Rob Kempton, VP, Brand Planning Director, Palio

Anyone who has spent a day in pharmaceutical – or any other type – of sales, will tell you the answer is an unequivocal “no.”

There are cold calls to warm leads and warm calls on glacial leads. There are follow-up calls on established accounts and first-time calls to what may be your next strategic account. There are calls where you get the hand-off, the brush-off or even the flip off, as well as those where you close the deal, make the sale and bring home the cheddar.

Against that backdrop, why would you use the same digital tools for every sales call? The answer is: You wouldn’t.

Heather Stone, Interactive Producer, Palio

Online or offline, we’re perceived by our actions. Because social media has become just “part of how business gets done,” it is easy to forget to be mindful of how we interact with others. In many religions and cultures, there’s usually some variation of the golden rule – do unto others as you wish to have done to you. Applying this rule to your online communications can help optimize your social media presence and contribute to positive perception of your company and personal brand.

Treat others how you’d want to be treated – Good relationships are the cornerstone of a successful social media presence. That requires listening to the needs of your audience and communicating with them in a way that resonates. Want to increase customer loyalty? Remember it’s about them, not you.

Todd LaRoche, EVP, Managing Director of Creative, Palio

There is no slow season in health care. Whether seeing patients in between personal and professional appointments or a spike in patient visits during cold and flu season, doctors are always busy. For sales reps, this results in a greater challenge getting face time with doctors.

Sales reps may not be used to communicating in a two-minute window, but doctors, nurses and office staff are conditioned to interact that way. Last year on Pixels and Pills, I wrote about being brief and getting to the point when communicating with doctors. That still holds true, but with more doctors tethered to their smartphones and iPads, we need to use technology to change how we communicate with doctors.

Lori Goodale, Corporate Relations Director, Palio

In September, Money Magazine listed Saratoga as one of the Top 100 towns to live in, across all of the United States. That same month, the Saratoga County Chamber of Commerce hosted the debut of the first ever lip dub. Made me think of all the incredible reasons I love Saratoga, especially now during this holiday season. Obviously, I can’t be the only one to appreciate when the wreaths go up around the lights on Broadway, so I asked everyone at Palio what they love about Saratoga and the surrounding areas. Here’s what they said:

Jon Fisher, Technology Manager, Palio

01. 23andme
Categories:	Home testing, genomic testing
What it is:	According to their site: “23andMe is a retail DNA testing service providing information and tools for consumers to learn about and explore their DNA. We utilize the Illumina OmniExpress Plus Research Use Only Chip which has been customized for use in all of our products and services by 23andMe. All of the laboratory testing for 23andMe is done in a CLIA-certified laboratory.”
Why it Matters:	We are at the dawn of personalized medicine. Up until now, testing and diagnostics have been in the hands of physicians. This is starting to change. With a growing geriatric population and sky-rocketing health care costs, there will be a trend in taking ownership of one’s healthcare. That, along with the coming trend of aging in place, proactively taking responsibility for one’s healthcare will not only take hold, it will become the norm. Look for encouragement from healthcare policymakers to take proactive steps not only in preventative care, but for long term disease management. And, very soon, the dialog will shift from “sick care” to “health maintenance.” The long view will shift will be from “healthcare” to “health lifestyle.”

Gregory Alderisio, Senior Copywriter, Palio

Let’s say you see an ad in a magazine or on the Web and you absolutely hate the headline. Who do you blame? Naturally, the wretched, abominable writer. Or what if the art direction is so banal or so hideous you recoil in horror. Whose fault is that? Of course, the hapless, no-talent art director.

Pretty much everything wrong with an ad can be laid at the feet of two people: the AD and CW. It’s the same with the glory. A good headline: well, obviously that came from the unique mind of a gifted writer. An inspired visual? Kudos to the innovative genius of the art director. Why would it be any other way? A pair of people did the ad so let’s praise/stone them depending upon how it turned out. And of course at their year-end review, the creative team with too many boring, dull, moronically-simplistic ads gets labeled as lazy, timid or unimaginative. On the other hand, the team with award-winning work gets a raise, a bonus and a big fat ego.

Neall Currie, VP, Creative Director, Palio

Our hero rushes ahead – his fingers twitching, his pulse a stampede – not knowing what lies ahead. It may be the answer he’s so desperately sought. It may be the peril he thought he’d already avoided. But the one thing he will conquer is the uncertainty that’s plagued him. Finally, he’ll have resolution. Finally, he’ll know. Because the final outcome lies just beyond the next

…page.

Serialized fiction is built on cliffhangers, and that foundation made the novel the most involving art form in human history. The earliest serialized fiction was “One Thousand and One Nights” (or, Arabian Nights), wherein the narrator – the convicted Scheherazade – uses cliffhangers to ensure her king will stay her execution one more day, just to hear the outcome of the story she told the night before.

Some of the most influential novelists of all time wrote for audiences that, rather than wielding the threat of execution, offered the lure of a good living. They desperately followed their prose in monthly publications. Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy, and Arthur Conan Doyle all supported themselves – and often subsidized other work that they preferred – by selling chapter stories in monthly installments to publishers who knew their gripping tales ensured a devoted audience.

Serialized fiction meant more readership, which made the magazine more attractive to advertisers, which allowed the publisher to charge more, both for the publication, and for the ad space within it. And the model held up through the years. Soap operas are so named because they started as serial radio dramas that were produced by the advertisers themselves – soap makers targeting homemakers – who wanted to retain an audience for their promotional messaging. Even today, cliffhangers sell.

Neal Stephenson is a contemporary writer who pays close attention to the narrative form (the main character of his most popular novel, “Snow Crash,” was named Hiro Protagonist, after all). So it’s fitting that he is part of a group of authors and other artists exploring serialized fiction in the digital format.

Stephenson, Greg Bear and others are “publishing” an expansive work called “The Mongoliad” through digital media. Their forward-looking take on the form improves the experience for the artists by cutting out the publisher – and for the writer by expanding the concept of the serialized novel.

Installments of the Mongoliad – published periodically to mongoliad.com, or to its proprietary apps – are, usually, chapter-length adventure tales that build toward a vast story with all the hallmarks of a classic serialized tale. A panoply of complex characters. Multiple intertwined story lines. Epic stakes. Personal drama. But its creators use other installments to enrich the story in other ways. Artists will provide sketches of important characters or locations. The creators and their consultants will post videos where they discuss the historical context or technical details that inform the story.

The Mongoliad doesn’t rely on advertising; it’s a subscription-based model. Readers pay to be in the audience – and in the community.  Subscribers can post to the forums, discussing the stories and often interacting with the creators. Sometimes they’re rewarded by seeing an earlier installment get updated, after the authors, influenced by their audience, make small but important revisions to the work.

Is the Mongoliad the future of publishing? It’s difficult to say it will replace traditional publishing – after all, Stephenson and Bear have both released new novels while working on it, and the creators have recently announced their intention to eventually offer the completed work in print. Could it provide a new model for the “soap opera” – highly targeted stories written to appeal to a very specific audience that a particular group of advertisers want?

To find out, we’ll just have to keep reading. Which was the point all along.

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

Meleik Goodwill, Medical Director, Palio

Here’s something we get asked all the time: “How can we learn this social media stuff?”

This question comes everywhere – at family barbecues and school functions, hissed in work hallways and mumbled shamefacedly in the back of conferences.

What if you’re not 16? What if you’re not a nerd? What if you’re not growing up with this social media stuff in your blood? What if you don’t work with a bunch of tech geeks? What if you don’t even know where to begin?

What if you blew it off, thought it was a fad, but have seen the light and now honestly DO want to learn more about social media? Are you too late? Is there no hope for you?

Relax, question-askers of the world, and follow our quick and easy five-step plan to becoming a successful social media enthusiast.

• Slideshare. This repository of Powerpoint presentations has more devoted to social media explanation than you can imagine. Go visit and search for “social media,” and you’ll be inundated with well-written, basic, informational presentations. I’m particularly fond of this one, salty langugage and all: “What the F*** Is Social Media?”
• Mashable. Arguably the preeminent social media blog, Mashable is a fire hose of social media news. It will be a good source for you to learn a lot, if you
• A. Accept that it’s going to overwhelm you with news, and therefore
• B. Do not try to read all of it, and
• C. Do not get frustrated when you don’t understand every article.
• Social Media Examiner. Another team blog on social media, it’s a bit higher-level and definitely lower-volume than Mashable.
• Google. It sounds obvious, but it’s one that people forget quite often. Anytime you see a social media term that you don’t understand, let me reassure you: at least half a dozen people have written blog posts defining it. RSS? Follow Friday? SEO? Hashtag? Just ask.
• Ask. Whoever you are in life, at this point in time a safe bet is that most every person who reads this post knows someone who is well versed in social media. They got that way by finding it interesting, and as such, are going to enjoy talking about it. Never be afraid to ask. (This is also a great way to sort out the people who actually do know a lot from the people who just like to use popular buzzwords.)

Tiffany Ryan, VP, Account Services, Palio

What an exciting time to be working in HIV. After 30 years, the scientific community has deciphered the mechanism of viral replication, resulting in multiple drug classes targeting multiple points of replication. On the patient/provider level, therapies have evolved to meet market needs – efficacious drugs with improved tolerability and convenient dosing.

This disease state has grown and changed at unprecedented speed – shifting what was once a death sentence into a chronic, more manageable condition.

Recently, there have been some interesting new discoveries that could impact and shape the future of HIV medicine. Discoveries that intrigue, surprise, and potentially shift the future of HIV care.

Glowing Cats and HIV – Don’t let the whimsical (maybe a bit spooky) photo fool you. This is real science. Researchers at the Mayo Clinic conducted a gene-therapy based study that looked at the impact of inserting genes that are known for blocking FIV cell infection into feline eggs prior to sperm fertilization. A jellyfish gene was also inserted, to allow for tracking purposes, which caused the cats to glow green. The genes disable the virus’s outer shield during entry into the cell, thereby not allowing the virus to begin replication that occurs within the cell. The impact of this genetic defense approach will likely have applications for advancing future genetic therapies for people and cats alike with HIV/AIDS.

Cholesterol and HIV – An international team of immunologists published findings that could have implications on future vaccine development. Researchers found that removing the cholesterol contained in the viral envelope of the HIV molecule interfered with the way that the virus attempts to reprogram the body’s immune response to the infection.

Gaming and HIV – Fresh from the “complex problems are solved in creative ways” files, gamers have solved one of the many mysteries of HIV that have plagued the scientific sector for years. Foldit, a game developed by researchers at the University of Washington, is designed to help solve complex scientific problems through competitive games. In three weeks, gamers were able to create models that allowed for successful molecular replacement and subsequent structure determination of the protease enzyme. This information will be critical to informing new drug discovery and development efforts. However, maybe even more promising is that this game has been used to solve problems in other disease categories – namely cancer and alzheimer’s research.

The possibilities appear to be endless when you take the best of technology and combine it with human intuition. I, for one, can’t wait to see what comes next.

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

If you find yourself in downtown Manhattan this November with a little time to kill, go to the Cooper Union, walk down the stairs, and check out an inspiring show called PHARMA, on view at the Herb Lubalin Study Center through December 3d.

The focus is masterworks of pharmaceutical graphic design and advertising from the 1940s to 1960s. If you think “masterworks” sounds too lofty to describe even the best of our hard-nosed industry, consider that mid-century giants Paul Rand, Lester Beall, Will Burtin, and Ivan Chermayeff all did pharma work.

The show lightly traces the whole history of pharmaceutical advertising, from its pre-FDA quack origins to the present day. You’ll see Ur-executions of now-familiar pharma concepts: the original chessboard, rowing crew, and suit of armor. Anyone hoping for an exegesis of contemporary pharma advertising will be disappointed, though. A bit of wall is hung with some satires (with predictably subversive lists of adverse events), but that’s it. I would have liked to have seen a serious discussion of work by the design stars of today, and how the best manage regulatory meddling that would have made Herb Lubalin throw away his calligraphy brush in despair.

But anything in the show that’s pre-WWII or post-60s is just there to provide a setting for the real jewels. The Mad Men ads, brochures, and packagings on display evoke a time when graphic masters were inspired by a confluence of optimistic forces: Visionary corporations headed by Swiss chemist-capitalists. Wonder drugs that promised to ease the strains of modern life. Faith in the power of great design to support and even add prestige to the image of a benevolent industry. And what an image they created — all in spite of (or is it because of?) the lack of Illustrator, InDesign, and Photoshop.

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