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?”

Giving Back to Our 4-legged extroverts

Inspired by our work with Pfizer Animal Health, extrovertic made the decision last year to get involved with Take Your Dog to Work Day 2011.

Following the success of that event, we continue to invite dogs to our agency on a regular basis. We find their smiling (and sometimes drooling) faces are a very welcome presence in the office.

Most recently, Sally, one of our frequent furry visitors, was named the poster dog for Take Your Dog to Work Day 2012!

The benefits of having Man’s Best Friend visit the workplace have been well documented. We notice extrovertic pooches promote a positive atmosphere at the agency. Clients agree, telling us during meetings which Sally has attended that it’s “such a nice idea!”

Recent reporting has specifically covered how we at extrovertic have expanded our dogs-in-the-workplace program:

• With a few rules, dogs and offices can mix well (USA Today)

• More Dogs Sit, Stay At The Office (Huffington Post)

Extrovertic is expecting a strong media presence at this year’s Take Your Dog to Work Day, and will again be supporting Bideawee with our efforts. If you wish to help us help this outstanding organization, please reach out to: 

Kelley Vos Burgh

Kelley@extrovertic.com

646-312-6000  

As a rescue dog herself, Sally is grateful for any support you can lend to animals in need of a home.

- Jared

The more cars I restore, the better Creative I become.

At extrovertic, we embrace an analog method of developing new ideas. We look outside the old tool box of the traditional, expected pharma world for business communication solutions and tactics from any industry, and it seems that my car hobby is a nicely tuned analog.

Taking a rickety heap from an idea to a coveted cruiser involves 3 things:

• a perspective on the collector-car market

• a vision of completion

• a plan and method for getting the job done

Huh. Those sound a lot like:

• research

• strategy

• concepting and execution

And those are a lot like what I do in my day job.

There is also a shared goal to both restoration and communication: to create an emotional connection. When there’s an emotional connection, you know you’ve motivated somebody. This motivation might be creating an interest to buy the car or, in pharma, it might be getting a person to ask their doctor about a certain treatment.

Another common component is function. A beautiful car that does not function is just paint on steel, and a beautiful printed piece that does not motivate is just ink on paper or code online. See? I knew there was a reason that both automobiles  and communication materials are referred to as vehicles.

So, moving forward, I’ll continue to hop up vis aids and refine roadsters knowing that one process very often benefits the other.

-Tom

Weight Watchers Lesson: Be the Bravehearts of Marketing

Insights behind Weight Watchers’ phenomenal marketing success were revealed last week by their SVP of Marketing, Cheryl Callan, at the Alliance for Women in Media luncheon. Bottom line, Weight Watchers was brave enough to follow what they knew to be true about their business and consumers, even when it flew in the face of well-established marketing tenets.

Here’re a few examples of Weight Watchers’ bravery:

1. Change before change was necessary. The old adage is “never waste a good crisis.” But what if you have the research and foresight to act to avoid a crisis all together and change before it becomes necessary? That’s what Weight Watchers did when they put aside their highly successful, clinically validated Points program to launch PointsPlus. Why? Because it no longer represented the most up-to-date science about weight loss.
   According to their CEO, David Kirchhoff, in a Wired magazine interview, “On some level, you operate with belief. We believed it was the principled thing to do.” Weight Watchers had a strong core belief about what their brand stood for and took the brave move of “pro-acting” on it rather than be lulled into complacency by their ongoing successful business.
2. Be a slave to results, not metrics. Weight Watchers no longer copy tests their ads, because according to Callan, they found that over time copy testing was not a predictor of success in the weight loss category. Rather, they invest their time and money into developing deep insights about the Weight Watcher consumer. It takes guts to move away from trying to bulletproof your decisions (and career) with stacks of well-accepted studies.
3. Free advertising from the tyranny of the claim. The Weight Watchers program has powerful claims seemingly made for advertising, including those published in Lancet and JAMA. However, their signature Jennifer Hudson campaign that helped change the trajectory of their brand contains no efficacy or competitive claims. It is based on the insight that most people felt Weight Watchers was effective but “not for me.” Or, as one Long Island focus group attendee told them, “Statistics don’t apply to me.” So Weight Watchers made the brave choice to walk away from clinical assets in their advertising and let their insights guide them.

The results? Their stock rose from $24 to $70 in the first 6 months after their campaign and the opt-in rates for online subscribers grew from 19% to 46%. According to their Q1 2012 earnings call, consumer growth continues with 12% growth in global combined paid weeks in Q1 2012. Weight Watchers’ deep understanding of their business drivers, coupled with the discipline to keep investing in strengthening their core brand attributes, continues to pay strong dividends.

So how can a healthcare marketer apply the lessons of Weight Watchers? Here are some questions to ask, particularly as 2013 planning is around the corner:

• What part of my research budget is dedicated to developing deep insights into my consumers?
• Have the metrics I track been predictive of my brand’s business results?
• As science, technology, and marketing have evolved, has my brand kept up?

The father of the real-life Braveheart, William Wallace, once said, “Your heart is free. Have the courage to follow it.” The knowledge needed to make a Weight Watchers transformation doesn’t come cheap. However, the bravery to act upon it is available to all marketers with a passion for results.

-Dorothy