Introducing Help with 2013 Planning

While summer is the vacation season for most people, for healthcare marketers around the world it means the start of planning season.

So while friends and family may be:

                         • carrying a paperback beach novel, you’re lugging PowerPoint

                           presentations in your overflowing beach bag

                         • heading to pool parties, you're diving into decks of data and

                           financial forecasts

                         • thinking about where to splurge on a summer weekend escape, you're

                           wondering about new creative ways to do more with less

Extrovertic can lighten your load.

This summer, we’re devoting these Wednesday posts to sharing crisp, juicy ways to give you food for thought about your business. We’ll be serving up different perspectives gathered from our Extro-Analog process, which is where we:

                         • explore non-pharma solutions and strategically apply them to the realities

                           of pharma marketing

                         • strip down the problem to its bare essentials

                         • search outside of healthcare for companies or brands that've faced similar

                           challenges

And we never know where inspiration can strike.

For example, we came up with a new way for a client to help patients by studying addiction counseling. We even developed an idea for a new video series based on the Heidi Klum Summer Run. We’ve found that the further out you go, the better the ideas.

So this summer we’ll offer up refreshing pitchers of ideas that’re focused on:

                         • strategies

                         • tactics

                         • measurements

These will include short- and long-term thought starters for your consideration.

Sometimes there are ideas that can be directly applied, while other times these out-of-industry examples provide the root of a new idea that can be harvested or further cultivated. We’ll also point out particularly interesting examples from around our industry.

So, starting tomorrow (June 20^th), check out our Intro to Extro blog. Then, every Wednesday for the next 14 weeks, you’ll see some bright, sunny ways to approach your 2013 marketing plan. We hope you find them useful and thought provoking. Either way, we’d love to hear from you.

Thanks for letting us share.

Dorothy

Tomorrow’s blog can help you answer the question, “What are we doing with our website next year?”

2 concerts and a plate of bones.

Whether it was poor timing or some inner party animal instinct, I managed to lock myself into two consecutive nights of concerts.

Both bands would feature loud guitars, a healthy dose of ‘80s-style synthesizers, pulsing bass lines, and did I mention loud guitars? Yet, they’re different.

One band is relatively new - the mean age of their members was about 26. The other, a band that’s been around for about 30 years, whose members are geezers and could technically be the fathers of the kids in the first band. These bands are quite unalike, yet each has qualified as ‘kickass’ in my opinion.

Without prejudice.

We had spare tickets to these shows and offered them to friends. No takers.

“I don’t know these bands, but I don’t think I’m gonna like ‘em,” was the typical response. This, was without hearing a single note from either band.

Much prejudice, it seems.

When I asked a colleague if he wanted to see one of these bands, he promptly googled them and told me, “I see that they’re classified in Wikipedia as a shoegaze band. What on Earth is shoegaze?!” Then he didn’t think he was going to like them. His reasoning made my head explode. “I think they’re before my time, before I was born.” I’m pretty sure people shouldn’t be benchmarking new music on the basis of their birth date.

You see, I have a voracious appetite for new experiences – not just music – and I believe that every one should be constantly on the look out for new and different things.

For example, lately I’ve taken to the idea of nose-to-tail eating, which means I’ve been going out of my way to try every type of offal I can find. Heck, before last night’s concert, I pigged out on roasted bone marrow with ramps.

I knew I liked bone marrow, but I had no idea what a ramp was, so I ordered it. (It’s a wild spring onion and you can see the little bulbs embedded right into the marrow).

(My mouth is watering just looking at that picture)

We all need to go out and try everything weird. If not weird, something that makes you a tad uneasy, and takes you out of your comfort zone.

So what’s the point of all this, then?

Run towards ideas that are unfamiliar or different from what you currently believe or understand. Have a voracious hunger for new ideas.

Despite its original context in the film Wall Street, Gordon Gekko’s seminal speech has a universal truth to it:

“Greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures, the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms; greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge, has marked the upward surge of mankind.”

Greed is very good for marketing, in the sense of the pursuit of ideas and creativity. Eat up everything around you – in pop culture, in automotive design, in furniture aesthetics, in product packaging, in films, I gastronomy–all of it.

I believe that so many solutions for pharma marketing lie outside pharma marketing. And the only way we’re ever going to find them is when we start paying attention to things about which we have no idea.

-Des

Please Welcome Our Latest extrovert to the NY Office.

As part of extrovertic’s recent rebranding brainstorming, each of us was asked to “bring in something that you feel represents extrovertic.”

I brought in a bulb.

But not just any bulb—an amaryllis bulb.

You’re probably wondering, “What does an amaryllis bulb have to do with extrovertic?"

A bunch of reasons come to mind:

        ·      It blooms big, with multiple flowers

        ·      It’s determined. An amaryllis is one of the easiest flowers to grow. The bulb of this one couldn’t even wait to get to work. It’d already started to sprout before we put it in soil and watered it

        ·      It’s unstoppable. An amaryllis can keep on growing and blooming for years with minimal care. This is the second time this one’s bloomed. I just trimmed off the wilting stalk and it grew another stalk that then flowered

        ·      It’s popular. Because it’s so easygoing and cooperative, there’s a worldwide demand for them

        ·      It’s diverse. They flower in different colors (red, white, pink, salmon, and orange) as well as with different stripes

The way I see it, we at extrovertic operate the same way. It’s who we are. What we do. And how we work. Is it genetic? The environment? I don’t know. I’ll leave that to the Watson and Cricks of the world to unearth.

But I leave you, kind reader, with a perennial question: Why not grow your brand with extrovertic?

-PVB

Brilliant—A Gift Card That Doesn’t Work At Any Store In Town.

Who doesn’t want to give back? We all like to think that most people are inherently good and, if given the opportunity, would donate either time or money to worthy causes. That said, people are also busy, perhaps now more so than ever. There are tweets to tweet, Facebook posts to post, blogs to read, and trends to follow. We also need to find time for those family, friend, and job things that seem to take precedence in many of our lives (for some reason!)


But what if giving were made easy? Isn’t that what holds us back from giving back—not having the resources to do something good simply and efficiently?

This holiday season, I received a truly inspired gift from a friend via globalgiving.org. GlobalGiving defines itself as:

“A charity fundraising web site that gives social entrepreneurs and non-profits from anywhere in the world a chance to raise the money that they need to improve their communities.”

The front of the elegantly designed white gift-card holder reads, “Brilliant. A gift card that doesn’t work at any store in town.” The back of the card holder offers the headline, “But gladly accepted in over 100 countries throughout the world.”

Below that is a biodegradable gift card that, after removal from the holder, reveals the instructions:

1. Go to www.globalgiving.org/redeem.

2. Find a project you are passionate about.

3. At checkout, select “pay with a gift card.”

4. Feel good about changing the world.

Donators (and gift card recipients) are urged to “select the projects you want to support…and you'll get email updates from the project so you can see how your gift is making a difference.”

Everyone loves getting presents, but this was a different sort of present that really made me feel good. Aside from being impressed as a writer/creative with its cleverly written copy and tasteful design, I also love the idea behind it. Both giver and receiver benefit, as does the global community at large. It’s the type of Big Idea creatives aspire to stumble upon and the sort of big idea we work to produce at Extrovertic. In pharma especially, we strive to employ these same themes—simple, elegant, and easy to understand and implement.

You can do it anytime, but isn’t this holiday season a great opportunity to visit globalgiving.org and give back, simply?

-Jamie

Regardless of What You Call the Business, It's Evolving

Interactive Marketing Trends

What an amazing time it is to be in the healthcare/pharma/advertising/marketing strategy/digital/social media/relationship marketing/closed loop marketing/consulting business.

Every day brings new challenges. New solutions. New technologies. New surprises. New potential. New growth.

This is not your father's healthcare/pharma/advertising/marketing strategy/digital/social media/relationship marketing/closed loop marketing/consulting business.

It's certainly not the world of advertising I grew up in. And thank god for that. (Actually, I didn't know then what I was missing.)

Then, creative was strictly left to the creatives. We were tasked to develop smart print/radio/TV/direct mail. Later, there were banners/Web sites/emails...

Today, everyone has to be creative. And I mean everyone. Because the charge of an agency today is to create more than just great ads and online messages. It's about creating strategically smart, compelling, holistic, cross-platform programs that strike just the right chord with patients/caretakers/professionals. That connect with them at just the right place in their hearts and moment of their journey. That maximize engagement, incite doctor-patient dialogue, invite more positive and healthful behaviors, better adherence and spread overall good karma.

Then, the creative brief was the domain of the planners and creatives.

Today, everyone needs to get involved, because everyone can bring their unique perspective to the party, and the earlier they do it, the better.

And today's version of "everyone" is different from tomorrow's, as we try to keep up with the ever-evolving tableau of insights/technologies/solutions/regulatory issues...

As I said, it's an exciting time to be in the healthcare/pharma/advertising/marketing strategy/digital/social media/relationship marketing/closed loop marketing/consulting business.

Which by next week, will probably have an even longer name.

-Mark 

 

And the Award for Best Supporting Actor Goes to All the Extroverts

In the spirit of tonight's Academy Awards acceptance speeches, I figured what better time to offer my personal thanks to all the wonderful folks who have helped Extrovertic grow so quickly into the kind of agency that we had hoped for when we started it just over two years ago.

At the risk of getting all verklempt, we have an amazingly talented, smart, dedicated –and just plain nice– group of people in our New York  and Cambridge offices.

There are a few things that separate our extroverts from the employees of the standard healthcare agencies:

First, while our people recognize that we're in the business of helping our clients' businesses, they understand that the best way to do this is to truly make a difference in the lives of patients. When an extrovert says he or she is passionate about patients, this isn't corporate speak. It comes from the heart. Every one of us feels a responsibility to immerse ourselves in the lives, lifestyles, and challenges of the patient populations we aim to help. And this need to understand and feel the pain, problems and joys of patients carries through every part of our organization, from our interns on up.

Second, everyone has a say at Extrovertic. We have a weekly staff meeting in which everyone gets to hear what 's going on with the agency and share what's going on with them. Nobody is too big or too small. And as extroverts, nobody is afraid to speak their mind.

Third, we all want to be the very best at what we do, whether it be creative, marketing strategy development, RM – anything. We all support each other in our collective quest to be the very best possible partner to our clients.

Fourth, we all work very hard, but we have fun doing it. What can be more fun than being involved right at the start of something that is growing as fast as our company?

A sincere and heartfelt thanks to all the extroverts. And an invitation to anyone who thinks there's an extrovert inside of them, just dying to get out...

-Mark