I wanna hold your brand
There’s a really interesting new theory circulating called transmedia planning. A quick background: transmedia storytelling was a trend identified by the cultural academic Henry Jenkins, where entertainment brands used different media streams to tell pieces of a story or plot. Transmedia planning was born when a number of strategists, including Faris Yakob, adapted Jenkins’ theory for the marketing world.
TMP places control in the users’ hands by asking us to “Allow your audience to assemble your brand story”. It’s an interesting evolution of 360° marketing where one idea is expressed uniformly by multiple channels. TMP allows ideas (or parts of ideas) to reach consumers from a slightly different point of view, but deliver consistent value and meaning around a brand.
Hive’s business plan adopts a transmedia approach in the context of the important changes happening in healthcare. You don’t have to have read our recent blog comments to know that informed, or partially informed, patients are increasingly the norm. Growing access to different information sources gives patients more control over their treatment. The web allows communities to form and discuss treatment and results. Consumers are showing they need more than shallow promises and that’s where TMP fits the bill.
We have to remember though that the transmedia concept evolved in an unconstrained consumer world. In its purest form, TMP can’t apply directly to prescription brands because of the necessary limitations on patient communications. However, prescription drug users still form communities to share experiences about treatment, particularly those with chronic conditions. Using a transmedia approach here involves setting up the dialogue between prescriber and patient, but acknowledging that some of the dialogue and beliefs around the brand may also be acquired from less informed sources. The reality for patients/consumers is, the relative weight of advice sourced online vs the prescriber is not always as you would imagine.
Building relationships in any industry is about engagement with people. In the healthcare mainstream, the critical commitment may still be the prescriber’s. But it’s vital to remember that the prescriber is not the person experiencing the brand in a hands-on manner. Its time our communication to professionals and patients alike began to reflect that.
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Debbie said (March 6th, 2008 at 3:45pm)
Users “designing” their own healthcare brands, more and more medicines switching to OTC - clear examples of society’s growing self belief. We get confident when we are more connected: “We’ve talked, we agree, so we’re doing the right thing here, yes?”
Healthcare promotion is by nature didactic: this is why you must protect your heart/ here’s something that can help/ yes it works/ it’s also safe/ but make sure you take it like this. Trouble is, we like making our own decisions (with the assurance of our peers).
That’s why the time seems so ripe for TMP: leveraging social desire and intellectual independence to build beautiful, creative and self sustaining campaigns. But medicine is not just any commodity and patients aren’t (usually) doctors. Whether we can talk directly to patients or not, we need to obey certain rules when we break down a story and release parts into separate channels. A natural and incorrect response would see people lock onto the sexy bits and ignore the more boring. HCPs are human too - could happen to them.
So can we do this? Of course we can.