Published in Marketing: Monday 09 January 9, 2012

As you work out how to exploit mobile in 2012, you need to start by working out which relevant and compelling consumer problem you’re going to address and how it delivers a benefit to your business.

It’s also important to understand that mobile represents just one of the many consumer touch points that you need to serve as part of your overall marketing strategy. Mobile marketing should not be treated in isolation.

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Of course, this trend is a reality everywhere. More and more of us are armed with our mobile devices of choice and use them more or less non-stop, 24×7. Just walk down any busy street and take a look around - almost everyone, regardless of their demographic, is interacting with their mobile devices.

And the more we interact with our mobile devices, the more we will want to explore the mobile web. We’re already hovering tantalizingly close to the point where more people access the Web using their mobile devices than they do using a PC. To me, it’s clear that 2012 will be the year the mobile web comes to the fore.

And so, brands will start to realise that their mobile strategy can no longer be treated in isolation. From now on, every digital experience will need to be built with mobile devices as the starting point and brands will have to develop digital experiences for three screens: the smartphone, tablet, and personal computer.

This will be a huge shift for most brands that have to date manifested their mobile strategy in the creation of native apps. In 2012 it will be clear that a strategy anchored in native app creation is costly and too limited to have wide appeal.

In 2012 marketers will realise that mobile needs to be deeply integrated into the overall marketing strategy. A mobile strategy has to be orchestrated and in sync with all other marketing efforts. It’s simply a matter of adjusting to and exploiting the places that consumers now inhabit.

In fact Forrester predicts success in 2012 will mean moving beyond mobile experimentation. The research firm says that good multiscreen marketing will depend on two factors: your ability to understand when, where, and how you can reach your customers, and your ability to engage with them appropriately across channels and platforms.

You see, one channel does not necessarily take over from another. It’s another touch point that’s more personal, always-on, social, and location-aware. And for consumers, expectations around mobile will continue to soar.  If you’re not optimised in this space in 2012 - you’ll be missing out on a large chunk of your market.

Indeed, I think that one of the biggest disappointments this year is how few brands have demonstrated that they really understand the mobile space. The investment in optimised mobile experiences has been sorely lacking. Despite the growth in penetration of smartphones and tablets and consumers using mobile in a variety of ways to interact with brands, as many as 80% of Australian businesses don’t have mobile-optimised websites. This obviously represents a massive opportunity and I think we’ll see this is a big focus in 2012.

And as consumers’ expectations rise, they’ll be seeking out more personal, relevant, and convenient content on the go. Without doubt, there will be more varieties of smartphones and tablets in your consumers’ hands, making it critical to deliver optimised user experiences across all devices.

But as marketers recognise the huge and urgent need to mobilise their content - the ongoing fragmentation of the mobile landscape will create more than a few headaches.

Marketers need to find a mobile solution that will allow them to connect with their customers or reach their audience across all browsers on all devices. And at this stage, for all its hype, HTLM5 is still a long way off delivering on such a promise.

In the meantime, I advocate using proven technologies that will afford you the luxury of writing once and running everywhere with optimised user experiences within the browser across all mobile operating systems. More than simply Apple iOS or Google Android, as important as they are, but  Nokia Symbian, MS Windows Phone 7, Samsung bada, HP WebOS, and RIM BlackBerry as well.

In 2012, successful marketers will place a sophisticated understanding of the mobile customer at the centre of planning and execution to manage across multiple screens.

Published in Campaign Brief:  Tuesday 03, January 2012

They say that 2011 saw the dawning of the post-PC era. With the accelerated shift to mobile everything, I can certainly understand why. While I don’t believe the PC is dead, I do believe that mobile is moving at such a high speed that in 2012 it will be imperative for marketers to own the mobile screen - no matter how daunting the task. While 2011 might have been the year that brands “did” mobile by creating a native app, in 2012 marketers will understand that mobile is so much more.

For me it’s not that very different from those brands that back in the day that created brochure ware websites and those that realised the full commercial potential, connectedness, and power of the web.

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Furthermore, the research claimed that many businesses were confusing having a mobile app with having a mobile strategy. Believe me, it’s not the same thing. A mobile strategy includes acknowledging the multifaceted mobile landscape instead of focusing on just a few devices.

So, in the process of conducting some of my own research prior to an event I was attending I searched for a handful of banks and financial institutions to see what they looked like on my iPhone.

It wasn’t pretty.

Good news

I’m not going to name names, but I searched 30 brands in all and discovered that just 11 of the sites were optimised for mobile – whether with a mobile site, mobile app or both. This represents 37% which is some way ahead of the Google/IPSOS research findings (admittedly using a very small sample) – but it’s clearly nothing to celebrate about. Particularly for an industry that is often praised for its mobile thinking.

Bad news

Worryingly, 19 of these sites were not in the least bit optimised for mobile users. The non-optimised sites simply presented me with the standard version of their website. And while I don’t have butcher’s fingers, navigating a website designed for 1024×768 pixels on a screen that’s 320×480 pixels is just not good business.

Remember, Australia has the second highest penetration of smartphone usage in the world. And this number is set to climb to 60% in the coming 12 months which can only mean more and more people will be hopping online from just about everywhere.

While you may offer a compelling and engaging web experience from a PC or laptop, if the experience is woeful on a mobile device, you just won’t be relevant to the increasing smartphone audience and missing out on the opportunity to remain constantly connected to your customers as they ‘go mobile’.

You can’t afford to be Apple centric

And it’s not about simply creating an iPhone app and considering the job done. You have to think carefully about your target market and cover all options. While a large number of your customers may have an iPhone, an equally large number may have a Blackberry, Motorola, Nokia or other brand of smartphone.

You need to give your customers a truly seamless brand experience regardless of whether it’s a mobile website or native mobile application.

You need to think about mobile in exactly the same way as you plan your website developments. The mobile experience needs to be as good as the optimal web experience you provide. You need to understand your customers and determine what they need when they’re on the move, and work out how your mobile site will help them do it.

As smartphones become an inseparable part of our lives, if mobile isn’t a focal point of your marketing strategy, then I can only suggest that you address this now before you’re left behind.

While retail foot traffic was up and cash registers were merrily ringing, a big chunk of the shopping frenzy came from ecommerce sites. Given the consumer shift to mobile everything, not surprisingly shoppers using mobile devices like smartphones and iPads accounted for more of the purchases than ever before.

As part of its Smarter Commerce initiative, IBM released some interesting data on online spending over the holiday weekend. Its online retail benchmark study revealed that online Thanksgiving Day spending had jumped by more than 39%. Meanwhile Black Friday online sales increased by more than 24% compared to the same period last year.

The study also uncovers the arrival of mobile deal seekers on Black Friday. These savvy mobile shoppers exploited their devices as a research tool for both in-store and online bargains. Traffic originating from mobile devices increased to 14.3% on Black Friday this year compared to 5.6% in 2010 as sales from mobile devices surged to account for 9.8% of total online sales.

Shoppers using the iPad led to more retail purchases more often per visit than other mobile devices. Conversion rates for iPad users reached 4.6% compared to 2.8% for all mobile devices. Indeed collectively iPhone and iPad shoppers accounted for 10.2% of all online retail traffic on Black Friday while Android users represented 4.1%.

Elsewhere, mobile shopping data from eBay and PayPal over the shopping weekend corroborate IBM’s findings. eBay said shoppers in the US purchased nearly two and a half times as many items via eBay Mobile this Black Friday compared to 2010. While PayPal Mobile announced a five-fold increase in global mobile payment volume on Thanksgiving and a six-fold increase on Cyber Monday this year when compared to the same time last year.

While all this is US data, I think it has real relevance for the Australian market. The US is obviously having a tougher economic time than we are over here, but Australians are heavy users of their mobile devices and have taken to mobile shopping with gusto.

Indeed some industry commentators are proclaiming that the figures suggest the true advent of the post-PC era.  For retailers here in Australia, this means providing an optimal customer experience across multiple channels, and creating a seamless experience on mobile.

And it’s not simply a matter of shoppers turning to websites to avoid crowded shopping malls. Australians are increasingly using smartphones as they shop in physical shopping strips. While mobile phones are being used to both research and purchase items, many consumers are actually using their mobile phone as they look at the product in a physical store. Australian consumers love the convenience of mobile to find the best deals from wherever they are.

Sales driven by mobile will undoubtedly play a major role in festive holiday shopping. Whether you’re in a position to capitalise on this trend will depend on how you use mobile technology to interact and engage with your customers.

They were followed closely by pharmacists, nurses and nutritionists/dieticians. However, what is surprising is that some of the most credible information sources were ‘ordinary’ people - someone living with a disease or condition, and friends and family members.

I think this is a reflection of the rise of social media and the increasing emphasis on recommendations from trusted contacts and a decline in the reliance on traditional advertising when making lifestyle decisions.

However in healthcare, healthcare professionals are still the most trusted sources of information, particularly in Australia, where regulations restrict discussions between pharmaceutical companies and consumers.

Traditionally, the most common method of getting doctors exposed to new therapies is sending pharmaceutical reps out on the road to call on doctors. But today, digital tools are being used to make rep contacts more effective, and to aid the process in other ways.

Product familiarisation programs, where doctors are able to prescribe a new therapy to a limited number of patients before the medication is available on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, are one area where digital solutions are having an impact.

Online program registration provides reps and management with a real-time view of how the program is tracking, while also making it easy for doctors to enroll and providing them with resources about the medication at their fingertips.

A lot has been written about the explosion in medical apps for consumers and healthcare professionals. But when it comes to product familiarisation, the most powerful way that apps can function is as tools that reps can use to provide doctors directly with important information about a new medication.

One of the biggest developments in digital healthcare marketing has been the rise of e-detailing, where reps use mobile devices like tablets and smartphones, rather than static, complicated, expensive, hard copy sales kits to discuss the therapeutic action of a new medication.

Bill Drummy, writing in Medical Marketing & Media, commented on the explosion in use of iPads (and it is almost exclusively iPads at this stage) by pharmaceutical sales teams in an industry that has traditionally been slow to adopt technology.

“In contrast to all earlier waves that washed over the business landscape, pharma doesn’t appear to be following its ‘follower’ instincts – ie, waiting to see if the platform proves out before jumping on board,” he wrote.

In the US, half of the top 20 pharmaceutical companies are using tablets to aid their product familiarisation programs, which is pretty impressive when you consider that the iPad has only been available for about 18 months and its Android competitors are six months old or less.

Drummy writes that there are five aspects of tablets that have led to its quick uptake: 1) the fact that it’s instantly available; 2) you can control it with your fingers to create an involving experience; 3) it’s easy to move between different media; 4) GPS and Accelerometer technology can provide location-based information and respond to movement; and 5) its size brings the rep in close with the doctor.

Many pharmaceutical sales forces in Australia are now employing iPads in their presentations to doctors, but I think most companies are still in the ‘gee-whiz’ phase, where they create a PDF version of their current sales kit and everyone ‘oohs and ahhs’ as the rep sweeps from one page to the next with their fingers.

There is a lot more that can and should be done, such as showing animations of mode of action, playing videos and even using the iPad’s camera to conduct live video conversations.

Over the next few years, apps developed for tablet computers will quickly evolve into ways that will help doctors to understand much more fully how new medical treatments can change the lives of patients.

Simon van Wyk, Founder of HotHouse  talks to Ray Welling from Vivacity Health about the rise of digital and mobile in pharmaceutical marketing. Many pharmaceutical sales forces in Australia are now employing iPads while medical apps developed for tablets are helping doctors to understand much more fully how new medical treatments can change their patients’ lives. At the same time healthcare apps are successfully supporting patients to manage their illnesses.

Ray-Welling-discussion

]]> http://www.hothouse.com.au/blog/2011/11/18/digital-and-mobile-focus-for-pharma-marketing/feed/ http://www.hothouse.com.au/blog/2011/11/09/digital-solves-a-sticky-healthcare-situation/ http://www.hothouse.com.au/blog/2011/11/09/digital-solves-a-sticky-healthcare-situation/#comments Tue, 08 Nov 2011 22:08:15 +0000 Simon van Wyk http://www.hothouse.com.au/blog/?p=3475 Globally, more than half of the billions of prescriptions that are filled each year are not taken correctly. Roughly one-third of patients take all their medicine as prescribed, while one-third only take some of their medicine, and the other third don’t even bother filling the prescription in the first place.

In Australia, patients stay on chronic anti-hypertensive therapy for less than two years on average, while 38% of patients younger than 40 years don’t even bother to collect their second prescription.

Patient compliance (AKA adherence or persistence) is a big problem for patients, the health system, and the industry. US studies show that 10% of all hospital admissions and 25% of nursing home admissions are due to poor adherence to prescribed therapy. This results in more than 100,000 deaths annually and trillions of dollars in avoidable costs to healthcare systems around the world, not to mention the revenue effect on medication sales.

From selling to helping

So why are we so bad at sticking to our medication? A study by Harris Interactive revealed that the top five reasons are:

• “I forgot to take it”
• “I had an unpleasant side effect”
• “It’s too expensive”
• “I don’t care what the doctor says – I don’t need to take it”
• “It’s hard to get it or take it”

The good news is that digital has emerged as an incredibly effective way to increase patient compliance. It’s all part of the changing pharmaceutical marketing landscape, which like many other industries is being transformed by digital developments and social media.

The pharmaceutical marketing model is moving from a product focus to a customer focus. That means, instead of expending their marketing effort in telling healthcare professionals and patients about their products, pharma companies are focusing on providing services for customers, building a portfolio of customer-focused services around a product. These patient-centred services help patients understand the importance of staying on their therapy and increase compliance.

As Pfizer US marketing VP Joe Shields said at this year’s ePharma Summit in New York, “We are no longer in the manufacturing business; we are in the behaviour modification business.”

Digital patient support programs and tools, either working on their own or in concert with offline patient support efforts, help increase compliance in a number of ways:

• They offer credible information about a condition (in contrast to what patients find when they do their own search), including the best ways of treating it and why it’s important to continue with their therapy.
• They use multimedia such as video to deliver the message in several ways to appeal to different learning styles.
• They offer interactivity, via email communications, SMS, web apps, etc. that meets patients at their point of need.
• They can offer a community where patients can share with others who are dealing with the same condition and support each other.

Information with feeling

One of the most powerful ways digital patient support tools can increase compliance is to give patients tangible data that encourages them to do what their doctor tells them.

Wired magazine editor Thomas Goetsz calls this “information with feeling”. He cites research that shows that fear campaigns such as anti-smoking advertising do not get people to change their behaviour; the most effective driver to compliance is efficacy, starting out with the belief that you will stick with a program or therapy.

In other words, it needs to be easy to obtain information that will encourage you to stay with your therapy. Specific, personalized information helps create a connection that shows a patient why it’s important to stay compliant and what will happen if they do (or don’t).

This is where digital tools such as blood glucose monitors that plug into a smartphone, or weight loss apps that use the sensors in an iPhone to track a patient’s progress can make a significant difference to a patient’s behaviour.

When digital helps this to happen, everybody wins – patients stay healthier, the health system carries a lighter burden, and the pressure to develop new, expensive therapies is lessened as more value is extracted from existing treatments.

It’s not swearing I object to. In fact, so long as it’s inventive, interesting or being done by someone bigger than me, I don’t mind it at all.

The bad language bringing me out in a rash, is the incessant, ‘corporate-jargo-speak’ infecting every written aspect of marketing communication.

For instance, when the bank wants to switch you to email statements, they don’t come out and say so. Instead, they tell you for your convenience as part of their ongoing commitment to enhance service offerings to valued customers, they have streamlined administration practices with a commitment to a targeted migration from paper-based communications to digitally focused information streaming, going forward.

Someone, somewhere (George W Bush’s semi-literate spin doctor, maybe) seems to have established a new writer’s creed, which states that writing should be euphemistic, verbose, pompous, obscure, and where possible, unintelligible. Forget colourful metaphors and similes and above all, never use language the way human beings do (ie with the wit, bad grammar, clarity, warmth, charm and individual flavour real people use).

The idea seems to be that self-important, barely comprehensible verbiage is more business-like and flatters because it tells customers they’re important, intelligent people who understand difficult issues. So they’ll be too busy feeling flattered to notice your message is crap. (If they can understand the message that is.)

The idea is flawed of course, because all it does is piss people off, confuse them and make them think (quite rightly) that you’re an idiot.

Nonetheless, far too many scribblers now follow this dictum.

A quick Google search threw up these pieces of literary vomit: (company names have been changed to protect the guilty).

“DUFUS Industries is comprised of many organizational elements with a single purpose: to enable, support and expedite the mission-critical objectives of our seven operating components and Directorates…”

“Dumm Corps must work with its valued customers on the creation of ORDs that accurately reflect their mission-critical operational requirements through active participation in the requirements development initiatives.”

After twenty reads I still can’t fathom what the ‘single purpose’ is in the first piece, nor what “…requirements development initiatives “ means in the second. But this phrase from Whogivesashit Grp, takes the mission-critical biscuit.

“Accelerated emergence of High-Maturity Behaviours.”

Hardly Shakespeare is it?

And while we’re on Shakespeare who coined some apt phrases in his time, whatever happened to his suggestion that ‘brevity is the soul of wit’?

Trying to find information about a company’s products on their website, recently, I was nearly moved to throw my laptop out of the window. Not fair on the laptop, I know, but it shows the negative effect badly used words can have. Especially when you wade through hundreds of the buggers to find something - and then don’t find it.

Another thing the language butchers do is make up words in an attempt to add gravitas and appear more dynamic.

No problem with new words. Shakespeare coined hundreds, and every one a winner. But he was good at language and let’s face it, corporate word mashers ain’t. These new words are flavourless, butt ugly and designed to exaggerate, embroider and obscure – to do anything in fact, except enlighten.

And adding ‘ality’ or ‘ation’ to perfectly good words as in“…increasing essentiality of purchasing …” or “Ideation for solution engineering…” simply turns them into perfectly horrible ones.

Our language is being systematically tortured and lies bleeding, in the gutters of countless magazines, web pages, mail shots and TV commercials.

This is no way to treat our mother tongue. It’s also stupid because the whole point of language is communication. And the communication business is the one we’re meant to be in.

There are small pockets of resistance out there. I received this email from UK based Paddy Power recently. Not the most amazing copy ever but no ‘mission statements’ or ‘valued customers’. And no self-important corporate speak or creepy crawly fawning. Just a clear message, written with wit and aimed at a real human being, not a ‘demographically targeted customer profile’.

More power to Paddy Power, I say. And up the resistance! The language needs all the help it can get.

So writers and creative directors everywhere, put your pens on low adjective diets. Kick the clichés. Bring back verbs and nouns. And when you come across dead robot language, kill it fast before it infects everything.

And next time you’re invited to a pre-meeting meeting for some blue sky thinking (in or out of the box) to get ducks in a row, prioritise deliverables and action them in going forward scenarios, please, please, please don’t keep me in the loop.