Hive Health

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?

It had been ages since I have experienced a real buster moment;  rolling healthcare, understanding and emotive awareness in one.

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.

Just back from a really inspiring evening held by a client for 250 pharmacists at Wembley Stadium.

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.

I have been contemplating a pitch Shep’ and I did last week  that for a first-time-for-us covered ‘prosumption’ as part of an approach to develop digital understanding and better resources.

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.