helping healthcare tell its story

These are difficult times, difficult markets, difficult circumstances. Everyone feels it. Many acknowledge it. Some overcome it. The financial guys call it a shakeout: smaller fish are gobbled up by larger, insolvent companies go bankrupt, and shops evaporate for lack of customers.

In times like these one emotion seems to predominate: fear. You can feel it in almost every industry. And while there are signs that the economy is changing, fear seems to be the operative force at work today.

There are three specific fears I see at work in advocacy development. The first is fear of the client. This fear was well in place before this economy sent everybody running for cover, but has been exacerbated by the prolonged downward spiral. We work in an environment where the singular goal seems to be to please the client at any cost. Now don’t get me wrong. My goal is always to please the client. But the nature of my consulting relationship precludes me from doing whatever is expedient just to keep the client happy. The client has engaged me to give them my best advice on achieving their communication goals. They’ve come to me because they don’t have that expertise. I respect my clients tremendously, but I’m not in fear of them.

What we’re really talking about here is the fear that you won’t get the second call. In fact that’s short-term thinking. Will you get the second call if you withhold your expertise from your client, and the project goes belly up?

There’s a second fear that I see very often these days in pharma communications: the fear of failure. This fear paralyzes innovation (something we need more of, not less). Because budgets are tight and the future is a bit unknown, the safe bet is to not take any risks, challenge any norms, or change any practices. If there was any fear guaranteed to keep us pinned to this downward spiral, this is it. What we need now, to pull us out, is a dose of creativity and courage. At a recent ad board I took a bold stab and stopped a meeting ten minutes from the start to redirect it to where I knew the client wanted to go, but wasn’t heading. That change in direction and tone resulted in the outcome we were looking for. Could the client have gotten pissed off and sent me packing? Sure. But I was betting that in all our preparation, we had built a rapport of trust in my judgment.  The bottom line is, if you’re not willing to make a mistake you’re never going to advance your position.

The third fear I see is fear of the community in which we work. We have the privilege of working with some of the most educated and brilliant people on the planet. That’s one aspect of our work that I love. I have met some of the most amazing, passionate people in pharma. But the tendency for those of us who don’t have all that medical education and training is to cower under its significance. If you find yourself taking on a position of mental inferiority you don’t have a clear understanding of what you bring to the table. I wasn’t invited to the party for my expertise in pharmacokinetics. I was invited for my expertise in communications. It’s with this understanding that I approach each member of the project team. I bring my expertise and they bring theirs, each of us learning from the other. What’s more, the project is completed with excellence—because each has played his or her part to the fullest.

Pharmaceutical communications is at a turning point in its development. Kicking this fear thing in the head will help us move forward. Honest communication between client and agency will produce the desired result.

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How do you reach a large number of cardiologists today with vital content regarding cardiovascular risk reduction?

Ten years ago the only way to do that was to have a series of meetings across the globe until you reached your target number, or the budget ran out, whichever came first. Today we can do it from the comfort of our own office or local production studio. No flights need be booked. No hotels contracted. And best of all, no schedules interrupted for days. The content is more focused, the experience is more engaging, and ROI goes through the roof.

Webcasts are nothing new. They’ve been around for quite a while. But when we combine the various technologies available today, we can create a product that’s greater than the sum of its parts. With broadband technology in just about every office and most homes, the ability to render multiple streams of information on a single webpage, to poll and interact with the audience, generates endless possibilities. The move from live to virtual meetings has increased in our business year over year.

One of my clients had a dream to reach hundreds of cardiologists with a live interactive debate. Their goal was to raise awareness of the involvement of class effect in the selection of antihypertensives for cardiovascular risk reduction. The debate would bring together thought leaders with two distinct points of view (class effect and evidence-based medicine) to argue the pros and cons with me before studio cameras. The stream would be webcast to groups of HCPs around the country simultaneously. But rather than have the audience sitting there passively listening, they would be able to direct the conversation through interactive polling. At predetermined points in the debate I asked questions of the audience to see what information they required to decide how they stood on our central question: Is it acceptable to generalize to a class effect, or should we adhere strictly to evidence-based therapy with individual compounds? The results of the various questions I asked told me where to direct the discussion and what topics needed further clarification for the audience. We concluded the “show” with an open forum Q&A.

The results of this process were nothing short of stellar. Within a short span of time (30 minutes) we effectively moved the audience’s opinion on the matter in question. Specifically 82.5% had changed their stance on our central question after viewing the discussion along with the data presented. In addition the thought leaders involved enjoyed being a part of such a cutting edge program and felt that they had done their colleagues a service by participating.

Does this mean that face-to-face meetings are a dying breed? Hardly. Nothing will ever match the depth of personal interaction that takes place at a live meeting. Many ideas are communicated, not just from the podium, but through the nuances inherent in human interaction. A webcast can never match that depth of communication. But as travel costs increase, budgets decrease, and time becomes a commodity in short supply, the technological options become increasingly attractive.

So attractive, in this case, that the client is considering doing another round of the same show. Although I’ve been involved in dozens of webcasts, there was something different about this one. It might have been the spirit of the team, the excellence of the content, or the brilliance of its execution. Most likely it was all of those qualities working synergistically. But there was an added factor that sent this project into home run territory–communications design. Subtle yet significant tweaks through the planning process brought us to a natural communication pattern that was a determining factor in the project’s effectiveness. The discussion ebbed and flowed according to the moment, according to those participating in the conversation. What it wasn’t was sterile and linear like some PowerPoint-driven data dump. It was, in fact, a conversation–not a presentation. This factor gave the program its winning quality. And while the content was compelling, the method of delivery made it unforgettable.

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Stop the data dumps! Now that I’ve gotten that off my chest maybe I can deal with the issue of medical meeting design in a more genial fashion. Maybe if we stopped and added a few extra questions to our planning mix we could pump up the ROI in our meetings. Maybe if we considered not just what we want to communicate but how we’re going to communicate it, we’ll end up with a meeting that people actually look forward to and, dare I say it, seek to attend. How do we do this? Let’s start by adding a new dimension to the planning process—communications design—that focuses on the how not just the what. Because meetings are communications events, right?

Communications design asks the questions that can insure our desired outcome. For example: What is the overarching message that needs to be communicated through this meeting? I often find it helpful to ask my clients not only what their desired outcome is, but also what the key message is that they want to communicate through this meeting. Everything else builds on this.

Once that question is answered then we can ask a more specific design question like: What types of sessions will support us in getting this message across? Here we begin to break free from the standard data-dump scenario. Will a facilitated discussion of the issues surrounding the message give the participants more ownership of it? How about an interactive exercise, like ranking features and benefits? Of course we will need to present some data in the traditional PowerPoint format. But can we break up the tendency to lecture, and get interactive with the participants by organizing the presentation into modules–making it easier to segment the story into its chapters? This allows us to take questions throughout the presentation, giving it the feel of a conversation, thus engaging the audience on a deeper level.

At this point the look and feel of the meeting begin to come together in the planner’s mind. We can then look at the agenda and order these sessions in a fashion that will allow our key message an uninhibited pathway into the audience’s mind. Heavy data (with Q&A integrated) is best dealt with early in the morning, with interactive exercises to follow lunch, and discussions concluding the day. But these decisions need to be made in the context of the myriad other issues surrounding the meeting, like its length, time of day, room availability, flight schedules, and budget, to name a few.

Whether planning an advisory board, speaker training, investigator meeting, roundtable discussion, or dinner meeting, looking at it from a communications design point of view, before you take any action, will greatly facilitate getting your message across, and will help you achieve greater ROI.

It has been estimated that the average person is subjected to over 3000 different messages per day. If yours is going to stand out and be remembered, communications design has got to be a part of your strategy.

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