Is your family physician your Facebook friend? Mine is. And yes, I’ve sent requests for medical advice to her “Inbox.” She also texts me—sometimes on the weekends, and, her office has recently adopted a system that allows me online access to my test results and current medical records.

Seem unusual? In fact, it may surprise you to know how rapidly this trend is catching on. My family doc is just one of a growing number of physicians who are embracing technology as a means of communicating with their patients on a more frequent and personal level.

2011 saw a boom in physician adoption and utilization of technology. According to a survey by QuantiaMD, more than 80% of physicians owned mobile devices and 30% owned tablets last year, figures that were far greater than those of the average population.

But what’s more exciting is that physicians aren’t just using their devices for looking up new study or drug information, or for researching diseases. Some are using technology to enable greater, more personalized patient care—with an “old-fashioned” touch.

Technology is allowing physicians more time to get to know their patients and stay connected to their ongoing health and well-being. The old concept of “bedside medicine” is becoming a reality again. Physicians who embrace this concept finally have the time, and the right medium, for careful follow-up on their patients’ care.

Here are just a few of the ways in which technology is enabling more one-on-one time with patients:

1. Email/text follow-ups allow physicians (like mine) to quickly and easily check in on patients and monitor progress.
2. Digital photos enable faster, more convenient diagnosis. Got a rash? Take a picture, send it, and get answers.
3. Access to electronic medical records allow patients to take an active role in their healthcare and minimize the time it takes to receive valuable health information, such as test results.
4. Social media connections such as Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest give physicians the ability to “follow” patients well beyond the office appointment.
5. Virtual meetings/facetime type software means you can have a one-on-one, face-to-face office visit just about anywhere.

Imagine the implications this movement has for healthcare, as well as for healthcare marketers. Technology has the potential to improve the attention and care we receive from our healthcare providers. Economic benefits could be possible with fewer office appointments, fewer hospitalizations, better patient compliance, and greater overall lifestyle management.

As healthcare marketers, we can increase our research and insight into this growing trend, helping us understand what sort of meaningful presence we can have in this space, as well as its impact on our healthcare system and on the ever-changing role of our physicians in our lives.

Having recently relocated to Southern California, I soon discovered a sport that hundreds and thousands participate in on a daily basis: surfing. 

People in Southern California surf in the morning, during their lunch breaks, and immediately after work. They have it down to a science, equipping their cars with gear beforehand and following some basic rules that help make their surf time enjoyable.

So, while sitting and observing the surfers I got thinking about the need for marketers to keep things simple when preparing to brand a product. Here are 5 basic rules of surfing that marketers can put into practice.

1. Start with a good solid surf board.  

 Just as surfers must learn to trust that the board under their bodies will get them over the waves, marketers must trust in their brand. Do your homework. Study the competition.

 But most important, understand your brand’s foundation. Everything starts there—and yet history has shown that this is where everything can fall apart. Ask the right questions of the R&D team. Understand not only the true heart of the product but the target you are trying to reach. Make sure the support under you is solid.

2. Learn to paddle. 

This seems simple enough, but if you are unable to go with the flow, or to keep your brand moving with the current, you may find yourself being carried in the wrong direction. For a surfer, reading a wave and then paddling out at a constant speed is essential. For a brand manager, being able to read the market and to keep both team and product paddling in the right direction is as basic as it gets.

3. Sitting on the board. 

Sounds easy enough, but surfers tell me that the ability to sit comfortably without wobbling and feeling out of control is essential to a good surfing experience.  Brand team leaders, too, need to maintain their balance.  They need to know when to venture out, but also when to stay pat—that is, when to hold the position that’s been established. Resist shifting around.  Find a comfortable position and stick with it.  The less movement, the smoother the ride.

4. Standing on the board. 

Unlike sitting on a board, standing on one seems far more difficult. And as surfers have told me, accomplishing this feat can take hours of practice. Surfers and marketers should know, however, that in perfecting their technique they should seek out the kind of helpful critiques that will keep them standing gracefully on the board while moving in the right direction. Having a reliable outside viewpoint can help biotech, device, and pharma brand managers achieve their goals.

5. Safety. 

Here’s the final basic that everyone stresses and that clearly makes total sense: have fun but be safe! With branding, safety can mean a lot of things—safety of product, safety regarding launch planning, and safety in conveying the right message.

Branding is complex, but sticking to the basic principles of surfing can make the ride smoother—and more enjoyable—for everyone.

A surprising treatment regimen is showing great promise and generating buzz in biotech and big pharma.  It works for several debilitating diseases, costs next to nothing, and best of all, has no adverse events.

What is this new drug and how can you get in on the launch team? It’s that stalwart star of many a study arm, good old placebo.

Dueling with placebo

Have you ever watched market research for a blood pressure medication, a pain reliever, an asthma drug, or an antidepressant?

Physicians behind the one-way mirror may look at the efficacy results and express their amazement, not necessarily at improvements with the study drug, but at how well placebo performed.  

How is it possible that an approved, proven, expensive branded drug can be shown up by a sugar pill?     

The power of nothing

Writing in The New Yorker, Michael Specter describes changing attitudes about the placebo effect and the role it may have in medical practice.

This isn’t just New Age stuff; a recently formed institute at Harvard, The Program in Placebo Studies and the Therapeutic Encounter, is dedicated to the interdisciplinary study of placebo and “medical ritual, the patient-provider relationship, cultural context, and the power of imagination, trust and hope in the healing process.”

In other words, what really makes a patient get better? It’s a tricky question.

Placebo cred at Harvard

The Placebo Studies Institute would conceivably have been laughed off campus as recently as 20 years ago.

But neuroimaging techniques that allow researchers to track a patient’s response to a drug have shown, for example, that saline can reduce symptoms of Parkinson’s and help patients produce more dopamine.

The key is for patients to believe the drug is going to work. What they expect is directly related to how they heal.

What would OPDP do?

The placebo effect is complex. Obviously, it doesn’t work for everyone, and it can’t take the place of proven drug therapies. But pipelines aren’t what they used to be. The regulatory approval process has become positively Draconian.

So, imagine the possibilities if you were to lead the placebo launch team and submit to the Office of Prescription Drug Promotion (OPDP).

You’d need unique positioning (“Designed to Deceive”) and a prominent disclaimer (“The mechanism of action is completely unknowable.”)

You’d have plenty of studies to support your claims, but the efficacy story would be a mixed bag. The good news? Placebo needs just one thing to succeed—the patient’s belief that it will work. The bad news? Placebo stops working as soon as the patient loses faith.

Designing a website without knowledge of web development is like designing an airplane without a background in engineering. It won’t work.

That being said, being able to develop a website doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll be able to design a website.

Designers and developers are 2 very different types of people, with very different philosophies but with 1 common goal: to create the best possible finished product.

“Two Cats in a Sack: Designer-Developer Discord” discusses the differences in philosophies between designers and developers, and shows how hybrids are becoming more sought after. It suggests that what we need is for designers and developers to be more alike—to merge their disciplines.

Although creating a universal philosophy of design and development could help bring the two sides closer together, the reality is that hybrid designer/developers usually fall into 1 of 2 categories:

1.   There are designers who learn how to use code assist on Dreamweaver, and who use Google for developing through open source coding. This approach can provide users with a better understanding of what can and can’t be done when designing for web, but because they continue to subscribe to their original design philosophies, their development and user experience will be lacking.

2.   Although it is important for designers to know something about developing and for developers to know something about designing, the overall quality of the work is usually strongest when designers and developers collaborate.

Through their collaboration, a designer and a developer can each draw on his or her area of expertise, producing work that exceeds the sum of its parts.

Having one person who can do everything isn’t always what is best for the final product. Who would you rather have as a quarterback on the field—Tim Tebow who runs and throws adequately, or Tom Brady whose specialty is passing the football?

Young people can benefit however, by becoming hybrids—by learning designing and developing in school.

A young designer, right out of college, may discover that employers usually prefer hiring people who have some experience rather than those who are just starting out.

For this reason it is important to have as many skills to offer as possible. Having multiple skills will not only benefit companies, but it will also give a new graduate the opportunity to find what he or she is best at and would enjoy doing. For young people, then, being a hybrid can benefit the company and the individual.

Hybrids are not replacements for designers and developers. Instead, they are young designers and developers.

Fusing logical and creative energy is crucial for tackling all marketing challenges. This post has broad application, and will argue that a brand must “know” its own identity: namely, what it is, what it stands for, and perhaps, most challenging of all, what it doesn’t stand for.

Having this knowledge before you delve into social media is imperative. A well-developed philosophy is a prerequisite for a bold brand story, and social media is a prime venue not only to express this story, but to observe how others interpret it through conversation.

Why do some brands lose their grip on conceptual foundations when entering the social media ecosphere?

One reason is that social media is treated as another reality, or as its own isolated strategy. Although social media is a different medium of communication, and there is a language indicative to each channel, these aspects can be learned quickly and should not constrain a brand.

Here’s the upshot: don’t treat social media as a social media ecosphere! Reframing social media from a specific type of platform to a way to interact with an audience allows the brand’s own identity to emerge naturally through its social media communications.  

Here are 3 ways to maintain your brand’s sense of self in social media:

(1)  Communicate with Precision & Intention. It’s obvious when a brand’s social media presence seems unnatural, pedantic, or unconnected with the brand’s overall strategy. Communicate a message and interact as opposed to communicating your mere presence on social media channels.

(2) Bridge Online & Offline with Care. Rather than developing a blatant online and offline communication approach, communicate the brand as a solidified brand experience that will include the various tactical ways of reaching an audience. How do the various audiences interact with this bridged experience? Try considering this question from an audience’s perspective.

(3) Provide Context & Clarity. Developing a brand’s context involves considering the locations or situations where a brand can exist in relation to its audience. This enables brand touchpoints to transcend their individual medium, opening them up for recollection, discussion, and action at a later time

The question, “How can we use social media?” is better posed as “How can our brand express itself by way of this medium?”

Reframing the question in a way that gives the brand precedence leads to a more precise approach that capitalizes on a brand’s unique attributes.  

Watch your speed

Presentations should be delivered with conviction. They should come from the heart, and your pacing should be compelling and comprehensible. If you speak too quickly, your point may not come across in the way in which you intended.

This philosophy can be applied to your golf game, too. If you overanalyze or overcompensate on a putt, you may find yourself 10 feet short. By speaking too quickly, you may cause confusion; questions may arise prematurely, disrupting your flow and dragging out your presentation.

Read the room

Making eye contact is vital during a presentation. While speaking, scan the room to ensure everyone is engaged.  If you have trouble doing so, pick one person out of the audience and focus on him or her. Choose someone who is centrally located, so it won’t appear as if you are excluding others. Other tips include moving around the room, gesturing with your hands, or posing questions.

These tips can help your putting game, as well. When evaluating a putt, it’s not uncommon for golfers to walk around the green to assess the surface. Look for dips, undulations, or anything in between to determine the best direction and pace. If unsure, you can always consult with a friend, a colleague, or a client (depending on the competitive nature of the outing). When all is said and done, go with your gut. Usually it’s your first read that is the most accurate.

Adjust to the conditions

Presentations are given every day. Consider your audience and the kind of presentation you are making. Are you giving a new business pitch? A creative presentation? Initiating an uncomfortable budget discussion? Consider your tone and delivery.

This goes without saying on the green, too. If it rained the night before, the green is going to be saturated and slow. If the green was recently irritated, it will be bumpy and uneven. The green’s condition will affect the roll of your ball and your game’s outcome. The more you observe your surroundings and course correct (no pun intended), the better off you’ll be.

Practice. Practice. Practice.

So, I will leave you with this. Practice is key. As difficult as golf is to master, so is delivering well-thought-out presentations on a regular basis. You may constantly find yourself rehashing certain parts of a presentation—wishing, perhaps, that you had said this or done that.

This mentality, and the need for practice, crosses over into your golf game, too. If you get frustrated when you miss a 2-foot putt or slice a drive, just remember we are all human and will benefit from some practice and coaching. Sometimes you just have to believe in yourself, take a deep breath, relax, and deliver—whether it’s by owning a room during a big presentation or draining a 50-foot putt.

You can read more on giving great  presentations with 5 tips to great presentations by biotech managers from Chris Tobias, PhD and presentation tips from guest blogger, George Bruno.

It’s that time of year again—March Madness. Or, in the marketing game, Launch Madness! Does your brand team possess the essential qualities it takes for its members to work together and be successful when pressure builds and deadlines are getting down to the wire? Hall of Fame Duke basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski has advice for anyone looking to achieve a high level of performance—whether on the basketball court or in the business arena.

“There are five fundamental qualities that make every team great,” Coach K says. “[They are] communication, trust, collective responsibility, caring and pride. I like to think of each as a separate finger on the fist. Any one individually is important. But all of them together are unbeatable.”

Some may say Coach K knows a thing or two about teams—and what it takes to win. One need look no farther than his 11 Final Four appearances, 4 NCAA championships, and record as NCAA Division I’s all-time winningest coach. And whether we’re talking about sports, the classroom, or the corporate world, the idea of team—of each member’s working in cohesion like the fingers of a hand—is essential for achieving success.

Let’s apply Coach K’s 5 fundamentals to managing a brand!

Communication: Critical to any team’s success is to have personnel who are aware of what is going on around them. Communicating deadlines for collateral material, voicing opinions about patient imagery, and listening to concerns regarding benefit claims are essential to ensuring cohesiveness during team projects.  Whether holding discussions with medical/legal review, or making certain that an agency is delivering what is expected, communicating effectively is key to having a championship-caliber brand.

Trust: This may take some time, but as a brand manager you must surround yourself with a team and with an agency that you trust has the best interest of the brand at heart. Of course, the ball will be in your hands when target dates start to tick down to the last seconds, but it will be more than reassuring to know that you have a brand team behind you that will help nail that big shot at capturing market share in a competitive therapeutic category.

Collective Responsibility: As the old saying goes, “There is no ‘I’ in team.” As a team, everyone is accountable for a brand’s success. It’s easy to point the blame for an embarrassing error or a missed deadline, but doing so just alienates team members. If one person fails, the whole team fails. As a brand manager, foster a sense of togetherness by using words such as “we,” “us,” or “our.”

Caring: Everyone loves to be appreciated, right? Whether it’s hitting the game-winning shot or delivering quality work before the cut-off date, show those who help make your brand a success that you care. Showing care can be a congratulatory pat on the back, bringing scrumptious bagels to the office, or making an appreciative follow-up phone call. The point is, you want others to know that you care and value their contribution to the team.

Pride: Remember, you’re a team! So, as a brand manager, make sure the people on your team are proud of the work they do and are putting forth their best effort. When everybody contributes, you get captivating creative, solid scientific direction, compelling copy, and mindful management. As Coach K says, “Even though we want huge individual egos, our collective ego is unbelievable.” This statement rings true. After all, celebrating with others is always more fun than celebrating alone.

If brand managers keep Coach K’s fundamentals in mind, your team will soon be basking in confetti and celebrating a championship brand!

Now, a couple of months into the year and with spring just around the corner, are you keeping your “promise” to improve your workout routine? Are you hitting the gym 4 times a week, or does your treadmill need dusting? Has your weight rack become a coat rack? Did your personal trainer forget your name again? According to a 2009 studyabout 78% of New Year’s resolvers fail before the year is over.

A new year marks the dawn of new opportunities, just as a new launch or initiative does for a brand. To reach your New Year’s goals, you need commitment (a sense of purpose) and dedication. Treating your brand as you would a New Year’s resolution can help you obtain the results you desire.

6 Tips to Keep a Brand New Year’s Resolution

1.   Have a plan. “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.” Think about your tactics, messaging, and the results you want to achieve. Whether you want to slim down your waist or bulk up your sales, proper planning will help you on the path to success.

2.   Don’t try to accomplish everything at once. It’s not reasonable to expect results from one all-inclusive, full-body workout, and the same can be said for your brand. Rolling out ads, sell sheets, banner ads, websites, and all other tactics in one day isn’t feasible—and it won’t work. Effective branding requires multiple touch points delivered over time to your audience.

3.   Don’t leave everything until the last minute. Great, you didn’t overexert yourself in the beginning, but now your cousin’s wedding is a week away and you still haven’t shed the pounds. Don’t let your national sales meeting creep up the same way! Always think long-term.

Tip: Involving your agency early and often can help you to successfully execute a brand plan throughout the course of the year. After all who besides yourself knows your brand better than your agency does?

4.   Start small. Pique interest with your most basic selling point and lose the frills. Tease out your bigger picture with one key idea, and work up momentum as you go. Your body doesn’t lose weight all at once, and neither will your audience respond to messaging overload.

5.   Keep it interesting. Too often the resolution to hit the gym gets boring, and people get discouraged when they don’t see immediate results. Explore new and interesting ways to flex your brand muscles and mix up the routine. Employ a multichannel approach that includes video, web, and print to keep your audience engaged.

6.   Believe in it. Results are possible and probable if you have confidence throughout. If you don’t believe things can change, they won’t. Tangible change starts when you know that change is possible through hard work and determination.

Don’t let your brand fall into the disappointing resolution statistic. Keeping sight of your goals throughout the year can help you transform your brand vision into a sales metric reality! It just takes commitment.

And even if you’re saying “maybe next year” to your favorite jeans, you can still be proud of your brand right now.

Your web site will probably be the place where most folks will go to discover what your brand is all about. With each passing day, more and more members of your audience will visit your site not from a desktop computer, but via an ever-expanding array of devices and browsers. Leading the charge away from desktop computer browsing is the mobile web. The population of users surfing the web on smart phones is growing at an unprecedented rate, and, according to some sources, mobile browsing will outpace desktop web viewing by 2014.

Having more users access your content from more places sounds great, but are you ready?

That powerful online brand experience you’ve been toiling over needs to be consistently presented to each member of an incredibly diverse group. No longer will non-desktop web users be satisfied with a stripped down, broken, or hyper-optimized experience that amounts to little more than text and links. Some users probably have a more advanced browser on their mobile device than they do on their desktop machine—if they even have one anymore. They want to witness as much of your web experience as possible, including images, video, and portable content (anything that can be downloaded so you don’t need to return to the web site).

Until recently, pleasing both stationary and mobile audiences probably meant your team needed to create two sites: one for general desktop users and a “mobile optimized” site for that burgeoning audience. Twice the assets, twice the coding, twice the review time, and worst of all, twice the budget. The last thing a busy brand launch team needs to do is waste resources on two of everything.

Responsive design techniques to the rescue!

Fortunately, the need for duplicate efforts is coming to an end. Over the past 18 months, the most talked about topic in the web design community has been “responsive design.” This combination of technique and technology, which is the brain child of designer/developer/author Ethan Marcotte, is the design of the future.

In a nutshell, a site with a responsive design will react to the user’s viewing environment based on screen size/resolution, platform, and orientation. Whether viewed on a laptop, an iPad^®, or an Android™ phone, the site would automatically reconfigure itself for optimal viewing.

Here’s an example of  responsive design from W3C conference:

There has always been experimentation with “flexible layouts” in web development, but such experimentation was more about filling up space for folks with larger screens/higher resolutions than for the average web surfer. These flexible layouts of the past were messy and unpredictable, and were generally despised by most developers. And the designers? They mostly wept quietly when the subject was mentioned.

Responsive design is something else altogether.

The 3 major components of responsive design are:

1. Fluid grids—creating a layout on a grid, where proportions are very carefully considered, rather than a set number of pixels. All the elements of a design will adjust their size in relation to each other.
2. Flexible images—resizing images proportionately to suit each device. Several techniques can be used to employ this method, but care must be taken to control download times on images meant for larger devices.
3. CSS3 media queries—using new technology, media queries are used to determine user data (such as minimum screen width) and conditionally apply styles to a design based on that determination.

In addition, replacing older elements—upgrading from Flash-based video players and interactive elements to HTML5 video and JavaScript^®-based interactive elements—can ensure that your valuable content doesn’t go unviewed due to platform issues or limitations.

The new online frontier requires one to be open and flexible. Gone are the rigid days of pixel perfection; the web must flow to accommodate its diverse audience.

In the future there will be one site for many kinds of devices, with each one showing a consistent and appropriate display of your brand.

But the benefits of responsive design aren’t just for the end users; if you build your brand’s site using these principles, you can eliminate the need for separate design and development phases for desktop and mobile audiences.

And with proper implementation, you can future-proof your web property against challenges resulting from new gadgets hitting the market.

Best of all, you may even eliminate the need for multiple legal reviews and rounds of changes…and what brand manager doesn’t want that?

As the client, you are naturally eager for the Big Reveal—the presentation of a beautifully concepted piece created by your agency partner. But it is important for you to remember your role as an active co-producer in creating this piece for its intended audience.

Can you imagine gregarious Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein waiting until opening night in the theater to see “The Artist”? You can be sure that Harvey, and any producer who wants his film at the top of the box office, is actively involved—even in the earliest stages of development.

In following the Hollywood method, here are 3 steps the biotech brand manager can take to co-produce a blockbuster marketing piece:

1.      Meet with your creative team to review the manuscript before moving into layout stage

Actors don’t just show up on the set and begin filming on day one. First, they spend a significant amount of time reviewing the script so they can fully inhabit their character. By reviewing the manuscript in text form, you can focus on critical elements like messaging and flow, without being distracted by the pretty “set” and “wardrobe” elements of imagery and design treatments.

2.      Use the creative brief and brand essence as character background

Successful, memorable characters are ones who are well developed and feel authentic to the viewer. Your brand is a character, your marketing piece is the story. As you review the project in manuscript form, compare your messaging to the points in the creative brief and brand essence. Doing this will ensure the story is the one you set out to tell: the right one.

3.      Partake in the dress rehearsal

When the script receives approval, it will be time to move into layout. Even though the brand team will be working in compliance with your brand’s guidelines and standards, your expertise will still be required. For instance, you may need to provide input before a photo shoot. It is also important that your agency get your buy-in on smaller projects, even those requiring simpler imagery or artwork. Again, you can weigh in on whether these images “fit” your brand character before they have been applied to a full layout.

Once the creative team has put the finishing touches on your piece, it will be time for the big premiere: Presentation Day. Although, like Harvey, you may have participated in much of the process, you still get to relish the enjoyment and big reveal of seeing your finished project polished and presented.

Input, feedback, critical decision-making along the way…these can be the difference between bust and blockbuster. And that’s a truism whether we’re measuring success in terms of theater tickets or prescriptions.