Meleik Goodwill, Medical Director, Palio

One of the classic definitions of marketing is delivering value in order to capture value. So it would seem that when someone’s got a question about your product, service or organization, you answer it. Your answer delivers value, allowing you, hopefully, to capture anything from a new customer to incremental brand awareness.

So when your organization is asked a question, the correct response – every time – is to answer it, right? The answer, it turns out, is a definite “maybe.”

One of the many things muddying up the answer is the proliferation of question sites – platforms like Quora, Yahoo Answers and others where members can post questions, relying on the collective intelligence of other members for input.

In theory, these are a great example of how enabling technology can aggregate expertise and collectively boost the knowledge available to anyone with an internet connection. And, most of the time, that’s the end result.

But there’s a big difference between 50 (or 5,000) strangers chiming in with suggestions on how to best fry a chicken, versus that same enthusiastic, opinionated and sometimes ill-informed group suggesting the best cholesterol medication, or whether vaccines are, in fact, safe.

Getting back to that chestnut about delivering and capturing value, the marketer’s instinct on things like this is usually some variant of “dive in!” After all, there’s an aggregated audience of people seeking information about your product or service, right? But the answer isn’t that clear-cut.

There’s a lack of clarity from regulators on how pharma should handle social-media messaging, and the very nature of question sites is that their messages have a level of permanence, typically indexed in search engines for future reference in a way that last month’s Facebook update comment is not. Plus, like dinner parties the world over, there are some people who show up just to argue – and a public, search-engine indexed fight with someone who just wants to tear down your brand isn’t moving the marketing program forward.

Does that mean pharma marketers should ignore these sites entirely? Not at all. A solid regimen of monitoring and privately responding to questions (a feature that Quora offers but Yahoo Answers does not) allows marketers to keep an eye on things and offer authoritative information when warranted.

Answers to public questions are not off the table, but as with so much of the online world, context is king – answering with an official corporate response on the popular site Reddit, for example, risks derision no matter how accurate and complete the response is, simply because the community values individual rather than corporate presence.

Question sites are one of the hundreds of new channels marketers must navigate. But whether it’s answering a prospect’s question or making a sales presentation, the fundamental question marketers deal with never really changes: How, with this particular audience and this particular channel or platform, can I deliver value?

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

Joe Arcuri, Director of Studio Services, Palio

Every minute, 24 hours of new video content is uploaded to YouTube – the second most popular search platform after Google. Last year we wrote about the growing influence of video on Pixels and Pills. At Palio, we’re creating more digital content than ever before – especially as iPad popularity continues to grow.

Online video is a great way to create engaging, exciting, informational, promotional and educational messages. With attention spans shorter and evolving expectations of patients, physicians and consumers, video is the way of the future.

Andy Smith, EVP, General Manager, Director of Global Operations, Palio

Last year on Pixels & Pills, I wrote about the mainstreaming of social media, highlighting a report from Nielsen Co. that found Americans are devoting almost a quarter of their Internet time on social networking sites and blogs, a 43 percent increase compared to one year ago.

Now, a year later, social is still dominating, with the 2011 version of the Nielsen report finding:

Guy Mastrion, Chief Global Creative Officer, Palio

This year, I had the pleasure of chairing the jury for the CLIO Healthcare digital work.

As always, I was mightily impressed by the level of work at the CLIO Awards and it reminded me of just how hard it is to achieve gold. And although CLIO Healthcare is only in its third year of existence, there was stellar work from outside the United States that gathered up most of the gold.

There is a freshness to this work; a freshness that, I believe, is not simply a result of these other countries having fewer regulations than we do in the US.

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.

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.