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.

The world isn’t what it used to be. Neither is the marketplace. And changes to both are happening at a faster and faster pace. So what do you do when you need to anticipate the future and you don’t have Nostradamus around to help? You shore up your brand’s ability to adapt. Which means getting used to change because nothing’s ever going to be like it used to be.  One reason why can be summed up in two little words: social media. It hasn’t just created a shift, it’s caused an upheaval.

Just check out the facts: social media has overtaken porn as the #1 activity on the Web. It’s created a major shift in how we communicate with each other. Facebook reached 100 million users in less than a year. Facebook reached 100 million users in less than a year. Twitter has 140 million users who generate 340 million tweets a day. Social media is credited with everything from boosting brands to toppling governments.

For your brand, the message is obvious. You have to adapt to new ways to connect with your customers. Plus, you need to be where the new technology is to show people that your brand is relevant. Which isn’t as daunting as it sounds because Palio can help you navigate this new world.  We’re right at home in the flux of today’s fast-evolving communications ecosystem. We can show you how to talk to your customers via social media and provide other ideas on how to increase the size of your digital footprint.

At Palio, we’re not just on top of technological innovations, we’re building them. We have a department devoted to digital content creation, including Web and app development, video production, and interactive programs. In fact, all our brand teams “think” digitally, so any one of them is capable of creating a new idea that can take your brand places it’s never been before. Add to that our deep history in healthcare marketing and pharmaceutical advertising – a level of expertise few others can match – and you have an agency that can lead you past what’s happening now, and through what’s ahead, without flinching.

Since you’re already on our site, now is a perfect time to check out some of our other posts to see what we’re thinking. Then, if you want to know more, call Mike Myers at 518.584.8924. He’s not Nostradamus, but he can tell you how your brand will have a brighter future if it links up with Palio.

Quinn Tetterton, Executive Creative Producer, Palio

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

I’ve just gone through our archives and realized that here at Palio, we mention listening quite often in our posts. I was very pleased to confirm this with my little bit of research. It means we’re doing something right, especially as an advertising agency in the field of pharmaceutical and healthcare marketing.

But I also noticed that when we talk about listening, we’re usually mentioning it in passing, as part of a larger goal, as a step in a process.

Listening can, and should, and needs to be, more than that, particularly in social media work. All too often, we relegate it to a baby step on the way to doing “real” things. When clients are nervous about entering the digital social media sphere, we tell them first to start out by listening, and then eventually they’ll work up the courage to really jump in to interactive social media work.

This is, of course, true, but it can lead people to think that listening is just that first baby step, and no more. This couldn’t be further from the truth, and this is the myth I want to dispel.

If you’ve let the listening aspect of your social media work slip to the back burner, now is the time to rectify that. Convene a “listening camp” and spend a few days really focusing on it. Start off by bringing your interns in to teach the first class. We know that’s who you’ve had doing the work of monitoring and listening. Listen hard to what they have to say about what the conversation about your brand is. Not the conversation that YOU have been trying to have. That’s different. You need to know the conversation that’s actually happening apart from you.

1. Are people still complaining about that little product glitch that you wrote off as “handled” three months ago when the official work to address it ended?
2. Is the most specific praise you’re getting from people coming about a product feature that you never really thought much about, and never highlighted very much?
3. And what about your competition? What specific praise and specific complaints are they getting?

Our Hyper Island training experience in June (read more about it here) really helped us think long and hard and critically about what we do – what we should do differently, what we should do more of, and what we should change. We’re all doing our best to make sure that new mindset sticks with us.

One way we can get that started is by looking at listening in a brand new light.

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

Carl Turner, VP, Research Analytics Director, Palio

They say everything you need to know is learned in kindergarten. A common mantra heard in my childhood was “sharing is caring.” Whether that’s information or a prized possession, sharing demonstrates passion, caring or empathy for others. Sharing is deeply embedded in human nature and is evident in the digital information age.

Understanding why people share can help advertising agencies who are revolutionizing pharmaceutical and healthcare marketing design content that is most likely to be passed among as many of the appropriate people as possible.

While the desire to share hasn’t changed much over time, how information is imparted certainly has – especially with the explosion of social media. Today there is more content, a plethora of sources, a greater number of people communicating with more frequency and exchanging information more quickly than ever before.

The New York Times Customer Insight Group surveyed 2,500 medium/heavy online sharers to understand why people share and the motivational forces behind letting someone in on what you know. What they found: Sharing helps people do their jobs, process information more deeply, increases memory retention and creates a bond – a deeper connection – to the information. It also helps them feel valuable. According to the study, 94 percent of respondents carefully consider how the information they share will be useful to the recipient.

Sharing is also a way of defining yourself to others. Whether you’re updating your Facebook status with political rants or posting success baking meatloaf cupcakes, you’re giving the world details for your personal dossier. More than half the people in the survey (68 percent) said they share to give people a better sense of who they are and what they care about. They also share because it is a way to support causes or issues they care about.

Other key motivators are to stay connected, feel a sense of community, discuss similar interests and keep in touch with people they might not keep in touch with otherwise. Sixty-nine percent said they share information because it helps them feel involved in the world.

The study identified six sharing personality archetypes:

Altruists – These folks want to be helpful and appreciated for their usefulness. Think of the girlfriend who sends you links to WebMD after you mention going to get your thyroid tested.

Careerists – Do you participate in LinkedIn Groups? Forward interesting business articles to your colleagues? Spend hours researching and reporting on CRM systems? A careerist makes a job of sharing and being “in the know.”

Hipsters – If sharing is part of who you are – too cool/busy/mobile for email, but not too busy to frequently update your status, send out tweets and are already drinking the Google+ kool-aid, you’re probably a hipster.

Boomerangs – This type knows that you are what you post and invests in sharing edgy, provocative content. When their content doesn’t get re-shared, they know they missed their mark.

Connectors – Need a plumber or an engineer fluent in Japanese? Every network has someone who can connect you to the information or resources you require.

Selectives – They know their audience and only share information they deem relevant. If you want to engage a selective, help them understand the WIIFM.

It’s important to keep in mind that people want to share with other individuals – not just your brand. Being a facilitator that drives online conversations requires understanding the motivations of why people share, especially as consumer touch points have increased and taken advocacy to the next level.

People who share want to be relevant, helpful, considerate, informative, creative, cutting edge and popular. To help them, keep your messages simple, appeal to their sense of humor, and embrace a sense of urgency.

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

From Carl Turner, VP, Research and Analytics Director, Palio

It’s the hottest buzz phrase in digital analytics these days. Everyone’s talking about moving beyond the click. Marketers are no longer content with counting clicks. They are now demanding new metrics to understand what a click buys. In advance of a campaign, they want to predict what a click will mean for brand recall and consumer sentiments toward a brand. To predict relationships between clicks and these important marketing metrics, digital analytics teams are beginning to look to complex statistical models. It sounds complicated because it is.

Very few people (other than statisticians or mathematicians) understand the assumptions and limitations underlying the statistical models being developed, yet there is increasing confidence in their value among digital marketers. It’s interesting. As we move further into the digital world, we are becoming more reliant on numbers and sophisticated analytics to understand human behavior. In some ways this makes sense. The digital world is constructed of codes and mathematical relationships. Shouldn’t we measure the digital world using the same codes and mathematical relationships that define the space? This seems logical until you consider who is navigating this space. Although the digital landscape is constructed from codes and math, it’s navigated by human beings. People have complex attitudes, beliefs, and values that underlie their behavior and govern their motivation. Additionally, they don’t typically act in ways that are intuitive or logical.

In our quest to move ahead and predict the impact of digital marketing, have we focused too little on what drives behavior? Do we really understand what motivates people’s behavior online? Yes, there are user experience designers who can help us to understand user goals and conduct usability testing, but often they rely on industry assumptions or flat-out myths about behavior. Although user experience has roots in psychology, it has veered away from them in recent years. Fewer and fewer UX designers are well versed in the psychological and group dynamic principles that have been scientifically proven to guide behavior. As we call for more statisticians and mathematicians to lead the evolution of digital analytics, perhaps we should also be calling for more social psychologists and anthropologists to lead the charge. Perhaps we should be spending more time understanding the “why” behind user behavior. Perhaps we should be spending as much time behind the click as we spend beyond it.

Here are two articles that support this line of thinking:
This article speaks to the lack of understanding when it comes to behavioral drivers.
This article speaks to the current deficiency in user experience design.

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

As a confirmed, proud, self-professed Luddite, I have somewhat stubbornly resisted the onslaught of social media, preferring to use the telephone (rotary of course) or the person-to-person meeting in order to do my socializing. Keystrokes, whether 140 (tweet tweet) or more (blog blog) just didn’t do it for me.

Strongly “encouraged” to tweet and blog by my employers, I hesitatingly dipped my toe into the social media water with a few very tentative blogs and tweets. However, rather than find the anodyne experience that social intercourse usually provides, I found the experiences polymorphously frustrating. What do I say? What about this? Would that interest anyone? How do I keep it ≤140 spaces? Who even cares what I think? Paraphrasing Groucho Marx, would I ever want to “friend” someone who wastes their precious timing reading my thoughts on-line?

Most frustrating was the simple fact that I never received feedback. Never. It was akin to talking to (not “with”!) someone at a party who spends the entire time looking everywhere but at you, searching desperately for someone more interesting and/or attractive. No real conversation. Kind of like dinner table conversation when you ask your children the dreaded question, “How was school today?” What you hear, minus the “Okay,” is the sound of silence that tweets and blogs give you.

But then one day, about 2 months into my daily enforced tweeting, after posting a tweet about an Environmental Working Group report on pesticides poisoning fruits and vegetables, my epiphany came in a tweet response from “Chem React.” Just a few simple words, “Agreed. Even just on Twitter, every day-so much evidence of the scary dangers around us. But nothing happens… Time to change.”

That’s all it took to get me to realize that while I may never see their responses, there are people who are reading what I’m writing. Perhaps they dismiss it, perhaps they think it unworthy of a response, or perhaps they simply don’t have the time to respond. Doesn’t matter. It’s kind of like a party, where not everyone is interested in conversing with you. It’s even better than a party in one important aspect. When tweeting or blogging, you don’t have to see the other people ignoring you, or looking past you for more fertile social intercourse.

So rather than curse the darkness, I’ve now lit the candle and brightened my attitude about social media. The applications are just waiting to be discovered. I can see potential utility in both the pharma and medical spaces.

Just this week, the Disney Company launched a Facebook application called Tickets Together, which lets you buy tickets via Facebook. When you do, your Facebook friends get messages letting them know where and when you’re going to the movies, in this case it’s “Toy Story 3.” Tickets, not available to the “general public” till the middle of June, may be bought in groups of up to 80.

Marketers in the pharma space should readily be able to use the social media to rapidly disseminate things such as drug-related information and discount coupons. Any marketer worth his/her salt should be able to come up with even better ideas than those.

Physicians can easily disseminate health maintenance, disease prevention information to their patients. Practice-related information (appointment times, doctor is running late, meet-up support groups of similarly affected patients) presents lots of opportunities.

While I’m not completely sold on the idea, social media is here to stay. It will without doubt evolve in ways we can’t imagine. An open mind is the prepared mind, and we better be prepared because things are moving fast. This deconstructed Luddite doesn’t want to be left behind. In fact, I think I’ll blog about this right now. Oops. First I’ll have to bike to the store and pick up some ink for my fountain pen.

From Maureen Wendell, VP, Account Services, Palio

In 2009, I attended several diabetes medical meetings (ADA, AACE, ENDO, AADE) and noted a modest digital footprint – wireless café and abstracts on CD. Ho hum. At ASCO 2010, I was amazed at the transformation. Is it the progressive oncology community or a sign of the rapidly changing world of digital communications and social media? The answer is yes.

Oncology by its very nature is one of the more technologically savvy disciplines and its specialists are highly interested in engaging online according to Manhattan Research (2009 ePharma Physician v9.0 #6). Disease complexity, extensive tumor classifications, rapidly evolving diagnostics, genomics and treatments have created a community thirsty for information and communication. And ASCO has stepped up to satisfy its members’ appetite.

From their networking website – ascoexchange.org – to the ASCO 2010 “Tweetup” held in Chicago on Saturday to gather physician insights on unmet needs and new opportunities – ASCO is clearly telling us that online communities and social media matters. Here are a few examples:

Twitter – over 2,000 followers are kept up to date on trial results, award winners, podcasts, schedule changes and membership benefits.

Dr. Blayney’s Blog – ASCO’s President is leading the way with his own blog where he shares experiences on EHR, e-prescribing, and safety standards.

Oncology EHR Exchange – in this ASCO forum, 450 members, including EHR vendors, can discuss electronic health records. Dr. Blayney was recently quoted in ASCO News stating: “It would be great to see online conversations start up around each of the major EHR vendors, so that those who are interested in purchasing or acquiring this technology can learn from our experiences with EHR products. Vendor representatives participate in the Oncology EHR Exchange and check in to see what users are saying. Unlike a yearly meeting, we can use this forum to create a virtual users’ group with the opportunity for continuous learning.”

Here we have ASCO leadership asking an industry stakeholder for help in satisfying the need for continuous learning. While many pharma brands focus on patient communities as they navigate the brave new world, are they missing an opportunity to take a leadership role in meeting this important need for healthcare professionals?

From Todd LaRoche, EVP, Managing Director of Creative, Palio

I’ve worked in advertising on the creative side for over 30 years now; originally as a copywriter and lately as the Managing Director of the creative staff at one of today’s most creative advertising agencies. It’s been in my best interest over all these years to promote the idea that great creative is key to building a strong bond between a brand and its consumer. Of course I still believe that to be the case. But now I’m going to say something that might sound heretical, coming from a ‘creative’:

A brand’s draw is becoming less about how creatively it expresses itself (in such a self-absorbed way such as an advertisement), and more about how satisfying an experience it can provide to its consumer – even before a purchase is made.

Don’t get me wrong: I love creative advertising… anything that entertains seems to be appreciated by most all of us. And good old awareness advertising will always have its place. But thanks to the digisphere (the digital atmosphere which is now blanketing humanity with its addictive connectivity), people today expect so much more in terms of what a brand should be offering them.

We all want to be given something that brings ‘value,’ pleasure, learning, growth, discovery, a deeper appreciation of our time, (insert your desire here), and not to simply be ‘sold’ on why brand X is better than the rest. And, at the same time, we’re all getting used to getting what we want, fast. In short, if I’m not getting something from you that I want – immediately – then I’m going to move on to find it elsewhere… because time is short and I’ve got a lot of living to do.

So how does the digisphere suddenly change the rules (for marketers)? Before we answer that question, it needs to be understood that if you’re looking at digital communications as simply another medium to ‘execute’ your brand’s campaign, you’re in trouble; you’re not seeing the bigger picture. Digital communications have allowed us to engage our brands’ targets in ways that traditional (interruptive) marketing never has. Think of the digital medium as contexts – arenas of technologically-enabled activity – and the pieces start falling into place.

When you see digital that way, the line between advertising and content (or experience) becomes indistinct. And with that, a brand is suddenly enabled to insinuate its presence while its target is dazed in the satisfying ether of connectivity – connectivity with information, people, visual and aural stimulation.

I could give you some examples of exactly what I’m talking about. But first I’d like to ask if you’d even care to hear more before I do.

By the way, if you want to get a little further out than the usual, visit  www.flixxy.com. And if you feel that your time there was worth it, think of Palio… we’re all about going beyond the usual and expanding one’s reach.

From Todd LaRoche, EVP, Managing Director of Creative, Palio

We’ve been hearing a lot lately about the evolving media landscape and the power of digital advertising. Yes, things are changing quickly and the way consumers receive marketing messages is becoming more and more sophisticated every day. Digital media, certainly, is allowing for the fundamental shift from a “push” to “pull” whereby brands are insinuated into a consumer’s day-to-day world. “Targets” are no longer passive objects on the receiving end; they are willing receptors who draw a brand’s message toward them while in the “digital contexts” that are now encompassing our lives.

Barry Wacksman, EVP, Chief Growth Officer at R/GA, suggests that there are at leat 10 digital contexts. It’s a subject that we’ll be writing about often here on this blog because it has huge meaning for marketers and is shaping very definitively the way marketing messages are now being disseminated.

But, for the moment, in this post I wanted simply to refer you to an article written by Philip W. Sawyer, recently published in Advertising Age. Take a look. It’s clear to me that what Mr. Sawyer is saying suggests that there are a lot of creative marketing agencies out there that just don’t get how to use the digital medium effectively. The seven mistakes he cites as being common to many digital ads are, no doubt, a real issue. In general, I think, he’s referring to advertising that is still based on the interruptive model of marketing, whereby content is ‘divided’ by a marketing message as it is pushed into the forefront of the space between the consumer and the medium. Right then and there you have a problem: advertising that is getting in the way of a satisfying user experience.

So, read Mr. Sawyer’s article. It makes sense. And also realize that marketers have yet to start leveraging the digital space, in a fundamental way, to provide an enhanced user experience, not a degraded one. When that really starts to happen, a lot of what Mr. Sawyer is talking about starts to go away. For more about this, check out this post.