Experience design is just that and far from just that. Dozens of man-years have been spent crafting a definition that still struggles with the difference between art and design, let alone the requirement we have to trap, cagoule and force down the edges of what it is to be experiential or to provide experience. The wooliness of the subject is refreshing and helping get my head out of the structured, problem/solution world that billable work often requires (especially on a Monday!).

From 5 senses, to 360 degree immersive sessions it’s clearly going to be an awesome 10 weeks.

My reading list is whizzing past Hegel, Marx, through terms as diverse as relational aesthetics and dystopian community. It’s been a while since I read something (Harvard biz review tends to pride itself on accessibility!) that had me rubbernecking to google this regularly. Blindingly good stuff, even this early session got me thinking like mad on a stack of plans/briefs/trickies I have in front of me.

In a world where ‘Brand is…’ is cumbersome and ‘brand does’ becomes more central to our planning model - experiential planning is pretty sexy for me. It channel planning with lipstick on, spinning on a table, air thick with perfume.

With HBR continuing to kick sand in the face of goods providers with yet another article on the worth of the experience economy. Joining the greying of the boundaries between sponsorship, co-branding, commissioned design, corporate installation etc. And Josephs Pine conforming that customer value has run away from all the  commodities and goods, towards tailored services or authentic experiences. It it  the time to try and consider how we offer these experiences, planned, proactive and of course with an audience insight bang in the centre.

With crossed fingers, in a dark, endless cold room . I am hoping that experience design and the time spent with the talent at CSM contributes a component  to me working on a structured approach to behavioural change achieved along a considered, multichannel, richer journey.

In the meantime – a rather nice Nokia experience, corporate installation, co-branded event, light show or Son et lumière (your choice).

It’s been a health intensive few weeks for me. An afternoon call from a disorientated father has resulted in me having to get my mum and I out, to a cliché that happens to many of us with a parent at ‘that’ age.

My dad’s been hit by a stroke that’s left him a little way from the capable fixer, never needing or asking for help that he has been all my life. I have become the adult in our relationship overnight. He is fine, on track to get better, sorted mentally and now discharged to a rehabilitation ‘hotel’ for the slow journey to getting him back on his feet. So don’t go getting sentimental on me and filling the comments box with sympathetic emoticons – this is a company time not therapy!

I know this country well, having lived, played and worked here throughout of my life. It’s a changed place. Spain is in depression. Suffering from unshifting thirty percent regional employment and a national debt that’s spiralling out of control. A gloom pervades this Costa. As I drive to and from the hospital avoiding the strays, the hospital remains a beacon of positivity, organisation and calm. Here the system works best with an extended family, who live locally and take turns to stay with their sick relative, tending, nursing and doing much of the menial and administrative jobs. It’s a system that adapts to cope with those that don’t have this Mediterranean advantage. In this emotional time, midst an economic mud we have found a pearl, an organism of care not a machine of health. Phew.

George, our Spanish/Scouse translator asked whether I was a doctor given my ‘confidence’ with medical terms; MRIs, thrombotic strokes, and secondary care procedures. My Mum is still laughing about this.  Jorge looked confused when I explained that my normal world is helping define stories for doctors and patients. “Who needs to do that?” He asked. “You need me to explain what they are doing. They don’t need telling – they’re doctors”. “Yes but…” said I. “Perhaps not the time” my Mum said. The comedy of this arrived over breakfast one morning, alongside a charm of a nurse who in pigeon English describing my dad whilst moving him up the bed as “a dead weight” which proved that the blackest of humour arrives as the blackest of times. “Not quite” we replied pretty much at the same time.

Equipped with a broken Iphone which I timely dropped on the floor in Malaga airport, a medical app, that I reviewed damningly the other month and an unashamed (cheers John W!) ability to ask the most basic of questions. My Dad’s doctor soon realised that ‘communications planning’ is going to be my default mode. I have to remind myself that I am not sitting behind the mirrored glass or midst a research group. The doctors here don’t seem as easy going as the ones nicking off with cans of coke and the free sandwiches in market research. I was tempted to suggest we run a workshop to get some answers, but I had the feeling the next pill would be for me if I didn’t stop ‘getting’ involved.

What hits me now, back at home, and with Dad out of crisis is the environment. Whilst sitting the hours out, we couldn’t be anything but calmed by the it. It felt  the lowest common denominator of healthcare; the cleanliness of the space has been a some form of solace. It’s spotless, there has never been a case of MRSA here and it’s a destination for European standard care. The option to go private results in a room on your own and not shared with another – simply nothing else can improve. As an ‘end of bedder’ the cleaning schedule disrupts you constantly. Seemingly every 4 hours the room is wiped down, floors bleached and a thoroughness that insist you exit the room. You are not the focus here, the programme is, and you sit within these confines, as a child in a room full of decision making adults. A perfect approach for a crisis situation.

I have no experience of ‘this’ in any other healthcare system, no comparison to offer. The UK doctors I know speak well of the Spanish system. Our hospital provided translator sought to quell in his mind, the most typical of British fears “our hospital is run by doctors not accountants; this is not your healthcare system”. I can say only that where he is has been the least of our worries.

We were lucky enough to be one of the beta babes and we have been curating Patient Centricity News for a couple of months now.  Its dead straightforward, and is backed by a plum algorithm that once seduced helps you find relevant articles and videos. It cracked the automated pitfalls of death by junk content by leaving the curator to choose what’s right for them, and its this for me that has made the Scoop.it experience so fresh.

As “curation” becomes the next buzz word it been a joy to be part of the big beta crowd.  With more than 2 million visits per month, and traffic is growing by 35 percent month, we look forward to reviewing load more healthcare comms publications.

It’s not often that poetry smacks you in the face, seeks an ethical and moral review on your activities. Not since Pam Ayers Battery Hen has something felt this powerful (I was 7 and midst egg mayonaise sandwich).

I chucked this at a group of us last night to discuss in place of a training session on the Value Profit Chain. The crowd were mixed from the ‘it’s just not that simple crowd’ to the ‘our duty is to provide value not just proliferate useless products’.

We do market products to people often in crisis. But are we the target of this poem? It’s important for all of us to be able to hold our head high. I think that consumerism relies on creating needs that aren’t often real needs but manufactured wants. But that this categorisation often differs by person and it much more complicated than the puppet paranoid would have us believe. In this poem the mum sits centre of a manipulative environment, powerless and stupid. Whilst the corporates sit dangling the bright and shiny like fisherman at a trout farm. I am not sure that I am quite to this level of paternalism, or to this confidence in the simplicity of this situation. The mothers I have market researched have all been a little more street wise than this. Capable of identifying commercialism and opportunism. Understanding and rationalising their sometime irrational need for more into a bucket of first time mum stock piling? Or to a reaction to the basic human need to prepared pre chaos. In a capitalist world this means buying stuff, often irrelevant stuff. But acting on impulse.

This cynicism has to be answered by us as individuals. For me it means basing everything we do on a tangible human need, not just a superficial fear driven want. Am I naive? Basing what we do and how we drive genuine value, and maintaining consumer partnership at our core allows me to pass a personal test.

An interesting discussion prompted by creativity and passion.

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.

The change kicks in from August 15, and has been brewing for a little while. No doubt causing some ‘chicken lickin’ activity from those who have established a FB presence and have felt that AERs and negative comments would be controllable in the long term.

“We think these policy changes support consistency for the Facebook Pages product and encourage an authentic dialogue between people and businesses on Facebook,” continued the email. “However, we also understand that these changes may lead you to re-evaluate your strategy and presence on Facebook. We are committed to helping you during this transition.”

The practice known as whitelisting has been a special exception that goes against the liberal approach by FB. It does feel as if our industry with a requirement to monitor all AERs (whose local definition is often lacking clarity) needs to find a practical approach to this. To date the FDA and EFPIA have remained silent on AERs in the digital space – failing to help us lot a framework to connect realistically in the community. Interestingly when Yahoo commissioned a study on free text enabled health comments it found only 1 in 500 an FDA applicable AER.

It’s also important to note that this doesn’t apply to the rarely commissioned brand specific FB page. But if you are one of many managers of FB health presences as the deadline looms there are a few things that can be done. Firstly, this isn’t an issue that’s going to go away, maybe its time to build a comment approval SOP and bolt in resource to deliver against this? Secondly be secure in the comfort that you still have the ability to delete and monitor comments. Thirdly, bolt in FB service likea Buddy media to moderate on your behalf, or use FBs existing functionality to build a word blocklist to id and spam comments automatically. As a last ditch attempt use a custom wall created as an application – its sticks a bit in my throat this one, as it removes the ability to ‘like’ comments and feels retrograde but its an option. Alternatively stick your head in the sand and get out of FB completely.

We netting out (I think?), with a conculsion that cultures a bloody difficult thing to define – but it drives all the organisations we are involved with. Our digital innovation agency Ebee’s culture is pretty unique and different from ourselves at Hive, yet both add terrific value in terms of our identification and cohesion. Its been interesting recently for us, as over the next few months we have a mate in the office setting up his own agency and sharing the space. Dom’s been really interesting to chat to on this – to see a partisan view on what makes us tick, in terms of a clear perspective on our ‘working environmental soup’. How ‘it’ maintains itself in the absence of us, hows it’s intelligent and spirited, how our philosophy connects us all. How its what makes ‘beapart’ not just ad toss.

At hive we manage this with a mixture between individual behaviour, spirit, personality and a collection of ad hoc and planned occurrences that drive all that we want our business home to be. I came out of the van (still not considered a business expense by the guys – despite its clear status as our mobile boardroom), with a better understanding of another perspective.  I had prioritised a proactive event supported culture (but definitely not compulsory fun or timetabled pizza) over individual behaviour and the impact on the environment we create by being us. Both sit within a framework  of unwritten rules, that we could take months to define and hone, but we are probably better just getting on and driving it by being us and not being too bothered about the minutiae of our special soup’s recipe.

Its the sum of these parts that make us dead special and a our space a destination for new entrepreneurs, the best talent in the business and some seriously good times.  Its not the cliche of pizzas at meetings, but effort to be constantly bothered, to behave and deliver what feels the right way.

So what did you do to drive culture today?

In 2000 Harding and Taylor took this theory and proposed that the big high street/ supermarket chains represented the McDonaldisation of pharmacy. ‘Fast-pharmacy’ was built on traits of efficiency, calculability, predictability and control opposed to a service based offering in smaller chains or sole-owned pharmacies.

While these 4 traits remain readily identifiable within, in particular, supermarket pharmacies other large chains (such as Boots) appear to have moved on. In 2006 Ritzer elaborated on his theory to describe the process of Starbucksisation as a variant on the McDonaldisation model. In this incarnation the focus is on promoting a premium product and the customer experience while still benefitting from a streamlined business model. In Starbucks we are encouraged to ‘hang out’ and have meetings on comfortable sofa’s while drinking ‘premium’ coffee in porcelain mugs. In reality however the experience is highly rationalised. Coffee beans are bought in bulk, the vast majority of customers take-out and don’t participate in the ‘community’ offer and barista skill is replaced by standardised protocols. Ritzer argues that Starbucks represents a case of emperor’s new clothes. The apparently individualised and locally determined offer cannot disguise the mass marketing strategy and the critiques of McDonaldised society still apply.

For pharmacy this shift towards a Starbucks-like model is perhaps more significant than it might at first seem. In the drive to reposition pharmacy within the British healthcare system there are calls for pharmacies to become ‘healthy living centres’ at the ‘heart’ of local communities. While the McDonaldised offer finds it difficult to answer to these demands a ‘Starbucksised’ model that provides an ersatz ‘consistently local’ experience seems to be a perfect fit and it is these chains that are most keenly exploring this new direction for pharmacy.

Whether or not this move presents a problem depends perhaps on your perspective.

For pharmacy as a profession a number of concerns associated with a business model that remains strongly determined by centralised management include: decreased personal involvement and autonomy of the individual pharmacist resulting in de-skilling, the need to place shareholder interests over and above potential patient benefit and the fact that the ‘brand‘ sits as a higher level communicator with the consumer and defines the professionality or otherwise of the pharmacist on his/her behalf.

Added to this, with just nine McDonaldised and Starbucksised pharmacy groups now holding around 50% of all pharmacy contracts in the UK the influence of this model in determining the direction of future pharmacy policy cannot be ignored. How the Starbucks model shapes the ‘healthy living centre’ will, in particular, have an impact on the types of environment pharmaceutical products are sold/ dispensed within and the type of expertise and services that are offered alongside medicines.

Food for thought next time you grab a latte…

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.

Key responsibilities will include:

• Accurate processing of invoices
• Preparation of payment runs
• Maintenance of expenses
• Petty cash management
• Maintenance of fixed assets register
• Credit control
• Other adhoc duties

We take people development very seriously and you will be developed and mentored through your progression with us. You will get valuable on the job training as well as full study support for the CIMA qualification.

No previous finance experience is necessary; all you do need is at least two B’s at A-Level, a 2.1 in your degree, great organisation and communication skills and above all, loads of enthusiasm.

If you think you want to count beans for Hive please email a copy of your CV with a covering letter to finance@hivehealth.com by 16 July 2010.