Hill+Knowlton Strategies

On Rare Disease Day last week, a new online community was launched for patients with Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis (IPF) on the existing patient website, RareConnect. RareConnect is led by the non-governmental, patient driven, rare disease organisation EURORDIS, and makes information available via patient advocacy groups from a variety of countries. RareConnect also provides a forum style platform for patients to meet and interact, allowing users to share individual experiences about how IPF has affected them, creating a sense of community between users. The website even has a translation service for all of its posts, making information available in five different languages and allowing its reach to be truly global.

Rare Disease Day also saw the announcement of Boheringer Ingelheim (BI) working with the online patient community Patient’s Like Me to enhance the website’s IPF community. Patients Like Me is a similar type of platform to RareConnect, but the main differences are that it has not been set up by patient advocates and is not just for rare diseases. With BI’s involvement, it looks like the IPF community now have online spaces on the platform where they can meet others with similar diseases, also allowing patients to input their health info and track their diseases. Although these communities have been around for a few years now, the involvement of patient advocacy groups and pharmaceutical companies to help strengthen these sites is new, developing the pages to be more patient focussed and giving them more of a ‘community feel’. 

Tracking patients’ health data in apps and online is a trend we have seen increasingly and now, patient data tracking company, Qualcomm, and patient information site, WebMD, have forged a partnership to track patient data and make information searched for on WebMD, more relevant for the user. Qualcomm partner with a large range of medical devices, such as blood pressure and blood glucose monitors that are connected to the internet and have a cloud based platform, which stores and tracks the health data from these devices. The idea behind partnering with WebMD, is that rather than receiving generic information when searching, you can receive information that is relevant to you. The idea is not new, and we have seen Google collect search information to make searches more relevant, but this is one of the first ways we’ve seen the potential for this style of tailored information for patients in the healthcare setting. The partnership is still early in its development, but it will be very important to see how this develops, and if this style of searching for patient information catches on in the future.

Last week, a study was released in the American Journal of Medical Quality, looking at the correlation between hospital Facebook likes and the quality of the hospital. Not only were the hospitals that had the higher number of Facebook likes more likely to be recommended by patients, it was also positively correlated with the mortality rate, meaning that based on this study, the more likes a hospital had, the better it was. This study shows the importance of having a strong and engaging Facebook presence as well as demonstrating that patients increasingly want more information from hospitals to make a more informed decision about where they seek treatment.

In the past week, there have been a number of interesting healthcare stories that have been making noise in the digital world.

As we’ve seen on this blog, the number of healthcare apps are ever increasing and now this growth has been truly cemented and recognised by none other than Apple. For a while, Apple has been creating lists of its favourite apps for specific demographics, including children, parents and film lovers. The new Healthcare Professional (HCP) list categorises apps that HCPs can use for reference, medical education, imaging, patient education, personal care and patient monitoring. Although iTunes have only made these available in the US, what’s interesting is that the list includes apps from pharmaceutical companies, including Novartis and Medtronic. Understanding and keeping track of how to get onto the list could be crucial for pharma companies to gain more visibility for their apps and help bring greater HCP engagement to mainstream attention.

Another story that garnered significant attention was that of the world’s first live-tweeted C-section. The Memorial Hermann Hospital in Houston tweeted the whole C-section surgical procedure from beginning to end, with followers able to see the process in real time. Essentially an educational procedure, this garnered a large amount of traction, with an estimated 72,000 people watching the C-section live on Twitter and an additional 11,000 viewing it in another format. This is not the first time a surgical procedure has been live-tweeted, with the same hospital carrying out a live brain surgery and live heart surgery last year. The popularity of this is a clear sign of  the educational value this type of digital format offers as well as perhaps whetting the (somewhat gory) appetite of many online.

As communicators, when creating campaigns we know how important it is to target the right audience with the right message. Previously, studies have shown women to be the influencers and decision makers in the household, and the results of recent survey have now shown that women are more likely than men to search for health information and advice online. According to a survey from the Pew Research Centre, 79% of female internet users vs 65% of male internet users went online to look for health information. These percentages overall are quite high, proving the potential reach an online campaign can have. This also demonstrates that when considering a digital campaign, it is important to think about whether it is right for your target audience, and the stats below, although US focused, provide a useful breakdown of which demographics are most likely to engage in the online space.

Welcome to the first post of An Apple a Day in 2013 – we hope you had a great festive break!

Before we look ahead to another year that promises to be full of interesting developments in the world of digital healthcare, we wanted to review some of our 2012 highlights. 

Here at An Apple a Day, we love a good infographic and last year we certainly saw our fair share of really creative examples. HIT Consultant has listed their top 20 most insightful healthcare infographics in 2012 – certainly worth filing away for future reference.

2012 was the year when Pinterest took over as the latest social media craze to emerge. While other industries were quick to adopt the new trend, many in healthcare digital communications were faced with the rather familiar challenge of trying to navigate around the regulatory environment to deliver something genuinely engaging.

Step in GE Healthcare, who have for some time now been a great example of how the healthcare industry can use digital and social media creatively and effectively.

Back in September 2012, we wrote about GE Healthcare’s Pinterest board, which capitalised on the clout of its parent group and the innovative work done in other areas of the business to transform apparently visually unappealing engineering and energy operations into captivating images and video.

If others in the healthcare industry can take the lead from GE Healthcare in the coming year, 2013 could be a really progressive year.

Another theme throughout 2012 was the popularity of mobile, with barely a week going by where we didn’t mention the launch of an exciting new app on this blog. This post on the website iMedicalApps looks at the most innovative medical apps of 2012 from a physician / HCP perspective and is well worth a read. Some highlights include Wrist Repair, which allows dynamic interaction to help doctors educate patients on the steps of a common orthopedic surgery; Doctor Mole, a skin cancer app which assesses moles and SimMon, a remote controlled patient monitor for medical training and simulation.

Finally, for a quick overview of the biggest hits in social media during 2012 check out this comprehensive infographic from The SEO Company.

That’s all for this week, here’s to an innovative and engaging 2013!

Fresh from watching the stunning (and stunningly long) part one of The Hobbit movie extravaganza, I am reminded of the lasting power of amazing content. I know every word of the book, so will happily stand online for all the movies — despite the fact that Peter Jackson’s version is way more gory video game than the novels I love.

Brands have been content publishers for even longer than The Hobbit has been around. The first infomercial was broadcast on the radio in 1922. I don’t know what the storyline was, but I’m guessing it was no sequel spawning epic. Yet if I make just one prediction for marketing in 2013, it’s this:
Brand content will compete with top shelf entertainment.

Like most year end predictions, this is of course already happening. And the reason digitally savvy brands put Hollywood levels of talent, craft and love into what they make is because they are competing for the limited attention of the very same people going to the movies, playing the video games, and yes, even reading books. Sticking ads around the entertainment is giving way to being good enough to be the entertainment. Hello Red Bull, Will it Blend, new style advetorials and every Facebook Page actually worth a Like.

What will content marketing look like in one year? We asked a few smart people for their sharable soundbite.

Many thanks to Claire Candler, Johanna Virtanen of Kiosked, Seb Bell and Brendan Hodgson for their views in the clip above. And thanks to our other D2 Content speakers who gave us some excellent Top Tips for Successful Content Marketing and Advice for budding Contentrepreneurs. Happy Holidays everyone and see you in 2013.

While content has been king on the Internet forever, there is no doubt that it is getting an ever increasing amount of attention. (Even if not everyone likes the term.) For me, I love to see brands offer real value in their communications, rather than just pushing out another empty ad slogan. But it requires an honest mindshift for corporations to become Contentrepreneurs. So we asked some of the bright minds at our most recent Demystifying Digital conference, D2 Content, for their insight and advice.

Top Issue or Barrier for Brands: Cultural Change

Alex Hultgren of Ford, Jon Steinberg of BuzzFeed, Steve Webb of Google, Johanna Virtanen of Kiosked

Top Tips for Brands: Take risks. Emotional hooks. Don’t forget about relationships.

Seb Bell of H+K, me, Simon Langford of GE, Johanna Virtanen of Kiosked, Richard Fletcher of the Telegraph.co.uk, Richard Millar of H+K, Jon Steinberg of BuzzFeed, Alex Hultgren of Ford

At our Demystifying Digital conference on content marketing (#HKD2), I spoke about the concept of brands becoming Contentrepreneurs. Taking advantage of the super smart people on our stage that day, we asked them to give us a soundbite worth of advice for clients who want to become Contentrepreneurs. In fast, furious D2 fashion, here are some great tips, including these wise words from Tumblr:

“Have fun. And don’t be afraid.”

Enjoy the video and share your tip below or via tweet.

Yesterday, I went over to Google for a different kind of APG event. Titled “Dark Arts of Digital: Video Masterclass,” this hands-on session covered the practical principles of YouTube. We all know how important video is in content marketing. And, in the never ending quest to uncover the secrets of what makes something go viral, it’s smart to hear directly from the people that own the data.

The best part of the day was making, uploading and annotating our own video. Unfortunately, we didn’t get to play in the YouTube creator space studio, but I’ve had a tour of it earlier and it is enough to tempt you to into vlogging full time. However, it was the following tips from the YouTube experts that are of most value to our work with brands.

Not surprisingly, Authentic Content (aka a video made specifically for YouTube or online viewing) works best. They listed these five winning categories below: Read the rest of this entry »

For a really interesting look at social media in the pharma industry this week, check out this post on the Eye For Pharma website.

The article looks at how the pharmaceutical industry responded to the growth of social media as a new comms channel and suggests that those companies that were willing to dip their toes in the water in the early years are now reaping the benefits of being at the forefront, “having learnt from their experimentation and having started the cultural change process that this ‘new’ channel requires”. The majority of companies, however, who were overly cautious at the emergence of social media, perhaps waiting for more regulatory clarity, are now struggling to play catch-up.

This is certainly a compelling argument. Genuine engagement with social media requires a considerable shift in company attitudes and behaviour, particularly within the traditionally conservative pharma industry, that can take years to implement. Companies willing to take risks early on will have had more time to adjust to the changing environment and to lay the foundations needed to utilise social media within their organisations.

Another good point the author makes is that companies that dabbled in social media a few years back did so in a far more forgiving environment, when it was still considered a new channel. Social media is no longer new. It is now the elephant in the room. It can’t be ignored no matter how hard companies might try, and those that have been slow to respond are at risk of falling further behind.

It’s not all doom and gloom though. Many of the early frontrunners have become more cautious due to bad experiences, while others have lost momentum due to lack of tangible ROI and internal politics. Great opportunities exist for those now wanting to catch-up and use the experiences of others that have gone before them to inform their activities. The article goes on to give some great advice to those companies now looking to “jump on the social media bandwagon” and it really is a must-read for anyone involved in pharmaceutical comms.

Although not strictly a pharma company, GE Healthcare is one company that has pioneered the use of social media and digital and continues to lead the way. Their latest foray into the online world sees them teaming up with Spotify to launch the first in a series of health initiatives that will be powered by the online music streaming service.

The first of these, the “Give A Little Beat” jukebox, has been launched to raise awareness of breast cancer. Spotify users can share and listen to songs via the jukebox, which GE say “reflects the healing power and international reach of music”. As part of the campaign, the company has also produced a “Give A Little Beat” Facebook App. Having already made use of a number of social media and digital channels, including Pinterest, this is yet another example from GE Healthcare of the potential that exists.

One of the joys of attending the WPP Stream unconference is the glorious stew of participants. Agency and brand people join platform executives, hackers, tech media, artists, and entrepreneurs. Among the latter this year were three startups that captured my attention as well as my imagination. While quite different, they are all concerned with digital content — which is one of the big things we help clients with at H+K.

Condition One

This technology company has created an immersive video player that wowed a pretty clued-in crowd when it was shown at the Stream Gadgethon show. Their software takes video that is shot and edited in the usual way and uses the gyroscopes and accelerometers of the iPad / iPhone to let the user swipe or tilt for a different view. While CEO Danfung Dennis, a photojournalist and documentary filmmaker, was motivated by society’s numbness to flat images of war, happier uses for our clients immediately sprang to mind. Watching video online has always been a fairly passive experience, so I love the idea of users being ‘hands-on’ as they experience brand content.

Read the rest of this entry »

I always enjoy participating in Social Media Week. Some big agencies may view it as ‘giving back to the community’ but I think we get more than we give. And in the world of digital marketing, there is a real connection among the group who share the job title of Community Manager. So it was a privilege to join four insightful women on stage and welcome more CMs among the standing room only crowd in the H+K bar.

I asked @ScottMonty, Head of Social Media at Ford, for his top tip for Community Managers. His sage advice — Be attentive, be available, be yourself — and the experiences of our panelists point to listening, empathy and common sense as the best practices of good community managers. Genuinely being a nice person might be the only real secret.

Our panel: Bethony Taylor of HSBC, Hannah Ryan of H+K London representing Tango, Alexandra Roumbas Goldstein of Dogs Trust, and Line Rochard of H+K Paris representing eBay. I purposely looked for a diverse range of brands and both in-house and agency side CMs. One of the interesting things to come out of the panel discussion, though, is how similar their views were at heart. Read the rest of this entry »