From Angela Williams, Editor, Palio

Did you know that when you translate a document from English into Spanish, the copy length typically increases by about 25%?

This small tidbit of information may seem unimportant, especially in the midst of a multilingual marketing campaign, but planning for translation hiccups up front will help ensure your communications are as clear, engaging, and culturally appropriate in another language as they are in English.

Writing or designing for a translated piece? Keep these 5 rules of thumb top of mind.

1. Err on the side of lean. Chances are that if your English copy is teetering on the verbose side, the foreign language translation will too. Use clear, concise language, shorter sentences, and simple, standard constructions. Translation vendors charge per word, so wordiness will cost you.

2. Steer clear of idioms, colloquialisms, and jargon. Expressions or terms with unconventional meanings (eg, the bottom line, quick and dirty) don’t always have suitable counterparts in other languages. If you’re not careful, their translations may inadvertently come across as inappropriate, offensive, or confusing.

3. Avoid excessive use of acronyms. If there isn’t already an established foreign language equivalent for an English acronym (eg, the translation of HIV is VIH in Spanish), its spelled-out translation will tack on length very quickly – at a rate of a few extra words per mention.

4. Don’t skimp on the white space. An airy layout with a good amount of white space might look slightly odd before your piece is translated, but when your manuscript comes back 25% longer, you’ll be thrilled you don’t have to crop images or sacrifice design elements to cram in that additional copy.

5. Tailor colors and graphics to your target. Before you start designing, do your research. Consider your audience’s nationality, religion, and level of conservatism when selecting imagery. And be aware of how your audience views certain colors, which may carry different connotations or meanings in other cultures.

Your translation vendor should be able to approximate how much your copy length will increase based on the language and/or dialect into which you’re translating. If you’re not certain, find out. And then make sure members of your creative team are privy, too.

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 Christina Armbrust, Studio Manager, Palio

I was looking at all of the new features offered in Photoshop CS5 and I thought I would share some things about the new software I’ve found particularly helpful.

One of the cool new tools in CS5 is called Content-Aware fill. I have done quite a few projects airbrushing objects in Photoshop and this is such an incredible time saver if you want to remove unwanted image detail. Here’s how it works: first, select the healing brush tool and click the box that says content aware; then just brush over the object that you don’t want in the image. This part is really cool as objects disappear before your eyes and Photoshop automatically fills on the lighting, tone, and noise and it looks as though that part of the image never existed.

Next I want to highlight is Puppet Warp which allows you to select part of an image and then bend and move the image around. It’s easy to use and gives you a lot of control on warping and moving around the image. Go under the edit menu and select Puppet Warp; place points on the parts of the image you want to maneuver. It’s a great tool for repositioning objects, resizing parts of an image, or changing focal points.

The Mixer Brush tool is really nice because it allows you to take everyday images and work with different brushes to create nice painting effects. Just click on the brush tool in the palette and select Mixer Brush tool and start painting. It’s that easy.

As we all know one of the hardest things to do is cut a path for images when hair is involved. We all want to avoid the “Helmet Head” look. And, luckily, Adobe did their homework. Go into Refine Edge, give yourself a larger radius, and click on smart radius. Then use the touch up brush to work with the mask until you achieve your goal. The Refine Edge can also remove color contamination of the image if it was on a background that you are trying to knockout. Brilliant!

Lastly, I would like to touch upon the ability to turn 2D text into 3D. This is so cool! Make a text box, set your color, go under the 3D menu and open Repoussé. It will rasterize the text and automatically bring up a 3D model of the image. There are all sorts of controls for you to manipulate the object. A really nice thing about this is that you can bring the image into After Effects and it will work with the program.

Nice job, Adobe!

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 Angela Williams, Editor, Palio

Hyphens and dashes are internal punctuation marks used for linkage and clarity of expression.

Hyphen (-)

Use a hyphen to avoid ambiguity or to form a single idea from 2 or more words.

Avoid ambiguity. Use a hyphen whenever ambiguity would result if it were omitted.

• He recovered his health

• He re-covered his leaky roof

Compound modifier. When a compound modifier (2 or more words that express a single concept) precedes a noun, use a hyphen to link the words.

• First-quarter touchdown

• A full-time job

• A know-it-all attitude

Many combinations that are hyphenated before a noun are not hyphenated when they occur after a noun.

• The team scored in the first quarter

• The woman works full time

• His attitude suggested he knew it all

When a modifier that would be hyphenated before a noun occurs instead after a form of the verb to be, the hyphen usually must be retained to avoid confusion.

• The man is well-known

• The woman is quick-witted

How hyphenation can affect meaning

Sometimes it is especially important to hyphenate the compound modifier because words can mean different things depending on the hyphenation. For example, there’s a difference between “hot-water bottle” and “hot water bottle.” When you hyphenate hot-water, you’re making it a single compound modifier that applies to the word bottle. It’s a bottle for holding hot water. But when you don’t hyphenate hot water, the words are separate modifiers and you’re describing a water bottle that is hot.

En dash (–)

The en dash is longer than a hyphen but half the length of the em dash (and gets its name from the length of the letter “N” in most typesets). The en dash shows relational distinction in a hyphenated or compound modifier, 1 element of which consists of 2 words or a hyphenated word, or when the word being modified is a compound.

• Post–World War I

• Non–small cell carcinoma

• Multiple sclerosis–like symptoms

Em dash (—)

The em dash is the longest of the three and is used to indicate a marked or pronounced interruption or break in thought (and gets its name from the length of the letter “M” in most typesets). It is best to use this mode sparingly; do not use an em dash when another punctuation mark will suffice (for instance, the comma or the colon) or to imply namely, that is, or in other words when an explanation follows.

• All of these factors—age, severity of symptoms, and choice of anesthetic agent—determine the patient’s reaction.

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 Amy Levinson, VP, Communications Planner, Palio

Google Analytics says it…

Manhattan Research says it…

eMarketer says it…

Kantar Research says it…

The proliferation of smartphone usage is changing the way people engage online with content and one another. As such, we live in a world where information-seeking behavior is increasingly more prevalent while “on the go.”

In our world of pharma, today’s customer profiles demonstrate to us that there are definitely nuances to this adoption curve (whether it be an HCP or a motivated health-information seeker), however, over the next 4 years, this will radically change.

eMarketer recently projected that US smartphone users will increase by 50% over the next 4 years. From a global perspective, this increase will be by 107% with 75% of smartphone users concentrated in Asia Pacific (excluding Japan), Western Europe, and North America. So, for a channel that transcends global barriers, why aren’t our clients paying more attention to mobile strategy and Website optimizations?

Experiential connections are the name of today’s game. So when it comes to our Websites or digital content, we have one shot to engage. Subsequently, that experience needs to be device agnostic for seamless and uninterrupted access that will ensure a positive customer experience, whether via PC, MAC, iPAD, iPhone, Droid, Blackberry,  or Braille. This means our clients need to understand that this alters the composition of their budget and impacts their digital strategy.

To ensure that optimal customer connection, our thinking needs to evolve to include deployment from a technologic/device perspective but also from a user experience perspective and actually define what that optimal experience looks like that will support overall brand objectives and strategies. On the flip side of the equation, all good tactics must have a defined metrics component to track success (or lack thereof).

Interestingly, ClickZ recently published an article that not only supports the need to pay more attention to mobile but discusses a data capture game changer with the article “Device Fingerprinting Could Be Cookie Killer.”

Device finger printing is an emerging device identification technique that captures bits of information that get transmitted when content or services are accessed. These bits of information communicate details about that particle device/operating system that can get collected to form a unique “fingerprint” for that device that can be used for ad targeting, profiling, etc., which essentially replaces the standard of online measurement: the “cookie.”

While this technique may take some time to infiltrate our pharma world, the point is that this is another reason to move away from the current “desktop mentality.”

All this and we still haven’t talked about QR codes. Kudos to those brands who are deploying integrative mobile/print campaigns but if you’re going to invest in it, do it the right way! For most of the campaigns I have tried to access, mobile content was not optimized for my blackberry; I want to know, for these brands, who’s asleep at the user experience wheel?!  Someone is not paying attention to cross platform integration.

And what about the need for universal scanner software?! But that’s for a whole other day.

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 Peter Hopper, VP, Account Services, Palio

I was told many, many years ago – it might have been my uncle – that in the old days on a submarine in the close confines of a submerged vessel shared by dozens of others, on that occasion if you “broke wind” you were obligated to raise your hand and take responsibility. There really was little to be gained in any attempt to dismiss or deny  that an offense had occurred, nor was it in the spirit of the task at hand – patrolling deep under water, depending upon each other to do your job because lives were quite literally at stake – to do anything less than raise your hand, take responsibility and move on, perhaps a little more mindful of your shared circumstances.

Accountability. What a thought.

Over the past few years in the public arena, the very idea of accountability has been visibly shaken. In its place, finger pointing, hyperbole, abject denial is more and more the common response – from deficits to bailouts, healthcare to gun control, profits to spending. The list goes on. The arguments are steadfast, stubborn and divisive. There is no sense of middle ground or common ground or common good.  The accountability gap just grows wider, and wider. And no voice is raised above the din to slap folks upside the head for a reality check: no one has all the answers, and all too often singular ideas are mired in self-interest. Rather, I maintain that the concept argued by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes almost 100 years ago still stands up to the test, that the marketplace of ideas brings forth the best ideas. Discussion. Dissent. Argument. And a whittling away at the fringes to arrive at a core concept in the best interest of the majority. Perhaps even enlightenment.

I was at my doctor’s office earlier this week and we had a brief conversation about his business and my business. The responsibility of taking care of people’s mental and physical well being, his role certainly on a much, much higher plane than mine. I told him about the excerpts from a recent speech made by a GSK executive, Deirdre Connelly, president of North America pharmaceuticals for GSK. Her core message reflected on how our industry may have “lost its way.” She noted, with exceptional examples, how the pharma industry has done a great deal of good, and one would think be held in high regard as one of the greatest contributors to health in our society. Yet, a recent Harris poll reveals that only 11% of the public believes the pharmaceutical industry is generally honest and trustworthy.

She went on to say that the business-to-business competitive selling model may be OK for other industries, “…but we do not sell chocolate or cars. We bring life-altering and life-saving medicines to patients. Society holds our interactions with our customers – healthcare providers and payers – to a higher standard. And it should. Society expects our business to be conducted openly and transparently and in a way that does not create even a perception of inappropriate influence.”

Ms. Connelly openly admits to GSK’s contribution to fueling the fire of distrust from prior transgressions, and then bravely outlines a new path forward based on four core values: focus on the best interest of the patient, transparency, integrity and respect.

Do the right thing for the right reasons. Serve a greater good. And success will follow.

Accountability.

So, in your life, in the industry you work in and the community you live in, are you willing to raise your hand?

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 Steve Dubansky, MD, SVP, Medical Director, Palio

In 1999 the Institute of Medicine published a report entitled To Error is Human: Building a Safer Health System. The report cited two major studies stating that from 44,000 to 98,000 patients die in hospitals each year as a result of preventable medicine-related errors. Moving with its usual alacrity, the government ordered the FDA to fix the problem in 2007. Congress, realizing the urgency, passed a law asking the FDA to offer a solution by September 30, 2010.

Yet, as noted by Stephen Barlas in P&T in October 2010, “…the FDA to date has no guidance, much less regulations, on the naming of drugs. Typically, when a drug company applies for approval of a new product, the FDA uses techniques such as human factors development and failure modes and effects analysis to determine whether the name is acceptable.”

Presently the agency and their agencies assure themselves that new drugs avoid drug names that have orthographic or phonologic similarities to drugs already on the market. Physicians have notoriously bad handwriting, and I assume that either we mumble more than the average person, or pharmacists on the other end of the line have a higher than normal prevalence of hearing loss.

The FDA reviews about 400 drug names a year and rejects about one third of them. The institute for Safe Medical Practices in conjunction with the Joint Commission publishes a LONG list of look-alikes or sound-alikes. Examples listed (http://www.ismp.org/) include:

In addition to look-alikes and sound-alikes, the agency now proscribes using names that imply efficacy (Paingona, Snotclyr) and dosing interval (Onlyonceawik). They will reject drug names that are misleading, including names that suggest the name of one or more but not all of the drug’s ingredients, or names that imply the drug is superior to a competitor. It wasn’t always this way: Lopressor (lower blood pressure), Coreg (help regulate heart rhythm) come to mind.

In Act II, Scene II of Romeo and Juliet, Juliette Capulet says to Romeo Montague, “Deny thy father and refuse thy name.” She suggests it because their love is more powerful than the feuding between the Montagues and Capulets. She follows with, “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” She’s simply saying she loves Romeo and the Montague name is of little concern to her. For Juliette, a name is an artificial and meaningless convention, not nearly as important as the individual who bears it. For too many pharmaceutical companies, the names of their products are now becoming similar meaningless appellations.

There are appropriate restrictions on naming, but it seems as if the FDA has totally emasculated efforts to allow creative and meaningful product names. Some brands do seem aptly named (Femara has an obviously womanly tone) and Sonata (I can hardly say it without dozing off). But while many names are aptly named, many others are awfully named. You know what brands I’m speaking about. Their names seem to have been made up by a computer or a random drawing from a scrabble box, often nothing more than an incomprehensible and/or unpronounceable olio of letters.

Many might say that their names are integrally connected to the success of this or that blockbuster brand. I say “Phooey.” Brands are blockbusters most often because they are novel, first-in-class products in disease states with a real need and a high prevalence, or they have real (or perceived) advantages over their competitors. But a name that actually tells you something about the drug certainly can’t hurt sales. Lipitor, a #1 selling statin from start to patent expiration this year, wasn’t first to market, but it had great data and a name that surely implied “lipid” to any physician.

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

Alan Steele, VP, Head of Art, Managed Markets

Larry Page and Sergey Brin met as PhD candidates at Stanford in 1996. They founded Google in 1998. Google is a play on the word googol, a mathematical term for the number represented by the numeral 1 followed by 100 zeros. The word googol was invented by Milton Sirotta, the nephew of a well-known American mathematician Edward Kasner.

Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. Google Search is the dominant Web search engine. The numbers are staggering: Google runs over one million servers around the world, and processes over one billion search requests and about twenty-four petabytes of user-generated data every day. One petabyte is equal to 20 million four-drawer filing cabinets filled with text.

How search works: You aren’t actually searching the Web, you are searching Google’s index of the Web. Think of an index at the back of a book: the index is Google Search, the book is the Internet. Software programs called spiders (crawlers, googlebots) fetch a few Web pages, then they follow the links those pages point to, and so on, until hundreds of thousands of Web pages are selected across thousands of machines. Google decides which pages to prioritize by asking questions – more than 200 of them. How many times do the key words appear in the document? Is the document from a quality Web site or spam? How many outside links point to it, and how important are those links? Page are scored, or ranked, using these questions, and then prioritized in your search results. Each search result includes a link, the URL, and a “snippet” (short text summary). As you know, if you have entered a few keywords and hit return, all of this happens in 1/2 second!

Advertising. Google receives 90% of its revenue from advertising – over $10 billion. Ads appear to the right and above search results. Google Adwords is software that allows businesses to enter words and phrases relevant to their business, so when people are searching on Google and one of those keywords is picked up, the ad appears on the search page. A sister service, Google AdSense, allows Website owners to display these advertisements on their Website, and earn money every time ads are clicked.

Diversification. Google has grown from two computer scientists developing a Web search engine to 24,000 employees involved in innovative products such as Google Analytics, Google Earth, Google Maps, SketchUp (3D rendering), Picasa (photo sharing), GMail (email), Chrome (Web browser), YouTube, Talk (instant messaging), Buzz (social networking), Android (mobile phone app) and most recently, the Art Project (http://www.googleartproject.com/).

While researching Google, I came across one of their core beliefs: it is best to do one thing really, really well. Google does search really, really well. What is it that you, your organization, or your client do really, really well?

Extracts from Wikipedia, Google, and Gizmodo.

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 Angela Williams, Editor, Palio

Who is used when you are referring to the subject of a sentence (like he, she, or they), and whom is used when you are referring to the object of a sentence (like him, her, or them). Generally, who does something. Whom has something done to it.

Still confused? Try mentally substituting he or him (or your pronoun of choice) where who or whom should go. If him fits, you want whom (both end in m); if he fits, you want who (both end in a vowel). Ask yourself, “Who is doing what to whom?”

Q: The captain chose teammates (who or whom) he thought played well.
A: The captain chose teammates who he thought played well.

Why: In this case, the who or whom in question has done something: played well. Or, if you use the substitution trick, he or they played well. You wouldn’t say, for example, him played well or them played well. Therefore, you know you want who.

Q: Joe wouldn’t tell John (who or whom) he chose for his fantasy team.
A: Joe wouldn’t tell John whom he chose for his fantasy team.

Why: Here, the who or whom in question is having something (the action of choosing) done to it. Ask yourself, “What did Joe choose?” and substitute. He chose them. You wouldn’t say he chose they. So, you know you want whom.

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 Jon Hussey, SVP, Director of Brand Planning, Palio

I was sitting around with some time to kill and happened to be on the Yahoo! homepage. Under their Video Picks they had “Viral hit: Texting girl falls into fountain.”  I love the intersection between technology and karma, so I figured I would watch. Nice. But then something started to slowly penetrate my awareness. Yellow. Crunchy. Goodness… Butterfinger.

Oh my God. The whole page was Butterfinger. Somehow I had stumbled into the Butterfinger Comedy Network on Yahoo!. Ads for Butterfinger Snackerz, a video on how to “Become a Sanckerz Sommelier!”, links to the Butterfinger Facebook page, Butterfinger games, Butterfinger imagery everywhere – this page has it all…  if by “all” you mean “all things Butterfinger.”

I cruised over to the Butterfinger Facebook page and became the 714,448^th person to “Like” it.  I got a recipe for Gooey Butterfinger Cake which I will never, EVER make – even though it looks like it might be pretty tasty – at least not until I lose all self respect.

That led me to discover the Butterfinger Defense League (Eric “Sex-Strada” Estrada, Lou “Strong Man” (really creative…) Ferrigno,  and the obligatory eye-candy Charisma “Sassy” Carpenter). “When all hope is lost, they make life delicious again.” I took a look at the winner of their video contest to find out who would become the newest member of the team. And stayed to watch a few more. Apparently this wasn’t their first video contest. Finally, I clicked over to the Butterfinger home page for some more info to round out the experience.  The whole process took around 30 minutes.  30 minutes of interaction with a brand that I barely notice otherwise.  I left feeling impressed – and with a mild snack craving.

How do you take a brand and turn it into an interactive experience for your customers?  Clearly Butterfinger knows.

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.

Mike Radigan, Copywriter, Palio

Whilst scouring the vast expanses of the information superhighway, I recently came across a very interesting article on a 19th-century advertising war that played out in the countryside of northern Vermont. As a person who’s interested in history, art, entertainment, and advertising, the story was intriguing to me on many levels.

We all know that everyone loves the circus. Children and adults alike have long enjoyed the spectacle of these traveling extravaganzas.

While this type of entertainment continues to draw crowds today, it was during the Victorian Era that the art form basked in its golden age.

Traveling circuses originated in a time before electricity, when society was largely agrarian and rural isolation was widespread. The arrival of a circus was a highly anticipated event – one that country folk would jump at in the hopes of staving off the monotony of life on the farm. They were places to see and be seen.

Victorian circus promoters like the legendary P.T. Barnum had to be savvy marketers if they wanted to fill seats. They had to let potential ticket-buyers know that something amazing was on its way, and that these customers should be first to see it for themselves. The answer was simple, and made sense given the absence of modern forms of communication such as television, radio, or the Web.

During the golden age of the American traveling circus, posters were the main form of advertising and promotion. These beautifully illustrated works of art were large and vibrant, capturing the imagination of anyone who happened upon them – the glitzy Adobe Flash of their day.

Circus owners typically employed roving bands of advertising shock troops who would travel ahead of the wagon train searching for the best places to display the posters. Oftentimes, these advertising agents resorted to purchasing space on the sides of barns and houses from farmers in exchange for tickets.

When competing circuses had overlapping territory, advertising space was in demand. This is where the story gets really interesting – and it’s where the article featured on The Art Newspaper’s Web site picks up.

In 1991, homeowners renovating an old house in northern Vermont were surprised to find layers of circus posters that had been long covered over by exterior siding. Realizing the age and value of the find, the original boards to which the posters were affixed were donated to the Shelburne Museum in Shelburne, Vermont.

There, researchers found layer after layer of posters that multiple waves of competing guerilla marketers had pasted over those of competitors. When one poster went up, another circus’ men would soon come along and put up a new one right over it. And so went the back-and-forth dance of the circus advertising battle.

Now you may be asking yourself, “What does this story mean for today’s marketers?”

If anything, it teaches us a lesson on the power of technology and what is now possible in the information age. The Internet is a game changer. No longer are marketers limited by the physical restrictions of advertising space. No longer is it as easy as it once was to drown out or cover up messages that compete with yours.

Competition will always exist. But nowadays, the playing field is fairer. Everyone has the same chance to let their voice be heard, whether it be a teenage blogger or a Fortune 500 company.

On the Internet, everyone has the same opportunity to share, the same space to disseminate information, and, if done correctly, the same chance to have share of voice. The reality is no different for pharmaceutical companies. They have the same access to what one could consider to be an infinite number of farmhouse walls – all of which can be covered in material of any type designed to reach any number of audiences.

Of course, the Internet is not a farmhouse in Vermont. And we’re not selling glimpses at elephants and bearded ladies. But the lessons of advertising still apply in the same ways they did over a century ago. It’s about knowing your audience and sharing information. It’s about featuring a product and shaping impressions. Only the mediums have changed. And with that change comes the potential for unbridled opportunity.

So take a look at this thought-provoking article and see for yourself where advertising once was. And while you’re at it, take a moment to consider the medium you’re using to view the article and the power it holds for advertising today.

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.