We Need Holiday Parties.

The annual holiday party is a curious rite of passage for just about any agency. It’s an obligatory ritual that’s squeezed in among the hustle-bustle of many year-end activities: financial reports, evaluations, and finishing up OPDP submissions before the holiday break.

For those given the task of organizing the holiday party, there’s tremendous pressure, whether it’s for a shop of 20 folks or an agency with 500 employees. You’re charged with ensuring the merriment of your colleagues. You’re responsible for making sure they have a good time. That is the only agenda: to have a good time.

The quality of holiday parties is as varied as the agencies that host them. Some are so monumentally epic that your grandchildren and people in foreign lands will be reading about them in their history books. (If you were there, you’d know what party I’m talking about.) Others are so awful you just want “Die Hard” to happen in real life.

Good or bad, fun or not, one thing is clear: We need our holiday parties. Because holiday parties are cathartic.

They’re not just some drunken convergence of people who go to work in the same building as you do every day. Holiday parties are important milestones in every agency’s year. It’s a time to get together with the folks with whom you spend a majority of your waking hours and reconnect as people, as friends, as trusted partners. It’s a time to stitch up the past year, pat everyone—including yourself—on the back, and look ahead to the coming year. There is always something to celebrate at the holiday party, no matter how big or small.

Extrovertic holiday parties—yes, we have more than one!—have much to live up to. It’s not like we have a choice—we’re called Extroverts for a reason. In a year of such explosive growth, it would’ve been tempting to overdo it and go all out and over the top—“go big or go home” style. 

Instead, the first of our parties, was rather…nice, charming, and a little quirky. Very Extrovertic.

Berklee College of Music students brought the jam.

A tarot card reader helped us look into the future. (Will anyone use this new app I’m designing?) We ate, we drank, we sang, we danced, and we drank some more. And then we all hopped into cabs, went home, and watched the sunrise.

Like I said, cathartic.

Desmond

Form, Meet Function.

What’s the first thing you do when you move apartments? Offices? Desks?

You clean house.

You sort through everything you have and decide which pieces can fit into your new space and which need to be left curbside for the garbage trucks.

Following this culling down of belongings comes the fun part—the need to acquire new furniture. Which is exactly what we did for the move to our new 21^st Street location.

In keeping with our emphasis on design, each piece of furniture for our new digs was carefully researched and evaluated prior to being purchased. We ended up with snazzy turquoise desk chairs, frosted glass desks, and polka dot-covered work stations (to name but a few).

But the coolest pieces of furniture (in this Extrovert’s opinion) are the Interstuhl chairs designed by Christine Lüdeke. Uniquely designed, visually stimulating, and bright chartreuse in color, these chairs at first glance counteract the idea of form following function. This principle states that:

The shape of a building or object should be primarily based upon its intended function or purpose.

By just looking at the chair, however, it seems to be…,well, non-functional.

But the Contemeporist, a product discovery site for architects and interior designers, quotes Interstuhl and clears things up a bit:

First of all you have to use your imagination to identify an easy chair in the 60-degree slanting element. But if you let yourself down at an angle you will experience something unique. You will be rewarded by a very comfortable seating sensation in a type of cantilever model that has been made possible by modern fibres and new weaving methods.

So, when it comes down to it, the modernist approach to design really does hold true—form usually follows function even when that doesn’t appear to be the case at first. Modern design merely asks that we work a bit harder to reap the benefits.

What are some ways that you can integrate form and function into your home or office?

Jamie

* A special thanks to Account Extroverts Bill, Thomas, and Steve for modeling in these chairs, thereby kicking them up yet another notch.

Massive Health’s Holy Trinity: Technology, Healthcare, and Design.

As a healthcare communications agency devoted to raising the bar on strategic and innovative thinking, Extrovertic has launched an initiative to explore how the principles of design can be employed to improve our processes, products, and daily agency lives ((see post date 11/28/11)). 

One of the first places we looked at during our design exploration was Massive Health, a startup dedicated to infusing design and technology into healthcare. Massive Health believes a new approach to tackling the healthcare crisis is needed. According to their website, Massive Health is about “making beautiful products that sit in your pocket and give you deep insight into your health conditions.” Massive Health turns “data into meaning, and make(s) that meaning actionable.”

They recently launched an iPhone app called “The Eatery,” which is designed to help people make lasting changes to their diet. Using an iPhone, people take pictures of everything they plan to eat, give it a simple rating (Fit or Fat), and submit. Massive Health’s wonderfully executed app makes it easy to adhere to the simple rules of healthy eating and to implement the basics of successful behavioral changes.

There’s also substantiation that this approach to eating works:

1.      Sharing your goals makes you more likely to accomplish them: With The Eatery, you can share your food selections with your friends and get their reactions. In addition to helping make you more accountable to your goals, your friends may help bust your personal food myths. For example, is that daily smoothie really healthy or, as their site suggests, is it “a sugar bomb?”

2.      Eating colorful foods is a must: In keeping with Michael Pollan’s belief that food needs to be colorful, The Eatery allows pictures of your meals to become part of a patchwork quilt that can you can evaluate in a glance. Is it bland and brown or full of orange, green, purple, and red?

3.      Making small sustainable lifestyle changes is more effective than strict dieting: By compiling your eating habits in pictures and easy-to-read colorful graphs, you are able to identify small self-defeating patterns. For example, is every coffee break accompanied by a cookie break too?

I compare this beautifully designed app to the tools my daughter was given by a nutritionist to ensure she eats 4,000 calories daily—the amount required for her to participate in competitive skating. Flora got a boring three-ring binder and a stack of what looked to be slightly off-kilter mimeographed sheets straight out of a 1960s health class. Only a highly motivated, disciplined athlete like my daughter would stick to that regimen. Her baby-boomer mom certainly wouldn’t!

Massive Health says on their blog, “this iPhone application offers a simple, beautiful approach to eating better.” This is quite an accomplishment; simplicity is something we aspire to but often encounter obstacles in attaining. As someone who has spent close to 2 decades banging the health literacy drum in Big Pharma, I know how hard it is to get the simple stuff through review committees. Bigger words and complex graphics are often more technically accurate, and therefore safer from a regulatory/legal point of view.

Deadlines loom, and the folders stack up. However, apps like The Eatery provide inspiration to push back just a little harder (perhaps there’s an app that can help us make small, sustainable review committee changes). Massive Health’s first foray into merging design principles and healthcare, raises the bar for all of us involved in healthcare communications.

Dorothy

“Designing” the Service Business Model.

With the passing of Steve Jobs, the central place that design has played in infusing everyday products with value has received tremendous airplay. That got me thinking, how could a design mentality create additional value in the service business? Specifically, the healthcare agency business?

What would a well-designed contact report look like? 

Would the structure of our meetings change?
How would our creative product be affected?

So, for the remainder of 2011, our Extroverts will be devoting time and energy to wrestling with these questions. We will start by immersing all New York and Boston Extroverts into the world of design. Extrovertic leadership will be giving presentations, taking the agency on a field trip or two, and bringing beautifully designed items into the office. We plan to culminate this effort with an Extrovertic idea storm, where we will apply the principles of design to generate ideas on improving our environment, processes, services, products, and work lives.

The inspiration behind Extrovertic idea storms is to look beyond the world of pharmaceuticals for interesting ideas and initiatives. Using a structured brainstorming process, we then develop ways these ideas can be applied to specific business challenges. In this case, how can Extrovertic raise the bar and offer a distinctively different level of agency service? Our clients have told us Extrovertic is different, that we offer a higher level of strategic thinking than most agencies. But we want to take that further.

Until the end of this year, we will be using the world of design as inspiration to offer a distinctively different level of agency service. The world of design has already provided us with a lofty template for our initiative. It comes from Mauro Porcini, 3M’s Head of Global Strategic Design, who was featured in Fast Company’s October Design issue.

“The designer’s goal…is not customer satisfaction. That’s a terribly low bar. You’re just meeting someone’s needs. If you’re a designer who loves your customers, you surprise. You enter the sacred field of the magic, of the extraordinary, of the memorable.”

At Extrovertic, we love our clients, their patients, and the healthcare space. So we will be idea storming on how we can surprise and delight them in 2012 and beyond. Please follow our blog, add your thoughts, and enjoy a design-infused end of year.

Dorothy

A Very Extroverted Halloween.

As Extroverts, we are naturally inclined to go a bit over the top when given the opportunity to do so.

Take Halloween for instance. Some people go minimalist—

A pair of kitty ears = a cat costume.

Horn headband=devil.

Not so when it comes to Extroverts.

Instead of merely dressing ourselves in a costume, we take it to the next level. 

So for Halloween this year, we hired face painters to come to our New York and Boston offices to kick our otherwise “non-extroverted” costumes up a notch.

Although the initial concept had been to create offices full of “walking stiffs”, the Extroverts had other ideas. While some zombies were seen walking around Cambridge and 21st St., looking like the dead, others took creative license (as we are known to do) and went a bit rogue with our designs. 

Jr. Art Director, Nathan Noyes took it upon himself to photo-composite the pictures to maximize the effect.

We had beautifully butterflied account folks.

As well as creepily two headed ones.

Copywriters gone morgue.

And project managers turned pro.

Fiendish art directors made an appearance, too

And the creepiest? Nathan (the very Extrovert who compiled this whole creepy slideshow) was the scariest of them all with a ghoulish Batman inspired clown getup.

Last but not least, Chief Extrovert, Dorothy, took us off the charts with her lovely Arab Spring ensemble.

Looking pretty darn fabulous, The Halloween festivities continued late into the evening (as did the face paint). And the take away? If you want to have a good time, all you need are a bunch of Extroverts and some face paint.


Jamie

If Facebook were a country…

It would be the third largest in the world. In fact, “there are 750,000,000 people on Facebook, worldwide.”

What is it about Facebook that has gotten people so obsessed? Why do people log on over and over each day, frantically checking for news updates, party invites, offers, games, likes and relationship status changes?

These were some questions I was hoping to have answered at the Social Media Strategies Summit I recently attended. 

I was able to participate in this great conference because of a recently instated policy at Extrovertic. This program allocates a very generous annual budget for each employee to attend conferences on virtually any topic. It enables us to learn about cutting edge practices in different areas of the business. When we come back, all Extroverts are then expected to translate what we’ve learned into innovative ideas for our clients.

So why did I choose this particular conference? Even though Social Media has not yet found its niche in Pharma, if and when it does make an appearance, I want to help prepare Extrovertic. Notebook in hand, off to Boston I went.

At the conference, we had the chance to participate in one of three tracks (Non-profit, Business-to-Business and Business to Consumer). I opted for business to consumer (since it was most relevant) and, I think I made a good choice. I got to attend talks given by the VP of Technology for Tasti-D-Lite, the PR and Social Media Manager of Dunkin Donuts (yes, she brought donuts), and the Director and Interactive Media Manager of the Boston Celtics (to name a few). Over three days, I got to attend lectures on everything from the NCAA marketing approach, to the Marines' social media platform. 

The conference was an amazing opportunity to meet people in different areas of the business, all around good time and a great chance to learn about effective social media ventures that other brands have produced. I was also pretty excited about the fact that I won a Definition 6 moleskin notebook and pen because of my frequent participation in their Snaptag contest. It was the first time I’ve ever won something! 

At the end of it, I walked away with a broader understanding of social media marketing initiatives. For people who are even somewhat involved in the development of social media programs for their companies, this is a great conference series. 

I think social media and pharma are unfortunately a ways away from intersecting. But, in the future, it seems like the first place social media may find it’s home in pharmaceutical marketing is in the unbranded sector. Because of this, it’s important that we keep up to date on what is going on in the social media world. 

What do you think might be a good way in? Do you agree with social media’s heavily regulated nature in the medical world? Leave a note with your opinion!

Jamie

My 9/11 Began On 9/10

I don't know if it's a symptom of the mass post-traumatic disorder we all experienced after 9/11, or if it's simply because each decade becomes proportionately smaller as we age, but for me, the past decade flew by like no other. Just as it does for many people, 9/11 feels, to me, like much more recent history.

But my personal 9/11 odyssey began not on that day, but the day before. At 6:00 pm, to be exact.

That's when my creative partner, Alfredo Rossi, and I were at Ogilvy; attending the pre-production meeting for a TV commercial we were to begin shooting early the next morning.

Ironically, the spot to be shot was for New York City tourism.

The concept?

"New York City: The Ultimate Theme Park." A wonderland filled with all kinds of exciting rides (the subway, buses and cabs), more international experiences than Epcot, and lots of great characters (the Naked Cowboy and other such street performers).

We wanted to focus on the things that give our city its vibrancy and character, while only peripherally showing the typical tourist attractions, like the Statue of Liberty, Empire State Building, and yes – the World Trade Center.

Our director took us through the board, frame by frame, as the producer spelled out the logistics of each shot: we'd start just after dawn at the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens, then move on to a street scene in Prospect Park.

Suddenly, a client who we had never met before (but a pretty famous name) interrupted the proceedings to announce, "I want to see the Statue of Liberty. The Empire State Building. The World..."

The director, a man obviously skilled at these matters, finished the sentence for him. "The World Trade Center. We end our day near there tomorrow, so if you can get us the permit, we can shoot a scene there in the early evening." 

Satisfied, our surprise celebrity client remained quiet the rest of the meeting.

Around 6:00 am on 9/11, I pulled into a garage on Duane St. in lower Manhattan and walked to a coffee shop, where our crew had been assembling. We boarded a couple of vans, which whisked us past the Towers and into Brooklyn.

The first scene, in the Botanical Gardens, went beautifully. After all, it was, as everyone will recall, a gorgeous, clear day. A perfect day for our shoot.

As we massed at the vans in a parking area in the Gardens, before moving on to our next location, I noticed a strange cloud formation directly ahead of us.

"It looks like smoke," said Alfredo.

At that very moment, Carrie, our producer, came running towards our van. "Turn on the radio," she said. "A small plane just hit one of the Twin Towers."

As we turned on the radio, another plane came into, and then out of view, swallowed by the smoky cloud. A voice on the radio completed the picture. This plane had hit the other Tower.

Two planes had just slammed into the two tallest skyscrapers in NYC. This was not an accident. This was beyond horrible.

We didn't know what to do.

In retrospect, it seems insane. But we went to our next location – the entire production crew – set up our scene, and started shooting. We had a bride and groom coming down the front steps of an old brownstone.

As our beautiful scene unfolded, a more bizarre one enveloped us. Debris started raining down. People were coming out of their homes in a panic, their mouths covered. Sirens were blasting everywhere.

The first Tower came down.

Everyone was looking up at the sky as rumors began spreading about other planes heading for the city. Military jets started appearing overhead.

We finally decided to scrap the shoot and all wandered into a restaurant on Atlantic Ave. Some of the crew then ventured over to the Promenade just as the second Tower fell.

Carrie and I walked to the Brooklyn Bridge, hoping to get back to the city. But the exodus of the walking wounded was coming our way. People in tatters, covered in dust, dazed, expressionless. The police weren't allowing anyone to go the other way.

After many hours of trying to get a cellular signal, I finally reached my wife, who reminded me that my cousins, Scott and Jen, lived in Brooklyn Heights. We made our way to their apartment and were graciously welcomed in. Amazingly, the windows of their place looked out straight across the water, perfectly framing the spot lit, smoldering crater where the Towers had stood only a few hours earlier.

Scott, who worked at the Trade Center, had arrived shortly before I did. Fortunately, he was okay. But I could tell he had witnessed things nobody should ever see.

After a sleepless night, I nervously took the subway back into the city, to Penn Station, where I would catch my train back to New Jersey and the hugs of my wife and daughters.

10 days later, my daughter, Hannah, and I were at Shea Stadium when Mike Piazza hit that magical, winning home run against the Braves in the first baseball game played after the attacks. It's often said that the healing began with that swing of the bat.

My 9/11 experience was Zelig-like. Surreal. Bizarre.

Here's to the thousands for whom it was simply tragic.

-MD