Most marketers and brands live with a beleif that FDA involvement = bad. Marketing communications that take full advantage of a brand’s label = good. So, what happens when the big “bad” FDA comes calling when an ad or other promotional effort crosses that grey line?

From Geoff Sheldon, VP, Brand Planning Director, Palio

As we, as agencies/consultants and strategic partners, help our clients navigate through the ever increasing congested and turbulent waters of pharmaceutical marketing, I always have to smile when I hear the analogy “it’s like turning a battleship.” Partly because steering ships is actually something I am very familiar with, as in my life before advertising I spent 10 years at sea navigating ships around the world, and also because there is a way to quickly turn a large ship, like a battleship, around very quickly using a technique called “The Williamson Turn.”

The Williamson Turn is an emergency procedure, reserved for those things that you hope never happen at sea, like a man over board. The reason that it is saved purely for emergencies is because of the disruption that it causes. Executing a Williamson Turn requires radical maneuvering, hard-a-port on the helm until you change course 60 degrees on the compass, then full helm, hard-a-starboard, until you are 20 degrees back of your opposite course, then back to mid-ships and you are back at the same location, heading in the opposite direction. Unfortunately, the downside of this maneuver is the chaos it causes – A 30-45 degree roll for each course change that turns everything in the ship upside down.

With everything that is occurring in pharmaceutical marketing right now; patent expiries, reduced rep access, increased regulation, influence of the changing media landscape, just to name a few… I believe that we can no longer afford to turn the “battleship” incrementally. It is time to execute a Williamson Turn.

Helping our clients make this turn however will not be quite as easy as on a ship where the disruption is brief and painless. From both an agency and client perspective, it will require us to rethink a lot of the things that we have done for a long time; how we strategize, how we connect with our target audience, and how we work internally all so that we can move beyond simply providing materials for the sales force and more towards providing better integrated communication solutions.

The upside to executing this maneuver will be brands that sail on the opposite course from competitors providing differentiation and connecting with their targets in unique ways.

More to come…

From Jeremy Lichtenberger, Senior Brand Planner, Palio

It’s no surprise that when charities and pro bono organizations advertise their services, they take a serious tone. We often see very real images of starving children in impoverished nations struggling to survive, and it pulls at our heartstrings.

As advertisers, we know this approach is usually necessary to get the seriousness of the message across. But Ben Stiller is not an advertiser, nor does he admit to “know anything about raising money.” What he does know is how to capture an audience’s attention and make them side with the lovable loser characters he creates in his genius comedies such as Meet the Parents and Zoolander.

So about a year ago when he wanted to start a charity that would raise funds to build schools in the poor nation of Haiti, he used his unique skills and founded “Stiller Strong,” along with the motto “Stealing great ideas from other charities to build schools in Haiti.”

Stiller Strong.org is a very serious charitable organization with a very not-so-serious delivery of its message. Stiller, of course, clearly ripped off the name from the popular and successful “Live Strong” campaign by Nike and Lance Armstrong, which was established to raise money for cancer research. Established in 1997, the Live Strong campaign started selling yellow rubber wrist bands for supporters to demonstrate their dedication.

This idea became tremendously trendy as many other charities followed suit. The yellow and black branding of Live Strong was blatantly stolen by Stiller Strong – along with headbands and wrist bands to boot – and it is an absolutely genius display of marketing. Stiller began promoting his organization and showing off his branding on late-night television and through viral videos, and played it up as having no relation at all to Armstrong’s campaign. In one promotional event, Stiller was featured on The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien in full Stiller Strong garb. During the interview, Conan just so happened to get Lance Armstrong live via satellite to discuss with Stiller his disappointment with the brand. It’s a hysterical skit and was a great plug for Stiller Strong because he makes you want to go to the Web site and check out what he is doing.

The site is full of videos including A-list celebrities such as Owen Wilson, Ryan Seacrest, and even former President Bill Clinton. Sadly, the recent and very horrific earthquake in Haiti has demolished the school Stiller Strong was building. In light of these events, the organization has undertaken a new mission to establish temporary schooling for the children of Haiti displaced by the earthquake. Stiller knew the importance of helping this country before the earthquake of January 2010, and his message is even more important now.

The genius of this brand is not the use of star power to gain attention, but the use of comedy as a way to maintain attention and to differentiate the organization from others like it. Take a visit to StillerStrong.org; if it looks familiar, well, that’s the point.

From Guy Mastrion, Chief Global Creative Officer, Palio

One of the simplest and most powerful design lessons I ever experienced was at the hands of the great American designer, Neil Fujita, while I was a student at Parsons School of Design in New York City.

One day, Neil walked into class with what has become in the age of Starbucks, a classic NYC coffee container. As we were settling down, he placed his cup of coffee right on the edge of the desk, not just at the edge, but right on the edge ─ with half the cup hanging over the floor and steam piping out the top. As he started our discussion on creating tension, our eyes riveted to the edge of his desk, and then drawn to Neil, and then back again to the cup. Neil, completely ignoring his cup, very poetically explained the importance of creative tension to a successful design.

Neil conducted an entire session on design with a cup of coffee as an object lesson. Brilliant!

In addition to being an extraordinary designer and wonderful teacher, Neil is also a passionate cook and published food columnist. Sometime after graduation, Neil invited me and my soon-to-be bride out to his place on the east end of Long Island. With the same easy essence as his coffee cup lesson, he prepared an extraordinary meal that was full of the same kind of creative tension; a juxtaposition of flavors and textures that to this day remains as memorable as his personal company.

Neil is an extraordinary man whose wit and genius is matched only by his gracious attitude. I realized over dinner that Neil sort of designs his way through life, always open to opportunities to delight in his ability to generate this wondrous creative tension. He is a natural. But what of those among us who don’t possess Neil’s innate ability? For many clients, some of their most stressful days are when they are asked to judge creative work.

For the untrained being asked to judge ideas, it can be difficult to articulate what you like and don’t like about a particular execution. Why does one version of an idea seem more appealing than another? When confronted with the task of judging creative, many clients default to talking about things like a color they might prefer, or a typeface, or the old comment that’s become a running joke, “make the logo bigger.” These types of conversations make everyone uncomfortable and worst of all, they diminish what should be an insight-driven conversation about the positive tension inherent in the idea and how the execution supports and amplifies that tension.

It is the responsibility of everyone involved in the creation of the work to give it every opportunity to be great. From project initiation to the final sign-off on the idea, the entire team must be focused on establishing a positive tension. This very dynamic honesty energizes the team, the brief, and the ideas. Without this, the work will be a struggle. Too often, the brief lacks any measure of insight that might be the driver of a powerful idea. A great brief creates tension, it pits ignorance against illumination, dark against light, joy against sadness, good against evil; it makes a hero of the ideas that it inspires. For smart creative professionals, the creative process starts with the creation of the brief.

For advertising clients especially, it is important to remember that when a creative person receives your brief, she is judging you on your ability to commit to an insight and a key thought that will be the catalyst to great creative, a tension, a balancing act, just like Neil’s coffee cup. When the results of the hard work of your extended team are hanging on the wall, remember to look for the tension inherent in the ideas. Is it the juxtaposition of copy and image? Is it a visual tension in the image itself, or the graphic design? Is it all these things in combination? What is making the idea work? What is not?

Practice giving learned critique. Ask questions, be curious about the formation and intent of the ideas and not only will it get easier and more enjoyable, it will also become more insightful. Then suddenly you will feel very much a part of the creative team and they will welcome your very meaningful contribution.

As with that cup of coffee balanced precariously on edge, you will learn that a good idea embraces you within its tension, and in that moment, you will be the victor.

Coffee anyone?

From Guy Mastrion, Chief Global Creative Officer

It’s a shame that I.D. Magazine will be no more. It was, and remains to me, a great publication for the simple reason that it was dedicated to design thinking. Design thinking and its subsequent solutions are having a profound and positive effect around the world today. From helping to solve the challenges of clean and portable drinking water to the next great chair, design thinking needs to be celebrated and shared.

So what happened? I still love magazine; to me, they are still a very relevant form of media, maybe not enough. Maybe the pub simply never really caught on with enough people for it to sustain itself; maybe the advertisers stopped spending, maybe all of the above.

I will covet every saved issue.

From Geoff Sheldon, VP, Brand Planning Director

Addressing the age-old paradox that what consumers say in market research and what they do in reality are often two different things, Neuromarketing is a new market research methodology where consumers simply can’t hide their true feelings.

Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and electroencephalography (EEG) to measure brain activity, and sensors attached to the skin to monitor changes in one’s physiological state, Neuromarketing allows us to truly get an understanding of exactly what consumers react to (in either a positive or negative way) when they see or experience marketing materials and messages.

Exploring this new frontier of market research, Buy•ology (a recently released book by Martin Lindstrom), details the results of Lindstrom’s personal Neuromarketing study where over 2000 volunteers were connected to brain scanning equipment and exposed to ads, logos, commercials, brands and products in the name of marketing and science.

Buy•ology is a fascinating read with Lindstrom providing interesting dialogue about consumer reactions to well-known brands and their associated advertising and marketing techniques.

Of particular relevance to agencies and marketers is Chapter 9 (Neuromarketing and predicting the future), where Lindstrom explores the future success of television programs. Two hundred volunteers were shown 3 TV programs and asked to fill out a traditional survey on how they felt about the program while their brains were scanned. When the results were compared, the paper survey results were disparate from the brain scans. Consumers claimed not to like a particular show on paper, yet the brain scan showed they were completely engaged and motivated by the show. Perhaps most telling was that, ultimately, the brain scans painted a picture that was completely in line with the reality of how those shows actually fared in the market.

Imagine applying this methodology to your next round of concept testing and predicting with certainty that the campaign will be a success. As Buy•ology highlights, with Neuromarketing, this is now possible.

For more information about Neuromarketing, and vendors currently using these techniques, please feel free to contact me at gsheldon@palio.com or 518-226-4140.

From Dan Bobear, EVP, Managing Director of Client Service

It all seems quite simple: Get the agencies in to do a pitch, make a selection, negotiate a contract and hourly rate, develop a scope of work, and you’re off to the races, right? As anyone who has been through this process knows it is much more complicated than that.

The negotiation of a successful contract requires experience, patience, and flexibility. Having been involved on both sides of this process for many years, it is clear to me that there is often a complete misunderstanding between the client and advertising agency as to what a quality relationship should be and what the real “product” is.

A common view is that an advertising agency produces creative work, selling materials, and other tangible work products. While these “nuts and bolts” activities are an important part of what an agency offers, they are very basic services that can be delivered by any quality agency.

The real product of an advertising agency should be quality thinking that leads to the creation of market-moving ideas. This is where the biggest disconnect often occurs between the client and advertising agency. In many cases, the pressure for short-term financial performance creates an atmosphere where “deliverables” trump thinking. The focus is often on creating a lot of attractive selling materials for the next sales meeting, and little time is put into what is really valuable: quality thinking. It is innovative ideas that drive a brand’s success in the marketplace, not how much “stuff” is created

The challenge is to create an environment where thinking and idea generation is valued more than the generation of tactics. This all starts with the negotiation of the contract and compensation model. Compensation models vary widely but generally fall into a continuum that ranges from a fixed-fee “project” basis to a full retainer. Under a fixed-fee project, a set price is negotiated around a list of deliverables that will be created during a set time period. The approach is very simple and works quite well when the scope of services and/or budget is very limited. Under these types of arrangements, it is generally difficult to “dedicate” a large number of agency staff to work on a single brand, as the scope of services and time frame are limited.

Every approach has its pros and cons, and there really is no “right” approach. What is important is that the compensation model incentivizes the creation of great ideas over the creation of “stuff.” If the compensation model encourages quality thinking and the formation of a strategic partnership, then it is a good model. Anything less isn’t doing the brand justice. If, instead of focusing on the perfect process or model, you can focus on a few guiding principles, you are much more likely to get to a good place.

In a nutshell: Make it fair, make it about the people, make time to think, and focus more on efficiency and less on the number of hours billed. To create an effective compensation model, it’s necessary to realize that the real agency “product” is ideas. The ideal compensation model will incentivize the creation of an environment that encourages quality thinking and the creation of market-moving ideas. While there are multiple pathways to get there, if marketers can help create this type of environment through their financial structuring, they’ll reap benefits for their brand for many years to come.

From Todd LaRoche, EVP, Managing Director of Creative

What’s your brand’s personality? It’s an easy-enough question to answer – just take a look at your agency’s creative brief or positioning statement, where it might state, “Brand Personality: caring, empathetic, comforting.” Or maybe it’s “confident, assertive, capable.” Or, perhaps it’s “experienced, trusted, wise.”  Whatever it is, it’s in writing and official…  and it sounds just about right based on your product’s attributes. “OK, now let’s move on to the more important elements of the brief, like the Key Thought,” you might suggest.

Hold on. If you really want to ensure that your brand has a personality, a character that will truly engage your target, let’s look a little closer.  You always want your brand to communicate with your consumer in as compelling a way as possible, in a way that might actually suggest your brand understands what it is to be human, and is something – no, someone – who your consumer would like to get to know better, someone who has a little simpatico with your consumer.

So how do you ensure that? First, recognize how important an element your brand’s personality is. If you break up a communication into “what is being said” (the content) and “how it’s being said” (the attitude), you could say the personality of your brand makes up 50% of its expression. Your brand’s personality is the driver behind how your brand speaks, so make sure you’re putting it to work appropriately to get the right message across. As an example, the words “That’s great” can mean two completely different thoughts depending on how they’re uttered – with enthusiasm or sarcasm. In the same way, it’s important to make sure your brand communications are fully leveraging the “how it’s being said” component and that they’re doing it in a way that reinforces your brand’s attitude or personality appropriately.

Second, think about giving your brand some real personality. Human experience makes for some very interesting characters and moods in general. People are three dimensional, not cardboard cut-outs. As such, your brand shouldn’t be flat. Give it some depth of character. Don’t let it be just a throwaway… a shallow personification of your product’s attributes. Just because your product works the fastest doesn’t mean your brand’s personality should be expeditious or to-the-point. Your brand is bigger than your product. Know your competitive space and your target mindset and use that knowledge to create a brand personality that will stand out and appeal to an emotional need in your audience. By rendering a deeper personality with your creative you’ll be sure to draw your audience in deeper as well.

Take the Cheetos “Orange Underground” campaign that features Chester the cheetah. It gives the Cheetos brand real personality. It might not be the kind of personality you admire, but it definitely brings a human dimension to Cheetos beyond its functional attribute, i.e. satisfying flavor. This campaign was developed because consumer research showed that it’s not just kids who eat Cheetos. In fact, 60 percent of all Cheetos consumption is by adults. Robert Riccardi, managing partner at Goodby Silverstein (the ad agency behind the new campaign), says that Chester’s mischievous new personality stems from the idea that “powering down” Cheetos as an adult “feels like a nonconformist moment. You’re supposed to be eating arugula dip, but you have a nonconforming desire.”

So, through Chester’s somewhat mysteriously dark personality, the Cheetos brand is brought to a deeply human place. Chester may only exist in our subconscious, but he does represent an inner urge that many of us express outwardly from time to time: the desire to shatter adult norms. And with that the Cheetos brand bonds with its audience at a deeper level. Here’s one of the spots.

In pharmaceutical advertising, as well, there are great examples of how bringing personality into communications can deepen the impact of a brand’s message. One that most everyone is familiar with is the “Your dreams miss you” campaign for Rozerem.

In this campaign, the Rozerem brand connects at a deeper level with its audience as it uses the quirky visual and verbal language of dreams to remind us how important they are. Sleep specialists will tell you it’s critical for humans to dream… they serve as a processor that helps us make sense of our everyday reality. But rather than asserting this through a less-engaging approach that might establish sleep’s medical importance (and therefore Rozerem’s value), this entertaining campaign lets the viewer enter a dream, as if it were a reunion of sorts, for just a few moments. It says Rozerem has a sense of humor and imagination and sentimentality that all combines to create a deeper understanding of, and care for, the viewer.

The last thing any of us wants to do is abandon our friends, and by establishing an affection between ourselves and the characters we dream through the technique of developed personalities, we welcome the Rozerem brand into our hearts and minds. Take a look.

Remember, truly persuasive, brand-building advertising compels its audience to bond with your brand at a human level. And not until your brand “feels” human will it be able to get that human commitment from your audience. To do that, don’t overlook the power of personality for your brand.

From Todd LaRoche, EVP, Managing Director of Creative

Parents often ask their children this question at the dinner table, and expect, perhaps, that it may lead to interesting dialogue, if not an elevated discussion about life’s more meaningful aspects. Perhaps not. Either way, it is fun to ask people what they’ve learned in a day… or, even, a decade or two or three.

I know you didn’t ask, but if you did, here’s what I would tell you I’ve learned working in the creative department of an advertising agency for what feels like a very long day.

1. The numbers don’t tell you everything (it’s the way the car feels that’s just as important).

2. Put the brand first, not you.

3. Selling an idea is just as important to its survival as your creation of it.

4. Stay current, always be curious.

5. Be honest.

6. Be prepared to be wrong to get to something original.

7. See the gem in every rough idea.

8. Respect others and their ideas and listen to them for real.

9. Have faith in those around you.

10. When you hit a wall, take a walk.

11. Do things outside of your career to keep other parts of your brain/heart active.

12. Recognize that working in a company will always presents challenges beyond “the work.”

What would you say you’ve learned?