Web Strategist Lab

Last week, some of our staff did a download from their trip to SXSW. We sent four people, looking at four different areas of tech and marketing, both inside and outside of pharma. Don’t worry, I’m already starting to lay the groundwork to go to next years conference.

Anyway, one of the themes they caught was that pharma isn’t going to solve the next wave of health problems, technology was. Pharma is chasing smaller problems affecting smaller populations (I mean, do you think if there was another penicillin around the corner? No. At this point, pharma is attacking people with a stiff case of the “Mondays”). What’s really going to turn around diabetes and heart failure is pretty much going to be food and exercise, right?  Pharma’s spent a long time trying to put something together that is as beneficial as vegetables and walking and can’t come close.

Pharma is really good at fixing diseases. Attacked by a germ or a virus or other living organism? Pharma is gonna fix that. They’re also good at squeezing the last 10% of value out of what your body used to do well: type-2 diabetes drugs are about getting more life out of your insulin and liver functions when they are on the ropes. But making your body better (unless you count steroids and HGH and the like, which I’d rather not)? That’s not something pharma is good at.

So the new focus will be technology, because technology can actually encourage you to fix yourself (or do the things that keep you from getting sick). For example, Wii Fit and the Kinnect? Tech that gets people off the couch. Wifi scale helps you track and monitor your weight and fat (you won’t try to fix what you can’t measure).

And that’s a good thing for us as people, because it reminds us that we have the power to keep ourselves from getting sick (to a greater extent than we used to), but what it also means is that we need to shift our focus.

Tech works because it does something neat: it only works because you can break good activities into something that is small, local and easy to measure. Weight? Yep. BMI? Yep. Exercise? Pretty much (though more and more studies are looking at the benefit of focusing on spurts of higher activity exercise instead of long strolls as being more beneficial to your heart and waist line, so until we crack that nut, its hard to measure). Take your meds? Yes! Check your blood sugars? Easy! All these things that make us healthier technology can make more interesting/fun/useful because they are small, local and easy to measure.

What does this mean for pharma? Big picture: Pharma thinks its in the chemistry game. It’s not. Pharma is in the health game. Tie drugs that keep you healthier longer with technology that does the same and you get a big win. Partner up and.or buy a small tech company that’s good at this (there are only a hundred of them, and most of them need the kind of help passing regulatory hurdles that you’ve mastered decades ago).

Yes, comments. Yes, @digital_pharma. Yes, yes, yes.

*Insight: stealing and versioning Errol Morris’ movie titles is always a good idea. Always.

I’ll just let you in on a little secret. I’m not the best when it comes to managing my finances. It seems like a lot of work for little return. Not to mention, it’s hard to find good information that is both well-informed without coming with some larger agenda (I’m looking at you, professional financial executives with TV and publishing deals).

It’s funny because ostensibly, I should be exactly the kind of guy who lives to manage his finances: My father was an investment exec for almost 30 years, so I know the terminology, I like knowing what’s going on to a fairly OCD level of detail, and I’m married and have someone who is also involved in he decision-making/spending process.

But I still hate it.

There’s one thing that has made my life a little easier when it comes to money, and that’s Mint.

If you aren’t on Mint, I have to assume you’re independently wealthy and have someone on staff who manages all your money. No? Then I can’t imagine what you’re waiting for. It grabs all your financial accounts (checking, savings, investments, loans, etc) and checks to keep that info up to date every date without you having to do anything.

That alone is worth the price of admission. But Mint takes it to the next level, making that data easy to see and understand with a graphical interface (both on the full browser and in the app) that is superb. It then augments that data and interface with information I might not have had at my disposal. for example, other banks offer better rates for my savings account. I spent $xxx in ATM fees this months, so maybe stop being such a dumbass and make sure you’ve got cash the next time you pass your own bank. It tells me that I usually spend $xyz a month on clothes, but this month I spent $XYZ. I can see if I’m going out to eat too much, or where my entertainment money goes. And it does it simply and without judgement.

How good is Mint? It’s so good, I’ll open my app 3-6 times a week. This single action triples (easily) the amount of financial data I access in a given time period. And we all know that access and awareness is the first step towards action.

And since this isn’t a column on the beauty of Mint, how can pharma apply these lessons to getting people to do something they hate to do: take their medicine.

The lessons of Mint are obvious:

• Make it easy to import data
• Make it easy to see what’s going on
• Make it easy to see when things are going well or not going well
• Offer recommendations on how to make things better (without being preachy or judgmental)
• Make it available on multiple platforms
• Make it really pretty (but not too pretty)

Let’s say I have diabetes like a few million other Americans. I’m supposed to monitor my blood sugar and my inputs (food, exercise, water, meds), I’m supposed to make adjustments to all these things based on my status, so the key is to make me obsessed with my status and adding data, right?

There is a growing movement (Hi, Tim Ferris!) that is semi-obsessed with measuring your body: what goes in, what goes out, how strong, how fast, how fat, how smart, etc and how it all ties together. How does exercising slowly for 45 minutes a day every day affect the body differently than exercising vigorously for 15 minutes a day twice a week? What happens to your blood sugar if you introduce cinnamon and creatine supplements daily? If you’re really good about food and exercise all week, what does a serving of really good ice cream do to your sugars and for how long does that last?

This movement is most commonly called the Quantified Self. Why listen to how a drug is supposed to affect you, when you can measure how itactually affected you?

The QS people represent a small, but influential segment of the population (you know, like Twitterers) and this is where the most interesting adherence ideas are going to be coming from in the future.

Wow, when did this post become a pitch to follow @SusannahFox?

Anyway, comments are open and you can always talk to me on twitter @digital_pharma

Today in MarketingProfs, an article about how the “human voice” in social media builds customer relationships.

I’ll just file that under “DUH” again (this folder is getting kinda full).

The reason social media works is that it’s powered by people. That chatbot you have to talk to when you want to “chat” with your cable company? No fun. Chatting with a person at Zappos? More fun. The web is people-powered. Every good web site you’ve ever read, every game you play, every flame war that made you giggle: People powered (Note to self: re-write The Police’s Every Breath You Take for the internet).

Here’s the problem, though. All those pages you ready that suck? A person wrote them, but while they were trying very hard not to sound like a person.

Example? Here’s something I found in five seconds on IBM’s website:

Implementing a cloud computing model means encouraging innovation by simplifying and standardizing underlying infrastructure. It entails the creation of efficient yet flexible IT foundations that can support the development of new services and the consistent delivery of quality user experiences. And it demands a focus on ensuring interoperability, resiliency and security in an integrated fashion.

Um… I’m a geek and I can kinda parse that stuff, but what I really take away from it? “This is a bunch of text that sounds impressive and says nothing you can hold us to later because the lawyers have taken my grandma hostage and won’t let her go until I remove any trace of humanness from this article.”

We. Hate. Reading. This. Stuff.

Insurance Explanation of Benefits? Hate. Contracts?. Hate. Terms and Conditions? Hate. Most business writing? Hate.

Bring me the people! Oh, it’s the internet and the people are someplace else… okay, bring me the human voice.

This is why you spend time on Facebook and Twitter: Real people’s voices! This is why the sales writing at a woot.com is so good.

But pharma is in trouble because pharma is terrified of the human voice because it terrifies the lawyers which are terrified of the regulatory agencies who are terrified of the people they are supposed to protect.

So the question isn’t “What will the fed let us do on social media” because even if the fed let us do anything and everything, if it’s not built in the human voice, it’s all worthless. It’s all so much Explanation of Benefits in social media form (eww). The question is “How do we find a more human voice with which to talk to our customers?

Funny thing is: there’s already an answer. But the answer is as complicated as the question. The answer? Get HCPs online and in social media!

[Sorry, I didn’t realize this would be such a long post when I started it.]

Yes, we need to get HCPs active on Facebook and Twitter. But they, like the rest of us, as terrified of the lawyers and getting sued, so they stay away in droves. They even try and force a copyright violation on people who complain about them online.

Suggestion: We need a federally mandated “Good Samaritan Law” for HCPs online. And HCP is allowed, encouraged and expected to answer questions online, knowing full well that if they are acting in the best interests of the “patient” and with the best possible knowledge they have, they are protected from lawsuits. They can answer any health care question (with links to their info, so I don’t accidentally ignore an oncologist in favor of an answer by a podiatrist when asking a question about cancer) using their full name and licence, based on whatever information is presented to them, based on the best knowledge they have at the time and you can’t touch them because they are acting on good faith. The patient accepts responsibility for asking a good question, getting follow-up when something is misunderstood, and have the good sense to stop lurking online when clearly the right answer is to see a doctor.

How does this help pharma? Now HCPs can talk openly about medicines, what they like and don’t like about them, recommend (gasp) off-label uses that might be beneficial, and can talk openly about what they’ve seen.

This means that pharma can focus on the one thing they’re supposed to do: make good drugs.

It’s a long weekend coming up, but you can still disagree with me at @digital_pharma or in the comments.

This week has been crazy, so a link I wanted to post last week has been delayed until this week.

Sigh.

Anyway, according to the Social Doctor, Doctor’s Facebook Profiles Now Rank At Top of Search Results. So you don’t have to click, it just says (in more professional language) that HCP profiles on places like their practice web sites and insurance provider finder sites aren’t getting much google-juice (shocked! Who doesn’t link to their insurance company? It’s hotter than Twitter!). But what does have a lot of google-juice is Facebook! Ergo, when you go looking for an HCP on the internet, you get Facebook first.

Add this to the fact that we know that 20% of people look up their HCP on line to see reviews, this means they are also seeing their Facebook pages.

Yes, we are entering the world where even your HCP is not private. I’ve always been used to thinking about my doctor as not really being a person, but as a big brain who lives at the hospital or clinic. I don’t want to think that they might have just had a fight with their spouse ten seconds before they walked into the exam room. Or that they might be a little tired or (gasp) hung over. I trust my health to them, so its easier to not think of them as imperfect people.

Of course, I know they are imperfect people, but HCPs like to put on the air of people who are… above it all. The white coat, the legion of nurses and assistants who do the supporting work so that the HCP can swoop in, look at a chart, ask two questions, prescribe something, tell me to lose some weight, and swoop out again.

You know, like Batman. Or something.

But Facebook (and Yelp and Google and and and) are changing that. What if before the doc comes in, I look at her Facebook page and see she’s friends with someone I know? Or that she forgot to hide her wall? Or her pics? Suddenly, no more Batman.

All the factors are pushing us all in the same direction: Docs can’t stay behind the curtain of authority any more than cops, teachers, bosses, celebrities or sports figures could. It’s not my fault, but there’s no denying that it is happening.

You’ve heard the stories about HCPs who claim that diagnosises are copyright protected and that you can’t repeat them on Yelp, right?

These are two opposing forces (internet’s destruction of the wall between us and authority versus the desire of HCPs and others in a position of authority to demand specialness) that won’t just lay down. I wonder who blinks first?

Comments are open, or just @ Reply me in Twitter (@digital_pharma).

If you don’t follow @jowyang, you probably should. He’s not pharma, but he’s been a guy I’ve followed in the web strategy world for years now. He’s got the goods.

Why do I bring this up? Not because he’s a stand-up guy and passed along advice now and then, but because this morning he tweeted this:

Consumers often want the brands they buy from to stand for something, because consumers want to stand for something.

Which is funny, because on the train I was struck with a thought so simple, I can’t believe no one’s ever said it. In fact, a quick Googling of the idea yields nothing of value, but I won’t take credit for it, it just lacks proper citation. The idea is what the fundamental/bedrock/underlying rule in all of marketing is and it kinda popped in my head in the train today (p.s. it’s raining in Chicago this morning. The kind of rain my mom would call “a Frog Strangler” because… well, she’s like that. Yes, I am delaying telling you the secret of marketing because it builds tension and gives me a chance to use the term “frog strangler” which can’t be bad for this blog’s Google-mojo. Funny how that works, huh? Anyway…) and it was this:

Marketing isn’t making people feel something, its about making people feel somethig about themselves.

When I think of marketing, I don’t think of Coke or Cheerios or Mad Men, I think about girls. In my head, you can get to the root of any big marketing questions by framing like this: Could I use this to talk a girl up? (Unrelated: is “talk a girl up” a Britishism or am I making that up? Just wondering.)

Can I use price, position, promotion and product to get a phone number? Yes. Can I use Novelty? Yes. Frequency? Yep. Consistency of message? Sure. I could go down the list and make it work. And that’s why I know this works. A girl doesn’t talk to me because I make her feel good (I mean, I could just be a loser and she could feel good that she’s not me), but because I make her feel good about herself (he’s talking to me because he seems something interesting in me and that makes me feel good).

I can do it with Coke and Cheerios (I’d Like To Buy the World A Coke is translated to I’d like to do something nice people people I don’t know and that would make me feel good) just like I can do it with pharma (If that new Viagra “A guy at your age can handle stuff when it doesn’t work right” marketing campaign isn’t the best campaign in pharma right now, I will eat my blog. It doesn’t make you feel good about sex, which should be the obvious way to go based on previous marketing campaigns, but this one makes a guy feel good about himself even if that one thing isn’t working right just yet).

So I just thought I’d pass that along. Feel free to use it.

And since we’re all done re-building the earth post-rapture, if you have questions or comments, jump in the pool and comment or hit me up at @digital_pharma.

Everyone’s got their lab coats in a twist because Facebook has finally stopped flirting with the idea of enabling comments and likes for all Pages and just kisses it on the lips and asked for its hand in marriage.

See the scoop? Here’s ePharma Rx’s version.

So I, like so many others, took the tack that Facebook was flipping off pharma marketing and its marketing budgets in a “We don’t need you”/”Take my ball and go home” snit. I mean, Maybe it’s my bias that Facebook is the kid in high school who got picked on for years and suddenly has some power and wants to rub it in everyone’s faces (The Social Network was a great movie and deserved the Oscar). Maybe it’s the reckless way it treats anyone who isn’t Facebook (erosion of privacy for users, bait and switch use terms, privacy controls that don’t even make sense to them, the recent Google smear campaign, untested public News Feeds, etc, etc, etc), so I just assumed this move was a way to tick off someone it didn’t need to appease.

But I’m wrong. Pharma is (if you can believe it) an innocent bystander in a war between Facebook and the feds. In this case, the FDA. Facebook always acts as if anything we ask of it is a horrible burden and is the worst idea (remember when we tried to tell Detroit to make a hybrid a decade ago? Yeah, like that). Every move sounds like, “Facebook is a free service and if you don’t like it, go away, but by the way, all your friends are on it, so good luck living without us.”

The move to treat pharma like every industry is either ignorant of the fact that pharma lives in a regulated house (haha! Like Pharma hasn’t lobbied Facebook for years: no one’s ignorant here) or Facebook has decided to start jousting at a very big windmill: the fed.

Why bother? Who is the only group who can tell Facebook what to do? Not the courts, not public opinion, not the media, not users, not stock holders (hahaha! Goldman Sachs has only one thing to tell Facebook: Thank you!). The answer is the fed. The fed is the only group who have any chance of laying down some laws for Facebook, and clearly Facebook (the willful 16 year old that it is) doesn’t like it when someone else tells it what to do.

Let’s see how this plays out. I only wonder what other aspect of the fed Facebook will lob grenades at next…

In Health Care Communication News, Chris Boyer lists 5 mistakes hospitals make with social media.

1. Don’t participate enough
2. Participating too much
3. Confusing social marketing with traditional marketing
4. Try to control their brand in social media
5. Not aligning social media strategies with hospital marketing strategies

I’m gonna add a few more to the list. I think they should be at the top of the list.

As a social media guy for a whole lot of years, I get lots of people who ask me to help with their social media strategy. The first question I ask is always “Why do you want to use social media? (or: what do you want to get out of it?)” Usually, they tell me how excited by a new technology they are (let’s say Twitter in this example). Great! Excitement is helpful. Then I ask: How long have you been using twitter?

Crickets.

The great thing about social media is that any idiot (including this one) can jump in for free. As I used to say, even Ashton Kutcher is good at Twitter, so what’s stopping you?

My other favorite answer is “because everyone else is doing it.” Uh huh. You just follow along and hope that no one notices you have no idea what’s going on. Good plan.

When I ask what kinds of two-way conversations the hospital would have with someone, or who that someone might be… blank stare. Hospitals (like most large companies) aren’t well-equipped to have a two-way conversations with someone. Too many lawyers, executives and marketers want to get in the way. They want to control the message, which is fine. But you can’t control a conversation (trying makes you a jerk — test this theory sometime at a party!) so stop trying.

Finally, even the biggest company in the world who is successful at Twitter (and other social media) has a well-defined voice. Usually that voice comes not from a committee meeting, but because one trusted person was given control and authority to make decisions. They ended up being the voice of the company online, a voice that grew over time.

So here’s my proposed list of top mistakes hospitals (and most people) make in social media:

1. The person proposing social media has never really used social media (worse: treats it with disdain or like it’s a toy)
2. The ultimate reason for using social media is because everyone else is
3. No idea what a hospital might talk about on social media (not, “say.” “Talk about.”)
4. No idea what someone might get out of following/friending a hospital on social media.
5. Not giving authority to someone to have a conversation in the voice of the hospital.

Is there any wonder why some people can’t figure out how to see the ROI on social media?

As per usual, comments are on, and you can hit me at @digital_pharma any time.

Something occurred to me on the train this morning (yes, I spend my morning commute thinking about what to post here. If it helps, I spend my evening commute thinking about dinner. Wow. Now I’m hungry. Are you hungry? Then take a moment and want this movie on cinema’s greatest sandwiches. Don’t worry, I’ll still be here when you get back).

Anyway, in an effort to play Seth Godin and try and look for the edges of an idea or industry (what? you haven’t read Linchpin yet? Geez…) I thought, what part of the pharma market hasn’t changed much in a long time. The retail side. The biggest change in retail is that Walmart started pushing for better pill bottles (which are pretty cool, actually). Before that? Probably the decision to keep pharmacists on platforms. While the development side has churned out new products and product development models year after year, retail stays stagnant.

So what would have to happen for retail to shift? An entrenched market, a well-established network of retailers in some of the biggest and smallest companies, regulated pricing… Yeah, seems like the only that will change things is… chaos.

Chaos in the form of a massive retail player with cash in their pocket willing to smash down some walls and think things through from a blank piece of paper. Yeah, that’s going to be Amazon.

Why would Amazon enter the market? If you exclude “I just got sick and I need some antibiotics today” market, you’ve got everyone with a chronic condition, the elderly who usually need a slate of drugs for a long period of time in a well-regulated schedule, and preventative medicine. These are groups who don’t mind waiting two days for meds, and would probably be thrilled to have things delivered to their house.

Amazon apply their own “lowest possible margins!” model and lower the cost a bit, probably more than enough to cover the cost of shipping.

The real thrill will be the critical mass as Amazon becomes the third or fourth largest retailer and begins to negotiate formularies with either insurance companies or the manufacturers themselves.

One of the biggest issues people have with pharma is that it’s complicated. Even if you can navigate the insurance waters, there are thousands of prescribed drugs and the permutations of any two (let alone three or four) in terms of interactions are insane. What did Amazon do to distinguish itself a decade ago? Adding more data! Others who got this med also got this med (huh. My HCP didn’t give me that. I wonder why? I should ask her…). Reviews and effects (think of it! Millions of people talking about their meds! Outside of a regulatory sphere! Think of the research data that could be collected for free!).

Clearly, this is an industry that would benefit from a little shake up and I wonder how far along Amazon has thought this idea through.

As always, comments are on, and I am reachable @digital_pharma.

So, I’ve been spending a little time thinking about mobile lately for a client, and I keep coming back to a bias I have, one that someone refuted for me, but I’d like to put out there and maybe get some conversation on.

In my world, mobile is personal. You don’t touch my phone unless you’re handing it to me when something is going on (though really, why did I leave it over by you?). I will be a little miffed if I find you looking around on my phone without my permission. If I show you a photo from it, I’ll probably hold the phone for you. My phone (iPhone 4, fyi) is mine. More so than my computer, it is an extension of my “self.” When I connect it to my computer, it is listed as my “back-up brain” and rightly so.

I assumed everyone felt somewhat similar. Here’s a quiz. You’re on the train and reading a book and you catch someone looking over your shoulder to see what your reading. On a level from one to ten, how irked are you? Now play the same scenario out while you’re using your phone (it doesn’t even have do be something as personal as Mint or your email. maybe you’re just cruising your Twitter feed). How irked are you then? Aren’t you more irked when its your phone than when it’s a book?

Then, the director of technology (@michael_tapson) says that at SXSW, he heard about research that showed the younger the user, the less likely they were to consider the phone personal. They swap phones to look at pics, to read stuff, to see texts. I have occasionally gotten texts from my little sister’s friends through my little sister’s phone (19yo).

But I’m not convinced. Won’t they get older and see the phone/device as an extension of themselves as they get older? Won’t they become like me, or am I a dinosaur?

Thoughts? Comments are turned on and you can always holler at me via @digital_pharma.

Some of you are waiting for the feds to issue guidelines on what pharma can do in the social media (in my mind, you’re building forts make of couch cushions and blankets from the guest room).

Allow me to suggest that you start a hobby, because you are goign to have a lot of time on your hands.

We already know what we’re not allowed to talk about, so why are we waiting for what we are allowed to talk about. In my mind, if the feds have delineated what’s off-limits, then everything else is fair game, right? Up until the feds say “no,” they are saying “yes.” QED.

So here’s what you should be doing right now to get into social media.

1) No one cares about your company. They might care about your brand. What they really care about is themselves. They are sick (they care about that). They know that a drug will help (okay, that’s kinda interesting). They have no interest in the company that makes that drug (or worse, they think the developer is a greedy bunch of bastard who would shake them by the ankles to collect their loose change before giving a sick person access to their medication). The only people who are friending your Facebook page are employees who are trying to suck up.

2) Stop channel dithering! Yes, you could spend time developing presences on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, YouTube, Tumblr, LinkedIn, Orkut, Bebo, Reddit, StumbleUpon, FourSquare, Plurk, Plaxo, Digg, Vimeo, Ehow and epinions. But don’t. That’s a waste. Pick one, maybe two, and build. If you’re good, people will find you (and you know that Google indexes social media, right?).

3) Talk. Not about you, talk about them. If people want to talk about themselves, that means they aren’t talking about what’s not on your label. They don’t want to spend a lot of time discussing the relative merits of Actos and Amaryl.

Here’s a list of what a diabetes patient will want to talk about instead of your drug: Diet, sugar, cards, glycemic index, aerobic exercise, anaerobic exercise, test strips, blood sugar spikes and drops, OTC supplements (you know, some of them have positive effects on insulin), new tech in the pipeline, etc. That’s a long list and I’ve barely scratched the surface.

4) Scared of AE Reporting? Build something that allows anyone to report an AE to a place that’s monitored 24/7. Then link to it like freakin’ crazy. Don’t be shy, be a respectful and engaged participant in the process.

5) You’re saying you don’t know the concept of a “third party?” Perhaps someone is asking about an off-label use. You know you can’t say that that’s okay. Maybe you’re uncomfortable pointing to references that talk about it. But we can’t ignore the Google. Since the user asked you, tell them that it’s not what it’s prescribed for, that you’re legally not allowed to discuss off-label uses, but that if you Google a term like “[drug] [use]” you might find that there are people who are doing some interesting research in that fiend trying to determine if its useful.

(This last point will probably bring disagreement. If you care to disagree with this post, kindly talk to me via @digital_pharma. I’m no zealot and can be persuaded to your way of thinking. I’m also a delightful conversationalist!)

So get to it!