Hive Health

I was sent this recently by Em down at Ebee our innovation guys. It’s a presentation covering web feedback schemes, produced by a team collaborating to evaluate, challenge and evolve current approaches. In a nutshell its a feedback website for feedback ON websites. A bit bizarre but very interesting if you are a measurement nut.

If you are interested – have a browse at www.howsmyfeedback.com

The window of opportunity for a brand to interact is a small one with pure product benefit marketing. The moment of differentiation is going to be tied to the point that the product/molecule has to do its work. With symptomatic conditions that moment is likely to be small, discreet and reactive. When you move away to the chronic therapy the opportunity to pass the ‘brandy around’ becomes increasingly tiny. Especially with therapies that are treating illness that are asymptomatic with products that are preventative. Is it any wonder that compliance to brands is low when their end benefit is miles away in some distant future? This coupled with a consistent need by our industry to focus on the dealer –  any emotional benefit often has been communicated miles away from the end user.

By expanding the brands ‘to do list’ beyond the molecule and finding places where a need exists the brand can start to deliver on many different levels and drive the experience much earlier. In my minds a delivered package across the patient lifecycle means further places to be different, and many more opportunities to develop a relationship with the patient. These opportunities needs to sit alongside the molecule delivered benefit, but could be considered a better place to focus our efforts, given our hard wired agency led molecule out tradition.

I am not wanting to drag into this article the pre prescription period. (Although its about time that we manned up and said that without industry the route to a medicine would continue to be a mess of inefficiency and chaos with out ‘market shaping’ activities). There is enough to do from initiation throughout the journey.

Writing this makes me think of a case study I read recently looking at airlines and the increasingly commoditised world of executive travel. When faced with price pressure (£3.5k/flight and falling) and parity of product experience (no delays, a la carte menu, wine list and smiling hotties). Virgin’s first port of call was to proliferate its services on board, from masseurs to manicures. Martinis to menus. It’s second step was a re-look across the entire journey from booking (parity with the script initiation?) to kicking off your inevitable PowerPoint presentation at your destination. This understanding presented a number of opportunities and new spaces to deliver in. Spaces where insight allowed undiscovered needs and frustration that although weren’t traditional spaces for an airline, were competition free territories. Conversations that hadn’t been had by anyone yet; a guide to your destination; a limo to the airport or pre processed luggage all drove differentiation.

For me this feels right, initially focus on the environment closest to the product customer interaction, move outwards into newer more radical territory. The approach is one that doesn’t seem beyond us? Does it?

After months of late nights and bleary mornings our very own Claire P spanks our local Marathon.

I finished an hour or so with an NHS guru and Strategy Director yesterday – catching up on life, health service change and business all facilitated by fine Bar Italia capuchinos.

Our catch up ended on a ‘what’s new’ chat – covering social media, our blogs and the use of twitter as intelligence radar.

As we parted  I was pointed to this nugget on change, efficiency and the reforms in the UK all packaged up to go viral by McNxtgen, a bin man from Loughborough. With all the lobbying and press releases flying – its interesting that this is one of the most connecting critiques of the NHS reforms.

Like all good community bonfires this is being fed by the masses chucking on all sorts of parodies, sketches and general piss taking. Of all of these this one hits pretty hard – the re-subtitling of Hitlers last days seems pretty harsh!

The view on the street is that the changes will be ‘strangled at birth’ whether that be a missed opportunity, or the maintenance of a National institution – I shall leave up to you.  Following on from my last blog post, these two grass roots viral stands its feel like healthcare is well on the way to democratising this week.