at your web metrics? In particular, the percentage of mobile traffic to your site, and how it has grown at a near-exponential rate for the past year? That means that all those technical decisions you made only 12 months ago are kinda worthless now. Can you see how desktop traffic stays around and watches your movie, just like you want them to, but that your mobile traffic is almost all gone a minute after they show up? I bet you can (and if you can’t, I’m betting your web team can show you).

*[how do I know that? Because we have access to 29,000 Texas HCPs and we send them bi-monthly newsletters and that’s what our email metrics say.]

If you embrace the idea that mobile is here to stay (and if you’re reading this on a tablet or phone, I think you do), you need to understand how people use these devices.

Allow me to direct your attention to a study that shows that tablet and phone users are more than happy to watch a ten minute video on these portable devices. The small screen is no deterrent. In fact, sitting on a train or waiting in line might be the only time your target has a chance to watch your epic video.

The problem isn't just the file format. It's not too much trouble to re-render the movie into some format other than Flash, but any interactions you’ve built in need to account for the fact that on a tiny screen, buttons need to be big and easy to use. And a mobile user is more likely to need that pause button. The rule of thumb, as described here is that the smaller the screen, the smaller the slice of time the device works best at filling. When they start watching your movie in line at Costco, they may need to come back and finish it later. Not accommodating that behavior means that HCPs just won’t come back.

We've also seen that emails opened by phones tend to get opened sooner. We think it's because most people carry their phones around with them everywhere and are happy to check their email dozens of times a day, rather than checking their email a few times a day at home on the laptop.

So are you ready to embrace mobile and walk the walk? Just don’t walk while texting. Will you go full-mobile to get your eLearning video seen by more of your target list? Yes? That’s what I figured.

How are biotech professionals using social media?

noreply@blogger.com (Jennifer) — Thu, 24 May 2012 20:11:00 +0000

Recently, BioSpace conducted a survey to see how the Pharma and Biotech community were using social media professionally. The found that use of social media for the professionals is sparce. Of those surveyed, only 44% shared that they never use Facebook for professional reasons. Only 25% of those surveyed use Twitter for professionals purposes. The most used social media source is LinkedIn, 56% of those surveyed do use it for professional purposes, but it is viewed as a networking and professional tool. This article constantly points out the benefits of using these tools - staying up to date with the latest news and the awareness of the potential for professionals to better their career.

This July at ePharma Summit West, we'll be hosting The eMarketing University For Brand Managers, with one one of the courses being "How to Find and Target Your Specific Audience Online." For more information on the course, download the ePharma West Agenda here. If you'd like to join us, as a reader of this blog register today and mention code XP1756BLOG to save 10% off the current rate!

Do these numbers surprise you? How do you think the use of social media will change as we see the next generation starting to work in the Pharma and biotech sector?

Sit Down with an #ePharma West Guru: AJ Brustein, Coca-Cola

noreply@blogger.com (Jennifer) — Mon, 21 May 2012 18:41:00 +0000

Today's Guru: AJ Brustein, Global Senior Brand Manager, Coca-Cola
His Presentation: What Does it take to have Authentic and Meaningful Conversations with Your Customer Online? on Wednesday, July 18

AJ Brustein's Four Questions:
Q: What makes you best suited to answer this question?
I have led the global digital rollout of the Coca-Cola open happiness campaign since its launch in 2009, including developing the interactive strategy and creating the Where Will Happiness Strike Next platform which I will talk about at the conference.

Q: Which digital channels do you use professionally?
Everything. As a brand we have a presence across all the major social media platforms, and scale across all other aspects of digital from search to mobile or CSR to advertising to owned presences etc. Professionally (on a personal level…) I use most of the same social media channels +wordpress, tumbler, and reddit which we don't engage in globally at Coke.

Q: What do you hope to learn from attending the ePharma Summit West?
How others are engaging in social media and translating their marketing campaigns into successful digital executions.

Q: What other Guru are you most interested in hear speak?
Christy Cooper from Facebook. Things change so quickly at Facebook, it's always great hearing the latest and finding better ways to engage with our fans through the platform.

The Coca Cola Happiness Machine:

A Message From Peter Dannenfelser, ePharma Summit West Conference Chair

noreply@blogger.com (Jennifer) — Thu, 17 May 2012 14:34:00 +0000

ePharma Summit West Conference Chair, Peter Dannenfelser, would like to share this with the ePharma Summit Blog Readers:

It’s certainly an exciting time to work in pharma marketing, with new technologies and best practices being developed almost daily. Who would have thought we’d ever be discussing Pinterest and how it relates to pharma? With all of these new channels appearing seemingly overnight, having a platform to learn about all of them, as well as what they mean for pharma, is imperative.

I love the format of this year’s ePharma West. This new approach is different from any conference I’ve been to and will inspire you, show you how to make the ideas you hear work for you, and help you plan for the upcoming year:

Get Inspired: Gurus will open your mind and expose you to what works in pharma, as well as less-regulated industries
Make It Work: Industry executives will demonstrate how it works within the industry through product stories
Plan for the Future: Each product story will be followed by moderated discussions, so you can discuss how to implement what you’ve learned into your marketing plan

There is plenty of opportunity for interaction and informal discussion with the speakers, and many attendees place great value on what they learn from other attendees, and the speakers. I, for one, am excited about the panel discussions after the presentations. It has been my opinion for years that the conversations are what make the ePharma events tick.

As you may already know, I co-chaired ePharma in New York, and am excited to be chairing ePharma Summit West. I think that it will be a completely different experience and I’m looking forward to adding what I learn at ePharma West to the strategies and tactics I took with me from the ePharma Summit.

For more information about this conference, click here to visit the website.

I look forward to seeing you this summer in San Francisco!

Sincerely,
Peter Dannenfelser
Chairman
ePharma Summit West
@PeteDTweets

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ePharma Summit West is taking place July 17-19, 2012 in San Francisco, California. For more information on the program, download the agenda. Don’t forget, as a member of the reader of this blog, when you register to join us and use code XP1756BLOG, you’ll receive an additional 10% of that rate! If you have any questions about this year’s event, feel free to email Jennifer Pereira.

What can social media contribute to the sales funnel?

noreply@blogger.com (Jennifer) — Wed, 16 May 2012 16:55:00 +0000

Marketing is critical to the success of any business, and over the last few years, social media strategy has also proven just as critical. It also shouldn't be it's own entity and Jordan Kasteler of Search Engine Land has a few great reasons why. The sales process is long, it doesn't start when someone arrives at a webpage. Social media should be in place all through out the sales funnel to provide engaging conversations and provide critical influence during the sales process. By reaching out and connecting and communicating with the customer at the beginning and throughout the the sales process, the power any company can hold over its customer is exponential. Not only are you connected with your customer throughout the sales process, but after and year round through your continual presence in social media.

This year at ePharma Summit West, Christy Cooper of Facebook will be presenting "How Do YOU Make Social Media Work for Pharma?". She works daily with Pharma companies to help them use Facebook as a platform to openly connect with their patients. For more information about Christy's presentation download the brochure here. If you're interested in joining Christy this July 17-19, 2012 in San Francisco, register today and mention XP1756BLOG to save an additional 10% off the standard rate!

One of Jordan's main arguments is that the social media team should be involved throughout the marketing process. Do you agree? What are the benefits of having social media integrated in to your marketing and sales teams?

#ePharma Guest Post: Fostering Open Innovation: 2012 Data Design Diabetes Innovation Challenge

noreply@blogger.com (Jennifer) — Tue, 15 May 2012 13:00:00 +0000

Today's guest post comes from ePharma Summit West Speaker Michele Polz, Head of Patient Solutions, US Diabetes, Sanofi US.

Fostering Open Innovation: 2012 Data Design Diabetes Innovation Challenge

Nearly 26 million Americans have diabetes, amounting to 10% of the total cost of US healthcare. An epidemic of such grand proportion demands innovative solutions that employ new approaches, technologies, and data to disrupt existing models and drive lasting improvements in care.

Successful innovation starts with an open approach. Now in its second year, Data Design Diabetes™ is a next-generation challenge offered by Sanofi US that drives action toward a three-part aim: innovation in the quality, delivery and cost of diabetes care. Recognizing that anyone could be the bearer of the next big idea in healthcare, we cast a wide net to innovators across the US, to find a breakthrough that may help millions of Americans living with diabetes.

Beyond simply promoting an extended reach to a broad community, open dialogue is also an important component of innovation. In order to develop solutions for the real issues people with diabetes and their caretakers face each day, it’s critical for innovators to connect with patients through open communication. Data Design Diabetes kicked off earlier this year by publicly crowd-sourcing answers to the question, “What matters most to you?” as it relates to diabetes, shaping the guidelines for the 2012 Innovation Challenge. As the semi-finalists continued to develop their prototypes, they also took part in a Design Bootcamp, using a human-centric approach that speaks directly to patient needs.

Finally, access to the right resources during the key phases of the innovation process plays a valuable role in cultivating success. Data Design Diabetes connects innovators with the right people and tools in several ways. First, semi-finalists learn from a team of experienced mentors with valuable cross-functional expertise spanning, human-centered design, healthcare, business modeling and technology architecture. An expert panel of judges with diverse experience in business and healthcare then reviews the finalists’ concepts to determine a winner. During each phase, advancing teams are awarded cash prizes ranging from $10,000 to a grand prize of $100,000 to help further their concepts.

When the conditions that foster innovation converge, the results are remarkable. Last year’s Data Design Diabetes Innovation Challenge winner, Ginger.io, transforms a mobile phone into an automatic self-monitoring tool for tracking real-time movement patterns and social interactions passively, without user input. The team has raised $1.7M in venture funding, has grown to a team of nine, and recently acquired Rock Health startup, Pipette.

Please join us at www.datadesigndiabetes.com to view this year’s semi-finalists present their concepts live online at Demo Day on May 16, 2012. As we await the winner of the 2012 Data Design Diabetes Innovation Challenge, we’re thrilled to see other organizations following suit, bridging the private and public sectors to drive innovation.

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Michele Polz will be presenting about this initiative at ePharma Summit West on Thursday, July 19 with Guru Christy Cooper, Global Marketing Solutions, Facebook. If you'd like to join us for this presentation, register today and mention code XP1756BLOG and save 10% off the standard rate!

Sit Down with an #ePharma West Guru: Scott Oppliger, SocialVolt

noreply@blogger.com (Jennifer) — Mon, 14 May 2012 18:41:00 +0000

Leading up to ePharma Summit West, we're going to spotlight our ePharma Summit West Gurus. Each has been presented with four questions that capture the essence of the ePharma West Conference. In this series, many will take the opportunity to share these with you.

These visionary experts are joining us in San Francisco to open your mind, challenge conventions and set the stage for the development of solutions and actions that immediately drive results. Today we feature Scott Oppliger, Founder & CEO, SocialVolt. For more information on Scott's presentation and the rest of the program, download the brochure here. If you'd like to join us July 17-19, 2012, in San Francisco, register today and mention code XP1756BLOG to save 10% off the current rate!

Today's Guru: Scott Oppliger, Founder & CEO, SocialVolt
His Presentation: What is the Real Risk of Losing Control of Your Brand Message Online? on Wednesday, July 18

Scott Oppliger's Four Questions:
Q: What makes you best suited to answer this question?
As founder and CEO of SocialVolt, I work with our clients in heavily regulated industries to help them manage their social media and brand messaging online. My background in regulated industries and expertise in social media have allowed me to help our clients successfully engage in social media. By drawing from my experiences and real world examples, I will be able to help the audience understand the real risks of losing control of brand messaging online.

Q: What is your favorite digital marketing campaign and why?
One of my favorite digital marketing campaigns from the pharma industry is from Sanofi US . Using a combination of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and blogs, Sanofi US is a prime example of a company does an excellent job interacting with and listening to its customers on social channels. Its interactive blogs provide insight and guidance to consumers and the company excels at creating conversations on Twitter and Facebook. In a heavily regulated industry like pharma, where other companies are hesitant to engage in social media because of the potential risks, Sanofi US is demonstrating that social media engagement can be highly successful, as long as the campaign is a well-planned and carefully managed.

Q: If attendees could walk away having learned just one thing from your presentation, what do you hope it would be?
Despite the inherent risks that come with the openness of the medium, if you can understand and manage these risks, you can empower your employees to help you harness the value of social media and generate revenue and brand visibility.

Q: What do you hope to learn from attending the ePharma Summit West?
I hope to learn more about industry innovations in digital marketing from my fellow presenters and conference attendees, in particular where pharmaceutical marketing departments have been seeing success lately in terms of their campaigns. I am excited for the opportunity to share my knowledge and at the same time learn from other experts in the industry.

What's the outlook for the mobile health market?

noreply@blogger.com (Jennifer) — Wed, 09 May 2012 16:54:00 +0000

The mobile health market is rapidly expanding, and it's easy to see why. There were more SmartPhones and tablets shipped last year than laptops and desktops. This year alone, it is predicted that there will be 44 million downloads of health related apps, with this number growing to 142 million apps by 2016. It is also believed that in 2014, mobile phones will be the most common way to access the Internet.

Here's a more in-depth rundown on the growing mobile market from HealthX.

What does this mean for the Pharma industry? More people are looking to manage their health through their phone. At ePharma Summit West 2012, Phil McKinney, Innovation Guru, Author, Beyond The Obvious—Killer Questions That Spark Game-Changing Innovation will be on hand to present "How Can You be the First to the Next Best Thing and Avoid Making the Next Big Mistake?" which will address this exact topic - how Pharma and Healthcare can venture into the mobile health market and navigate the waters successfully to connect with their market. For more information on McKinney's presentation and the rest of the program, download the brochure. If you'd like to join McKinney this July in San Francisco, register to join us and mention code XP1756BLOG to save 15% off the current rate.

How do you think mobile health apps will affect the overall population? Do you see this as a way for the worlds population to be more aware of their health?

Sit Down with an #ePharma West Guru: Kurt Mueller, Roska Healthcare

noreply@blogger.com (Jennifer) — Tue, 08 May 2012 14:15:00 +0000

Kurt Mueller's Four Questions:

Q: What makes you best suited to answer this question?
I’ve driven the strategies behind multi-channel and digital healthcare marketing campaigns in the pharmaceutical space for 22 years. Having measured the successes (and failures) of truly integrated marketing campaigns over such a long period of time, I’ve gotten pretty good at knowing what’s going to work – and more importantly, what’s not.

Q. What is your favorite pharmaceutical marketing campaign and why?
Gardasil’s “One Less” campaign was one of the most well-thought-out, best-executed multichannel marketing campaigns in history. The vaccine’s efficacy, in my opinion, truly offered young women the opportunity to become one less casualty of cervical cancer. The campaign maintained message consistency, brand look and feel, and really engaged parents and adolescents to take action. Adding to the program’s effectiveness was that it was deployed across all key critical touchpoints, where patients and parents of patients gathered most – watching TV, on Facebook, surfing the net, at their doctor’s office. They were not only given the information they needed for themselves, but the tools required to help spread the word and save others from infection. The data doesn’t lie. If you look at the drop in incidence of cervical cancer in adolescent women in the US, as well as the awareness of human papillomavirus (HPV), Merck and its agencies did a terrific job marketing the vaccine.

Q. If attendees could walk away having learned just one thing from your presentation, what do you hope it would be?
Just because you can measure something doesn’t mean you should. We’ve become so obsessed with what we can count that we’ve lost track of why we’re counting. You need a carefully thought-out measurement plan that’s tied directly to your objectives, one that generates the kind of actionable information that drives decisions. And, those decisions should work to allow you to continually refine your strategy to take your successes to the next level—as you divert energy from poor performing activities.

Q. What do you hope to learn from attending the ePharma Summit West?
I’m interested in innovative strategies that other Gurus and Product Story presenters are using to drive action and generate measurable results in their campaigns. I’m really looking forward to not only playing a role in the conference, but also exchanging actual uncensored ideas with the great minds around the table during the working group sessions. I look at our time together in San Francisco as an opportunity to really break down the walls, get real, and share ideas that can move markets.

The Tools You Need to Optimize Your Digital Marketing Program

noreply@blogger.com (Jennifer) — Mon, 07 May 2012 19:27:00 +0000

ePharma Summit West is a new event format designed to foster creativity and collaboration to effectively answer your toughest questions.

Each topic begins with a 15 minute guru presentation designed to deliver expert knowledge from both in and out of industry participants. Our gurus are hand selected from companies like Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Roska Healthcare, Coca-Cola, Google and Facebook to provide you with insights into their areas of expertise. Each guru presentation is followed by an industry product story to show you how these tactics and strategies have been used in this regulatory environment. Finally, gurus and product story presenters facilitate open discussion with the audience about the challenges you and your team face to give you the most comprehensive solutions available. All in an environment carefully controlled by the event organizers to maintain an ideal ratio of Pharma representatives to secondary market players.

This is not a lecture...

This is not another stop on the speaker circuit...

This is not an over-programmed, low networking event...

This is not a place where vendors can overwhelm pharma marketers...

Find out what ePharma Summit West is.

ePharma Summit West will take place July 17-19, 2012. As a reader of the ePharma Summit Blog, when you register and mention code XP1756BLOG, you’ll receive an additional 10% off the current rate! If you have any questions about this year’s event, feel free to email Jennifer Pereira.

The Right Place, The Right Time for Action

noreply@blogger.com (Jennifer) — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 16:08:00 +0000

Today’s guest post comes from Jeff Meehan, Chief Commercial Officer of MD On-Line.

It’s no small secret that providers are becoming increasingly harder and harder to reach. Time is becoming increasingly more valuable, as doctors are expected to provide the highest level of care to an increasing number of patients, while often finding themselves having to simultaneously decrease their resources due to the current state of the economy. With so many doctors already feeling the pinch, how can Pharma marketers look to demonstrate value without getting the proverbial door shut in their face?

There are a number of web-based healthcare communication channels out there with an extensive provider base that Pharma utilizes on a regular basis to promote their brands. HCPs have historically had to venture outside their daily workflow to access this store of information, and as a result, end up wasting their most valuable resource, time. The ideal channel to communicate with HCPs should therefore be one that’s directly embedded in the provider’s existing workflow, one that can quickly and efficiently deliver messages that are directly relevant to his or her patient population. Pharma marketers have been challenging themselves to bring value to HCPs through leveraging new technology platforms. In fact, many pharma companies have recently looked to place branded content within EMRs. However, with very few EMR companies having critical mass, and with a large number of states now looking to ban point-of-care messaging, this channel may soon become less attractive. How then does one creatively embed messages within the provider’s workflow without directly interfering with patient care?

There are yet ways to circumvent such challenges. Newer, more innovative channels, such as MD On-Line’s Instinctive Data program, have found ways to grant Pharma marketers unprecedented access to a provider’s practice. Launched in October 2011, MD On-Line’s Instinctive Data program aims to improve provider education through delivering a mixture of care, industry, and educational alerts to providers based on their specialty and patient population, ensuring that the information being delivered is valuable, relevant, and meaningful to the practice.

The idea behind this program is simple – take a medium the provider is already reliant on to manage his/her practice and revenue and deliver messages through that medium in a simple yet innovative way. Tens of thousands of providers of all specialties were already utilizing MD On-Line daily for electronic claims submission. Through using Instinctive Data, a free feature located in the provider’s MDOL Web portal, pharmaceutical companies are now able to integrate sponsored, targeted communications seamlessly into a provider’s daily workflow. These types of marketing solutions not only look to improve the quality of care and enhance the doctor to patient relationship, but also hold the potential to ultimately change the doctor’s perception of the pharmaceutical industry for the better. Rather than wasting time getting information outside their daily work flow, providers are now able to focus on their patients and on managing their business simultaneously.

As we continue to leverage technology for moving into the next generation of Pharma marketing, we must look to giving providers the ability to take action on the education we are providing. We need to be more than aggregators – we need to be innovators. It’s time to leverage the data we have and share the wealth.

DMD hosts digital marketing glossary on Twitter

noreply@blogger.com (Jennifer) — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 20:44:00 +0000

DMD, a sponsor of ePharma Summit and national leader in connecting health care practitioners to professional information sources through comprehensive, database deployment services, today announced its new twitter page, designed to spread awareness about today’s digital terminology.

DMD will post a new term each business day, related to email, Web, or mobile marketing. The terms and definitions will be derived from the following sources:

DMD’s second edition of Emailology, a comprehensive, digital marketing glossary, which has received industry recognition
Daily research, observances, and experiences
Input from DMD’s network of technology companies, major medical publications, educational resource companies, and data management experts

“In a digital world, marketers need a guidebook and a compass to find a way through the maze of multiplying terminology,” said DMD President Roger Korman, Ph.D., a health care data management expert with more than three decades of experience in the field. “As industry leaders, we collaborate with multiple sources to provide our followers with the newest, digital marketing terms and definitions.”

To follow @DMD_Digital.

For more information about DMD, please visit its website at dmdconnects.com.

About DMD
DMD is a national leader in connecting health care markets through comprehensive target-audience deployment services. DMD provides unique direct communication solutions to clients in the medical publishing, pharmaceutical marketing, medical advertising, health delivery system, and allied health sectors. With innovative technology and numerous consultative services, DMD enables its clients to create millions of connections with their targeted health care professionals.

More Pharmaceutical Representatives Than Any Other West Coast Event

noreply@blogger.com (Jennifer) — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 13:44:00 +0000

To provide you with the networking opportunities you need in order to excel, the ePharma Summit West team is actively managing the ratio of industry executives to solution providers to ensure you connect with peers who have overcome issues you may be currently facing, and have first-hand experience on how to overcome them.

ePharma Summit West will inspire you with visionary Guru presentations and address tangible topics including mobile, non-personalized promotion, social media (including the risk of losing control of your brand message), patient marketing, HCP marketing (including EHR and e-prescribing opportunities), ROI and measurement.

They will provide you with examples of how it works through industry product stories presented by top executives from Takeda, Lilly, Galderma, Sanofi, Janssen, Gilead and more. Following the Guru presentation and the product story, you will network with other industry executives to discuss how you can implement what you learned into your current brand strategy.

ePharma Summit West is the best place for you to learn the newest strategies, tactics, trends and technologies from the brightest minds in the industry, and out of it.

For more information on the program and the presentations, download the brochure.

As a reader of the ePharma Summit blog, when you use code XP1756BLOG, you’ll receive an additional 10% of that rate! If you have any questions about this year’s event, feel free to email Jennifer Pereira.

Are you looking for a new way to learn and engage with visionary leaders and your peers?

noreply@blogger.com (Jennifer) — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 14:30:00 +0000

At ePharma Summit West, you’ll hear 10 digital marketing gurus address each of your challenges in a series of mind opening talks, which tee up 10 product stories selected specifically for their relevance to each of your challenges. After, you’ll join all the participants in a collaborative session facilitated by each digital marketing guru and the brand marketers who presented the case study. Finally, to ensure that you have the sounding board of other experienced digital life science marketers, we are limiting participation of agencies and other industry service providers. So space is limited!

Our 10 Digital Marketing Gurus include:

Peter Dannenfelser, Director, Pharmaceutical Digital Marketing—North America, Janssen Pharmaceuticals
AJ Brustein, Global Senior Brand Manager, The Coca-Cola Company
Roni Zeiger, CEO, Impatient Science, Former Chief Health Strategist, Google
Scott Oppliger, Founder & CEO, SocialVolt
Justin Graham, MD, MS, Chief Medical Information Officer, NorthBay Healthcare
Adam Schlifke, MD, MBA, Anesthesiologist, Kaiser Permanente; Entrepreneur, Panaceon & IdeaMed, Mentor, Blueprint Health
Christy Cooper, Global Marketing Solutions, Facebook
Mark Bard, Co-Founder, Digital Health Coalition
Kurt Mueller, Chief Digital & Science Officer, Roska Healthcare
Phil McKinney, Innovation Guru, Author, Beyond The Obvious—Killer, Questions That Spark Game-Changing Innovation

To find out more about these marketing gurus and their presentations at this year's event, download the brochure here.

As a reader of the ePharma Summit Blog, when you use code XP1756BLOG, you’ll receive an additional 10% of that rate! If you have any questions about this year’s event, feel free to email Jennifer Pereira.

Another Pharma Facebook Page Closes

noreply@blogger.com (Jennifer) — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 13:56:00 +0000

Janssen UK unit of Johnson & Johnson has recenty issued a statement that they will be closing down their Facebook Page "Psoriasis 360". Their reasons for closing the page are due to comments that involve specific mentions of other drugs as well as offensive language. This was one of the first Pharma pages in the industry to allow comments.

According to Pharmalot, a Janssen spokesman commented:

“We are sorry to announce that we will be closing this Facebook page shortly. It is not a decision we have taken lightly, and we want to be upfront and honest about why we feel it’s necessary. As a UK pharmaceutical company, we – quite rightly – comply with strict rules, particularly in relation to communications with members of the public,

These rules mean that whenever a post on this page mentions a specific drug by name, or talks about the efficacy of a particular treatment is (or its side effects), we have to ask for it to be changed, or pull it. Since the page was launched nearly 18 months ago, we have found ourselves removing a larger and larger proportion of posts, stifling worthwhile discussions.

This page was created - in a spirit of innovation - as a space for people affected by psoriasis to share experiences and information, and to discuss psoriasis and related topics. Janssen is proud to have provided this forum at a time when they weren’t as widespread as they are today. But instead of our original intention of facilitating meaningful conversations, our experience shows we are actually hampering conversations that could take place freely on a page run by a patient organization.”

This July at ePharma Summit West, Christy Cooper, Global Marketing Solutions at Facebook will be on hand to present How Do YOU Make Social Media Work for Pharma? to take many of the issues Pharma has with using Facebook head on. If you'd like to join Christy, register for ePharma Summit West and mention code XP1756BLOG to save 15% off the standard rate!

Do you agree with Janssen's decision to close down their Facebook page? Is it a step back for Pharma who is trying to connect with their customers in a social media world? Or was it the right thing to do?

ePharma Summit West Brochure Now Available for Download

noreply@blogger.com (Jennifer) — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 13:53:00 +0000

ePharma Summit West is a NEW INTERACTIVE EVENT EXPERIENCE where visionaries, case studies, and collaborative sessions give you the tools to scale non-personalized promotion, provide customers with tools that foster meaningful engagement, build ground breaking campaigns that drive results without driving your MLR team crazy and deliver outcomes that everyone can stand behind.

What can you look forward to July 17-19, 2012 in San Francisco?

- Get Your Toughest Questions Answered in One Place
- Hear From Visionary Gurus and Leading Brand Marketers
- A New Event Experience Designed to Deliver Actionable Results
- New Collaborative Networking Environment

Click here to download the ePharma Summit West brochure and see all that this revolutionary event has to offer.

As a reader of the ePharma Summit Blog, when you use code XP1756BLOG, you’ll receive an additional 10% off the current rate! If you have any questions about this year’s event, feel free to email Jennifer Pereira.

What’s Your Ad-Buying Strategy?

noreply@blogger.com (James Ellis, Digital Strategist) — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 13:44:00 +0000

There’s no preamble or cutesy anecdote to draw you in this time. Just a question:

What’s your online ad-buying strategy?

Maybe the question should be: do you even have an ad-buying strategy? Well, Besides picking a budget and spreading the money around. I’m not sure that counts as a strategy.

You've got SEM and display ads, you've got sites and targeting. You've got email, mobile and push ads. You've got conference targeting. You’ve got re-targeting. And any one of those idea has about a dozen (or a few dozen) channels, and each with a bunch of people willing to sell you on that channel.

Where do you spend the money?

Do you prioritize by saying that you need to hit this conference and that conference? What if only one of those conferences has an official web site? For that conference, you’ll need to spend money on some other site about the conference. Surprisingly, the official conference site is far cheaper to advertise on than the non-conference site.

And you've got to hit the search engines, right? That’s where people (HCPs or DTCs) go looking for solutions to their issues – solutions you solve. This is where you aren't interrupting their web surfing so much as speaking up when they are looking for you. So, you’ve gotta be there.

And what about social media marketing? Facebook has got a great ad system, if you know how to use its targeting system properly.

What about channels? Should you be advertising on EHR sites for your HCP market? But they are still pretty spread out with no one vendor taking up the lion’s share of the market, let alone the majority. So if you’re gonna play there, you’re going to have to spend on two or even three sites.

And what about re-marketing, where, after having visited your site, you continue to hit them with ads, even if they are on someone else’s site? The cost is a fraction of what the big medical portals charge, but has anyone shown that HCPs who see your ads while shopping for khakis are at all inclined to click? Or even become more brand-aware?

And then there’s the big medical portals. Big money for the right audience, and no one has ever gotten fired spending money there, right?

So with all these choices, how do you make spending decisions? Do you print out your media plan on tabloid paper and throw darts at it? Medscape in January, Google in March, EHR#1 in June? Cut the insertion orders into bits, glue them onto turtles and race them down the hall? First turtle gets the biggest buy, so stop when you hit your budget numbers!

And what about benchmarking? If you are spending all this money, what do you expect to get out of it? Are you measuring clicks or conversions? What about micro-conversions? Can you correlate ads with prescription changes? I bet you’d like to, wouldn't you?

Do you ask big broad questions like, ”If I had to spend it all on SEM or display ads, which would be better?” or, ”If I pilot a re-marketing campaign, how many conversions would be a success?”

Do you have all your click/conversion data in one folder and your budgeting/costing data in another? Why don't you combine them and see the cost of each conversion on each channel?

If you can't answer these last questions, can you really say you have a strategy? And given the amount of money you’re spending, shouldn't you have a strategy?

Fight back in the comments or just yell at me on Twitter.

What impact can health apps have on wellness?

noreply@blogger.com (Jennifer) — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 18:25:00 +0000

Source: Mashable

Health apps are the third fastest growing app category, and have a strong presence at over 1000 currently available. So what can they do for public health? Doctors believe quite a bit, 40% believing that apps that aid in weight watching, monitoring blood sugar and vital sign monitoring can cut down on doctors visits.

When speaking with Mashable, Chad Udell, managing director of Float Mobile Learning, stated "With the forthcoming changes to the U.S. healthcare system, there will be an increased focus on wellness programs and preventative medicine. Mobile health offers a tremendous opportunity for people to become more involved in their own health and wellness.”

The infographic to the left also points out several other interesting facts: 78% of US consumers are interested in mobile solutions, there are 320 million phones in the US, while there are only 1.7 million hospital beds. See the graphic at Mashable.

While mHealth apps are very popular and growing daily, what do you think the real impact will be? Will society take them on begin to use them to manage their health?

ePharma Summit Provides a Fun and Important Kickoff Event for Manhattan Research’s 2012 Agenda

noreply@blogger.com (Jennifer) — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 18:06:00 +0000

ePharma Summit Media Partner Manhattan Research recently posted their experience at the 11th Annual ePharma Summit! We'd like to share it with you. It is also posted at the Health and Pharma Insight Blog .

Posted by Lem Sanders, Director of Business Development. Follow him for updates on Twitter or LinkedIn.

ePharma Summit is a timely kickoff for the 2012 Manhattan Research calendar. A preseason bowl game, if you will. Many of the events attendees and speakers are instrumental in shaping our research agenda and we’re grateful for their views and support. It’s nice to see many of our clients in a midtown Manhattan ballroom under 7th Avenue that features a small army of technology advocates cheering and contesting the complexities we face and the solutions we pitch. All of this takes place while a Peruvian flute band plays down the street across Times Square from a team of break dancers. The Giants have won the Super Bowl and it’s warm outside. The party has officially started and for two days the discussions help galvanize our key research objectives for several of Manhattan Research’s Global market research studies which are in the late stages of planning. Following the event we finalize programming for questionnaires for 4000 physicians across the Americas, Europe, and Asia. The data will be available in Q2 with a rush to get insights to our members. The feedback we receive from events like ePharma Summit is vital to our research and it keeps our firm most relevant in a difficult space. Great conferences provide the necessary chatter on real issues we consider closely with our subscribers and we work closely to address these high curveballs with survey research and advisory content. We even talked to non pharma representatives like Gatorade to hear the thirst quencher’s social strategies and how we can tie them to pharma. Whether the debates range from mobile behavior trends to social media challenges to emerging pain points, all of them seem to involve Facebook and the iPad but we still leverage events like this to continuously map our topical agenda to pressing problems that can be solved realistically with quality research. By late spring we’ll have new data and insights to assist hundreds of healthcare stakeholders and perhaps set the stage for further debate during the key summer and fall events. Perhaps some will even carry over to ePharma Summit ’13. I’ve been attending digital pharma events with Manhattan Research since 2004 and it’s safe to say interest and investment in the space has gained significant momentum, especially in certain areas like mobile and physician customer service. Let’s look forward to studying them closely and answering the call in the months ahead. We can and look back at the February Summit experience to see what we’ve uncovered.

Doctors adopting iPads, so how can hospitals benefit?

noreply@blogger.com (Jennifer) — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 16:10:00 +0000

Source

In a recent study from Manhattan Research, they found that of 1200 doctors surveyed in five European countries, 20% said they owned iPads and 27% of those doctors use these devices while at work. An additional 40% planned on buying an iPad in the next 6 months. According to TUAW, these rates are the same for primary care physicians and specialists. Their general use is typically researched based, focusing on medical articles and videos and education of the patients.

Interestingly, in the US, some apps have been created in the hospital environment to help the physicians. In San Diego, the Palomar Pomerado Health Systems in San Diego developed an App that help the doctors within the hospital. According to PC Advisers, an app created that pulled information on the patients in their surrounding area in the hospital and delivered their information to the tablet.

Here's how it works:
Physicians log in to the app, which uses location services to generate a list of their patients who are currently in the hospital. The app communicates with patients' RFID wristbands to determine their whereabouts. And the list is auto generated and sorted by patients who are closest in proximity to the doctor accessing the app.

The app gives doctors up-to-date summaries of patient information including allergies, active medications, lab info, recent vital signs, and more. A doctor can drill down into more detail in each area by tapping an icon, to see, for example, data on recent blood tests, prescriptions, various patient charts and notes, and even look at X-rays.

What benefits can both iPad and Android based tablets have for hospitals and physicians? Will streamlining the systems and platforms have for both patients and doctors?

The Grand Theory of Pharma Marketing

noreply@blogger.com (James Ellis, Digital Strategist) — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 14:00:00 +0000

Today's guest post comes from James Ellis. Ellis is the Digital Strategist at closerlook inc. and blogs at digital-pharma.tumblr.com. He also needs more activity on his Twitter account (@digital_pharma) if you'd like to tell him he's wrong. No, really.

Einstein’s last project before he died was the search for the grand unified theory, proving how all the major forces in the universe are related: gravity to the speed of light to the attraction between electrons and everything else. It remains the “holy grail” of physics, something huge, important, and possibly unknowable.

HCP marketing has a grand unified theory that marketers are trying to understand. A unified theory would tell us that a married male gastroenterologist in Alabama with a degree from a public school who works in a small private practice needs X touches before he will change their prescription behavior, but an unmarked female Obstetrician in a large hospital in Seattle will need Y touches.
Our unified theory shows us how tactics are related to each other. If an HCP has seen a complete eDetail, for example, maybe they need five fewer touches than one who has never seen one. What about rep visits? Or conference attendances? How do they all interrelate, and how much work do they do in encouraging behavior, by themselves or in tandem with the other tactics?

It's far easier to think in smaller terms. Here’s a hypothetical campaign: Send a million emails and see how many someone has to get before they’ll go to a web site. How many web visits do they need before they register? How many registrations turn into an eDetail viewing or sample request? How many samples (both with and without a rep visit) will lead to more prescription writing?

We look at these questions in isolation because looking at them in the larger picture is... messy at best, requiring very complex mathematical models. To be fair, if any of us were better at math, we’d probably be engineers instead of marketers. And the kind of math we’re talking about goes beyond the pre-calculus class we took freshman year. And if I had a nickel for every marketer with an MBA who said that they barely passed their stats class, I’d be able to retire. To an island. That I owned.
That’s why companies exist that are full of math nerds who can run modeling data and tell us what our deciles are. They tell us who should be prescribing and aren’t, and who needs a little push based on what data they have available to them.

But again, this is small ball. What if we started thinking big?

What if we took all the data we had... But, we don't have enough data. We need a lot more data, and it's gonna take a little work to get it.

For the next year, every banner ad you put in the field needs to get a dynamic ID number. In places where an HCP has to login, correlate that ID number to the HCP ID. You already know what emails are being sent to that target in your brand, so figure out a way to get all your brands to collect the same data so that you can put it into one big pool. Take all the data the reps send back (oh yeah, you might need to teach reps how to collect info so they can tag and input it into your CRM). Take all your eDetail data. All those business cards you collect at the conference to win a free iPad. All the mailers. All the web traffic (cookies, people). Every giveaway, every teleconference or teledetail, every meal, every pen left behind. All these things are collectible and able to be connected to a given target. Then add everything else you can find out about your target: specialty, school, practice type, practice size, gender, age, geography, marital status, family status, psychographic data about their parents and how they were raised (what, you think that’s not available?), everything. Think like Amazon or Target. Collect every coupon that’s been redeemed, every prescription filled, every visit, everything. We’re playing for the majors now, so stop thinking small.

What could all that data in the hands of serious math nerds tell us? Here’s a sample of the questions they can answer: are reps effective (broken down by specialty, brand, location, practice type)? How many emails does it take before a target prescribes (and how many before they will opt out completely)? Do nurse practitioners ever click on banner ads? Is there value in seeing your brand name again and again on an ad even if it doesn't lead to a click? Which is better: email then a rep visit, or a rep visit and then email? Which works better at a conference: a lot of little trinkets or a chance to win a big prize?

The days when a brand didn't know which half of their marketing was effective is long long gone. These days, we aren't far from knowing if a PCP in New Jersey wants your brand emails every 21 days or every 18 days, and how many they need to receive before a rep shows up to make the visit worth the trip.

But it all starts with thinking big and collecting the data. What data are you collecting? How are you planning on using it?

Maybe you need better answers to those questions.

ePharma Love Affairs

noreply@blogger.com (Jennifer) — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 14:00:00 +0000

There have been several great love affairs in the digital pharma world, and we wanted to highlight a few for Valentine’s Day -

Couple of the year...

Doctors heart Apple products. Our 2011 Taking the Pulse® U.S. study found that 75 percent of U.S. doctors owned either an iPhone, iPad, or iPod – far outpacing adoption of Android and BlackBerry devices. The iPad in particular is poised to transform the physician workday. As of last Q1 (just one year after the iPad first hit the market) already 30 percent of doctors owned one and an additional 28 percent said they planned to buy one within 6 months. Additionally, these doctors expressed strong interest in using iPads to facilitate practice management and patient education. The 2012 version of Taking the Pulse® U.S. is just about to go into fielding and we expect to see a significant boost in iPad ownership from last year. One thing should remain the same though – doctors’ love affair with Apple will likely remain strong.

An enduring romance...

In a report a few years ago, we referred to search as the little black dress of marketing – a classic that never goes out of style. And now a few years later, when it comes to online health research, search is still very much in vogue. When consumers seek health information on the Internet in key medical scenarios, such as when experiencing new symptoms, preparing for a doctor’s visit, or after receiving a prescription, the vast majority rely on search engines rather than going directly to a website. Additionally, consumers are more likely to use search engines than web browsing or apps to find prescription drug information on their mobile phones. While some technology pundits claim the online landscape is shifting towards a narrower digital world characterized by apps and a declining need for browser-based searching – in digital health, the fires of romance should keep burning for search and consumers at least for the time being.

Star-crossed lovers…

The relationship between social and pharma is, well, complicated. On the one hand, our latest ePharma Consumer® study found that 42 percent of online consumers agree that pharma companies should be involved in online health communities, and this expectation is even higher among certain caregiver and patient groups. On the other hand, even with recent FDA draft guidelines, it doesn’t seem marketers are finding that it’s getting any easier to navigate the social media regulatory minefield. Additionally, when it comes to getting questions answered directly from pharma company representatives, very few consumers want this messaging via general social networking forums like Twitter or Facebook. Throw in the challenges of social ROI measurement and you’ve got a relationship ripe for angry phone hang ups and late night tears into pints of Ben & Jerry’s. So while pharma and social media may not be headed for divorce yet, the union will likely encounter its share of stormy weather for the foreseeable future. But just as we hope against hope that Seal and Heidi reconcile, we can remain optimistic that this pair can somehow work it out in the end!

Sources: Manhattan Research - Taking the Pulse® U.S. 2011, Cybercitizen Health® U.S. 2011, ePharma Consumer® 2011

This guest post was contributed by Maureen Malloy, Senior Healthcare Analyst, Manhattan Research Maureen Malloy is a Senior Healthcare Analyst at Manhattan Research, with a focus on consumer digital health trends. You can find her on Twitter or at Manhattan Research’s blog. This post is co-posted with the Manhattan Research Blog.

ePharma Summit 2012 - That's a Wrap!

noreply@blogger.com (Casey Ferrell) — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 22:29:00 +0000

By Casey Ferrell

Research Analyst, Cutting Edge Information

Guest Blogger

Okay, it’s been almost 24 hours since ePharma Summit 2012 wrapped. Like a good holiday feast, if you did it right you’re probably still digesting the experience like I am. Day One’s symposia offered a more intimate setting for attendees to interact with panelists, while Day Two was a big bacchanal of sessions, networking, keynotes, and panels. Day Three was a tamer affair, with more targeted sessions focusing on case studies and practical applications of the principles discussed the day before. Based on conversations with fellow attendees, Wednesday’s content was a welcome transition from the “what and why” to the “how.”

I’ll briefly recap roughly half of the day’s sessions, but before I do I wanted to share some general observations I took away from the event as a whole. First, there are some very impressive individuals working within the epharma space. I won’t open Pandora’s box and start naming names lest I inevitably overlook someone, but suffice it to say that the future of digital promotion in pharma is bright if the industry figures out how to retain the enterprising intellectual capital on hand at this conference (and that's a big if - there is a brain drain underway in digital pharma). I spend a lot of my professional time taking a long view of the role that digital can, should and is now playing in the industry, and clearly so do a great many of the people asked to speak at ePharma Summit.

A general take-away was that the industry is gradually shifting from a tactically driven approach to a one driven by strategy. Hallelujah, might I add. Companies are less and less interested in being the first kid on the block with a sweet new iPad app than they are being the kid on the block with an iPad app that has real uptake, aligns with broader marketing goals and serves the customer in some kind of meaningful way. Again, hallelujah. In my experience conducting digital pharma benchmarking research, this shift has been underway for some time, and because it is being codified by new internal structures like centralized dedicated digital departments and multidisciplinary digital task forces, you’re now starting to see how pharma is beginning to get a handle on smarter ways to execute digital promotion.

This is critically important for the following reason: in the years since the internet came onto the scene MLR has been unjustly portrayed as a monolithic, unmovable object standing in the way of digital “progress,” and as a result, an already tense relationship between it and marketers became downright antagonistic. It used to be that marketers would push to open a branded Facebook page for their product simply because everyone else had one, or because their marketing friend at Nike said it was The Future. It used to be that these things were undertaken hastily, rashly even, due to a perceived urgency that if they were not, everyone would laugh at them. And in so doing, marketers had a hell of a time justifying them to leadership and to MLR. Now, though, it seems that people in digital pharma are learning the wisdom of tying digital campaigns to an existing bedrock of marketing strategy, thereby contributing to a more collaborative and less combative approach to building digital creative and getting it out the door. In other words, the more epharmateers recognize the value (and lack thereof, in ~~many~~ some cases) of digital and how it fits within the broader marketing strategy of a brand, be it corporate or product, the more likely it is that it will not only get approved but have some kind of real and measurable impact. The days of building smartphone apps to reach an elderly target audience who don’t own smartphones are mercifully coming to an end. This shift is painfully slow, but it is underway.

My one suggestion for next year’s ePharma Summit is simple: open the back channel up to the rest of the audience. It’s no secret that a significant proportion of attendees are active on Twitter, and actively use it during the conference sessions to communicate to one another and those following the conference-sponsored hashtag, #epharma. What would greatly add value to the conversations taking place on the stage, on the floor and online is if everyone could see the thoughts of their peers and react or respond to dissenting views, nearly all of which are as insightful and thoughtful as the ones being agreed upon on stage. Open the kimono, put the “e” in ePharma, and put up the Tweetstream next year. I guarantee a more lively and engaged audience. Because that’s what everyone here is after anyway, right? Engagement?

Okay, onto the sessions. What can I say about Andy Smith, author of The Dragonfly Effect? Smith is an able presenter with a gift for beautiful storytelling through slides. I won’t get into the nitty gritty specifics of his talk (I suggest you read the book), but his message to pharma was that when lives are on the line, you have carte blanch to invent compelling ways to engage with people on behalf of other people. He told a touching story about two friends diagnosed with Leukemia around whom a rather incredible effort was built to find suitable bone marrow donors (they were both South Asian, exacerbating the difficulty of finding a match stateside). Social media and digital channels played a massive role in organizing hundreds of marrow registration drives that led to matches for both friends. Sadly, they relapsed and lost the struggle, but the lesson Smith took away was the power of social networking to drive remarkable health outcomes. “Revolutions start by the actions of a few ordinary people. Find the ignition point and light it,” Smith said.

Two interesting case study panels followed. The first, I Wish I’d Done That!: Social Media, was led by Todd Kolm, director of emerging channel strategy at Pfizer, who was joined by panelists Alison Woo, director of social media, BMS and Zoe Dunn, principal, Hale Advisors. Kolm delighted in showing the audience what not to do with Twitter through non-pharma examples of social media failings, from the f-bomb drop at Chrysler to the utter ignorance showed by Kenneth Cole during Egyptian uprising. For those who aren’t familiar with these examples, I encourage you subscribe to a feed such as Mashable or TechCrunch where you will be sure not to miss the latest flub in corporate social media. There are lessons to be learned, even if it is outside pharma. Among the most important of these lessons is to know that social media is earned media — so make sure you earn it. Dunn pointed out a number of examples of pharma social media done well, including Sanofi’s Allegra OTC campaign and Pfizer’s Viagra counterfeit YouTube video. Woo offered her own take on good examples of “socpharm” as well as her social media best practices, which are simple but indispensable:

· Have a target audience; you can’t reach everyone

· Create a compelling message

· Think about value for audience

· Use the right tool for the right audience

· Measure metrics

· Think of engagement as an ongoing practice

The I Wish I’d Done That!: Mobile session was led by David Kopp, senior VP of consumer media, Healthline Networks. Joining him were Jay Appel, director of physician relationship marketing, Amgen; Scott Wolf, executive VP of sales, Everyday Health; John Viera, senior director of strategic marketing, Daiichi Sankyo; and Kate Miller, director, Evolution Road. Two things really jumped out during this session: one idea and one tactic that both have a lot to say about where mobile is going. The idea was suggested by Viera, citing Progressive’s Snapshot, which documents real-time driving behavior and incentivizes people through lowered premiums to drive more safely. The application to pharma is already happening, he said, though the quantified self movement and apps that track human biodata. Viera thinks that the future of mobile will be in passive technologies that collect health outcomes data which companies can then leverage in negotiations with payers. That will be quite interesting indeed. Another example, also pointed out by Viera, of an effective campaign was the TextInTheCity SMS initiative to reach at-risk teens. The decidedly “low-tech” tactic actually helped the campaign have a much better penetration and uptake because the target population was much more likely to have feature phones than smartphones. Just another example where knowing your audience and using the appropriate channel to reach them. Had the campaign tried to get fancy for fancy’s sake, it would have failed.

After lunch (that flan in the tall shot glasses was pretty sweet… thank you, I’m here every Wednesday night), I attended the Multichannel Consumer Marketing track again. An interesting session by Deborah Radcliffe, director, Consumer Center of Expertise at Pfizer, focused on how to open up your content to sharing and how to do so compliantly. What follows is a handy list of questions you need to have the answers to if you want to take the plunge into the world of sharing (and there is ample reason to do so: 73% of people say they process info more deeply, thoroughly and thoughtfully when it’s shared with the):

· What’s the objective?

· How does sharing help achieve that?

· What’s the target’s sharing behavior?

· How does content you want sharable align to marketing objectives?

· Is your content relevant?

· Is it valuable?

· Is it share worthy?

· If you applied the seven factors that prompt sharing (laughter, inspiration, cuteness, originality, shock, surprise and nostalgia), what would you learn? Is it touching people?

· What might you do to increase share worthiness?

· What does your target think of your stuff?

· And most critically: do you have the tool to do it?

Following this was a brilliant session by Todd Siesky, communications and external relations, Roche Diabetes Care US and Robert Muller, associate marketing manager, global marketing, Roche Diabetes Care US. They talked about the success they’ve had in developing cause marketing. The reach of their campaigns grew exponentially when they were able to gain the trust and partnerships of some 30 of the most influential diabetes bloggers, which took guts, persistence and humility on Roche’s part. To me, the essence of the session was this: vision drives strategy drives tactics, and when you start with vision and add to it a long-term, sustained commitment, the results can be remarkable.

EPharma wrapped with a session on the global marketing environment. Mark Bard of the Digital Health Coalition led a panel comprising Peter Pitts, president of the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest, Ray Chepesiuk, commissioner, PAAB, and Muller from Roche. Pitts talked about the importance of intent when dealing with cross-jurisdictional snafus. If you’re trying to be cute and skirt compliance, regulatory agencies are going to catch you, Pitts said, adding that “the .eu or .ca is not a get out of jail free card.”

So, that’s it from ePharma Summit 2012. Hope you enjoyed the tweeting and blogging! If you have any feedback, I'd love to hear it. I'm on Twitter (@Casey_CEI), and I'd love to continue there the conversations we started this week. If you loved or hated what I brought to the table, do let @epharma know so they can decide whether the should can me or bring me back next time. Hopefully it's the latter and I'll be seeing you all again soon. Thanks for reading!

#ePharma Wednesday Updates and Commentary

noreply@blogger.com (James Ellis, Digital Strategist) — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 14:35:00 +0000

Kudos to Andy Smith and his presentation on the Dragonfly Effect. Aside from having one of the best designed presentations (along with @PeteDTweets yesterday), he presented three examples that we not just inspiring, but relevant to almost everyone in the room. While only one was directly health care related, I was impressed by the amount of work he put in to relating these non-pharma examples to pharma. For example, his Coke case study seems anti-theatrical to pharma (they sell sugar water), and yet I, and others around me, could immediately see how to apply the lessons to our work. This was our anticipated return on the cost of attending -- to be inspired, not by a magical future beyond the horizon, but by ideas we can put to work today.

Beyond that came an object lesson from Peter Frishauf and Jay Goldman in discussing the value that SMS message could play in a brand. Text messaging has been relegated to the junk drawer of our marketing tool kits despite the fact that it is functional, useful, and has a reach Apple, Google and Facebook can only dream about. Their presentation influenced any discussion regarding mobile for much of the rest of the day. After lunch, Scott Wearley opened up and gave everyone of us a realistic and reasonable blueprint for relationship marketing. This wasn't broad strokes and vague ideas, this was a set of instructions better than those that come with Ikea furniture. Take it home, build it yourself. I was very much impressed by what Robert Krensel and William Tunno had to say. The pictures were pretty, but the conversation on how best to utilize Those pretty pictures showed a depth of thought and consideration I wasn't expecting at all. At both these sessions, I took a lot of notes. However, without being too much of a curmudgeon (it seems someone else is filling that slot quite well), I'd like to call a few things out. First, I appreciate the value of great big numbers to grab attention. But telling me that a billion iPhones were sold or a trillion Facebook accounts were created doesn't help any of us. These numbers are as helpful as the fact that it's usually warm in NYC. What's worse is when these broad numbers aren’t just useless, but edge into the territory of obfuscation. For example, when you call out that 37% of all new tablet sales are Android tablets, this is an aggregate number that doesn't reflect the facts on the ground that HCPs are now and continue to be passionate iPad users. The same is true for calling out sites like Pinterest and Tumblr as “hot new properties” without revealing that both site have very narrow audiences (good luck running that Viagra campaign on Pinterest without a radical reworking).

There was an interesting conversation I had with a few people this morning. I won't call out who they are, but it occurred after the presentation that listed all those twitter blunders, notably from non-pharma brands (because pharma always does social right? If you say so). There was a running bet as to what percentage of the audience had not heard all of these twitter blunders before (and some were pretty famous, like the Kenneth Cole/Eygpt tweet and the Chrysler agency posting about Detroit drivers who couldn't drive). Our group assumed that most people had heard of all of them. When we asked around, we found was that most people hadn't, and that some hadn't heard of any. If you are active in marketing, especially in eMarketing, these tales should be as familiar as the case study surrounding New Coke. That conversation turned shifted on twitter, where people mentioned sites like mashable.com and boingboing.org where news like this is a hot commodity. Plenty of people chimed in with other great sites for Web 2.0-type news until someone suggested that having this conversation on twitter meant that the people who needed to hear about them would be missing out; those people were not just ignoring the twitter back-channel, they were willfully ignoring the rest of the web world. They were only aware of things like Facebook and Twitter and mobile healthcare apps and iPad content delivery in so much as they needed to be for a given project and no more. I worry when I think about stories like these.

One of the amazing things about social media is its ability to create, manage and strengthen the connections between ourselves and so many others. I know so many people who turned their organizations on to twitter because they were hooked on twitter themselves. And yet, here we see a huge segment of the audience paying money to be told how incredibly important twitter (and it's brethren, no need to be twitter-specific) is to their campaigns and to their brands, indeed to their own livelihoods, but never dipping their toes into the water. Aren't these the risks we all said we wanted to talk and have others take within our organizations? Are we just talking, or do we really mean it? So I implore you, you delightful participants of ePharmaSummit 2012, jump in. Be part of the conversation. Agree and disagree. Pick a fight online among your peers and lose. See what those tools your company is paying so much money to leverage can really do. As for places to learn more about the eMarketing world outside of pharma, my twitterzens (twitter citizens? I admit I made that one up) and I came up with the following list: Mashable.com Techcrunch.com Engadget.com Lifehacker.com Allthingsdigital.com Cnet.com Boingboing.org (be aware, they will reference Burning Man on this site. Don't be alarmed.) Notes about what was said on stage can be found at bit.ly/epharmasummit.

Big virtual high-fives to Sarah Gordon and Jennifer Pereira for getting Casey and I invited to all these sessions so we could bring the best to you. They bent over backwards to help us help you, and I hope their bosses read this far down the blog post. Thanks also to Casey Ferrell for letting me partner up with him in this blogging experiment. We hope we did you, the presenters, the organizers and our peers proud (so if you got something out of this, let @epharma know! Otherwise we won't get invited back!). Beyond that, please please please feel free to engage me on twitter @digital_pharma or schedule lunch with me if you’re in Chicago. Good night!

#ePharma: Day Two Roundup

noreply@blogger.com (Casey Ferrell) — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 03:09:00 +0000

By Casey Ferrell

Research Analyst, Cutting Edge Information

Guest Blogger

Well, we’re two thirds of the way through the 2012 ePharma Summit. Day One was a full day of symposia, while Day Two was a mishmash of sessions, keynotes, thought leader panels, futurists, multichannel tracks, examples of award winning campaigns and coffee. Lots of coffee.

My colleague James Ellis and I were live tweeting the day’s events, but we are going to provide a roundup blog here to help flesh out beyond 140 characters what the sessions had to offer. We split up the job, so between both of our blog roundups, you’ll get a pretty comprehensive view of the day, minus coffee breaks and totally unrelated bathroom breaks.

Charlotte McKines, the global VP of marketing communications and channel strategies (that’s right, global) at Merck and Co., had an excellent presentation on how a multinational company might look at the evolution of digital channels and how they can fit not just within a company’s overarching marketing strategy but within that company’s overall business goals. McKines’ well-organized presentation outlined three primary ways in which digital is transforming the industry. Looking beyond the pill, she said, digital is “the connecting point, the core enabler that allows us connect to our stakeholders.” With digital experiencing a meteoric rise — 86% of physicians go to the web daily to gather health, medical or prescription drug information — whoever “gets there” first will have a major competitive advantage, McKines said. The three keys to getting there are:

Adjusting the organizational mindset
Embracing new technology
Building new business models

Adjusting the organizational mindset (no small task) means aligning to rapidly changing customer needs. This means improving sales force effectiveness (i.e. making the sales rep the quarterback in the middle who is calling the number of a certain channel depending on preference), engaging Generation Y (i.e. striving to make the pharma experience match the non-pharma experience they’re familiar with or recognizing their “self-service” mentality) and utilizing digital functionality (i.e. doing micro-segmenting, personalizing content and maximizing spend).

Embracing new technology means picking a strategy before it picks you, McKines said. Interestingly, her first point here was to use social media to promote collaboration, steer conversation, listen to customers and respond quickly. Her second point was to leverage mobility (i.e. enable mobile content delivery to reach consumers in real time, support sales and training, and increase customer engagement). She also pointed out the importance of integrating channels (i.e. deliver one message across all channels).

Building new business models means shifting the internal (i.e. centralizing innovation, decentralizing localization, and prioritizing content) and shifting the external (i.e. using collective intelligence, investing in infrastructure and choosing the right partners).

Her session ended with a Q&A highlighted by a pointed comment from the audience in which an agency attendee said, “We can only innovate as fast as quickly as you can change.” McKines’ responded by saying, “I realize we are not always a fast and nimble partner, but that’s why we need partners, to push us to change.”

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The next session I covered was a moderated panel discussion led by Liz Cernak, CCO of Pozen, based out of my college hometown of Chapel Hill, NC. Founded in 1996 and public since 2000, Pozen focuses primarily on drug development but is in the process of transitioning to a commercialized model and as a result put together a coterie of thought leaders to form its digital advisory board, including Raj Amin, CEO, Healthnation; Bonin Bough, Sr. Director of Digital and Social Media, PepsiCo; Marc Monsseau, Founder, MDM Communication; Daniel Palestrant, MD, Founder, Sermo, CEO and Founder, Par8o; and Meredith Ressi, President, Manhattan Research. Among the highlights (paraphrased unless in quotations):

Monsseau: The biggest challenge digital can help with from a marketing perspective is in heralding the shift from one-way to two-way communication and targeted approaches, while in sales, it presents a way of reaching physicians with more efficacy and reach. “At the end of day, you still have to have great content.” It needs to be resonating, actionable, and useful. Content that lives in digital now is dry, not what you want to watch or share. Opportunity exists to create content that people can take in, but can also start a conversation with, with a doc or someone else struggling with the disease. Ultimately, what’s needed is content that can improve health outcomes.

Bough: Set it and forget it is passé. Deep customer listening on top of real-time customer engagement is the way of the future. The quantified self (referencing Kevin Kelly’s talk) allows people to their own progression through their own healthcare, meaning pharma and healthcare need to adapt. Bough also provocatively stated that pharma is negligent if it is not listening to its consumers through social listening techniques, highlighting the difficulty in applying non-pharma perspectives to the risk-averse, highly regulated industry.

Palestrant: How can pharma use digital to better relationships with physicians? One way is through sophisticated sales and techniques that can amplify efficacy data. He also talked about how social media can cost-effectively communicate important messages to stakeholders in ways that speak to their own preferences for information consumption. Among the communication revolutions to date (including the printing press, broadcast, etc.), the digital age means that now the tail is wagging the dog.

Amin: Digital allows pharma to touch consumers in deeper ways across multiple platforms. Consumers see media differently as they get comfortable with new devices, so the industry needs to learn when to present content based on the disposition of the consumer. Are they lean back? Lean forward? On the go?

Ressi: Mobile is completely changing the game. Platform adoption metrics change under our feet. Understanding the way it changes how healthcare providers learn and gather info and how it changes service expectations is critical if the industry is to properly leverage the opportunity.

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I attended the post-lunch (no monster reuben today, just a forkful or two of salad and a cookie… okay, two cookies) multichannel consumer marketing track hosted by Alison Woo, director of social media at BMS. She had Mark Bard of the Digital Health Coalition and Jack Barrette, CEO of Wego Health, up to discuss the recent FDA draft guidance on off-label communication. Among the quotes that really stood out to me was Barrette saying that “not looking for [adverse events] or not trying to look for them is an indefensible position.” This was borne out of a lively conversation between Bard and Barrette on the scope and impact of the narrow guidance and how it may impact the way in which pharma chooses to address its digital presences in light of misinformation correction, off-label comments and AEs.

Gregg Zagras and Jen Willey of RealAge presented a session on their product, which depending on your orientation might equally frighten or excite you. Their digital health assessment produces a score that represents your actual age as compared to your real age (i.e. a heavy drinker and smoker who is into red meat and couch surfing might in reality be several years older than their age). The tool allows individuals to chart a path toward better health while offering pharma clients the ability to position their products in front of highly aligned segments of the population. People with high cholesterol, for example, might be presented with statin drug ads while they progress through subsequent health evaluations beyond the original assessment.

Willey and Zagras argue that brands need to consider their patient population before launch in order to optimize their marketing efforts. Obviously, one way to do so would be to partner with RealAge. For the curious, the site also offers the ability for individuals to learn what their sex age is. Insert your own joke here.

The last session of the track was a refreshing perspective from patient advocates Amy Gurowitz, Founder, MS SoftServe; Jeffrey Roberts, Founder, IBS Self Help and Support Group; and Max Szadek, Founder and Executive Director, Divabetic.

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The last panel discussion of the day back in the main hall brought some of the industry’s most influential thought leaders in the digital space together to talk about future trends. Of all the great insights, my favorites revolved around how the industry should handle the challenge of working with Medical, Legal, Regulatory (MLR). Julie Holcombe, senior director, US Vaccines Marketing at Pfizer referenced the hilarious Kevin Nalty-produced video that aired this morning called “Fear Factor: Pharmaceuticals” in which MLR was presented in a less than flattering light. She said that video is what is wrong with marketers’ thinking. She said MLR and marketing need to be “frenemies to the end. … Their job is to keep us safe, and we’re walking a fine line between wanting to not get a letter” and still get the job done. Since “we as marketers are not going to regulate ourselves, … we may have to extend the olive branch.”

Joe Shields, head of global strategic marketing at LifeScan, said that MLR departments need a tune-up to ensure that they are not an operational bottleneck, but he also suggested a curious idea that to save money, time and resources, some pharma companies purposefully dial back MLR capacity to throttle back marketing output. I’m not sure what the industry thinks about this, but it certainly provoked a reaction on the #epharma tweetstream by agency and media thought leaders who found that idea troubling.

Peter Dannenfelser, director of North American digital marketing for Jannsen, said that the MLR issue raises two key points: the industry clearly needs to play in the space, but it also needs to do a much better job of communicating to consumers the rules that it has to play by, something that he thinks pharma could do a much better job of.

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One of two Best in Show sessions was hosted by James Chase, editor in chief for MM&M, in which he discussed the GetToKnowC campaign launched by Vertex Pharmaceuticals and Ignite Health that earned the top spot at the 2012 MM&M awards in the best disease/education website category. Brian Lefkowitz, chief creative officer at Ignite and Hugo Brown, associate director of marketing at Vertex joined Chase on stage to talk about the campaign and how it took shape. Brown said his company wanted to empower Hepatitis C patients while removing the stigma of the condition. Lefkowitz explained the way his agency created a multichannel campaign featuring deep, rich, informative content with the right tone. One feature of it that jumped out at me was the homepage, which opens with a creative segmentation feature, allowing visitors to choose the “person” that best represents where they are in the process of dealing with the disease.

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So that’s a wrap from Day Two — looking forward to seeing you all tomorrow as we wrap up the 2012 ePharma Summit. I really hope that all this blogging is helping you attendees derive even more from what has so far been a rich conference experience for me. Please do forgive any egregious typos; a stenographer I am not. If we haven’t met yet, please do come introduce yourself and learn more about the benchmarking research and analysis that I do in the digital marketing space for my firm, Cutting Edge Information. You know where to find me: near a plug.