By: Marty Hardin, SVP Director of Emerging Media and Technology

03. Sickweather in βeta
Categories:	Categories list goes here
What it is:	Sickweather combines social networking with real-time intelligence reporting that actually forecasts the movement of illness. Just as Doppler radar scans the skies for indicators of bad weather, Sickweather scans social networks for indicators of illness, allowing its users to check for the chance of sickness as easily as they can check for the chance of rain.
Why it Matters:	By combining social media and illness reporting, users will be able to track what illnesses are out there, how fast they are moving, and plan on taking the necessary steps to take prophylactic measures. I think it’s safe to assume that whatever illness is looming on the horizon, there will be product placement that aligns to the immediate crisis. The result? A highly engaged, highly motivated audience that is primed and ready for the advertisers product. Smart move.

04. A “lamp” turns your desktop into an iPad in the prototype phase
Categories:	Augmented reality, liquid interface, prototype
What it is:	A computer interface that does away with with physical interaction with the device itself
Why it Matters:	As technology evolves and matures, the need for physical human to machine interaction should become more transparent, until the technology driving the interaction disappears. Imagine a doctor and a patient being able to interface without the device getting in the way. Or, a sales rep being able to take a healthcare provider though a detail without a device.

05. Best selling iPad app created with Flash
Categories:	Adobe Flash, iOS, devices, iPad, gaming, apps
What it is:	A game that became the top selling game for the iPad despite the continuing myth that you can’t develop in Flash for the iPad
Why it Matters:	This is a definitive answer to the widely held assumption that you can’t develop in Flash for iOS devices. There are many companies and individuals who have devoted countless hours and years to honing and refining their flash skills. This signals a positive step forward for people who do remarkable things in this stalwart program. It also means that established development cycles can be easily modified to bring Flash to the millions who have adopted the iOS tablet device platform.

Google Buys 1,023 U.S. Patents From IBM; No Terms Disclosed

This is on top of the 1,030 patients they acquired in July. There are fewer companies than Google that are as deeply immersed in technology. Remember, the concept for the mouse driven computer came from IBM’s PARC Center in the 70′s. That technology became the Mac computer. Imagine what goodies Google may have purchased and what impact that coud have on the future web.

1 Million Android and iOS apps have now been published

As the smartphone market continues to boom and device owners download an increasing number of applications, app discovery platform AppsFire announced that there have now been more than 1 million apps published to the Apple App Store and Android Market combined.

Web Sensation: “What I Wore Today”

Poppy Disney’s blog is now a social media sensation that has tapped in to the inner-”Fashonista” of people in UK and has also spun off into an iPhone app. It’s important, because the amount of work required of the user is pretty intense: join, take a picture, upload the picture, describe the picture, vote, etc. If consumers are engaged on a deeply emotional level, they will take as many steps as they need to participate. The trick is getting them that deeply engaged.

Tess Okura, VP, Account Director, Palio

Like many children of the 70’s, I could rattle off the phone number of every person I knew and other random facts. Learning and memorizing things came easily, but it was a necessity – it was a time when there was no smart phone or Internet to look things up.

Today, however, technology has provided with so much information at our fingertips that our critical thinking skills are often less exercised or, perhaps, are over-stimulated, and that can be dangerous if you want to lead with thoughtful strategic thinking in the pharmaceutical and healthcare marketing space.

Though we’re now incredibly aided by technology, we’re also bombarded with more information than ever before. Everything we do from work to play to interacting with families and friends stimulates our brains, helping us learn and acquire new information each day. Add in the amount of digital information being created through emails, instant messages, blog posts, Web sites, Facebook updates, digital phone calls, podcasts and more, our brains are constantly in overdrive.

Technology has certainly made information more available and accessible, and it offers unprecedented convenience. Many technologies are sold on the promise that it will free up time to help us be more thoughtful and creative thinkers. While Google and ubiquitous access to a variety of media has put a world of knowledge at our fingertips, it may not necessarily be making us any smarter.

The decline of critical thinking skills is one area of concern. Education reporter Trip Gabriel recently discussed the quality of learning in online curriculum, where advocates cite its convenience and critics say that it’s all about saving money.

Jack London was the subject in Daterrius Hamilton’s online English 3 course. In a high school classroom packed with computers, he read a brief biography of London with single-paragraph excerpts from the author’s works. But the curriculum did not require him, as it had generations of English students, to wade through a tattered copy of “Call of the Wild” or “To Build a Fire.”

Hamilton, who had failed English 3 in a conventional classroom and was hoping to earn credit online to graduate, was asked a question about the meaning of social Darwinism. He pasted the question into Google and read a summary of a Wikipedia entry. He copied the language, spell-checked it and emailed it to his teacher.

Google may help speed the time to answer, but changing the depth and breadth of instruction can be detrimental to developing problem solving skills and memory recall. These proficiencies are important for intellectual development and fostering innovation.

Search efficiency is also changing how we interact. Whereas people might have deliberated at length over a given topic, being able to readily access information lessens the need for debate and argumentation. What’s the point when you can just Google for an answer? This can be potentially limiting because new ideas are born from looking at old concepts in a new light.

Gary Small, professor of Psychiatry and Aging at UCLA School of Medicine has looked at how search is affecting our brains and notes that it’s not making us smart or stupid, but it is changing how we think.  What search does, he says, is change how we use our memory.

Unlike children of the 70’s who had to memorize phone numbers, people today can simply look them up in their handheld device or press a button for speed dial. There is no need for active thinking. However, we still have to pick and choose what we need to remember. Individuals attending an industry trade show need to be able to remember people’s names, what company they work for and if and when they’ve interacted. It would be awkward to need to look up that information on a handheld device.

Our prior experiences, education and ability to activate short-term memory help us search online, but for interacting in the real world, technology can be used to encourage brain fitness. Small suggests activities such as Sudoku puzzles, games and other memory techniques in addition to physical training and healthy living to improve brain efficiency and brain health as we age.

Search and other technologies are indeed changing how we think. The way we use memory is being altered as we move to a society of searchers and gathers. Technology has created a world where information changes quickly, and ideas can be distributed almost instantaneously. Individuals need to develop and nurture critical thinking skills so they can continue to innovate, evaluate information and arrive at thoughtful conclusions.

Palio is an advertising agency revolutionizing pharmaceutical and healthcare marketing to create experiences that will Never Be Forgotten.

Philip Reynolds, VP, Associate Creative Director, Palio

In our “Client vs. Agency” series, we’ve looked at the differing views that can be taken regarding time, money, expectations and collaboration. Now, we’ll look at creativity.

Palio is an advertising agency revolutionizing pharmaceutical and healthcare marketing to create experiences that will Never Be Forgotten.

Michele Boxley, Account Director, Palio

Most businesses – certainly, most businesses that have been through a crisis – understand the value of a good disaster plan. Whether you’re an advertising agency like Palio that specializes in pharmaceutical and healthcare marketing, or any other kind of business, when trouble strikes, that’s exactly the wrong time to be sorting out how to talk to customers and the media, or how best to communicate with employees.

So, if we stipulate the value of having a plan in place, then what goes in it? Or, more specifically, how can you leverage the new social, digital and mobile communication tools when disaster strikes? And what should you watch out for? Consider the following:

Have a formal cascade of options. If disaster strikes and you need to communicate with a far-flung workforce, employees should have no question about which channel or tool is the right one for official company updates – that’s a core component of most disaster plans. But, what if your primary tool is damaged or unavailable? Depending on the scenario, it’s possible for email, phones and the company intranet to all be down simultaneously – and that’s when employees need to know what other official options exist.

Keep risk management front and center. The organizational imperative in a crisis is not to communicate with everyone and anyone who wants information – that’s a time sink, a risk and a distraction. Rather, the imperative is to manage risk at every turn. That means looking at social, digital and mobile communication tools through two lenses, at once both weighing their potential to quickly reach a dispersed and mobile workforce, and understanding their potential to generate distracting and counterproductive public chatter in a crisis if not properly managed.

Your vendor’s disaster could be your disaster as well. Many organizations have embraced enterprise-level social collaboration platforms like Socialtext, gaining great benefits from the software-as-a-service model. But, that begs the question: What happens when disaster strikes a core communications vendor? If your organization can’t afford the lost productivity of downtime, go beyond simple service level agreements with strategic communications vendors, and ask to see their actual disaster and business-continuity plans. Not only will you have more insight into their resiliency during a disaster, but you may walk away with ideas for how to better prepare your own organization.

Social and mobile media are an incredible asset in a time of crisis, particularly as today’s workforce gets out of the office and into the field in ever greater numbers. However, “social for the sake of social” is never a good idea – especially in crisis and disaster communications. So, explore your options, but don’t assume anything is a must-do just because social currently gets so much attention.

Palio is an advertising agency revolutionizing pharmaceutical and healthcare marketing to create experiences that will Never Be Forgotten.

Todd LaRoche, EVP, Managing Director of Creative, Palio

There’s no denying it: Video games are addictive. The question for us to answer as an advertising agency that’s revolutionizing pharmaceutical and healthcare marketing, is “How can we leverage the high engagement potential of gaming to help (and healthfully) promote our clients’ brands?”

Parenting articles are rife with information on how to wean kids off games and fanzines are chock full of cheat codes, Easter eggs and behind the scenes stories. Nielsen reports that 10% of U.S. Internet time is spent playing games, which has now overtaken email as the second most popular online activity. Last year on Pixels and Pills, I wrote about how video games have changed our culture and influence the way we live and play, learn and communicate, and how we are entertained.

The Pew Research Center reports that more than half of American adults age 18 and older (53%) play video games, with the computer being the most popular gaming device. Games are not passively consumed like television; they require interaction and proactive thinking. And, they can be used to improve health and health care. Here’s how:

Extend messages to the offline world – Getting people to move more, think about what they’re eating and make smart choices has received prominent focus even from the White House. Washington-based Cascadian Farm provided a branded crop – blueberries – for Farmville players. More than fun, organizations striving to combat obesity can use games to deliver education and positively influence health whether on the farm or on the field.

Create new modes for learning – For medical students, poor test results can be more than just personal failure – they can mean life or death for patients down the road. Learning via simulation provides the opportunity for nurses, doctors and other medical professionals to develop and refine skills without compromising the safety of real patients. Games can also be fun, educational and helpful for patients, enabling them to test and deepen their understanding of health issues or contribute to better health outcomes. For example, video games can be effective therapy for stroke survivors. Using a Wii can improve patient motor functions, according to research presented at the American Stroke Association’s International Stroke Conference last year. Research projects at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation include alternate reality games that teach substance abusers tactics to prevent real-world relapses and computer-based programs that use Wii technology to help Parkinson’s patients with balance.

Foster a sense of community – Social networks provide group support for difficult tasks or emotional situations. While some individuals are comfortable attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings or caregiver support groups, others miss out on these valuable connections due to fear being exposed or unsuccessful. Social interaction in health care games may be useful in encouraging healthy behaviors like healthy eating or reinforcing the importance of following a prescription regime or in connecting people in similar situations.

The world of health-focused games is growing, covering a wide range of activities from rehab and physical therapy, disease management, health and behavior change, bio-feedback, epidemiology, cognitive exercise and nutrition and health education. Patient-centric health games can go far in advancing many health care goals: reversing the epidemic of obesity, driving down tobacco and alcohol use, improving the quality of health care delivery or enhancing the performance of public health system.

While achieving good health is serious business, it doesn’t mean that it can’t be fun.

Palio is an advertising agency revolutionizing pharmaceutical and healthcare marketing to create experiences that will Never Be Forgotten.

Marcelle Rockwell, VP, Account Director, Palio

Are you an only child who was raised on a desert island by wolves? No?

Then you’ve probably had to work with others over the course of your life to get things done. And, if you’re anything like the rest of us, you’ve had varying levels of success with the process. Sometimes it’s a joy. Sometimes it’s hard work. Most of the time, it’s somewhere in between.

In our professional world of creative marketing agencies and clients, we find that collaborative desires are fairly standard in many ways. Both sides have their ideal image of what collaboration would entail.

Clients would love to have ingenious ideas, perfectly complementary to corporate strategy, completely fleshed out with examples and practical details, falling well within the budget constraints, to be dropped in their lap ten minutes before they ask for them (and sometimes even before they ask).

Agencies would love to have clients who provide extensive detail into their broader brand strategies and long-term goals (which would be secure and unchanging), instant access to all of the stakeholders involved in the approval and execution processes, creative carte blanche unencumbered by regulatory requirements or legal stipulations, and unlimited budgets and flexible timelines to make their dreams reality.

Obviously, these scenarios are seldom the case. Which is why collaboration is key. Negotiation, compromise, diplomacy. And — you may begin to sense a theme across recent posts — communication.

If you can mutually communicate a realistic sense of what to expect before you begin your collaboration, your efforts forward will move that much more swiftly, smoothly, and successfully.

In any collaboration, though, you have to work around the constraints that a partnership poses:

• More than one opinion is at play, and while everyone is working towards the same goal for the brand, there can be vastly different visions about how to reach that goal. Remembering that everyone does have that mutual goal goes a long way toward solving those disagreements
• Your office is not Hogwarts, and no one you’re working with has magical powers. They will not always be able to instantly give you the answers you need; they will not always be able to remove the stumbling blocks that appear in your path; and they will, at some point or another, make a mistake. Being human does that to a person. Reflect, every now and then, on your shared humanity, and use it as an opportunity to build respect rather than frustration
• We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again: collaboration requires frequent updates—from both sides. You can work more successfully together when you’re both working toward the same goal on the same activities at the same time. The closer you can stay in synch, the more efficiently you’ll work and the better your results will be

What’s your favorite part of collaboration – the creative brainstorming… the thrill of success… the Happy Hour celebration?

Palio is an advertising agency revolutionizing pharmaceutical and healthcare marketing to create experiences that will Never Be Forgotten.

Paul Harrington, SVP, Creative Director, Palio

(This post also appeared as an article in the June 2011 issue of PM360 magazine.)

We’ve all heard of the Seven Deadly Sins (SDS). They’re ancient, appearing back in Proverbs as “six things the Lord hateth, and the seventh His soul detesteth.”

As we all work in healthcare marketing to one degree or another, I began to wonder: can we apply the SDS to the marketing profession, and can they corrupt our ideas and the creative process? And are there Seven Virtues that can preserve our promotional souls? As a lark, I’ve dug up the age-old SDS and taken a hard look in the mirror – and it ain’t pretty folks.

Lust: When crafting campaigns, do we choose beauty over reality, lust over honesty? Illness usually isn’t pretty, yet all too often we see attractive people walking on the beach with their fluffy dog, all while suffering from devastating irritable bowel syndrome. Really? Makes me almost want to get it. Almost.

The opposite of lust is chastity: we need to deny our self-indulgence and be honest about the conditions we treat. If your target patient is a type 2 diabetic, show an obese person, not a hot supermodel supermom.

Gluttony: Too often we try to shove every product attribute into an idea. Got a blank page? Fill it up! 60 seconds of airtime? Keep muttering claims and fair balance! But will a consumer savor this excess, or will the bloat get stuck in his throat?

The opposite of gluttony is temperance: the ad agency, client brand managers and other marketing partners need to set modest, reasonable expectations from the get-go. An ad simply can’t do everything, and force-feeding every product attribute into the creative is just plain gross.

Greed: Greed has a fragile relationship with creativity. Sure ad agencies want to create great work, but they also have to eat. And brand managers need to keep the lights on and turn a profit. It’s a fine line we dance, between genuinely trying to help people and appeasing Wall Street.

The opposite of greed is charity: sometimes we should do things that don’t earn a dime. Sponsor a charitable road race in your company’s therapeutic area. Ad agencies should do pro bono work — not to earn a trophy but to change the world.

Sloth: Ah laziness, our old friend: the easiest and safest path is the one most taken, and it leads to horrid marketing and creative. From delegating difficult marketing decisions to focus groups to the curse of cheap stock art to the 45-word headline that just restates the brief, we’ve all gotten fat and lazy. Pass the M&Ms.

The opposite of sloth is diligence: we must maintain high creative standards and resist the urge to take the easy way out. Be bold, be decisive: don’t let a room full of strangers behind a focus group mirror choose the safest, most vanilla approach for your creative campaign – leverage their insights and then make it smart, creative and outstanding.

Wrath: Seething, boiling anger and resentment: they’re easy to experience in this nutsy business. When management kills a good idea, when marketing is compromised by budget, when a colleague lets us down, we get steamed. Giving in to that wrath can feel quite delicious.

The opposite of wrath is patience: don’t let a grudge poison your marketing and creativity. Setbacks are part of our business, so learn to deal with them. Take a moment, suss it out, and release the frustration: stay the path and stick to it, and you will do better work.

Envy: Humans are naturally competitive, but marketers are downright bloodthirsty. We dread that someone’s more talented, more creative and more intelligent than we are, and we’ll be darned if we can’t prove that we’re better.

The opposite of envy is kindness: look, you can’t be the best every single day of the year. Sometimes, the competition wins. Don’t begrudge them their time in the sun. Learn from their success to fuel your own. Gird up for round two, and kill ’em with kindness, baby.

Pride: Behind our backs, we’re known by many other names: prima donna, stuffed shirt, pompous @ss, Jerkface McJerkerson… labels we’ve earned with our inflated pride and egos. We’re marketers, for crying out loud: of course we’re better than everyone else. We went to business school/ art school/medical school just to be the smartest person in the room!

The opposite of pride is humility: we could all use a slice of humble pie. Don’t introduce yourself with your title; just say you work on the team. Take a back seat once in a while. Entertain someone else’s opinion. Make it less about “me” and more about “we” and the work will improve.

OK, the sermon endeth. Just remember: if you put the work first and maintain your integrity and honesty, the Seven Deadly Sins won’t ruin your marketing creativity. I’m off to church now to pray for your healthcare souls… and my own.

Palio is an advertising agency revolutionizing pharmaceutical and healthcare marketing to create experiences that will Never Be Forgotten.

Maureen Wendell, VP, Account Director, Palio

Tech pundits have been predicting the death of email for the last several years, but will social media be its killer?

Technology progression isn’t going to change. Just because something new comes along, it doesn’t mean we should start digging the grave on other technologies. The advent of television threatened the existence of radio, but here we are, decades later, still listening to radio, even if our choices abound with satellite stations.

It’s been an awfully long death march for email, but it isn’t going anywhere – at least not in the near future – and it’s still a viable part of the marketing mix. ComScore notes that while Web-based email is on the decline, mobile email is experiencing an uptick – 43.5 million users turn to their mobile devices on a nearly daily basis for their email communication needs.

In addition to remaining a cost-effective solution to drive lead generation efforts and build long-lasting relationships with clients, email is the original social animal. Email supports one-to-one communication, and while not public, it is also a mass communication tool. Thousands of Listservs still exist and messages are broadcast to groups of subscribers. Email is sharable, whether forwarded to an individual network or posted in whole or part on other digital media.

Email also lets you send attachments such as PowerPoint presentations, particularly important for business users sharing confidential collateral. While some social media platforms enable sharing of attachments via private messages, they’re not the most secure way to transmit information. In some cases users sign away their rights to ownership of any material posted, making it property of the social network.

New social media platforms such as Google+ are indeed social and collaborative, but do they offer more capability than email? Writer Brian Storms doesn’t think so. Recently he posted a side-by-side comparison of social media’s newest darling and email, illustrating similar functionality. Plus, how many people still look for their social notifications through email to learn someone responded to a Facebook post or were added to a Google+ circle?

The reality is one medium isn’t going to replace the other – both have an important place in the marketing agenda. However, knowing how and when to communicate with your target audience so your efforts work in your favor, garner more leads and open more lines of communication between you and your contacts is essential. More so, by combining the two, marketers can further extend their message, target communications to specific groups, encourage users to share and forward email through the social networks and capitalize on the many ways to capture their audiences’ attention.

Palio is an advertising agency revolutionizing pharmaceutical and healthcare marketing to create experiences that will Never Be Forgotten.