by Mary Kate Hallahan, VP, Human Resource Manager

Should your Facebook password be fair game for your employer? If you care anything about your privacy and the value you bring as an employee, the answer is no.

The expectation of privacy in a digital world is sketchy at best – we’re a culture of over-share, with many people posting every detail of their lives online. It has become natural to meet someone, whether it’s a vendor, job candidate or colleague and hit the search engines and social networking sites to see what they look like and what they post.

Even as informal background checks become the norm, employers need to tread carefully and employees shouldn’t be afraid to take a stance toward protecting their privacy. For employers, there are legal and cultural reasons to think twice about asking employees for their password.

From a legal perspective, organizations expose themselves to risk by asking for access to personal information. For example, if an employee sends a message to six of her friends that she is expecting, and her employer passes her up for a promotion, she may be able to prove discrimination in court.

From a cultural perspective, it’s like telling employees their privacy is meaningless. Even requesting that employees “friend” their manager crosses the line between personal and professional, but an employer asking for an employee’s Facebook password is equivalent to asking for house keys or to peek in their medicine cabinet.

It’s true that the actions of employees in and out of the office are more transparent today and it has created new concerns. But, if employees are trusted to interact with customers or business partners on behalf of the business in the real world, they need to be trusted online. After all, there are no great companies that were built on a culture of fear.

If you’ve hired the right talent then they’ve proven that they exhibit the company’s values and behaviors. That also gives testament to the ability of hiring managers to use traditional screening support – resume review, interviews, reference checks, etc. — to make good hires.

Responsible users take time to lock down their profiles, including their personal Facebook page, and they have a right to privacy when it comes to personal property. Plus, employees who stick to their guns and keep their password protected not only demonstrate self respect — they also show they understand the boundaries of privacy.

Many companies have policies in place prohibiting employees from sharing email passwords, security cards, etc. Unless companies are using this question to screen out employees who would breach other security protocols, it’s best to respect an employee’s personal life.

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

by Maureen Wendell, VP, Account Services, Palio

Put a physician, a pharmaceutical expert and a sociologist together in a room, get them talking about their work, and you’ll eventually come around to something everyone has an opinion on: compliance.

The physician might bemoan how, for lack of patient compliance, millions of people suffer long-term health degradation and shorter life expectancies. The pharmaceutical expert can probably bring data to the discussion, talking about how there are endless studies correlating certain types of information and patient education to better long-term compliance.

The sociologist? She just smiles and says: “People are going to act like people. You might want to leverage that.”

Compliance is the big win-win issue for pharma – crack the code, patients have better outcomes while marketers sell more product. But broadly boosting compliance – especially with social media and marketing tools – often becomes a game of gizmos. This product has an app, that product has a web portal, etc.

Good stuff, but it’s ultimately window dressing that doesn’t get to the heart of compliance. For that, we need the sociologist’s insight. “People are going to act like people,” means several things for compliance:

Community builds compliance. Physicians – even trusted ones – are a lot like newspapers for many patients. They get information from a physician, but they form their opinions about what’s important through interactions with trusted peers.

These interactions have lots of opinions, lots of shades of gray and are very unlike the cut-and-dried information that comes from physicians or other medical providers. And while that’s certainly a cause for concern among medical professionals who want to make sure the right information is conveyed, one fact remains: People most strongly believe the stories they tell themselves.

So, the role of community in compliance is to give them a place where they can find those trusted peers, bounce their thoughts around, and know that they are not alone. It’s a strategy that’s worked for many compliance-intensive medical treatments and conditions, such as Alzheimer’s, diabetes and lap-band surgeries.

A community is more than a Web forum. The sociologist would probably also tell her companions that communities – going as far back as civilization – have a few common rules. Successful communities have onboarding processes – ways that new members can learn the formal and informal rules without stubbing their toes along the way. Communities also recognize and celebrate the wisdom of “elders” – people known to provide value and wisdom over time – and generally make it known what behavior is celebrated, as well as what is not tolerated. Finally, communities recognize that there are both public and private conversations, and have provisions for both. None of those things are particularly hard to implement in a Web or social-media environment, but they’re often treated as afterthoughts – when in fact they are the heart of the community-building infrastructure.

Your app? It’s not that big a deal. The flip side of how compliance and community fit together is that, if community is of great importance, then the tools are just that – tools. Make them user friendly and, yes, make them fully social. But the big strategy behind your app should be how it connects users to a community of compliance. Because the community will provide far more positive reinforcement and, ultimately, greater compliance, than a standalone tool on a tablet or smart phone.

Getting to the win-win of broad, self-reinforcing compliance for pharma marketers is a big job, with a seat at the table for everyone from marketing to PR to the social media director and the advertising team. But also save a seat – if only symbolically – for the sociologist. And for people acting like people.

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

by Greg Alderisio, Senior Copywriter, Palio

Flashing cameras, red carpet, golden trophies, velvet ropes. Another Oscar night blowout? Nope, this was ADDY night as created by the Albany Ad Club.

Recently the club rolled out the red carpet for the nominees at their annual award ceremony. In other words, their yearly celebration of work judged to be the best across an eclectic mix of categories: everything from websites to annual reports, television commercials to logo designs.

It’s a unique event in that it’s one of the few to bring together production companies, account people, art directors, designers, producers, writers, composers; all facets of the ad world all in one place. By nature there’s a celebratory atmosphere to the evening, still everyone appeared especially happy and lively, a feeling you can’t just attribute to the 4 or 5 bartenders handing out drinks. It was as if everybody felt like they made it through an incredibly arduous journey to get to this night. The lucky ones here didn’t just work hard. Everyone works hard, that’s the nature of the industry.

No, what separates a good year from a not-so-good year is that after working so hard to create, sell and produce work, you end up with something laudable to show for it. Something seen as noteworthy not just by you and your creative director, but by your peers. Achieving that feat in any year, well, that’s the charm.

For all the nominees, this was a good year.

The nominated work was on display, all the better for each finalist to dissect the competition and bet on who could win, who should win, and who would win. As always, Palio was right in the center of the award scrum. After all, Palio loves competition, which is something you’d expect from an agency named after one of the most contentious races in Italy, a horse race battled yearly since medieval times.

In all, Palio had 12 nominations competing in 11 different categories so there was the potential for a very rewarding evening.

Once the opening speeches ended, the lights went down and the emcee took the stage. One by one he announced each category and named the nominees whose work instantly appeared on a huge screen. Then came the inevitable “and the winner is…” followed by a burst of applause and a spotlight to lead the winner to the podium.

By evening’s end, Palio had the extra weight of 10 awards on their table, one of the most impressive performances by any agency. Yet it wasn’t just a very rewarding evening, it was dramatic, entertaining, filled with ups and downs.

In a way it was like a great ride at an amusement park: as soon as it’s over, all you want to do is hop right back on it. Suddenly going to this year’s ADDYs was no longer enough, the new focus was going back next year. That’s the kind of inspiration people left with. It was all about plotting next year’s triumphant return to the red carpet.

ADDY Awards won:

Sales Promotion/Packaging – Silver award

Interactive Media/Website, B-to-B Flash, Services – Silver award

Advertising for the Arts & Sciences/Arts, Poster – Silver award

Public Service/Poster – Silver Award

Public Service/Campaign – Silver Award

Advertising Industry Self-Promotion/Broadcast – Silver award

Advertising Industry Self-Promotion/Interactive – Silver award

Advertising Industry Self-Promotion/Campaign – Silver award

Advertising Industry Self-Promotion/Mixed Media Campaign – Silver award

Elements of Advertising/Music Only – Silver award

*Public Service/Poster – Bronze Award

*Consumer or Trade Publication/Campaign – Bronze

*Awards won, but not given out during the ceremony

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