Posts tagged "training"

Post the PM digital awards last night what I really needed was a dark warm room, a duvet and to be entertained. Fortunately part of this was possible, unfortunately only after having to go to Brighton to hunt down insights into Nurses/virology/technology for 9am. The skedaddle back to Town for 3pm proved all a bit of a blur.

This entertainment came in the form of an afternoon with Paul Smith, sharing his views on inspiration, business, customer satisfaction and being polite. Equipped with wild gesticulations, vivid facial expressions, and a bit of dancing he provided a total inspiration for us. It was hard not to be enthralled by him and totally hit the mark – a perfect replacement for what could have been an afternoon of Murder she wrote.

Paul built his archetypal British label on a foundation of playfulness, an impeccable eye and a steely business sense. Since setting up his first shop with wife Pauline Denyer in 1970 – he’s been knighted, had his own exhibition and owns 230 ‘individual’ stores worldwide. But more than any of this, he proved to be a total gentleman, true to himself, and elegant in his honesty. Classically quirky to the core.

His views on globalization, homogenization, and characterless multinational organisations were bluntly put. He willed us to strive for character and difference, to not just repeat what is successful, and role it out country to country but to strive to build on that success, to challenge it, or risk becoming yesterday.

His views on success and happiness were nicely encapsulated in him recommending we all ask ourselves “what’s the point of you”, defining what we love doing, and doing it. No more complicated than that.  Awesome.

Having met Helen at a Cambridge-milk-round-thing, I got in contact and last week completed a weeks work experience. Part of the deal was that I promised to summarise my time for anyone who has the foresight to want to try this out!

As the week drew nearer and the more I thought about it, the less I realised I knew about the company, heathcare, communications and hands on science. My cluelessness was sorted in my first day after a chat with Ian – its dead easy – their world is all about conversations, stories and who’s involved.

On arrival at my desk, I was greated by my pretty full timetable for the week. To the inexperienced work experiencer this probably sounds like a bit of a nightmare. WRONG.  My week was full things to do, which was brilliant. Whatsmore, these things didn’t involve any photocopying or tea making, but casting, filming, editing, proofing and the odd lunch, amongst other stuff.

This is part of the reason my week was so good. I got a varied look at what goes on at Hive and all the different modes of communication they utilise. All the team were patient and took the time out to help me out and explain things.

It was interesting to get an insight into what I now know as strategy/marketing/branding of new and old drugs as well as looking at novel ways to converse with the end user.

To me it seems Hive likes to look for a different angle on things, which is challenging and creates a good bit of office banter.

It was good to be a part.

All ‘new’ industries strive for legitimacy, a movement that is often accompanied by an entire lexicon of terminology and process. For a long time we have been developing terminology and processes that seek to formulate an approach, clarify our position and differentiate our offer. The world of  demand chains,  brand onions and disruption is one that all clients and agencies occupy.

Case in point is the numerous phrases that describe essentially the same thing — brand essence. Some networks have gone so far as to trademark their terms and the processes they use for determination. End result = terminology galore and as much process explanation as strategic clarification.

Spending some time on holiday last week – I revisited Kotler (it was this or be left with a book about a girl in love with a complex man she couldn’t love in the world within which she had to live and her struggle to make do with an empty life with a simple but good man who provided everything he could but not enough for her to be happy) – a comparitively magnificent book on marketing that I first brought to enlighten me when I first came into the industry. It’s a dry read and although wanders into the theoretical it’s pretty refreshing in its lack of terms.

I like Kotler’s steadfast use of the term Unique Selling Proposition (in my mind a potential forerunner of brand essence), a concept developed and named by Rosser Reeves of Ted Bates & Company. A 50 year old term that has stood the test of time and been universally adopted. Some argue that with the advent of product parity it has evolved into the Emotional Selling Proposition. ESP is certainly a concept much closer to our common understanding of “brand essence,” as its focus is on the brand’s intangible differentiator. Although I find it hard to believe that me-too products are a recent phenomenon I think that the ‘U’ still stands up whether that be a feature led ‘portability’ or due to some emotional unmet need like ‘popularity’. Either way to be unique emotionally or functionally is still to be different.

This book seems to either have been penned prior to or has ignored the multitude of copyrighted verbs describing the logical processes for develop brands by agencies needing with some irony, you guessed it – a USP. I would love to see each agencies model worked through with their own brand – please someone in procurement construct this legend! Two birds (process understanding & agency offer) with 1 stone. Please, please, discounted please.

Reviewing the alternatives to Rosser’s, here is a collection of words and phrases used to describe what is unique about a brand:  Brand Essence, Brand Soul, Brand Heart, Brand Mantra, Brand Promise, Signature Strength, Core Strength, Core Attribute, Brand Description, Brand Differentiator, Brand Uniqueness, Brand Individuality, Brand Meaning, Brand’s Central Nature, Brand Proposition…

Any more?

 As usual Tom Fishburne’s nailed the process here.

Ps. A note to purists: I admit that there may be shades of difference between some of these terms. You could make a case that brand personality and brand promise, for example, mean two completely different things. My point is that the differences are largely semantical and do little to advance the clarity of the branding process.

Being alright at business and communication strategy paid off this week.

Ian and I have worked together for years, our relationship is based upon a love of business, strategy, people, solving problems and a really good wrangle. It’s this that got us to Hive – thank god for the wrangle and gardening leave! 

Every now and then one of us gets an invite to help a mate out with a business. It usually starts off with – ‘I am a bit stuck with growth/selling/marketing/what we do/core offers/branding etc’. What follows is often a moderately informed conversation taking what we have learnt from pharma strategy and transferring this knowledge to their industry. It’s good for them, and really helps us look at our core skills and apply them to different business – its business case studies in the flesh. The best type of learning.

This time around the company in case was a Helicopter management company. Ian and I invited to an afternoon session with the management team. We were tasked with helping them crystallise sources of growth, audience segmentation, prioritisation and marketing. This company manages a load of £6-11 million choppers owned by big billionaires who are flown all over Europe, or even flown into town to do some shopping.

It’s afternoons like this that I really enjoy and learn loads from. But also it leads to an appreciation of pharma. We often kid ourselves that our industry is very different to others that we forget that we are packed with transferable skills. Knowing how to market to patients and HCPs is pretty much exactly like any consumer or business to business world. What we know is useful to so many.

Anyway, the thoroughly interesting meeting finished, we with a new found understanding of the billionaire aircraft market, and the management team with load of decisions made/avenues to explore. I was getting slightly nervous about trains from Surrey as I needed to get to Camden for a birthday do.  Across the table came the best offer I have had for a while, ‘we are flying up to town to pick up X’s girlfriend, who is doing some shopping – we could drop you off on the way’. No sooner had it been said I was packed and stuffing diagram filled flipchart paper in my bag.

I left Ian driving back to Hampshire as I boarded the £6 millon Eurocopter,  sat reclined in grey leather, followed the river at 165mph and was dropped off just in time to make the first pint in Camden.

Got to love healthcare.

On Wednesday, Kieran and I went to see the BP ‘Classified’ exhibition at the Tate Britain. Two things stood out for me and really got me thinking. 

The first was an oil painting by Gillian Carnegie. Using only black paint she’s created an amazing picture of trees, which seems to have more texture and atmosphere than a coloured painting would have had.

But what made her decide to do it in just black?

The second was a collection of sculptures by Jake and Dinos Chapman. At first glance they look like traditional aborigine sculptures, but when you look closer there are numerous references to McDonalds. It’s a comment on our lack of understanding and appreciation of the culture that this type of art originates from, and also on our own culture, and the predominance of huge commercial organisations such as Maccy D’s.

Again, it’s such a clever idea, but what made them think of it?

At Hive, our business is built on doing things differently, thinking in a different way. But it’s all too easy to get stuck thinking ‘differently’ – and then different becomes the same. The challenge is to keep finding the inspiration to think outside an ever-changing box.

As Helen and I drove down the M6 in the rain yesterday, something struck me…..

In 1996, I travelled – I had no email, no mobile phone – my family got a postcard every couple of weeks

In 1997, I started at university – they gave us a clunky email that resembled an MS-DOS screen – we thought it was great

In 2000, I did a PGCE – for the first time I used the internet for research – my paper on health education for behaviour change was largely in debt to online publications

Here we are in 2009, not a huge number of years later, and Helen and I were driving down the M6 after meeting the Head of the Pharmacy School at Keele University. What he showed us was mind blowing!

They have developed the virtual patient – an avatar called Shirley who walks up to the pharmacy counter, coughs, snuffles and waits for you to start the conversation. Depending on what you, as the pharmacist, chose to say or do, Shirley will respond. The prototype is using text input, but the future masterpiece version will use voice recognition.  It’s ingenious and totally captivating!

The consultation scenario that Shirley demonstrates is based on a decision tree algorithm – an interlinking set of questions, answers and decision points that dictate what Shirley will say and do. These algorithms are incredibly complex to build, we know, because we have just completed our first set for the alli launch that has been used to train pharmacists across the land. We’re very proud of the work we’ve done so far, but I can’t help wanting to take scenario training to the next level.

This week saw us pushing the boundaries on training (reps, pharmacists, other HCPs etc). When dealing with a new client, we grappled once again with the limitations of paper-based training or the ‘usual’ ShockWave Flash. Both are fun and interactive, we explained, but struggle when you have anything that requires more than a simple question and check box answer.

With this client, it’s not an option financially to bring everyone in for a conference or a regional meeting series. So we brought in some of our technology friends and got thinking. What emerged, and what we are proposing, builds upon what geeks know as gaming and us marketeers know as just plain cool.

While our version is still in development, I discovered that Virtual Worst Case Scenarios are being used to great success already. They are gameware-like programmes increasingly used to train emergency medical staff in the US. In one worst case, a freight train derails near a heavily populated train station and releases cyanide into the air. Victims pour from the station and the player – as medical commander – must set up a triage area and sort through the patients as quickly as possible, making sure proper treatment is administered. It’s been very successful at making participants develop real time decision-making skills, under realistic and pressured conditions. It forces the participant to act on their feet, make snappy value judgements and succeed in the chaos that ensues.

Can you imagine how far this kind of thing could go in our industry? And all without ketchup and actors…