Hive Health

We have been planning a regional rollout for the last few months.

Culminating in a biggie transition event where the baton was handed over to the markets to start to build local plans.

Usually this would take the form of a M4/Heathrow/PowerPoint orgy/branded pads/pens/salad bar. This week has seen us kick this tradition into touch and activate using 27,000 sq. ft of The Old Truman Brewery, (that’s 4 times the size of an Olympic Swimming pool), 19 countries, 150 people, 9 sets built, 1 stage, cool caterers and a rather fun sized graffiti wall. An uber-rollout.

The opportunity proved to be a step towards us using some of the principles of experience design that Central St Martins set me up with – focus on the narrative, not just the story, examine the geography, figure out the level of covert/overt communication you want and don’t do a sticker campaign. With these in mind we have been working hand in glove with our guys on the inside to develop a journey, support and train facilitators, developed some cool stimulus and set the brand above and beneath all activities. It culminated in a pretty mind blowing 5 days, with action stations/audiences in the room for 2 of these.

As with anything new risk was present. If you want predictable then head to the Radission – they do meetings really well, just the same one. If you want Wow, then grow a pair and strive for the new. It’s been a mixture of bloody scary, buzzing like mad and organisational focus.

I was lucky enough to be host/master of ceremonies for the two days. A far easier job than the rest of the team, who I could see the other side of the footlights orchestrating the most creative meeting in my career. As we set up sessions, hired heaters, built the energy, the team made it come together like no other. Matt, Nat, James and I certainly had the odd moment  where the scale and distance from the traditional certainly caused us to need to get our shit together. But for me that has been part of the joy.

Once our ace client team left to head off on well deserved holidays, we all experienced a Ocean’s Eleven moment of reflection and classical realisation. We did it. Simply smashed it.

The pressure was most evident about an hour into our post event wash up/quiet drink that turned into a Lock Stock style session that resulted in me being banned from a restaurant for life, us highjacking a 21st birthday, a trapeze artist’s manly chest being touched up and a wine waiter pretending to be a pirate. It was surreal, only now are the receipts starting to help it all make sense.

I wish you were here to see some of the set up, ideas and scale of the event. It’s truly awesome. Truly. We are showing and telling next week to the group and beginning to plan the next wave which sees us take on 35 local markets. James (midway through 21st birthday shots with a stranger) kicked us off with an interesting idea regarding approaching our next task as an sequential experience theatre. Now there is an idea.

…breaking my heart this month. I can’t move for workshops. The delights of post it notes, flip charts and democratic strategy. All facilitated with patience and joy.

My bugbear with these multi day extravaganzas is with the foundation icebreaker sessions. This is more rant than thought through critique. (I am sugar rushing from some charity cake from brought over by the guys at The Nursery)

Surely we all get paid to attend, think and deliver. Surely we all consider it a default to work within a team, even an unfamiliar one. Whether that be off the cuff or after permitted thought. At no point is the voicing of ideas, public thinking and discussion considered god given, it’s not easy or natural for anyone. But it is a paid for requirement. The day job.

I increasingly struggle with the rationale for;  sharing the content of my wallet, climbing through imaginary tires, providing public facing previously unknown facts and almost feigned cardiac stress prior to a ‘colleague’ shoulder massage.

Are we all caught up in the entertainment aspect of this lunacy? This initial agenda item is slowly morphing from a simple required introduction into a corporate versions of Big Brother. I wouldn’t be surprised if the next meeting started with us all having to milk a boar. It’s getting a bit unnecessary.

You can’t manufacture or facilitate intimacy, if anything this can achieve the opposite of what’s required. Strangers soon become partners once you are midst a task. Is it unreasonable to consider human beings a social species?

As we haven’t had a poll in a while I though I would take this to you our reading public.

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I took a solo trip to the Egyptian peninsula for scuba diving and sun. I had this in abundance, and I also had a glimpse of how they do healthcare over there. I was not conducting fieldwork, I was having fun. So here are some simple stories.

1. The GP

At the dive centre I had to fill out a medical pre-assessment form. I ticked two boxes – chronic medication and asthma – and so I was advised to seek counsel from Polyclinic Dr Sadek.

I was fascinated by Dr Sadek and his polyclinicians from the moment my pickup car cruised into Dahab. At the entrance to town you see the pride in their billboard. The eye is focused magnificently on the sun bleached promises of “cosmotic dentistry” and “supervised TB treatment”. On the drive from the airport, sleepy and thirsty, I’d watched the desert. The hessian coloured mountains slid slowly off the highway. Polyclinic reminded me that I was still on the earth, and I should probably brush my teeth soon.

So I took my diving form to Dr Sadek. The waiting room was humble and dusty, with two chairs seating a Bedouin woman and her daughter. I was ushered straight into an even tinier consulting room.  A young Egyptian doctor greeted me, certificates wonky on the wall behind his head. We communicated well. I sat on the bed while he fitted a thin, saggy BP cuff to my arm. He listened to my chest and stuck a thermometer in my armpit. He asked, what is your medication for? I felt like an affluent idiot, ashamed to talk about the antidepressant I have taken for 10 years. “Western neurosis.”  Tell me about your asthma? “It is very mild and only happens when I run.” The doctor signed me fit to dive. I shook his hand and gave him the fee of 40 egyptian (4 quid).

2. Behaviour change

Like most of the world, Egyptians pay insurance for their family’s healthcare. A dive instructor in Dahab earns about $500 American a month. I’m not sure how much medical insurance costs, but a box of 20 fat, short, filtered yet lung exploding cigarettes is 50¢. My dive instructor Emad, consummate professional of recreational scuba and corny jokes, told me how he’d managed to kick cigarettes.  “I used to smoke 40-60 a day!  Quitting was hard. I couldn’t stand that I was going up to people I didn’t even know to ask for a smoke.”

I relate completely. How did he quit? “I said to God: I’m dying. I prayed and prayed. And I asked my doctor to help me.”

3. The pharmacy

Every day a different driver took us out to the dive site. One day I was in the back of an open jeep, crunched in amongst the cylinders and other diving getup. We always had a rolled up plastic carpet to lay the gear on when assembling it pre-dive. On this day, as we were streaming along the desert road, the carpet flew out of the jeep. I yelled and grabbed it. Emad, in the front seat, freaked out thinking his student had hit the dirt. All was well and he got a new magic carpet joke out of it.

We had a day’s diving. Every time we removed gear from the jeep, the driver warned me about the hot exhaust pipe. Every time I was cautious, until we did the final unloading and I seared a strip of calf flesh. There was a sound like barbecue taking to the edge of a steak. There was pain flying like a burning plastic carpet. It was actually not a serious burn, but with all the diving, the dressings didn’t last. So I went to the pharmacy in the main drag of town. Each time, the guy put betadine on the wound and a nice clean dressing.

It was exactly the same as a pharmacy in the UK.

I sneaked peeks at the behind-the-counter stash. I couldn’t really make sense of the drug names. Most stuff was locally packaged and unbranded. I saw a blood glucose monitor, the same leading brand we have here. I saw boxes and boxes – huge boxes – of orlistat. I think the Egyptians have a lot of metabolic disease even though they eat lots of beans. Could well be the cheap fags.

More later. Go to Egypt and check it out. Don’t smoke the cigarettes, they’ll kill ya.

These days pharmaceutical companies are faced with shrinking sales forces and reduced access to healthcare professionals. With less time to learn about products and meet with reps, they’re increasingly turning to the internet for information. To help keep up, pharma brands are being pushed to find more effective ways of promoting themselves digitally.

To help solve this problem, Physicians Office Resource (POR), a trusted digital and print resource for over 360,000 US physicians, has launched a new site: PharmaCONNECT. It allows pharmaceutical brands to actively engage the right healthcare professionals, at a convenient time and in a trusted context. The site offers physicians and pharma companies a place to connect in real time or by appointment, in a product agnostic or neutral environment.

By giving digital space (impressions) to pharma brands for free, PharmaCONNECT only charges for successful, active engagements. Active engagements are the types of interactions that can truly impact on prescription decisions, such as a healthcare professional scheduling a rep visit through the POR site, getting eDetailed, clicking to chat with a rep, or a variety of other engagement options.

PharmaCONNECT hopes to create a space where healthcare professionals can have meaningful and measurable engagement that will help pharma companies to get their message across.  The site will also include a resource section and a frequently asked questions page. The site works on the Android and iOS platforms while mobile apps are in development, including a click-to-call feature for iPhone, so healthcare professionals can connect to a rep right away.

Since its launch at the start of this month Novartis, Genentech, Abbott, Bayer Schering, AstraZeneca, BMS, Roche, Pfizer and Boehringer Ingelheim have all already established a multiple brand presence, and POR claims to have 15 to 20 other pharma companies set to join by end of the year.

PharmaCONNECT is currently only operating in the US; it will be interesting to see if it expands globally, and if pharma companies continue to embrace this new platform.