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By Anne O’Brien of Remedy Health Media

I have been quite the content creator lately. My October wedding provided plenty of fodder for Facebook posts, reaching not just my friends, but friends of friends. I was providing entertainment that might otherwise have been provided by a commercial publisher, maybe by my company’s site HealthCentral.com, or maybe your brand’s content.

Free content creation has been a concern to publishers from the beginning of the internet. As marketers, we thought we would become our own publishers. At the turn of the century many thought advertising would become obsolete as brands could just use search to drive their target audience directly to their own content. But managing that content, keeping it current, making it relevant, engaging, and trusted has proven to be a bigger challenge than most marketers can manage with great success. The challenges in the pharma space are even more compounded.

Our counterparts in consumer goods have engaged resources that can make their products cultural icons, or part of the consumer landscape. Take Buick’s product placement deal with ABC’s Black-ish. The team at Dentsu Aegis’ The Story Lab was able to not just pull off a simple product placement, but to marry and fully integrate their client, Buick, into the storyline. In one episode the ad agency featured in the program is pitching the Buick account. Per Molly Peck, Buick Marketing Manager: “With any of these integrations, they allow us to be organically woven into a storyline. We get the benefit of being part of the program, so people are actually watching it as opposed to advertising where viewers often don't watch it.” What a brilliant way to capture key copy points and articulate your brand value. Can you see that happening for an Rx product?

We certainly have a “higher bar” when marketing prescription products; so how will we maximize efficiencies, reach the most appropriate audiences and encourage patients to discuss our products’ treatments with their doctors in 2016?

Continuing the heavy mix of television will prove to be less impactful as even the older audiences are skipping ads on their DVR, using Netflix, Apple TV, and other devices to have more control. Many of my friends in advertising (and maybe you, too) will record all their programming simply because ad skipping is a more efficient way to watch TV.

In digging through reports from Nielsen and stories in the advertising trades, ad avoidance is focused on digital ad blocking technology. Reported by PageFair and Adobe, ad block usage has increased by 48% in the past year with 45 million monthly active users in the US. It is rare to hear stats on TV ad skipping and even more difficult to demonstrate who is paying attention to ads. TV remains a powerhouse but with 65% of U.S. adults having smartphones, and 45% having tablets, viewer distraction continues to be a challenge to marketers. Additionally “live TV” viewing by adults 18+ is down to four and a half hours per day – with 18-34 year olds spending 54% of their “media” time with TV.

Partnering or sponsoring the development of storylines about a condition relevant to your brand can be done on TV or in movies, but not without challenges (and good contacts like the team at The Story Lab have!). These tactics are fabulous opportunities for brands, but they don’t have the “legs” to sustain reach and awareness over time. Your advertising needs to be the thread that links the programming, requiring that the advertising message must do some heavy lifting. Beyond the legal requirements, DTC ads must be as engaging as the content surrounding them to ensure that they do not get skipped.

I have always been a firm believer in the catch phrase “content is king”. Is your creative strong enough to be king? Is it in an environment that complements the creative? Does it feel connected to the content… do they go hand and hand?

When I left Johnson & Johnson in 2007, I believed the real patients writing from HealthCentral.com had the most powerful stories to help others like themselves receive the best care possible and do all they can for their condition. I was confident those stories would also result in more visitor engagement with advertising. Today, Remedy Health Media’s team of producers and video experts are bringing powerful stories to life via short-form multimedia executions like Gay’s Rheumatoid Arthritis Live Bold, Live Now: Turning Points story. These stories are proven to have strong content and ad engagement. Results of a site survey found that:

• 94% of respondents would recommend the story to others
• 91% of respondents were inspired
• 82% of respondents related to the story
• 75% of respondents learned something new about the disease

The impact on the advertising is even more profound:

• Respondents were 2x more likely to research the advertised medication online
• Respondents were 2x more likely to talk to their doctor about the advertised medication
• Respondents were 3x more likely to request a prescription for the advertised medication
• Brand recognition of the advertised medication was 3x higher among Turning Points visitors

My 2016 prediction is there will be far more ad skipping, blocking, and avoiding, except where consumers are highly engaged in content that is sought out and relevant for their specific needs. If you need to relax and have a laugh and are also in the market for an Enclave Crossover, Black-ish is the perfect environment to be receptive to Buick’s message. If you are diagnosed with Rheumatoid Arthritis, you may be interested in a TV series featuring a patient with RA, but more likely you will be connected and deeply engaged to learn how real people with RA manage the very real hassles that the condition presents in real life and how they overcame these obstacles.

Looking back, I made some big life changes in 2007, not only did the career move prove to be advantageous; the online dating plan did, too. I am very happy to report that, after 8 years, I sealed the deal with my favorite ad skipper!

Spend enough time with children and you will learn the difference between hearing and listening. You can tell kids to clean up until you are blue in the face without even a turn of their head, but whisper ice cream and they come running. This is the difference between reaching your audience and connecting with them.

With children it is easy to tell which messages are connecting. If the room is still a disaster, your message did not connect; when there is a line in front of you for ice cream, this is a sign you got their attention.

Getting the consumers’ attention is not all that different than children. People react to what is of interest to them, in psychology the term for this is salience.[i] As suggested by Max Sutherland & Alice K. Sylvester in Advertising and the Mind of the Consumer, one way advertisers can gain prominence in the minds of consumers is through repetition. The issue here is there is a difference between reach and frequency, and salience.

The key to connecting with your audience is about identifying the insights that make people feel as if you are speaking directly to them. To this point, veteran marketer Graciela Eleta says, “Great insights are not about adding more factual data or reasons for buying your brand. Finding a great insight is like having an ‘aha’ moment; it’s about unearthing a belief that unlocks consumer’s hearts & minds; one that says ‘this brand understands me and my life’.”

While making a connection is critical for all brands and all consumers, it is even more pronounced when reaching out to multicultural audiences. It is for this reason that Lisa Valtierra, an awarding winning pharmaceutical marketer says, “With a multicultural audience, whether you are talking about the Hispanic, African American, or LGBT segments, it is obvious when they are part of your plan from the start or just an afterthought.” This is why she ensures all creative begins with insights relevant to her target audience as opposed to adapting something from the general market.

It is the presence of consumer insights that explains why two brands with similar executions can perform differently. Unlike with children and ice cream, assessing the creative connect with consumers can be more challenging. This is because a rich marketing mix makes it hard to know which message is working or not.

Creative testing is a standard means of assessment. However, it is based on self-reported feedback of participants. With self-reporting there is potential for participants to give socially acceptable responses. Also referred to as the Hawthorne Effect, this is when people modify or improve an aspect of their response as a result of being observed.[ii]

If only we could understand what the consumers were thinking and not just telling us, it would be a game changer. The good news is that we can to some degree. Hans Berger, a German psychiatrist, was the first to record brain waves in the 1920s, having invented the electroencephalogram (EEG). Today, market researchers are incorporating the use of biometric monitoring tools, such as the EEG and eye tracking, in their studies to understand the unspoken responses of consumers.

Working together Nielsen and Univision, SMG Multicultural set out to try and understand Millennials. The work focused on the bi-lingual Millennials reaction to language and the cultural context of messaging. Using a combination of EEG and eye tracking, the study was able to determine that not only the language but the context in which it is delivered impacts message receptivity and drives greater emotional engagement and memory activation.

The problem with using tools such as EEGs has been cost, but this is changing. Cerora, a new company from Bethlehem, PA, is about to make brain monitoring more accessible. Developed to help with early detection of concussions, the Cerora Borealis multimodal biosensor solution is a single lead EEG brainwave sensor that wirelessly transmits data to a tablet or laptop. What this means is with a specialized headband collecting brainwaves and sending results to a tablet, market researchers now have an easy to use and affordable means of understanding what consumers are thinking.

Just because a piece of creative works with one audience does not mean it will work with another. As Lisa Valtierra has identified, the key to success starts with understanding to whom you are speaking. Be focused on who your audience is, what you want to tell them, and how you want them to feel. Keeping these principals in mind and leveraging the tools available today to understand consumers, you will be on your way to making a creative connection.

References:

[i] Max Sutherland & Alice K. Sylvester: Advertising and the Mind of the Consumer.

[ii] McCarney R, Warner J, Iliffe S, van Haselen R, Griffin M, Fisher P; Warner; Iliffe; Van Haselen; Griffin; Fisher (2007).

Editor’s Note: DTC Perspectives asked a leading creative expert to review current DTC ads for our Creative Assessment issue of DTC in Focus. OPDIVO and BELSOMRA were her standouts. Read what Brenda Molloy has to say about why these ads made her take special notice.

It’s necessary now more than ever for commercials to stand out from the crowd. The ability to cherry-pick what we watch, to fast-forward through commercials, and sometimes to not be exposed to paid media at all, means that if we want our clients to invest their marketing dollars in TV, they’re going to need a good story to tell. And it’s got to be different.

OPDIVO’s Longer Life

I was stopped in my tracks when I first saw this commercial. I watched silently, quickly hit the rewind button, and watched it again. And then I emailed a colleague who I knew was still up to see if they had seen it, too. We ended up sharing a banter of emails about how “groundbreaking” it was and how exciting it was to see a spot like this – not to mention the emotional pull it had, and admittedly, some tears shed.

Getting excited over pharma spots doesn’t often happen, but this time it was different. The OPDIVO commercial stands out, mostly because of what it is about: advanced squamous, non-small cell lung cancer. A cancer with not a great survival rate; this is the first time in years that there are advancements in this type of cancer. And, they are claiming, you have a chance to live longer because of it! That’s damn exciting to me.

In a category like lung cancer, you need to come across as authentic, and that’s what this spot is. It opens with dramatic music, panning over a cityscape as the sun rises. Cliché? Yes, but it works; this is huge after all. As the VO announces the big news for patients living with this type of lung cancer, copy is projected on buildings and integrated into the environment. It’s done very effectively and adds to the drama as the story unfolds with multiple people (stopped in their tracks, too) staring up at the words with their loved ones. They also did a nice job of integrating the OPDIVO icon (an exclamation point) into the environment for the latter part of the spot. Subtle, but showing the excitement and the big news. I wasn’t even bothered by the almost 40-second fair balance, because I was so drawn to seeing them with hope and life left to live. And perhaps one of the most compelling parts of this commercial is in the last six seconds. It’s where BMS thanks the doctors and patients who participated in the clinical trial. Now that’s pretty groundbreaking, too.

BELSOMRA’s Cats and Dogs

In a category that has been around for a while, do we really need another sleep aid? Luckily BELSOMRA has a different story to tell. It works differently than the other sleep aids by turning down Wake mechanisms in the brain, so Sleep can happen. But it’s going to have to look different too.

The concept of personifying Wake and Sleep with a dog and a cat is brilliant, and the Brief must have been spot on. The visual storytelling is engaging, as you see the woman having her Sleep in the beginning (represented by a white cat), but then Sleep disappears. She searches for Sleep, only to find it being disturbed by Wake, the dog. I love the interaction between them all and how she ultimately puts Wake into the little BELSOMRA bed on the floor while Sleep gets to hop into the woman’s bed. The animation of the two “animals” is superb. The movements of both creatures really take on the characteristics of a cat and a dog as they prance, pace, and walk throughout the commercial. Sleep looks more vulnerable and cute, and Wake looks a bit more rambunctious. He is, after all, keeping the woman up at night.

The fair balance is pretty heavy, so it’s good being distracted by the “animals” while the woman goes about her day with Wake interacting with her a little more (doing what dogs do), while Sleep lays a bit low in the background (like cats do). The film quality is absolutely gorgeous. The beautiful musical score throughout the spot sounds like a whimsical rendition of Smetana’s Die Moldau that keeps me humming it long after the commercial is over.

The commercial comes to a close like a nice fairytale where everyone is where they need to be. And, while this spot seems pretty polarizing when we talk about it around the water cooler, I think we can all agree that it has the stopping power to stand apart from the competition.

We are creatures of habit. We buy the same products and follow the same daily routine. Unless compelling information is served to us the moment we’re making a decision, we are reluctant to change.

As the saying goes, old habits die hard.

For healthcare marketers, changing behavior within our industry can seem impossible. Earlier this year in DTC in Focus, I discussed the difficulty in implementing innovation within healthcare marketing. Changing patient behavior can be even harder.

Years ago, we sat on the exam table surrounded by outdated collateral and posters that seemed more decorative than anything else. A clutter of pamphlets about influenza or the dangers of smoking meant nothing if you were visiting the doctor for migraines. These were the early years of point-of-care marketing. With only mass delivery of paper collateral in their toolbox, healthcare marketers lacked the technology and focus to truly target campaigns. The lack of targeted delivery meant that the information being served was actually, by design, misinformation.

But the landscape has changed. For the past decade marketers have applied digital innovations to target consumers at high-impact moments. Digital point-of-care marketing makes it possible to address patients with relevant information at a time when their treatment is top of mind. When patients are sitting in the doctor’s office thinking about their condition right before speaking with their doctor the messaging that surrounds them is very powerful. Starting with the waiting room and following the journey through the appointment into the exam room, point-of-care messaging has become an increasingly necessary part of patient education.

As DTC marketers, it is becoming increasingly more important to ensure we target our exact patient. According to a study by ZS Associates, the majority of treatments are now targeted toward less than 1% of the US population. New point-of-care channels allow us to target specific patients – the ones that can benefit from these exact treatments. As a result, point-of-care spend is growing 8x faster than the overall DTC spend, totaling ~$400M in 2014. Point-of-Care marketing is no gamble, but a tried and true solution that consistently delivers ROI.

None of this is news, but it’s an exciting indicator of the road ahead.

While digital marketing is an incredible tool for DTC marketers, actually changing patient behavior the ultimate goal. Fortunately for us, innovation has progressed and we now have more tools to increase the frequency of engaging patients. New innovations like Mobile advertising capabilities are just the beginning of rounding out the patient journey. By taking a comprehensive approach to POC marketing and embracing the tools that are now at our disposal, we can actually achieve the impossible: change patient behavior.

At the same time, we as patients are increasingly incentivized to take advantage of these tools and be hyper-engaged in our treatment. With recent changes to the healthcare landscape, we are now responsible for more out-of-pocket healthcare costs. This means we want and need to know more about our conditions and the treatment options that are at our disposal. Read: we crave the information and consume it, especially when we’re at a doctor’s visit.

Similarly, healthcare providers are taking advantage of improvements in technology to redesign their workflow and create a more efficient practice with better care coordination. EMRs are rapidly improving in quality, which, when integrated with point-of-care messaging, can create a customized, contextual experience for every patient.

Imagine walking into an office and receiving messaging on your mobile device that is relevant to the specific point in your treatment. Imagine being able to see, in the exam room, visualizations of your past visits, alongside your treatment options. As a patient, you will have more access to information that will better inform your decision-making.

So, remember those behaviors that were so hard to change? It is now easier than ever to understand the impact of changing them. Tech companies have made these technologies a reality, and they will continue to make it easier to guarantee returns for brands.

DTC marketers have built an industry creating hundreds of effective solutions to a singular challenge – how to change patient behavior – and we are at an inflection point. We have the opportunity to address the challenge with unprecedented accuracy, which means we need to approach these new channels intelligently and empathetically, always with the patient in mind. Our goal is to change patient behaviors for the better, and if we embrace and continue to innovate the platforms available, we will make that goal a reality.

There are millions of patients that need to change their behavior to live healthier. Let’s do something about it.

In just the past handful of years, the Point of Care (POC) options available for messaging have undergone dramatic expansion. Where once POC meant patient messaging at the pharmacy or specialized magazines distributed to doctor office waiting rooms, we now have choices that offer an array of patient and healthcare provider (HCP) media solutions. New companies offer messaging services through in-office displays, Electronic Health Records (EHR), patient registration tablets, telemedicine, place-based apps, wearables and more.

With so many compelling choices to consider, the importance of creating a plan to execute, measure, and optimize programs delivered through these companies is critical. While goals may differ brand to brand, there are three strategies that can help you get the most from POC programs.

1. Data driven insights are used to craft a complementary combination of relevant messages delivered to the right audience at the right place and time. For example, while messaging according to decile-based HCP target lists remains a staple consideration, it’s important to think about additional segmentation criteria made possible through the use of anonymous-patient data. The ability to select doctors according to their patients’ access to your brand, adherence, pattern of adoption, and more, allows us to consider a variety targeting criteria to help ensure campaign effectiveness.Staying with the HCP as our target example, a network of POC partners must be selected so that the combination of partners brings the desired reach across the targeted HCP offices. Such a network can be comprised of a single POC vendor type, like a group of in-office-display partners. Or it might make sense to knit together a variety of POC partners to include vendors that provide EHR messaging plus in-office display companies. The resulting plan can touch patients in the waiting room with a complementary message to the HCP through the EHR platform.

2. True patient outcomes are used to understand what works best for each program and message type. Each POC media partner and message type represents a measurable tactic. It’s vital that the same data source and business rules are used for all measurement across a campaign so that each message and tactic can be evaluated in relation to the other. Staying with the example above, each patient response is aggregated to their targeted doctor and the relative impact of each POC media partner can be ranked. It’s important to employ anonymous patient data to ensure that a clear signal of behavior change is captured. Depending on the objective of the campaign, key performance indicators (KPIs) such as changes in new patient brand starts, adherence, or other metrics may be used to determine program effectiveness.

3. Incremental results versus a control group need to be consistently monitored to optimize spend according to what’s working best. If new patient brand starts are the KPI of interest, then each new patient can be tied to the cost of acquisition through the POC tactic(s) that drove the outcome. POC media partners and tactics can be adjusted during the campaign in order to optimize spend where the tactics are having the greatest effect in driving new patient brand starts.

Of course, each campaign is different. Innovations in place-based messaging and other complimentary capabilities will continue to help POC programs bring new opportunities to drive HCP and patient behavior and improve overall outcomes.

These considerations represent an approach to optimization, and while there are other viable methods, media analytics are a fast evolving science. The explosion of available data in recent months makes it possible to apply cross channel targeting and optimization to all media channels (POC, digital, television, print) at the patient and HCP level. Today, we have more ways to assess our work and, most importantly, to use the findings to develop more effective messages and delivery channels that help HCPs, as well as improve direct-to-patient outcomes.

Two of Dave Nussbaum’s Publicis Health Media colleagues, Matt McNally & Sharon Patent, will delve further into this topic during their session on leveraging big data, only at the 2015 PEPP National Conference. Their discussion will teach you to know how, when, and where to engage with patients and HCPs. Don’t miss out – 2015 PEPP National Conference, held Nov 5-6 at the Ritz Carlton in Philadelphia. Register today!