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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

I saw this poster a little while ago at Maidenhead Station, took a photo to remind me to hunt around and I have finally got around to exploring more.

The associated film is a hard hitting view on Motor Neurone Disease,  has been banned from TV despite being one of the best eye openers I have seen. It seem a terrible shame when the reality of a disease is shelved for the public good.

Alongside this film and poster  the featured sufferer Sarah Ezekiel has a site showing life post diagnosis and provided me with a great example both of human spirit and inspiration.

Alongside chicken satay and chardonnay was a really fresh approach.

Half way between stand-up and business school the slide presentation avoided a focus on products, ingredients, features or benefits. And elevated the discussion to value and driving an understanding that customer satisfaction was the common ground that existed between the audience and organisers.

The two hour presentation waxed lyrical on the value placed by customers on the interaction and the urgent requirement for pharmacy to wake up to engaging their customers in the non product elements of the consultation.

Delivered in a fresh, unusual and pretty compelling way it’s the first time I have seen this challenging approach and style of presentation given live with customers on a mature brand.

It’s pretty common to train and educate on launch brands during a med ed’ phase, but this focused on Business ed’ and went down a storm.  It provided a real opportunity for the company to demonstrate commercial expertise, partnership . Probably most importantly  it elevated the discussion from product flogging to a genuine adult to adult dialogue. A business talking to another business for mutual gain, rather than supplier and stockist fulfilling the usual adult child  cliché.

I hope to be able to get some footage to show you.

In is woolliest form prosumption is useful when we are developing materials for a sub group of consumers when you just can’t follow the traditional; write/art direct/code/build, test, review and rebuild approach. Whether than be for time or budget reasons.

Prosumption is the mixing of  consumer and the producer to produce a new hybrid – the Prosumer. In what (another new word for me this week) I now know to be a portmanteau – a blend of two words and their meaning.

Reading around what I thought was a new internet thing. I find it’s almost as old as Ian, and much older than I am. In 1972, Marshall McLuhan and Barrington Nevitt suggested that technology would drive the consumer to become a producer (‘democratisation of media’ -  I hear Gemma (AD at AMV) shout). In the 1980 book, the term was coined by a futurologist named  Alvin Toffler who predicted this coming together.

The approach results in individuals working together blurring the barriers, between need for something and capability to provide it.

The conclusion of much of this work is that once mass market saturation and standardisation have brought us all happi(ish)ness, the market evolves  to initiate a process of mass customization. Giving consumers exactly what’s wanted with the assumption that this delivers a risk free relationship and a guaranteed happy customer.

Pretty interesting? It does make you think that once we all have perfectly tailored good, where will we go next? Ultimate rebellion should see us go full circle and start buying goods at George at ASDA perhaps?

Anyway fairly standardised fingers are crossed here. We hear Wednesday this week.

PS. I am really trying to avoid puns in headlines. Really sorry.

My immediate answer was to say, of course they bloody shouldn’t be paid! Treatments are prescribed to make people feel better and help them function in the world, surely that is incentive enough?

Hold on, I thought – it’s plainly not enough. Poor compliance is a fact of mental healthcare. It’s easy to speculate on why these patients would avoid their medication. We need to ask about the conversations they are having with their HCPs. Are professionals helping patients reach an informed decision about treatments?

Well, at least one survey says not really. Here, 59% of patients taking an antipsychotic reported that other treatment options had not been discussed. Almost two thirds said that they hadn’t been given written information prior to starting their medication. And 46% said hey hadn’t been warned about its potential side effects.

The NHS and HCPs need to look at the way they are engaging with patients. How many have read the NICE guidance on patient adherence and choice, published in January? And how is the NHS supporting them in implementing change?

Of course, it’s not easy for anyone. The befuddling thing about informed choice is that patients can refuse medication, and the professional’s obligation is to respect this decision. But what if the individual is antisocial, or a danger to self or others? Why are we paying these guys, really – what are the savings down the line? To make a judgment on this pilot, we need to know more about these patients other than that they are poor compliers.

If the scheme sees the light, bitter laughter will accompany jokes about kids being paid to go to school and likewise to adults for behaving on a night out. No-one’s going to like the idea of a pay-for-peace society. Whatever happens, let’s hope these patients get something positive out of it.

Patientslikeme.com is a privately owned initiative that encourages patients to post details about themselves. This real world, outcome-based data is shared with individuals and organisations who work to improve health outcomes, including pharmaceutical companies, research organizations, and non-profits.

30% of epilepsy patients are refractory to treatment, so this move is good news for patients, HCPs and even competing Pharma. Over 37,000 patients are already registered on the site as well as 3,000 caregivers. Any epilepsy community should include the voice of caregivers, as a significant proportion of epilepsy sufferers are elderly or have learning disabilities.

Patientslikeme.com doesn’t just collect data from patients, it provides quality information and allows them to blog and communicate with peers. It’s a site that really does seem to have patients’ interest at heart. That’s why we like it – and so congratulate UCB for being a part.