From Catlin Renaud, Brand Planning, Palio

So what comes to mind when you hear the word cancer? You’re probably thinking of how many people die from it each year or how horrible the diagnosis must be to receive. And you’re right. Cancer is a terrible disease, but did you know that there are more than 11 million survivors in the United States alone? And that the survival rate for adults and children diagnosed with cancer is up to 64% and 80%, respectively?

With advancements in technology and medicine, cancer is no longer a death sentence. But why is it that the word cancer is still positioned as an end to life? Positioning refers to the space a product or brand occupies in the mind of a consumer. In other words, what do people feel when they think of a brand. Anything can be a brand. Cancer can be and is its own brand.

To further examine the positioning of cancer as a brand, I searched “cancer” on YouTube. After watching the first 2 videos I came upon (video 1 and video 2), I felt even more frightened by the word. These videos fill your mind with the causes of cancer, how it’s formed, and statistics on the rate of death. Neither video mentioned the survival rate.

Instead of focusing on how many people pass away each year, we should all make an effort to remember the 11 million people who have survived, especially those close to us. Let’s change the positioning of this word into something that people can live to tell about. The rate of survival has increased dramatically in the last 40 years, and many people aren’t aware of this.

In my life there are 3 people who have been diagnosed with cancer, and all 3 of them are still with us today and going strong. My aunt was diagnosed with multiple myeloma 5 years ago, and the life expectancy for this rare cancer is 3 to 5 years. She continually exceeds her doctors’ expectations with her positive outlook on life and the belief that cancer will not be the end of her.

I’m not trying to take the seriousness of this disease out of the word, but what I’m trying to illustrate is that we can view the word more positively. When thinking of the word, take into consideration the vast advancements in technology and medicine over the last 40 years. Cancer will never be good news, but going forward it can represent a challenge that many people will overcome and a challenge that millions of Americans have already overcome.

From Alan Steele, VP, Director of Studio Services, Palio

A review of: Change by Design: How design thinking transforms organizations and inspires innovation, by Tim Brown with Barry Katz

Design thinking asks, “What are an individual’s motivations and what are the behaviors that follow?” around relationships between people and products and relationships between people and people. Human-centered design is built around human need. The designer’s job is to identify and convert need into demand. Humans are notoriously ingenious at creating a work around; they may not see the need, and/or they put up with inconvenience. Social scientists, skilled observers from academia, can help by observing improvised behavior and detailing their findings. A good design thinker is empathetic with the people he/she is observing; that means seeing the world through the eyes of others, experiencing their challenges, and their feelings.

Challenges to the organization

In a business organization, new ideas are disruptive, they challenge the status quo and recast yesterday’s innovators into today’s conservatives. Change takes resources away from existing programs and challenges managers with new choices and unknown risks. Business units have everyday real-world responsibilities and no time for trial and error. Innovation in a company can only come about if there is a culture of innovation. Chief Innovation Officers, design managers, and early adopters can lead organizations away from business as usual. Giving staff permission to learn, experiment, fail, and grow in dedicated facilities helps.

The starting point for design thinking in the business place is the brief: a mixture of freedom and constraints. The project team must be interdisciplinary, meaning each member has a key skill to contribute but also has one or more ancillary competencies; for example, an artist with an MBA or a business person with a degree in psychology. Benefits of interdisciplinary teamwork is collective ownership of ideas –– the sum is greater than its parts, turf is less defended, and a small group helps decision-making. The innovation phase is followed by ideation and implementation phases.

The importance of story telling

Storytelling is sharing a positive experience and communicating it in a way that encourages others to try it. The heart of a good story is a central narrative about the way an idea satisfies a need in some powerful way. The agency promoting Oxyride, a powerful, longer-lasting alkaline battery from Panasonic, asked, “can man fly on the power of household batteries alone?” Scientists developed a special plane whose development was covered on a Web site. For the plane’s flight, journalists were invited, which generated publicity and created a news event. “People love the idea of following bands of adventurers as they compete to achieve the impossible.”

Adherence in the drug industry is a problem. Mr. Brown suggests that, by using story-telling, the marketer can change behavior over time. Designing with time means thinking of people as living, growing, thinking organisms who can help write their own stories. His “time-based narrative”  involves 3 phases of medical treatment: 1.) The patient understands the condition, 2.) The patient accepts the need for treatment, and then 3.) The patient takes action. The marketer creates an “adherence journey” to address these phases — better ways to inform the patient of the disease, better methods of dispensing and administering medication, better adherence by connecting with support groups on the Web, nurse call centers, and pharmacist advice.

The design of experiences

Functional benefits alone are not enough to satisfy consumers’ increased expectations. Experiential activities are deeper and more meaningful to the consumer than passively consumed entertainment. Think of the difference in emotional, mental, and physical involvement with Wii golf as opposed to watching a canned TV program. The author says that over the last two hundred years, Americans have gone from rural agrarian life, where we produced our own experiences (square dance, playing an instrument, games using imagination) to urban industrial life consumers (television programs, pre-recorded music on disks, manufactured toys) and now a to post-industrial world village of producers (who make our movies, create our news, share and mix our music).

Design has the power to enrich our lives by engaging our emotions through image, form, texture, color, sound, and smell. American post-war food shopping has been the supermarket with its frozen food, packaged food with preservatives, and long distance transport of product. The Californian Alice Waters with her emphasis on locally grown, organic product, Whole Foods, and local farmer’s markets, are examples of alternative food purchasing experiences; venues that encourage the shopper to linger and participate. Our senses are much more involved in these environments.

A cultural experience requires tailoring it to the individual so it feels personal and customized. Using the Ritz hotel chain as an example, the author explains how “scenography,” a flexible toolkit provided by the Ideo marketing firm, enabled general managers of each location to choreograph a property-specific ambience. Hotel managers became design thinkers.

The author argues that there are important connections between the activities we participated in as children and the characteristics of innovation and creativity… what he calls “serious play.” We lose our ability to explore with our senses (smelling a honeysuckle bush), to build things (Tinker Toys), and to role play (Cowboys and Indians). Instead of following our natural inclination to play we became very “left brained,” analytical and convergent in thinking.

The new social contract

Shared involvement in design happens when the public are active participants in the process of creation and the organization has less boundaries with its methods and the public. An example of an open, flexible, large-scale system where everyone has the opportunity to participate in the conversation is Wikipedia. Programmer Ward Cunningham developed wiki software which allows anyone to modify content without a centralized authority. Unpaid contributors submit articles directly. Wikipedia is a testament to the power of participation; participants are aligned in their objective: to create an encyclopedia. The direct opposite of Wikipedia is one man, Samuel Johnson, laboring alone for nine years to create the Dictionary of the English Language.

Design thinkers anticipate the needs of customers and build on the ideas of colleagues. Using another hospitality model, the author describes The Four Seasons hotel chain’s desire to deliver flawless service consistently. After six months of employment, every employee is allowed a stay at one of their properties. The result is two-fold: the employee experiences the hotel as a guest and is inspired to replicate it, and the employee is rewarded for service.

How can design thinking spur innovation in your organization?

From Jon Hussey, SVP, Director of Brand Planning, Palio

Let me start by saying I am a brand planner. This means that I am often amazed by things that other people find commonplace. Perhaps not truly a creative trait, but one that allows me to appreciate creative talent. I also grew up in the 70’s, which means that while I understand computers they are not quite part of me — I just missed being part of that generation.  Working at an ad agency gives me the opportunity to work with people who are far more creative than I am, and with people who are far more technically savvy than I am. I get to watch, and sometimes to guide, but can’t quite participate. I am my generation’s equivalent of the music lover who can’t play an instrument or hold a beat.

Technology has become both the medium in which modern creativity is expressed as well as the way that it is distributed and consumed. Some of this creativity is really quite impressive.  And apparently, for once, the Guggenheim Museum agrees with me. They have partnered with YouTube to create YouTube Play, a collaboration to unearth and showcase the very best creative video from around the world. Anyone can submit one for consideration, and the winners will be awarded at the Guggenheim museums around the world on October 21, 2010.

A shortlist of the finalists is available for viewing at http://www.youtube.com/play. They are awesome. Take a look if you have a few minutes to kill.

And while you are on Youtube, sign up to win a friggin’ lightsaber.

Palio is a full-spectrum global pharmaceutical and consumer advertising, marketing, and communications agency that excels in brand creation and specializes in brand strategy, product launches, global marketing, and digital and integrated media.

From Joseph M. Acee, Associate Creative Director, Palio

In the course of a meeting, a few weeks before writing the following piece, I encountered a phrase I found humorous. Our team was discussing visual elements for a layout when an individual in the meeting referred to less important elements as “noise.” It didn’t strike me until later in the day that there was something unusually profound about the statement. The following poem was inspired by the moment:

The Rest Is Just Noise

Stop and sink in silent wait
Inspiration bleeds within
Extra hours spinning plates
Whitewashed screen mocking grin

Scenic literary grime
Pressure frozen temporal bliss
Fear so serene this time
Surviving worse than this

Self-proclaimed electro flunky
Sprinting futile digital race
Touch pads fire burning keys
Launching monkeys into space

Outstretched comfort zone
Mental exercise foreplay
Over and out it bemoans
Same loop different day

Hot air blows blacken pixels
Digital pontification
Sheep ride upon the wave
An ensemble’s obligation

In the pink slippery slope
Corporate Custer’s last stand
A final round in the clip
His mouse against the man

Huddled righteous insane
Bring the noise and the funk
Your fifteen minutes of lame
Desperate art directing punk

Push beyond write profound
Shine hindsight for the blind
Self-composed rhymes abound
For all of madmen kind

Journey on wayward one
Sling sobering song with poise
Your vision rings eternal
For the rest is just noise

From Paula Murgia, VP, Digital Strategist, Palio

My father died 10 years ago, not because of his illness but due to the adverse events associated with his medication regime. As the state of his health declined steadily over time, I had many years to internally and externally weigh the pros and cons of the US health care system. Even going so far as to dedicate my “career” to seeking creative solutions to what I felt were the hottest problems.

On the road to educating and exposing myself to the top minds tackling these problems I crashed many conferences in the US and Europe as a cash strapped inventor/entrepreneur.

In the fall of 2007, I “attended” the first Health 2.0 Conference in San Francisco. The energy and the vibe on the floor reminded me of the early days of the dot com boom, when everything was possible… the analogy was even made by Marty Tenenbaum, of Commercenet, that just as before eCommerce became a way of life, like minds gathered and worked together to make the virtual handshake of online financial transactions go from being a dream to a reality. This was Marty’s passionate call to arms presented to a budding Health 2.0 community… while Health 2.0 rock star, Esther Dyson, poetically described the state of the health care industry as a “calcified hairball stuck at the bottom of a drain.”

Needless to say I am very excited to finalize my travel plans to attend this year’s Health 2.0 conference with the goal of bringing back to Palio best practices and outcomes that address the needs of our clients.

In preparation, I’ve been reviewing literature published from the past few conferences I have missed… and I came across this video clip of Esther Dyson’s succinct summary of the health care ecosystem, delivered at the Health 2.0 Goes to Washington conference this past spring.

Esther’s framework eloquently states the challenge before all of us, as we endeavor to develop engaging, creative health-promoting solutions… knowing full well that these pro-health solutions will compete against equally creative and engaging “solutions” for keeping us all unhealthy.

From Jon Hussey, SVP, Director of Brand Planning, Palio

Following is a presentation on the 10 best viral ads of all time, according to Advertising Age. I’m sure you’re familiar with some of them, but some are for products that get very little exposure otherwise. The winning ad is surprisingly simple and effective, and is something that you can try at home for yourself.

We hope you enjoy the presentation; let us know what you think.

[slideshare id=5241492&doc=10bestviraladcampaigns-100920094437-phpapp01]

From Lee Whitcher, Research Manager, Palio

What is the affect of a mistake in market research? Some readers may have noticed the mistaken use of “affect” in the previous sentence. Some may not.

We all know how costly typos, a misplaced hyphen, or a mispelled word can be. Unfortunately, mistakes in market research are even easier to miss, and sometimes, can have a much more serious and long lasting impact on our brands. To that end, the following presentation includes a few simple and common errors that we should all be wary of.

We hope the presentation is helpful; let us know what you think!

[slideshare id=5211728&doc=researchmistakes-100915230642-phpapp01]

From Bob Rath, Associate Creative Director, Palio

Could Hamlet have been written by a committee, or the Mona Lisa painted by a club?… Creative ideas do not spring from groups. They spring from individuals.  ~ Alfred Whitney Griswold

A committee is a cul-de-sac down which ideas are lured and then quietly strangled. ~ Barnett Cocks

There is no monument dedicated to the memory of a committee. ~ Lester J. Pourciau

Dangers of the “I way.”

Committees can be the most dangerous way to judge an idea – in fact, allowing a committee to critique and rule on an idea makes it almost impossible for a great idea to survive.

The process of allowing a committee – a group of diverse backgrounds, tastes, and experiences – to judge creative work is flawed. If not governed, it can become a process promoting the belief that a committee’s collective opinion represents that of the target audience.

The committee’s views on art style or execution don’t matter. Their likes or dislikes don’t matter. They were not trained to create ideas that persuade the target on many subtle levels and that, at the same time, are relevant, original and stop the target dead. And when individuals of a committee don’t agree, the resultant half-hearted consensus will most always create a bad idea.

The “I’s“ don’t have it!

What matters is knowing the target, defined in the Brief. In fact, everything needed to judge the creative idea should be found in the Brief. If it isn’t in the Brief, it shouldn’t enter into the judging process… but too often, when a committee is involved, it does.

When each judge takes turns being “I” — as in “I like it” or “I don’t like it,” the fragile creative begins to dim and soon dies. Truly original ideas don’t stand a chance. The more “I’s“ there are, the faster the idea weakens, as each ”I” slowly shaves away its strength, edginess and uniqueness. Before you know it, the idea is eviscerated, it’s gone.

How to get off the “I-way.”

Why allow a committee to judge creative work? Simple: they are important and indispensible as judges because each person of that committee is an expert in his or her own way. Each has been educated to judge based on his/her unique perspective. Each possesses knowledge that is critically important to the judging. The committee can be an invaluable way to help form an idea. They also can use all that knowledge to stand in the target’s shoes and present an incredibly valuable point of view… as long as you don’t allow judges to build their own ”I-way.”

Personal views should never enter into the judging process. Keep comments impersonal. If you hear an “I” from a judge, it should be phrased as, “I think this idea will work, or won’t work, with the target because the Brief says…” Remember, the only way to judge is by seeing it through the eyes of the Brief’s target audience, not your own.

Keep the “I” in imagination.

It falls on the highest ranking Creative Director to make the final call. A call based not on the personal tastes and opinions of the committee but on a specialized knowledge guided by the Brief. The CD combines all that he or she has heard with a creative instinct… and voila, you have what matters. Not adjusting ideas to group design or group taste permits an idea to remain its purist. When “I” stands for the inspiration of its creator, the individual it was created for and judged by creative instinct of the creative lead… it can truly capture the imagination.

Palio is a full-spectrum global pharmaceutical and consumer advertising, marketing, and communications agency that excels in brand creation and specializes in brand strategy, product launches, global marketing, and digital and integrated media.

From Catlin Renaud, Brand Planning, Palio

Recently there has been a trend for State governments to restrict data mining companies’ access to physician prescribing records. This law could have a significant impact on the pharmaceutical industry if more states decide to enact such a law. The following presentation briefly outlines different viewpoints and potential ways for pharmaceutical companies to adapt to this trend.

We hope it’s helpful; let us know what you think!

[slideshare id=5176241&doc=datamininglawsv8-100910172317-phpapp02]

From Kori-Ann Taylor, Account Supervisor, Palio

As the summer winds down and our marketing clients are coming back from their vacations, a frenzy of excitement returns to the agency as we complete the business planning process for next year. Adding spice to this year’s process is a more restrictive financial situation, since many of our clients are being asked to take moderate to dramatic cuts in their marketing budgets. As this process unfolds and marketers are being forced to make decisions about resource allocation for their brands, it is surprising how few of our clients are prepared for this inevitable situation. Moreover, because of the lack of emphasis on, and scrutiny of, the actual brand business plan for most of the year (except for budgeting exercises), brand managers are unprepared to evaluate those tactics that they carried out in previous years to help determine which were most advantageous to the ROI for their brand.

We prepared for this business planning wrinkle this year in anticipation of persistent recession and subsequent marketing cuts, and have taken a more proactive approach to our clients’ challenges by investing in business planning. Over the course of the year, we asked our clients to take some simple steps with their typical brand planning process to make their smaller budgets go farther. Furthermore, we asked them to increase their discipline in both targeting exercises and their measurement of tactics, to make certain that we are appropriately engaging the right customers and measuring the ways we are communicating with them. In this way, as an agency, we aren’t doing more for less, but rather finding more value for the client with the budgets that they have.

Our strategic planners have been essential in this process. Our brand planning department strives to engage clients regularly in the business planning process so that we have an appropriate amount of time to evaluate what the client planned to do (versus what was originally written in the business plan), what they actually did (in terms of quality and quantity of interactions with customers), and the results for their brands (in terms of revenues and qualitative measurements). Our brand analytics group complements our account managers and brand planners by working hand in glove with the market research departments of our clients to provide succinct analysis of brand, competitive and market trends for our customers. With their help, we have been able to curtail the renewal of many costly programs that our clients have traditionally utilized from year to year in favor of less expensive, more efficient ways to talk with their customers.

Not surprisingly, this approach has helped us maintain a strong relationship with our clients and has helped us improve our overall organic growth. So when your clients are asking you to help them do more with less, ask them if you can help them do more with what they have through better planning. They will be happy you did!