e-Pharma Summit 2010 commences

After another productive year of marketing to patients and HCPs online, digital thought leaders will gather in the City of Brotherly Love to discuss success, spark innovation and share challenges. There’s usually a healthy bit of debate and skepticism to keep things lively, but after a whirlwind 48 hours, we each tend to emerge with a few precious insights that are exactly relevant to our respective goals. It keeps us coming back.

This year’s agenda includes: a keynote by Susan Dentzer, Editor in Chief, Health Affairs and Health Policy Analyst, PBS on evaluating what the healthcare overhaul means for the industry, panel discussions with brand and marketing participants from leading Rx companies on topics like The Evolving HCP and Consumer Media Mix and Social Media in Pharma–What’s Working and What’s Not, and break out sessions on Consumer Marketing and Professional. You can read the full agenda here:

http://www.iirusa.com/epharmasummit/agenda.xml

As in past years, I will immerse in this community of passionate experts, trepidacious testers and occasional naysayers to go beyond the trade buzz and engage with the people behind the programs we support, critique and discuss day to day. In 2009 Underscore delivered impressive search results for patients and HCPs, developed innovative behavioral targeting models, and launched measurement and tracking methods that go well beyond the click. 2010 has begun with gusto and we’re challenging ourselves and our clients to deliver breakthrough innovations that drive the right results. There may be a short wait while we shepherd these things through legal and regulatory, but we’ll do what’s right.

In the meantime, share your e-pharma insights or challenges with us here to spark the conversations.

Underscore’s POV on the 11/2009 FDA hearings regarding digital DTC

 The followng is Underscore Marketing’s POV on what the FDA should consider is developing guidelines for digital DTC advertising.

1.       The internet has changed human behavior as it relates to health and wellness.

The internet has enabled consumers to form hypotheses regarding their health and pre- or self diagnose medical problems.  Whereas prior we would rely on in person advice from trusted medical professionals and socially from peers and/or  family members, we now turn to the internet to self educate before we do the former. As the web has evolved over time the sources for this online information have evolved from strictly content and pictures to live discussions, forums and debates. In essence, the seeking of health and wellness information has returned to its social and interactive roots. The major change is the ability to monitor, document, and censor the conversations that technology has enabled.

2.       As in the real world, responsible advertisers cannot be held accountable for what consumers say or do regarding their brands within the social media realm.

We could not predict or censor what neighbors would say to one another about a brand, or be a fly on the wall during a medical exam pre-Internet, but brands still found ways to influence the conversation. Examples include: doctor detailing, samples, sponsored hand-outs and consumer events among others. It’s true that just because technology enables us to monitor conversations it doesn’t mean brands can freely interject. On the other hand, it does not suddenly make brands responsible for what consumers say and do online with said brands.

There are many instances where brands should interject—where they can educate, correct misinformation, or offer  additional resources. The key is establishing guidelines for responsible and transparent brand participation in social media. Consumers should be clear when they are engaging with a brand representative and fully understand what said representative is able to do. Telling people what your role is and what your limitations are is honest. It allows people to set the right expectations and act accordingly. However, brands should not be held responsible for consumers who act and speak outside of the communicated rules of engagement.

3.       We must lobby hard for agreement that “a click away” is sufficient for any fair balance/disclaimers that are mandated in Rx/OTC advertising. It should not appear in initial banners, buttons, videos or search copy, but be a single click away that is highly visible.

This is important for many reasons, most importantly digital effectiveness. The bottom line is that people use the internet to seek a wealth of information (health at the top of the list), to solve personal problems,  for personal entertainment and also for utility (scheduling, maps, weather, etc.). Regardless of usage patterns by segment, there is a common behavior of clicking to drill into information. This was established from the beginning of the commercial web through “step search” and has not changed as adoption and usage has increased over time.

4.       Common language for the “one click away” should be adopted by all advertisers.

If we do this we will train consumers to immediately understand where they find the details without having to consume large parts of the ad space explaining where to click and what to expect there. Much like people expect to click to drill into details, they will quickly associate a common phrase in health advertising with an expectation.

Presentation from iMedia Financial Marketing Summit

For those of you who were at yesterday’s iMedia Financial Marketing Summit (or for those who wanted to be, but couldn’t make it), here’s a link to my presentation on getting additional bang for your buck in the depressed economic climate.

iMedia Financial Summit preso – Hespos

Some of these display media buying tactics can pay off handsomely for you and your organization.  As always, we’re here to answer questions and help in any way we can, so e-mail me at Tom[at]UnderscoreMarketing.com or leave a blog comment and I’ll be happy to follow up.

Overhaul Terms & Conditions?

This piece in iMedia should probably have been titled “Why it’s time to overhaul Terms & Conditions,” but my editor took liberties. 

The length of time we spend wrangling over terms and conditions on each media buy tends to ebb and flow like the tide.  As market conditions change, buyers and sellers clash over things like the notice required for cancellation, payment terms and such.  That’s bound to happen and I’m not sure we’ll be able to do too much about it.

Then there are the problems that have more to do with the IAB/AAAA Standard Terms and Conditions v2.0 being out of date.  Those are things I think we need to address.  Issues like data privacy, how custom ad units and sponsorships ought to be paid for, and how we deal with adjacency to objectionable content are all things that need addressing but are not addressed adequately by standard Ts & Cs.

At some point, you begin to look back at the IAB/AAAA document and ask whether or not it’s delivering the time savings it promised.  If the answer is anywhere between “maybe” and “no,” it’s time for an overhaul.

MIXX Panel

Thanks to Adify Media’s Thai Arizpe for sending along this photo of the panel I moderated on Monday at this year’s MIXX Expo.  The panel covered a lot of territory, touching on definitions of engagement, leveraging the mid-tail, effectiveness measurement and more.  The panelists were Bernie Albers of SixApart, Rob Griffin of Media Contacts, Steve Tippie of Tribune Media Services, Joelle Gropper Kaufman of Adify and Jonathan Halvorson of Mediavest.