MINDSPACE (Dolan et al., 2010)

+  +  +         #2  Incentives         +  +  +

Incentives can be a powerful tool in harnessing the power of the public – engaging people and motivating behaviour change. The impact of incentives clearly depends upon factors such as type, magnitude and timing of the incentive. In a competitive economic environment brands are increasingly using incentives to attract consumers and stand out from the competition.

The power of incentive

Brands in the service industry – such as high-street banks, mobile phone network providers – are using incentives and rewards to become more attractive to consumers. However, the behavioural economic insight loss aversion is important in order to understand how best to use incentives in marketing. Loss aversion is used to explain that we dislike losses more than we like gains of the equivalent amount. What this means, for example, is human beings feel the loss of losing  £1 more than we feel the elation of being given £1. Therefore, brands that emphasise the money (or reward) that people will lose out on by not taking an action/purchasing can have a more powerful impact and motivation on people’s behaviour, rather than simply highlighting the amount they could be given if purchasing.

Brands in the fast-moving consumer goods industry consistently have to compete for consumer’s attention. Unilever’s Magnum icecream is an example of a brand currently (April 2013) using incentives as a marketing strategy to drive sales and engage consumers. The incentive Magnum is giving consumers is the chance to win a designer handbag worth £800 every day. However, now understanding loss aversion, if Magnum had framed the incentive in a way that consumers feel that they are losing out if they do not purchase, then this could have a more powerful impact on people’s behaviour to drive sales. Although, the type and magnitude of the incentive of a £800 handbag could be significant enough in itself to demand attention from some consumers. Furthermore, people have a habit of over-weighing small probabilities – for example lotteries – and so consumers may over-weigh the small chance of winning the handbag.

Magnum - win a designer handbag everyday

Another example of using incentives to engage a community is ConAgra Foods. In order to increase engagement on it’s Healthy Choice Facebook Page, users who “liked” the brand received a coupon for 75 cents off their next Healthy Choice purchase. ConAgra then coaxed more consumers to join its Facebook page by dangling a “buy one, get one free” coupon offer. In other words, the coupon’s value grew as more consumers joined the page.

However, a fundamental problem with using incentives, is that once an activity (such as buying a Magnum) is associated with external reward (chance to win a handbag), then individuals are less inclined to participate with the activity in the future without further incentives. Furthermore, and worst still, is if a brand fails to deliver on a reward/incentive – an example would be Red Bull’s VIP trip of a lifetime to the Belgium Grand Prix Competition. Red Bull was censured and criticised by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) in February 2013 after sending competition winners on a budget trip across three countries, making them share a bed and then sending them home early after they were barred from entering the race’s VIP enclosure.

Incentives - influencing behaviour and engaging consumers

In summary, incentives can be a useful tool to engage people’s behaviour – and the impact of the incentive depends upon type, magnitude and timing. People have a habit of over-weighing small probabilities, meaning competitions can be effective. Losses loom larger than gains, and so framing incentives to consumers in such a way that they feel the loss if they don’t participate can be a powerful communication and marketing tool. However, if brands become associated with external reward/incentive then consumers can be less inclined to participate in the future without these external rewards/incentives.

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3D printing is already a relatively established technology in industrial manufacturing but now we are seeing the technology becoming more readily available to individuals and small businesses.  This begs the question…could 3D printing for the consumer be just around the corner?

There have been some amazing stories in the media recently illustrating how 3D printing technology could have a profound impact on healthcare; take the 3D printer which produced a jaw bone for a transplant patient, or the news that donor organs could soon be printed on demand.

The fashion industry has also followed suit, with Dita Von Teese stepping out last week in the world’s first dress produced with a 3D printer. It seems like almost everything from organs to clothing, and even garden gnomes like these showcased by Makerbot last week at SXSW, is within the realm of possibility.

Excitement around this phenomenon has reached an all-time peak, but tongues are wagging as experts question what such a shift could mean for both intellectual property rights and public safety.

Firstly from a copyright perspective, there has been concern that ability to share and print digital files will make Intellectual Property regulation almost impossible.  There are worries about the implications in terms of the repercussions for businesses; what impact could 3D printing have on the economy if we can print off products on demand?

Moreover, in the face of the recent US gun crime debate, concerns have been raised that one day it could be possible for people to download files for weapons. CNET reported that Alice Taylor, CEO of Makie Labs doesn’t believe the dangers are imminent.  She said “I feel like it’s going to be easier for at least a decade to go and buy a gun off the shelf…I think this is a problem of the future, but it’s a long way away.”

The general consensus on 3D printing seems to be – as with many technology innovations – although there are risks and challenges, the pros outweigh the cons.  The move of 3D printing to a more consumer market could help to empower entrepreneurship, innovation and creative thinking and there could be huge potential health benefits. Although there are certainly substantial flaws which need to be ironed out and regulations which will need to be introduced, we’ve already got our thinking caps on in the office as to what we’d like to try our hand at printing!

Of course, the NHS library could become a sort of stamp of approval for health apps in the UK, although with 70 apps already featured and seemingly minimal entry requirements, it will be interesting to see how they ensure people are being directed to the most useful and relevant apps for them. One consideration is that the scale of apps included could become overwhelming, while the quality and effectiveness of an app in itself will not necessarily be guaranteed provided it is not unsafe. The website does state that the review process will be updated and improved over time though, and this is still an important development for the industry.

In a similar vein, this post on The Health Care Blog by Leslie Kernisan, who practices in geriatrics, provides some excellent insight into how and why health apps should, if at all, be prescribed. Kernisan suggests that while many digital health enthusiasts expect that apps will become routinely used tools in healthcare, clinicians need be more thoughtful when recommending apps, basing their recommendation on medical rather than marketing considerations.

The article is an absolute must-read for people with an interest in digital within the health industry. It is really interesting to see someone take a step back from all the noise there is about apps and provide some genuine insight. Although the post focuses on the attitudes of healthcare professionals, there’s a lesson in there for communications professionals and the industry too. While it might be tempting to develop an app or some other creative digital tool every time you are handed a brief, it is worth taking a step back and assessing how appropriate and valuable this will actually be on a case-by-case basis.

Finally, it is worth reading this from the social media team at Intouch Solutions. On March 7, Facebook announced a major redesign to its News Feed and this article looks specifically at the implications the design change will have on pharma Facebook pages. If you or a client you work with community manage any pharma Facebook pages this is absolutely essential reading.

L’Oreal were one of the first to ditch pretty boy Matthew Fox in favour of the more grizzly Hugh Laurie in an effort to attract the man who fears his masculinity may be threatened by the presence of an anti-age eye gel in his bathroom cabinet. And this year the trend continues with Unilever using the Super Bowl, fertile territory to reach hordes of males, to launch its new Dove men + Care real man campaign.  The Dove brand already known for its Real Beauty campaign which featured posters of ordinary women in their underwear is now doing the same for ordinary guys.  According to Matt Close, marketing director for home and personal care at Unilever UK, three-quarters of men find it difficult to identify with the men they see in advertising and feel stereotyped and misrepresented with only 3 per cent strongly agreeing that they are realistically portrayed.  Cue a bevvy of white van men posing salaciously on billboards near you?  Probably not but expect to see someone a bit more like your husband, boyfriend or brother flogging moisturiser in the future. 

And if all this championing of the average guy wasn’t enough internet hosting site Go Daddy took it to the logical extreme with the very antithesis of the model man, the guy you never thought would grace your TV screens….the ugly guy.  Go Daddy caused an online storm earlier this year with its use of the bespectacled Jesse Heiman in its now famous Super Bowl ad who with his Afro and unhealthy BMI is hardly your usual poster boy.  Jesse was seen sharing a bit too much saliva with blonde beauty Bar Refaeli and overnight has become a cult hero for thousands of guys around the globe.  The former film extra known for his “ugly looks” now has the title of World’s Greatest extra and a rapidly growing twitter following.

 However, despite this proliferation of ordinary guys in marketing to men, the shift has actually been a relatively slow one.  Pop culture has been embracing the everyman for years with the likes of comedian James Corden championing the average man and Ed Sheeran proving that it is ok to be ginger and proud (if you can sing so well even Taylor Swift wants a piece of you).  And it seems that now brands are beginning to mirror this trend. 

No longer does the brand poster boy have to be beautiful to flog us stuff, today’s male consumer it seems likes to think brand ‘faces’ could be one of their mates down the pub or even better just like them!   It’s official the everyman is no longer just on the rise, he has risen…

By Daisy Sheppard

Next up is Rhianna (no, not that one). Rhianna Pratchett is the daughter of much-loved author Terry Pratchett, and is also a talented writer, but in a very different field to her father. You may have   seen her cropping up in the press recently, promoting the new Tomb Raider game. Rhianna is responsible for scriptwriting the game, along with many others, and is proving that playing video games isn’t just for boys. In fact, 42% of gamers are female. Duh.

Inspirational women don’t have to be real, which is why our next celebrated woman in tech is She-Ra: Princess of Power. We’re pretty sure her Sword had some kind of electrical current in it, which she used along with her inexplicable physical strength to overcome all manner of threats, making her our childhood hero.

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.

Another busy one for our Army team as fourteen new Army recruits from North Wales swore an oath of allegiance to the Queen as part of their official entry into a career with the British Army on Tuesday. The Attestation ceremony took place at the British Army Careers Office on Glynne Road in Bangor, and included a traditional parade of the new recruits in front of their proud friends and family.  Having successfully completed their oaths of allegiance, each candidate received his or her Attestation certificate which marked the final completion of their recruiting process and welcomed them as new members of the British Army.

Recruiting remains one of the Army’s highest priorities. The Army offers a wide variety of careers for both Soldiers and Officers, in the Regular and Territorial Army, with over 200 different roles available and recruits 15,000 people to the Army each year.

And hot off the press, our Retail + Leisure team today held an event which launched the IHG Trends Report, compiled by The Futures Company. The report looks at specific trends and how they are going to affect travel over the next 10 years. The report is called “The new kinship economy: from travel experiences to travel relationships” and identifies travel groups including ‘new global explorers’ – travellers from high-growth countries such as China and India.  The debate was hosted by Simon Calder and the panellists included Richard Solomans IHG CEO, Sarah King from The Futures Company and Dr Miguel Moital of Bournemouth University.

The event took place at the Intercontinental Westminster Hotel and was attended by a range of media across travel, trade and lifestyle press. Stakeholders also attended including Visit England, ABTA, WTTC and Tourism Alliance.

Finally, a shout out to our Financial + Professional services GE Capital team for their simply fantastic piece of coverage in the FT’s special mid-market report this week. This is entirely the product of tenacity from the team that managed to convert a piece with no less than FIVE really positive mentions for GE Capital and the Leading From the Middle research.

Balthazar, Covent Garden. Image via http://bit.ly/ZMnivK

The menu features everything you would expect from a traditional French Brasserie and the décor of bright leather banquettes, mirrors and high ceilings helps to create to the buzzy, informal atmosphere that makes this type of restaurant a pleasurable experience.

Balthazar has big boots to fill in the form of the other leading grand cafes The Woslely, The Delaunay and Brasserie Zedel but we have high hopes for this newcomer and if the reviews are anything to go by, the hype definitely matches the reality.

The Woslely. Image via http://bit.ly/13HOAo1

We like fizzy wine

However, new market research this week predicted that the Britain will soon become the world’s biggest importer of champagne and sparkling wine in the next five years. People are increasingly drinking champagne and other sparkling wines as a fairly standard way to end the week or as a default request at a bar. We in the H+K Food + Drink team are certainly not immune to this trend and many have experienced the wrath of the team for not buying enough bottles of Prosecco on a Friday night. The H+K Healthcare team behind the app Apple a Day blog are equally enthusiastic about the fizzy stuff.

The variety of sparkling wines available in the UK today has also increased, and southern England is becoming world renowned for the quality of its sparkling wine (as discussed previously on the Food Bites blog). There are currently over 400 active vineyards in the UK, but it is the chalky soils of the South Downs that are attracting the most attention. Experts say that the same seam of chalk running underneath the Champagne region extends across the channel to the Downs. This gives some English sparkling wines the same characteristic qualities as some of their more famous Gallic counterparts.

Having the wine of your life: Tamara Ecclestone's bar bill. Image via http://bit.ly/Te70In

So, now that sparkling wine has been turned into everyday humdrum bar-fodder, what can you do to add some fizz into your nights to really impress your friends? Well, if you’re looking for something really spectacular, you could always try to the master the art of “sabrage” – the ceremonial opening of a Champagne bottle with a specially made sword. Of course, if you have more money than sense you could always just take after the young rich socialites of this world and work your way up the list of wonderfully-named super-size champagne bottles: the Jeroboam, Rehoboam, Methuselah, Salmanazar, Balthazar or the gigantic 15 litre Nebuchadnezzar.

However, if you don’t have £30,000 to spend on a night out, but still want a glass or two of bubbly, try to savour it and remember the words of Napoleon:

“Champagne! In victory one deserves it; in defeat one needs it.”

We have selected some must-reads for anyone with an interest in digital communications in the healthcare industry. This article on PMLive’s Smart Thinking blog addresses this issue specifically, stating that while we all tend to judge how well pharmaceutical companies are doing in social media by looking at their presence on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, there are in fact many other ways of using social media that should be considered, including what is known as social innovation.

Although Twitter and Facebook are obviously parts of this, they are not the whole story, the blog argues. Other aspects of social media such as social bookmarking, wikis, virtual social worlds and crowdsourcing are also part of the equation and further inspection suggests pharma companies might not be as far behind as some people think when it comes to these less obvious forms of digital innovation. Indeed, the blog suggests that there are in fact plenty of examples of internal social media projects within the industry that are on a par with other sectors, with three of the top ten pharma companies (GSK, Janssen and Merck) using the enterprise social network service Yammer.

The article pulls out some encouraging examples of social media innovation within the pharma industry which back this up. Definitely worth a read.

Another article that caught our eye here at An Apple a Day was this one from Pharmafile, which covered some of the platforms more traditionally associated with digital and social media engagement such as Twitter and Facebook. The article looks at the ‘received wisdom’ that suggests pharma should be joining the online conversation and asks some very important questions about what sort of conversations are appropriate and inappropriate, as well as conversations actually worth engaging in.

As social and digital media continue to secure their place on almost everyone’s agenda, communications professionals will increasingly be expected to show they are capable of answering these sorts of questions and provide genuine insight, to ensure they are not just suggesting digital for digital’s sake, but are actually able to identify the most appropriate and effective solution to meet specific objectives.

(image: Cancer Research UK: Cell Slider)

In other news, Cancer Research UK has teamed up with Amazon, Facebook and Google to create a mobile game for analysing genetic mutations. Data is integral to finding a cure for cancer, however the challenge is getting the data investigated by human rather than machine eyes in order to be properly analysed. With this in mind, Cancer Research UK has teamed up with these US tech firms to try and build an engaging, fun and user-friendly mobile game, which can be used on the move. The charity has already developed a web-based game called Cell Slider where users look through archived tissue samples.

Finally, if you work in the oncology disease area, this interview on the Cancer Network website is really worth checking out. Dr Michael A. Thompson, an oncology specialist who writes a blog for ASCO (American Society of Clinical Oncology) Connection, talks to Cancer Network about the use of social media by oncologists, providing some great insights into the dissemination of research results, clinical trials, and other oncology news using social media.