With this in mind, I looked up a woman’s review for standard Veet (for those of you that have never heard of it, it’s a feminine hair removal cream which has seemingly now decided to tackle the “metrosexual” market). The review went pretty much as one would expect:

“It’s good, worked well, the first time I tried it I worried about leaving it on too long as it says 3-6 mins. It took slightly more than 3 mins for it to work and I was worried that I was too slow when taking it off but it was ok. Sometimes it didn’t take off all the hair but that may have been because i didnt leave it on long enough…”

So this lady had read the instructions, cautiously adhered to the guidelines and been worried that even by straying slightly from the recommendations,  she may suffer the potential ill-effects highlighted.

The men’s reviews demonstrated an entirely different approach to following the instructions; I have sampled three reviews below:

“Being a loose cannon who does not play by the rules the first thing I did was ignore the warning and smear this all over my knob and bollocks. The bollocks I knew and loved are gone now. In their place is a maroon coloured bag of agony which sends stabs of pain up my body every time it grazes against my thigh or an article of clothing. I am suffering so that you don’t have to. Heed my lesson. DO NOT PUT ON KNOB AND BOLLOCKS.
(I am giving this product a 5 because despite the fact that I think my bollocks might fall off, they are now completely hairless.)”

“I like the clean shaven look down in my gentleman’s log cabin, so for the past few years I’ve used a shaver. However the hair keeps growing back which means every 6 months I have to spend 20 minutes trimming again. As I’m sure you’ve realise this is valuable time I cannot waste. So I decided to get to the root of the problem and purchased this product.
Probably the first thing you will notice after using this product is the pain. Although as a man I lack the required experience, I’m going to estimate that using this product is at least eleven times more painful than childbirth.
Imagine sticking a rusty razor blade into your favourite eye, before tying your hands behind your back. Then imagine that you use the entrenched razor blade to slice open a raw onion. All the while being butt naked. This product is slightly more painful than that.
However if we ignore the blinding, crippling and debilitating pain I should point out that this product is remarkably effective. Before, all manner of organisms great and small lived down there, now nothing can grow; not even on a cellular level. Sadly this includes my genitalia; I’ve spent the last four hours staring fixedly at Carol Vorderman’s arse, all to no avail. My tinkywinkleton hasn’t even so much as perked up, so if my review seems a bit harsh, it’s only because I wanted children.”

“Although I understood the part about ‘intimate use’ I could not find anything about this not being for nose or ear hair. I get fed up with constantly cutting myself whilst trying to cut my ear and nose hair with a pair of Kitchen Scissors, so I decided that this product would work for me. I rubbed it up into my nostrils and around the outside of my ears. Very soon the burn started and trust me it really makes your eyes water. Probably more that if it was on your knob or bollocks like the other reviewer did. If your eyes do water, make sure the product is not on your hands when you go to wipe your eyes as this product also removes eyelashes and eyebrows and makes your eyes water even more. I look like I have been put on a sunbed for too long and people keep asking me why I am crying. Still, a good product which does what it says”

The first two exhibited a flagrant disregard for the recommendations whilst the third’s interpretation of these was questionable to say the least.

What needed to be done in the instruction leaflet to avoid their gung-ho attitude towards “intimate use”? Should there be an Orwellian voice triggered on opening the pack that repeats “not for use on your knob and bollocks” (just to avoid any misinterpretation about “intimate use”) until the tube is safely replaced? Neon sign? Or would making the tone of the instructions different suffice?

We do currently consider typical patient types within each therapy area, ensuring that tactical plans take into account age, ethnic backgrounds, socio-economic status, concomitant conditions etc. but should we start adjusting language to compensate for a difference in gender-related interpretation. Could we improve compliance and correct self-administration of medicines by tailoring communications by gender (in non-gender specific therapy areas)?  Judging from those reviews, tailored instructions may avoid any unpleasant surprises.

Specifically The Listening Project. A gem of a collaboration between BBC Radio 4, BBC local and national radio stations and the British Library. Tasked with capturing the nation in conversation to build a unique picture of our lives today and preserve it for future generations it’s a brilliantly gentle and real picture of who we are as a nation. If you are ever sat at your desk trying to find a voice for the rich collective of humanity we write for then I could recommend no better time spent than here. For me its  a healthy reminding kick to remember the real people that go through life not distant demographic classifications.

Please excuse my poor editing of the podcast attached I didn’t want the whole podcast only the health related conversation. It was this submission by BBC Radio Ulster that left me attempting to wake my catatonic girlfriend up on the back seat to no avail. After years of dialysis and declining health, Brendan was the recipient of a kidney donated to him by his older brother Kyron. They talk candidly about what this has meant for both their lives. Emotional heartwarming treasure.

One to the kidneys

We have a pretty standard call for us all to go and get infront of our audiences as much as possible, heeding Paul Smith’s call to action for all of us creatives “go out and see the whites of their eyes”. If you ever doubted medics are human, accessible, and just like you and me – have a look at this. My highlight is the “Girl I cant tell whether you’d be winking or got mild ptosis” line. Genius.

Here is the original if you are not as cool as me, and if you fancy Friday afternoon with your Air Jordan’s on.

For those that are of a certain dustiness. If you didn’t recognise the style and 90′s theme running through the video.Shame on you. It’s been styled to be retro 90s. ” ‘Look at Me Now‘ is kind of like my very first hip hop, rap video,” Chris  Brown smiled when he sat down with MTV on Friday. “I wanted to complete just like old school, not truly old school however, like, back-in-the-day style.” Back in the day, for the 21-year-old, meant reviving 1990s staples such as “big baggy clothes” and “a lot of art, graffiti.” “I attempted to blend all of those components into one and make it enjoyable and exciting.

90s = retro. I am off to buy a red porsche.

We finished our year with walks in the heartlands of Scotland warmed by knitwear surrounded by snow (imagine a less aesthetic Marks’s & Spencer ad).

I post this from the seriously snowy french alps, where 50 cm fell last night and the slopes are calling. My Mac is reminding me that I should complete the appointment set by me a whole year ago – it feels like I set it last week.

As usual this ‘year in numbers’ finds me rushing around trying to get some new statistics with which to summarise our year. Numerically  2011 saw;

1 patient centric strategic approach

£5.3 million billed

43 brands

13 client companies

27 pitches

8 losses

1 burglary

100% clients retained

1 torture seminar/bobotie/marathon /in-office gig

66 blogs

5 podcasts

16,493 web visits

Our first eBee baby – bouncing little Josh

1 new company started

38 fantastic people

562 hours of team training

1 Scottish adventure

8 bottles of single malt

1 heartfelt thank you to everyone we have worked with in 2011

1 Happy New Year to you all.

Matt and I are heading up to Salford on the train, it’s pitch black, and dead depressing. This cheered me up somewhat and stirred a long gone memory.

I only just remember my sister being ill when I was about 6. A more distinct memory was her accompanying bear; Peri.  Peri pretty much was present all the way to health. Every now and then Peri is discovered still with his hospital wristband on and much smaller than I remember.  I now know that this little bear was named after a Heath Robinson looking yogurt pot, tube and bag gizmo that provided her with the peritoneal dialysis needed whilst her kidneys took a kicking,

This enterprising inspiring mum took her son’s similar requirement for a cancer companion to the next level. Just after his first birthday, Gabe’s mother, Lu Sipos, made the very first Chemo Duck for him. She thought he could use a companion to take to the hospital, one with whom he could share his journey back to health. Both Chemo Duck and Gabe finished treatment in November 2003 and have remained cancer free since.

Since then Lu along with a board of directors and a newly formed not for profit organisation have taken the chemo duck and made him fly. Chemo duck is now in production and the team are striving to give away 10,000 of these donated friends by Gabe’s 10 year birthday.

More than a companion chemo duck has become a vital part of ‘medical play’, a concept that allows children to communicate with parents and healthcare professionals, offering a window into their world midst the turmoil of cancer. Chemo duck is used time and time again as a powerful therapeutic and teaching tool used in medical facilities to familiarize children with cancer protocol and procedures.

Pretty cool eh?

This article was written by Max G, an account executive candidate as part of a first interview to help us see where his MA in International Relations from LSE and our world of healthcare collide. We are delighted to welcome Max to Hive in January.

This is, to quote Tim, a Darwinian moment. The cusp of a revolution and a moment for new thinking and creative minds. The patient is coming, the power structures are diversifying and it’s the job of folks like us to harness that power and use it to effective ends for our clients. Critically, this will mean truly respecting the conflicting and often contradictory wants of patients, instead of merely seeing digital and all things social as just another channel for vulgar old-ad indoctrination. More than anything else, this will mean actually listening to patients: learning from them and understanding their needs beyond the most basal of levels.

Just for the sake of thinking, it’s fun to draw parallels across disciplines. It can also be genuinely productive.

Take the body of literature surrounding U.S. Public Opinion and U.S. Presidents. At the LSE I took a course that addressed the interaction between Presidents and public opinion and I was particularly fascinated by the moment at which the existing consensus completely broke down. Critically, the power-players – i.e. the President – had absolutely no idea how to handle the new climate. It was akin to Reagan’s Secretary of State, George Shultz, visiting Gorbachev in the Kremlin in the late 1980s and telling him ‘The Information Age will destroy your economy if you don’t afford it the room to breathe’. The powers that be were the ones to lose out.

Think of the drugs companies as the President and the patients as the voters. To take the cast a step further, imagine Carter’s team of experts and his Presidential pollster Patrick Caddell – as the tired old ad man who simply clings to the methods of old.

Prior to the end of the Vietnam War and the election of Jimmy Carter in 1977, political scientists and commentators alike agreed that the ‘bully pulpit’ style of Presidential leadership dominated and that the masses had little to say or think, other than that which they’d already been told. In other words, if the President shouted loud enough, the public generally went along. The people were ignorant and malleable. This was termed the Almond-Lippmann consensus.

Similarly, for years the GP-patient relationship consisted of linear, one directional messaging where the GP told the patient what’s good for him and the patient minded his Ps and Qs. Why, as a patient in this climate, would you engage with a brand that meant nothing to you? You were simply told to take it. The brand name sounded scary and the active ingredient scarier. There was no reason to connect with a brand and more importantly, no one had ever muted it as an option. The President knew what was best for you.

Back in the world of politics, The Vietnam War changed the underlying conditions of public opinion dramatically and new scholarship by the likes of Katz and Witkopf asserted that the public was increasingly ‘activated’ on foreign policy issues. The consumer of policy had suddenly woken up. The trouble was, no one had bothered to tell Carter. Or rather, both him and his top-team wouldn’t listen. In critiquing the failures of Carter, one school of thought argues that Carter’s bold and brazen honesty and New World Agenda was simply too much for a typically Conservative American electorate to consume in one go. Honesty, it is argued, was the cause of his failure. For another school, Carter simply didn’t care about public opinion at all.

On the contrary, Carter failed not because he cared nothing for public opinion, but because he failed to appreciate the changes to the underlying landscape and continued to treat the electorate – or for the sake of this analogy his ‘customers’ – as ignorant drones ready to be led. The contradictions in their views meant nothing; little had really changed. From this rapidly expiring rationale, Carter tried to sell something like his human rights policies as ‘non-ideological’ and one-fit-for-all, as opposed to understanding the complex underlying reasons why different voters supported the very same policy, but for markedly different reasons. Far from pleasing everyone, this linear approach to strategy failed everyone.

Back in the world of health care in the 21st century, almost all major stakeholders now appreciate the degree to which the landscape is changing. They get that choice and patient empowerment is coming and that patients are broadly embracing of it. Worryingly however, many traditionalists see this new medium as broadly compatible with the tired old information dissemination of old. Bully pulpit ring a bell?

That’s where Hive and our team of smart cookies come in. We see the irony in giving a presentation on digital in a room full of stuffy insider types through the medium of an overhead projector. Instead, we actually seek to understand patients in their most complex – and thus natural of underlying forms. We tailor our clients’ products to this end and take power back through the empowerment of others. To some observers, this method might seem like pretension defined. Or to others as a serious challenge to the status quo. To us, it’s a holistic approach to the demands of an entirely new and still-emerging world. Digital isn’t just a corporate buzzword and choice means genuinely listening to and respecting the needs of patients.

The way we see it, you can either come with us for the ride or end up like another Jimmy Carter – as much as we love the old peanut farmer.

There are lots of different things you can check but you need to careful when interpreting your results. Experts warn that some effects are due to changes in the language we use to describe things (such as ‘The Great War’ vs. ‘World War I’). Others are due to actual changes in what interests us (‘slavery’ peaks during the Civil War and again during the era of the Civil Rights movement.)

So what can the Ngram viewer tell us about healthcare? Well it seems that the words ‘doctor’ and ‘hospital’ have had a similar cultural presence from 1800 to the present day. In comparison the use of the word ‘patient’ has steadily increased with a massive boost post-1950.  Most interesting is the word ‘health’, which had a huge cultural presence in the 1600s followed by a dramatic slump in the early 1700s. It’s been increasing ever since.

Go and try the tool yourself, or have a look at what other people have searched for on the Ngrams Tumblelog. 

So how do you motivate men to maintain their health? Or, even more challengingly, how do you get them to check for prostate, bowel and testicular cancer before they’re extremely sick? In 2008 prostate cancer was the second most common cause of cancer death in men (10,168 deaths), accounting for 12% of all male deaths from cancer. Colorectal cancer caused 8,758 deaths in men in the same year, accounting for 11% of all male cancer mortality.

The Male Cancer Awareness Campaign (MCAC) is trying to get more men to take a maintenance approach to cancer by educating them on how to detect early stage symptoms. The campaign is about cancer, but it’s also about culture. In addition to providing specific information, it also aims to reduce the embarrassment that surrounds men’s attitudes towards their health.

While MCAC has created some great campaigns, such as the Near Naked Man, they recently created a viral video that makes checking for cancer sexy. JWT London teamed up with world famous photographer Rankin and model Rhian Sugden to create a video that goes a little further than your run-of-the-mill cancer campaign.

The black and white video is intimate and elegant, and the ending might just leave you stunned. It’s a smart little video because it takes what some might find embarrassing or uncomfortable and makes it seductive. I’ve already sent it on to most of my male friends, and while their reactions have been mixed none of them failed to mention it when they next saw me. And many of them, in turn, have forwarded it on to their friends.

The ad’s executed so well that if I were a man, it would make me want to put my thumb and index finger between my balls and massage them—to check for cancer of course.

The route to audience, their community of relationships and the purity of our crystal clear, brainstormed messages is under threat. We are midst a revolution, a chance to throw it all in the air and start again. This is a Darwinian moment; those that are adapting fastest will top-trump the dinosaurs. Our ability to do new stuff is now a competitive advantage not a dangerous countercultural diversion. It’s the Wild West all over again, except with worse shoes.

Why idea?

The point of having an idea in communication is straightforward. Ideas are bread and butter to marketers. They seek to be different, striving to connect a product with a defined audience. Find a point of difference, make it come to life and get it delivered to an audience that stands some chance of impacting your bottom line.

Secret ad men

In the days of old, lunches lasted until way past 2.30pm, golf was cool, procurement focused on toilet rolls and agencies had loads of sex. This approach was fine. Ads were king. They ruled. Despite the environment changing the ad as first port of call for ideation has proved a tough, tenacious little sucker to bump off. Despite this tactic proving incredible restricting when looking for broader ideas.

It’s a shame to say that secret ad men still surround us. We still see ‘the ad as the primary brand communication’ touted all over the place. For some it’s an attitude that’s retarding our progress as communicators and as plan makers. We have moved on. Those consumer-focusing guys who piled into healthcare a while ago seem to have ignored the changes that have occurred to their old manor. TV is midst decline and that poster off the M4 has been augmented by permission based and experiential disciplines; by a channel mix that looks nothing like it did 10 years ago.

Not dead just suffering

I don’t want to consider this the death of the ad. I think it’s in manageable decline rather than on the floor choking. History tells us media don’t die, they just become increasingly unloved. After all, we do still carve words into stone, 1000 years after it was our dominant media. But as soon as we considered the requirements of the marketing mix more than the double page spread the end started. Those early days, when marketers, sought integrated campaigns and assessed them by whether all shapes and sizes of tactics spread out on a meeting room table matched or not, make us smile now. Was it all really about 4 key messages and a frequency calculation?

The beginning of the end

The beginning of the end saw agencies strive to find new terminology to cope with the changes. The birth of the horrific word; adcept, summed it up. A sticking plaster over the cracks in the idea generation landscape, a way of getting ad focused teams to come up with bigger ideas than the media booked was capable of holding. Without spilling the beans that their ‘precious’ is looking a bit sickly as the dominant tactic.

Stretch required

Perhaps our world doesn’t need another tweeting digital bore. But the proliferation of channels have done their bit to jump start evolution. One could argue that the evolution of direct mail, or sales forces could have contributed as much to this decline as digital. The ad man didn’t really grasp the requirement for the brand to be pushed into these spaces in a way that it could really work.  Why? Because what makes a great ad – doesn’t often make a good media neutral idea. The interaction that these channels require and the opportunity that they have is vastly different to a 4 second A4 connection required in the BMJ. So why use your lowest common denominator tactic to develop you idea?

It strikes me that to accuse digital of being the cause of this evolution is a bit naïve. Selling has continued to evolve at a startling pace taking in its stride the bicycle, penny post and TV. Digital although arguably more intangible, and certainly fast is not going to change the fundamental way people connect with brands. Humanity is the rate-limiting step. The need and ability to form relationships is cultural and hardwired. The way audiences assimilate attributes, experience and value remains. You could argue that brand strategy has finally caught up with humanity?

The rise of experience transparency

What digital has changed is the control we have as marketers over our messages. We are no longer the only ringmasters. Every customer we have has a platform to communicate their experience, they, are closer and more vocal to other prospective customers.  Consequently we better get our brands anchored in something more than abstract positioning. Ideally anchored in a defined idea, encompassing a need that can be supported and championed by the audience. If our views on the product and the audiences don’t match then it’s going to die. Regardless of the cunning uniqueness of the positioning.

They’re for the journey

To thrive we need to be bothered about our customers not just at point of decision but across a broader space. This means our idea has to work beyond the moment of customer acquisition. It’s not just about a tipping point. We need to make sure that the wider customer experience is known to us. If additional needs exist, we need to see them as service opportunities. Consider them part of our product offer lest they become the low point of our customer’s product experience.

Change the people, or change the people

Thankfully, most of the adcept touters have fallen by the wayside. A new type of creative has emerged – the integrated conceptualiser. Not just an ad award hungry beast but also someone who is as passionate about every opportunity along the customer’s journey. One that knows the ins and outs of channels, how each works and what elements of the story is best delivered in each. These guys are dead easy to spot. They don’t need to draw an A4 box on their pad before conceptualising. The idea is conceptual, not confined to a given media space.

Idea planning

To cope with this change, new forms of idea planning have sprung up. New models force us to consider ideas as an adhesive wrapper for our uniqueness and supporting messages. With this have come some of the most exciting aspects of strategic development. The onus has been placed on marketers to consider their product story, the channels available to them, and deliver it. For products with a package of differentiation rather than one clear superiority this is a huge advantage. We can tell more complex stories and as long as they are based on real need not conceptual space available all is well. Models that look at splitting the story, and delivering it the audience in chunks across the channels are exciting us hugely. And its getting to the stage where you can quite easily see a time where the complete brand story exists only in two places; in marketing and in the mind of the customer. In between it’s fragmented and efficiently distributed by the best channels available. The level of planning is adding a further dimension to brand strategy where implementation and strategy are blending. Creating real challenges for those that consider 4 key messages delivered 4 times to be the best guarantee of behavioural change and early adoption, and really messing up a world where ads come first then your tactical plan.

How we cope with the changes is the next big question.  If you want to embrace these exciting times, like any moment midst change, it’s best to find a partner who is comfortable to tell you that all the answers are out there, but not yet in our grasp. Work towards a real connecting story, ways of delivering it efficiently and be comfortable with informed risk.

Tim is one of the founding partners of Elf, a group of innovative healthcare agencies. Including Hive, Ebee and Pollen that launches in September. Tim blogs regularly at hivehealth.com spend most of his time at Hive partnering a pretty awesomely progressive set of client’s. Any enthusiasm for this article or offers of work should be sent to tim.scorer@hivehealth.com, corrections or points of difference can be made direct by email to ian.busby@hivehealth.com or in person to Jas Hummel.

Most of the team have been at Digipharm, coming back with lessons, learnings and frustrations. I have been engrossed in reflective discussion and ploughing through slide shares.

Digipharm presented rather an interesting paradox. Almost all the speakers were advocates and users of social media – be that Twitter, blogs, Facebook or Slideshare. By it’s very nature, getting stuck into social media in the spheres and groups of interest to each of us gives us great transparency to the views of others with the same interests. As such, those people close to the social media outputs of the speakers over the last year will have already been familiar with much of what they had to say. It does beg the question – if you believe in the strength of social media, is it really appropriate to hold an offline conference to persuade of it’s power?

Fascinating too, that most of the presentations are compiled and repurposed blogs in a presentation format. Is it too much to hope for these digital specialists to understand that all channels require us to optimise our delivery and message to suit them? Isn’t there an irony in taking lessons from another powerpoint slide purveyor on the importance of utilising digital effectively? That just delivering content is not enough – you need to screw everything you can out of the environmental possibilities of the channel. Use the conference opportunity, enable the debate, force group work or even, heavens above, facilitate live innovation. Where’s the problem solving? Where’s the experience?  Where’s the ‘practice what you preach’?

Beyond the appropriateness of the style, is is reasonable to assume that whilst we just talk to ourselves we should expect to achieve anything more than incremental improvement? For two days, digital pharma spoke to digital pharma, partly about how behind digital pharma (still) is. As an industry, how can we expect to learn from and catch up with other industries if we only talk amongst ourselves? Conferences like this should be pulling in seriously capable talent from outside our arena, allowing us to see bleeding edge digital work from the whole space, not just an inward look at our keen but clearly toddling sector.

But regardless of who they are, whilst people are up on stage. A small wish for next year would be to rise above the speaker-bashing-by-tweet mid presentation. It’s Prickville. Why not go the whole hog and draw a cock and balls on the blackboard? These are too important times to allow the Twitter tits to lowest-common-denominator-heckle. If you disagree, or are bored, then grow some nuts and get involved. Or sit still and behave – the usual rules of polite convention apply. Don’t hide behind the little blue bird – its anonymity is not an excuse for a lack of respect.

I have seen digital communities develop in the hospitality sector for years now, as part of a team running what the guardian considered to be one the UKs top 5 pop up restaurants. It’s really interesting to watch this grass roots digitally enabled community grow and develop, and contrast it to our world. In the pop up restaurant world the early days saw a few leaders act and encourage, keen to co-create, eager to share, but most of all drag everyone in, regardless. Those that did, shared. Self imposed authority was questioned, ego was mocked, and the community self-policed, valuing development of the movement over sales, fame and self promotion. It felt almost liberal. In the healthcare world that community is a punch line, a sound bite. Is the community thats discussed in digital health really a collection of the self interested? I think we should take a good hard look and fear becoming at most a collusion for profit, at least egomania united in sycophancy.

Alongside our visit to the conference, we have been involved in the judging, entries and ceremony of the PM Digital Awards, picking up 5 across the group last night.

The awards have provided us with view of what is seen as worthwhile, what’s valued. ROI is front of mind and look and feel is pretty central. Would it be healthy to seek an evolution to the night – seems fitting for digital surely? Both the ‘established’ format and traditional black tie event are crying out for change. It left me reaching for some interactivity, some alternative approach that differentiated the space we are in.

Most importantly, surely we should demand that these digital events challenge our expectation. I hope we strive to avoid corporate safety, for the benefit of the digital community and look to other areas to really engender change and progression.