Hill+Knowlton Strategies

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.

This week’s blog is brought to you by Ching-Han Wan & Gareth Kolze-Jones from our Technologies team….

Word on the (Regent) street is that it’s not what it does, but what it stands for. Some of the avid Apple fans we spoke to as the doors opened at 5pm had queued up outside the store for as long as 29hours! To put into context, in that time I had slept twice, enjoyed five square meals (interspersed with *ahem* snacks) and bombarded my colleagues with innumerable tenuous puns, but for these guys, it’s all about living the brand.

School kids, office workers and app developers were all prepared to brave the hustle and bustle (on occasion there was a lot more bustle than hustle) to be among the first to get their hands on Apple’s thinner, faster, sleeker iPad. But why? Not because of what it can do, but because of what it says about them; It says they’re modern. It says they’re trendy. It says they’re cool.

There’s an interesting point here – the point that if we believe in a brand strongly enough, we are prepared to go to extreme lengths to maintain that connection. It’s the same principles as monogamy – if you already have an iPhone and iPod, you shall stay faithful to your fair lady, Apple, and not cheat on her with any other tablets.

So why not the Samsung Galaxy Tab, Motorola Xoom, or HTC Flyer? Is it the iOS or the work of Jonathan Ive? Simple answer, neither. A large majority of the people we spoke to admitted that the reason they were there was because it gave them that ‘special feeling’, a Je ne sais quois, the X Factor. This is all heart-warming stuff, but we think it’s fair to assume that hype of this magnitude for a single product launch is the exclusive property of the world of technology.

The question need be asked, how do technological brands continue to draw so much buzz around its product launches? Simple; Legacy. The most successful brands create a series of products that have their own cache to the point where as Vince from Birmingham (who had queued up for the iPad for 22 hours) said: “yes it’s over-priced, but I’ve got an iPod touch, I’ve got an iPhone 4, so it makes sense for me to have an iPad to keep up with Apple.”

There might be no jaw-dropping revelation here, no earth-shattering epiphany to shake the world of brand development to its core, but the question worth asking here is; are you innovating or are just creating another piece of the wardrobe?

Webmongs! In a show of MASSIVE DEFIANCE I am today saying XXXX XXX (use your nous and creativity to establish exactly which expletive I am masking behind those cunning Xs) to my workload and instead channeling all my energies into bringing you some stuff off the web. You hear that, The Man? YOU HEAR THAT???? Eh? Oh.

It appears that The Man couldn’t give a flying one about my defiance, knowing as he does that the battle may be mine but the war is almost certainly set to be his.  I hate you, The Man.

Strangely enough, The Man’s ambivalence to my defiance is pretty analogue to my feelings about the new toy for grown-ups which has been launched today (as an aside, may I just quote the ever-wonderful Saul Williams here and reference the conspiracy-theorists’ anti-Apple belief…”no one seems to recognize the symbols come to life / The bitten apple on the screen, and Jesus had a wife…”…JUST SAYING, is all) – for a full, unexpurgated viewpoint click here (WARNING – BAD WORDS).

For those of you, though, who are fully intending to line Steve Jobs’ pockets even further and sit about stroking your new i-pets to the appreciative breathy moans of your i-onanist colleagues, can I suggest that you all get the Scrabble app, which is the best thing I’ve yet seen on the iPad. Apart, actually, from a demo of the Telegraph’s forthcoming app, which looks very shiny indeed (it won’t actually make reading the news any better, but it will make it prettier – and that’s what counts, eh? I despair, I really do).

Anyway, enough bitter misanthropy. Or maybe not; we’ll see how we go.

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I’d thought about trying to compose something pithy and insightful for the opening section this week, but frankly all I can think of is the upcoming 4-day weekend. It’s times like this that I’m particularly grateful to Jesus for riling up the Romans and getting himself nailed to a tree (as with all the good stuff on here, that line’s courtesy of someone better than me – in this case, the late, great Douglas Adams). Freedom, webmongs, sweet freedom (or at least the transitory illusion of freedom, which frankly is pretty much all any of us can hope for, with our useless arts degrees and a future of interminable wage-slavery ahead of us). To celebrate, I give you THE LIFE OF CHRIST IN CATS (one of the finest things ever to appear in Viz):

A plate depicting the life of Christ through the medium of cats. No more, no less.

Anyway, feline frippery aside, here’s this week’s offerings…:

[NB - if you're strapped for time, can I just suggest that you go straight to the last video and watch it. 23 seconds you won't regret. Obviously if you've got time then read everything as it's all...well, pretty mediocre, frankly]

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You! Yes, you! Welcome, once again (presuming that you’ve been here before – if you’ve stumbled across this whilst searching for pornography then I apologise in advance for the lack of nudity but offer you a sincere first-timers’ welcome) to Web Curios.

God, that was a desperately poor intro. Sorry. What can I say? It’s Friday afternoon, and I’ve spent the entire week feeling a bit hungover under the weather. Not to mention the impact on my mood that this has had. It’s hard sometimes being a webmong (as you will well know). Nonetheless, I am putting my personal feelings of exhaustion and ennui to one side to bring you another selection of stuff I found online this week that one or two of you could conceivably find moderately interesting.

(It should be apparent by now that I am not a salesman).

We begin, this week, with a video – If you do nothing else here this week, watch this. It’s 5 minutes long, and is by far and away the best description I have yet seen of how virality works. Ignore the scaremongering undertones, and just think about how the meme below spreads. Oh, and for the non-geeks among you, a quick explanation of what 4chan is – you know all the stuff that features on those lists of the ‘biggest viral sensations EVER’? Stuff like RickRolling, the Numa Numa kid, Chocolate Rain and YouTube Porn Day? They all start at 4chan (WARNING – that link is direct to 4chan; the landing page is safe but I take no responsibility for what you might find beyond that (clue: porn and swearing)). It’s…just mental, really. Anyway, the video….

Oh Nestle… – Other ’social media gurus/mavens/experts/(insert meaningless title of your choice)’ will do this at length over the next few hours / days, but it doesn’t take a genius to work out that the tone of Nestle’s reponses to comments on their Facebook page probably didn’t do them any favours… Of course, as my esteemed colleague Dan Leach pointed out, it could all be very clever work by Greenpeace…

EDIT: @Malbonster just pointed me in this direction – Nestle’s share price over the past 5 days. Spot where today is on that graph…

Twitter Announces @anywhere – Ok, so what this is (massively simplified) is Twitter’s next step in terms of integrating itself with other, 3rd party websites. The TechCrunch piece linked to in the title is a decent overview (and this is a shorter one)- what it doesn’t seemingly touch on, though, is the potential implications for the development of a ‘universal’ online identity. Could this be a first step into the creation of a one login / username culture, integrated across all platforms? The BBC’s announcement yesterday of greater integration with both Facebook and Twitter would suggest it could be…Oh, and at the same time Twitter also declared that it wanted to be ‘A Force For Good’. Isn’t that nice? And…er…haven’t we heard that before somewhere?

I WANT THIS TABLE IN OUR OFFICES. IN THE UNLIKELY EVENT THAT SOMEONE IMPORTANT IS READING THIS, CAN YOU MAKE IT HAPPEN PLEASE? THANKS.

Can I have the whisky too, please? Kthxbai.

The Times is set to introduce its Paywall in the next few weeks – Will be fascinating to see what happens (clue: it won’t be an increase in traffic) and how other big media players respond.

What a magazine on the iPad might look like - Women’s digital magazine Viv put together this shiny demo, showcasing how their content might work on an iPad. My first thoughts? Content for people who really enjoyed Sin City but who don’t actually like reading very much.

An iPhone app that lets you create virtual balloon animals! – If this doesn’t make you smile just a little bit then you are dead to me. Seriously.

A Few Nice PR / Marketing Case Studies

• Skittles for Valentine’s Day – Part of the ongoing trend in giving people real-life (cool) stuff in exchange for engagement with brands on social media (see also the Marmarati)
• Burger King’s Whopper Face – Your face, on a burger, in Brazil. Genius.
• Heineken Italy – Been everywhere this week, and rightly so)
• (NB – 2 of the above came courtesy of @webkitten, for which thanks are due.)

A Wonderful Collection of Social Media Infographics – useful, courtesy of Michael Schulz whose personal website is also very nicely designed.

CANNONBALL KITTY

I can haz projectile

And, to finish (I know, I know, tldr), this week’s video selection:

1)Losers – ‘Flush’ feat Riz MC & Envy: Great track, great video and Envy is set to be huge this year (obviously if she isn’t then I never said that)

2) I went to see this lot on Tuesday. Great gig, though I did actually cause someone to leave the venue towards the end. In the unlikely event that you ever read this: sorry, Annoying Pair of Girls, but you were really getting on my tits:

3) The Internet of Things: how the planet is developing a central nervous system. 5 minutes of frankly insane futurology here from IBM:

4) Finally, a music video of near-Gaga levels of insanity. WHY THE SELLOTAPE???