Archive for the ‘healthcare’ Category

Making Healthy Eating Easier for People with Diabetes

Wednesday, December 9th, 2009

gomeals

Most regular readers are likely aware of Dose of Digital, a meaningful marketing blog for our agency, Bridge Worldwide, that is run by Jonathan Richman, one of our top Directors of Strategic Planning. The most-visited tool on Dose of Digital is a Social Media Wiki that gives marketers the chance to add their case studies to a list of examples from the pharma category. A few weeks ago Jonathan shared a submission by Sanofi-Aventis from its diabetes group that I felt compelled to share here on Marketing with Meaning as well.

I watch the diabetes category pretty closely because we work with Abbott Nutrition and have managed the Diabetes Control for Life program for several years. Our work on this program was a featured case study in my book. And a few months ago I wrote about a Bayer tool that turns blood glucose testing into a game for kids, thanks to a partnership with Nintendo. Both companies market to people with diabetes, and both have realized that the best way to succeed is to actually help people manage their disease and forge healthy eating and testing habits.

Now Sanofi-Aventis joins these two with an iPhone app called GoMeals. The purpose of this tool is to make “it easy to access nutritional information, find restaurants and keep track of your food intake.” There are a few very useful tools here: (1) a restaurant finder that includes nutritional information for many national restaurants; (2) a daily tracker of food intake meter for information on calories, carbs, protein, etc.; and (3) a searchable database of food and ability to plan and save meal choices.

The overall marketing strategy here is for Sanofi-Aventis to forge closer bonds with prescribing physicians and patients who are working to manage their disease. The company sells Lantus, a type of insulin, which is used to help manage the disease. So by offering this free tool, the company is doing more to fulfill the purpose of its product.

This approach builds on the well-known insight that people with diabetes must continually micromanage their meals to prevent both short-term blood sugar spikes and long-term deterioration. And by putting this tool into an iPhone app, it becomes much more convenient and useful. After all, we don’t eat meals at our computers very often, and the iPhone has become an incredible tool for information on the go. The company is even doing its customer service via Twitter, which helps it make its product more viral.

It’s early for the GoMeals app, and will take some time to build a critical mass of users. I am also curious to see if the company will be running a clinical study on the impact of the tool, like Abbott Nutrition has successfully done with its Diabetes Control for Life program. This helps both patients and physicians gain confidence in the program and is “living proof” of its meaning in people’s lives. I’ll keep watching and testing the tool, maybe even using it to drop a few pounds for my New Year’s resolution!

Posted in healthcare, mobile | No Comments »

How Fixodent Found an Insight to Add Value

Monday, October 19th, 2009

fixodent stories

Many brands offer products that can ladder up to a higher-level benefit. A good online banking service can make people feel more confident about their financial choices. A reliable, comfortable diaper for babies helps new mothers feel that they are doing the right thing for their newborns. Really good food and service at a fine restaurant can kindle romance (and maybe another newborn). These are the “higher-level benefits” that many of our brands aspire to reach, and we can only hope to reach them by understanding how our products and marketing fit into the overall experience of people’s lives.

One of the best illustrations of this comes from my team on the Fixodent brand, which just launched an impressive new meaningful marketing program. I know, I know: The denture-adhesive category probably doesn’t seem like it would offer the richest source of new insights, but it is a great example of how by starting from scratch and really getting inside our consumer’s mind (and life), we were able to uncover now-obvious insights that inspired a new, meaningful marketing approach.

Most of you probably picture denture wearers as a fit, smiling, well-dressed, gray-haired couple roaming a beach with a golden Labrador retriever; after all, that’s the message we’ve been served by advertisers for decades. Because our business objective was to win over new buyers, and, by helping them early in the process, win their loyalty for life, we felt we needed to test this cliché and make sure that’s who we were really talking to—and revisit what more we might do for denture wearers.

We began by conducting new research that focused on people who had recently gone through the process of being fitted for their first pair of dentures. From our first consumer interview, we were stunned to learn that the dental surgery and denture-fitting process are, in fact, very frightening, and that our target audience was quite different from whom we had imagined. Despite improvements in cleaning products and dentistry, and fluoride in water, some people are losing the majority of their teeth by age 35; they are often completely unprepared to deal with the reality of dentures and—whether age 35 or 65—feel a great deal of embarrassment about it. Many, in fact, suffer in silence with tooth pain for some time, lacking the funds to undergo measures that can correct problems before it is too late. When lower-income people are eventually forced to visit a dentist, often due to excruciating pain, many are sent to a “chop shop” where their full set of teeth is pulled and dentures are fitted in a matter of hours (a process that really should happen over a few weeks for the least amount of suffering and the best fit). Unfortunately, some dentists at the bottom of the market see the denture wearer as “the end of the line”—a customer who will never return—so the level of education and service tends to be basic, at best.

Even after people are fitted with dentures, they frequently feel ongoing shame and embarrassment. One woman in our research said that she had never let her husband of 40 years see her without her dentures on. Another sad fact that we learned from denture wearers is that they often stop smiling in photographs. This struck a personal chord with me, as I remembered that my grandfather, who wore dentures, always spurned the camera for this reason.

Through our research process, we narrowed our focus to a single, invaluable insight: Denture wearers feel like they have nowhere to turn for help and advice in this embarrassing and painful experience. We saw opportunities to be a reliable source of information that could be accessed without embarrassment, a place where they could learn about everything from preparing for oral surgery to handling the discomfort afterward. And we saw a crystal-clear opportunity for the Fixodent brand to present this solution—to add value through its marketing.

The result of this insight is Denture Living, an online resource for new denture wearers that provides specific information for visitors depending on where they are in the denture-wearing process (pre-wearers, new wearers, and experienced wearers). Helpful features include a guide to prepare visitors for discussions with their dentists, and a calendar that annotates just what new wearers might experience during their first month.

Denture Living also includes real stories from real people who have gone through the process, and offers a message board where visitors can ask questions, including ones that they are too ashamed to ask elsewhere. After only a few weeks, we are already seeing some intensely personal stories being shared in these boards. Information for friends and family is also provided, so that they can be informed and lend their support.

The site puts a priority on information and solutions, while clearly presenting Fixodent as the trusted source of the guidance. In addition to making a positive brand association for the new denture wearer, the site provides a platform for product news and promotions. Instead of simple beach scenes of smiling 60-somethings, the Fixodent brand is bringing real solutions to people who need the help the most. And let’s face it: If a denture-adhesive brand can uncover applicable insights, any brand can.

I am extremely proud of this work by our agency and client team. Congrats on a very meaningful marketing program, gang!

Posted in Solution, Uncategorized, healthcare | 1 Comment »

Baxter Delivers Free Health Testing

Wednesday, August 19th, 2009

Just when I thought I have heard every example of meaningful marketing in the healthcare industry, my friend and coworker over at the Dose of Digital blog, Jonathan Richman, shared a very intriguing new example with me this week. It could be the start of a meaningful marketing trend that helps save our healthcare system.

This example comes from healthcare giant Baxter, the producer of a drug called Aralast. Aralast is a drug that was developed to treat alpha-1 antitrypsin (AAT) deficiency. This little-known disease is an inherited condition in which there are low levels or no levels of AAT in the blood. AAT is an enzyme that protects the lungs from neutrophil elastase (NE), another enzyme that is produced by white blood cells. Without AAT, the NE can attack healthy lung tissue. The result can be early emphysema and liver damage.

The “good news” is that only about 100,000 people in the U.S. suffer from this disease, and treatments from companies such as Baxter can help prevent the negative effects of the condition. The bad news is that there are only about 100,000 people in the U.S. who suffer from this disease, which means that many doctors and patients know little about diagnosing and treating it. What’s worse, it is estimated that 95% of those with AAR deficiency are currently undiagnosed. With increasing pressure on healthcare costs and insurance companies’ aversion to “needless tests,” many healthcare providers don’t stock and won’t provide the tests to patients who come in. Many patients experience failing health for years before they are eventually diagnosed correctly.

This is obviously a significant barrier for suffering people, and for Baxter in its attempt to make a return on its millions of dollars of drug-development expenses. What to do? Some might assume the leap to an expensive television awareness campaign, or even government lobbying to force doctors and insurance companies to stock the tests.

But Baxter’s solution is brilliant: The company provides free test kits for healthcare providers, and even allows people to order the kits themselves online to take to their doctors to administer the tests. Baxter pays for shipment to the lab and for the tests themselves, and sends the results back to the physician. It’s a significant added value for both physicians and the people they serve.

According to a recent news release, Baxter has tested more than 50,000 people since 2004. Of those tests, more than 385 people were positively identified with the disease. This goes to show how rare it is, and how usual healthcare economics just won’t work. In addition, about 10% of those tested discovered that they are carriers of the gene that can cause AAT deficiency, and by learning this information they can be better educated about their higher risks of smoking and the risk of passing the gene along to their children.

As people and politicians debate healthcare legislation around the country, I wish more positive light was shining on this example. I wonder what would happen if more healthcare companies were turning their massive marketing budgets away from interruptive awareness building and toward meaningful marketing programs like this. I think we can all agree that this would be a big step forward.

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Posted in Solution, Uncategorized, healthcare | No Comments »

Bayer Creates Nintendo Game for Diabetes

Friday, July 24th, 2009

A few weeks ago I was alerted through buzz-tracking site Boing Boing of a new Nintendo plug-in from Bayer called Didget, which helps encourage children with diabetes to build good blood glucose testing habits. It is an incredible example of meaningful marketing and I hope the first of many such examples in the healthcare industry.

While I’m not a child with diabetes, I know a little something about the disease through work with one of our clients, the Glucerna brand at Abbott Nutrition. Several years ago we helped launch a program called Diabetes Control for Life, which helps people manage their disease through better eating, exercise, and regular glucose monitoring. And I have learned how important regular blood glucose testing is for people with diabetes, as it helps people learn about how their body reacts to food and activity. I have actually pricked my finger a few times to test my blood—and I can tell you that it’s not fun for an adult, much less a child. So anything that makes it easier—and even fun—for children to manage their diabetes is a huge opportunity to improve lives through marketing.

Bayer created this program with the help of a parent, Paul Wessel, who noticed that while his son was constantly losing his glucose meter, he always had his Nintendo Game Boy close by. In its final product, Bayer has done a lot of things well. First, it has developed an add-on to an already very popular and widespread Nintendo DS game system. Nintendo was likely very helpful in the development, both because of the revenue upside and chance to do good work. Second, the company created new games that tie into the monitor and reward kids with virtual credits that can be redeemed at a personalized website online. I know my own kids have improved their math and language skills through the educational games we have bought them with similar benefits.

Bayer’s Didget tool lies somewhere between the definitions of “product” and “marketing.” It is a new device that sells for around $50 in the U.K. and comes from Bayer’s family of glucose testing devices (including the Contour brand). I consider the online site and digital prizes part of a meaningful marketing program, much like the Webkinz online experience that is unlocked by purchasing a stuffed animal.

It will be interesting to see if Bayer will quickly expand this program to the U.S. and other countries around the world. I would be interested to see the company commission and share research showing that this device is helping kids learn to test regularly. This could help drive other healthcare companies into a new way of encouraging education, testing, and treatment by making it more fun for children of all ages.

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Posted in Games, Uncategorized, healthcare | 4 Comments »

Polling Readers on a Hard Call

Thursday, June 18th, 2009

It’s time for some fun on a Thursday, folks. One of my readers, who I am choosing not to identify, pointed me to an article on Newsweek.com about the rising issue of low testosterone among men. It seems that as many as 13 million middle-aged men in the United States suffer from this issue. For some, the answer is increasingly a prescription for a steroid such as AndroGel, but new and old studies show that simply having an erection—including by watching porn—is enough to get low testosterone levels up to snuff. And so this, dear readers, is the question of the day: Should AndroGel be offering free porn on its website?

Today, Solvay Pharmaceuticals, the maker of AndroGel, is pursuing the classic strategy of driving awareness of a condition it calls “Low T” through TV advertising and a website. The company hopes that the condition is recognized by men as much as “ED” or “BPH“. If you’re male, watch sports, and haven’t seen the ads yet, you soon will.

Driving awareness of a real health issue that guys don’t talk about, and using the safety of a private website to answer questions, can be very meaningful. But I wonder if there is an opportunity for AndroGel to do more than simply motivate men to, once again, ask their doctor if a new drug is right for them. The website for AndroGel only mentions various prescription answers to low testosterone, thus missing the chance to educate men on other potential (ahem, natural) remedies.

Why not follow the path of Tylenol’s “Feel Better” campaign, which has used print and outdoor ads to educate consumers about how they can avoid headaches by eating breakfast or drinking plenty of water, and soothe muscle aches by getting a partner to massage their shoulders?

There is certainly no undersupply of adult content on the Web that men can use to raise their testosterone levels without medication. After all, Newsweek reports that:

Forty million people, most of whom are men and a large chunk of them married, visit a porn site each month. A quarter of all Internet search engine requests and 35 percent of all downloads are for porn.”

But AndroGel could do more to bring a full solution to Low T men and attract attention around the issue it solves. At minimum, the brand could provide information about how there are natural ways to increase testosterone levels. This would increase trust among patients and prescribing doctors alike that Solvay is not simply pushing pills. Thinking more creatively, AndroGel might provide tips on how men can safely enjoy adult material without encountering problems on office computers or being surprised by family members. It might seem silly, but check out (NSFW) this guy whose porn screensaver kicked in during a meeting. This might cause some “attention” in the media, but isn’t that what marketers aim for? And if the marketing is a meaningful solution to this issue, the brand is standing on firm ground.

Now, all giggles aside, I don’t seriously believe AndroGel should or will actively encourage porn viewership, but there are little things it can do to better deliver on its mission, no matter how stiff the marketing challenge.

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Posted in Solution, healthcare | 1 Comment »

Philips Wins ‘Advertising As Service’ Award

Tuesday, May 26th, 2009

For the past two weeks, Advertising Age has been sharing case studies that have come out of the annual Festival of Media Awards. Last week I hammered award-winner Gatorade, which was praised by the awards jury but managed to offend gamers. But this week I’m happy to praise Philips, which found a way to add value to China’s crowded hospitals.

For more than three years, Philips has stuck with a campaign that has meaningful marketing written all over it. Dubbed “Sense and Simplicity,” Philips is investing its marketing dollars across the board to save time for and sanity of its consumers, thus earning brand respect and product interest. The campaign first got recognition when Philips paid magazines $2 million to remove the annoying subscription cards from magazines for a month and allow readers to flip straight from the cover to the table of contents. The company also has paid for free access to paid areas of ESPN.com and WSJ.com, and it bought up blocks of commercials on shows such as 60 Minutes and gave the time back to programmers.

The company later created a service called Philips Simplicity Concierge that answers texted questions from travelers in major cities. According to a 2007 article in The New York Times, Philips committed about 25% of its advertising budget to such value-added efforts.

Now Philips has applied the campaign to its medical-products business in China with a very compelling solution to the country’s notoriously crowded hospitals, where people can wait three hours to see a physician. Philips created and installed terminals in 10 major hospitals where patients can enter their phone number to reserve their place in line and get a text message when they are near the front of the line. This simple but effective tool is used by 125 people per day. In a second effort, Philips teamed up with the Public Health Bureau to drive awareness of the country’s system of smaller, newer health clinics as an alternative to hospitals. According to research from Philips, these efforts are saving the equivalent of 156 years in total waiting time per year.

What I love most about this campaign as a Marketing with Meaning case study is that it shows a killer B2B campaign. Yep, although all benefits go to consumers, the company’s efforts are actually completely targeted at the hospitals and clinics that purchase Philips MRI, ultrasound, and other products. The brand’s waiting-room texting kiosks and campaign to drive patients to community clinics are both clearly benefits to the hospitals they sell devices to. And at a time when healthcare costs are under extreme pressure around the world, these added-value services help Philips drive loyalty with hospital administrators.

Meanwhile, of course, Philips is able to deliver a valuable service to its consumer-products target market at a very meaningful time. The brand is seen as a hero when people are under stress and worried about their health. And when the time comes to look at big-screen TVs or DVD players, that positive brand experience can have a big impact on the bottom line.

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Posted in B2B, Solution, Uncategorized, healthcare | No Comments »

Cheerios Wakes Up to an FDA Warning

Friday, May 15th, 2009

Along with many other people in the marketing world, I was shocked to see that the FDA wrote a warning letter to General Mills, charging that it was making drug-like claims on its Cheerios brand. For two years, the brand has spent tens of millions of dollars on TV, print, packaging, and the Web to advertise the claim that “Cheerios lower your cholesterol 4% in 6 weeks.” The Cheerios brand has been around for decades and many adults and children have been raised on the popular cereal. It has become what its agency, Saatchi & Saatchi, calls a “Lovemark.” But its words seem to have gone too far, and I believe the brand could have done more action to lower cholesterol and improve lives.

In analyzing this case, I first went to my friend and coworker, Jonathan Richman, a former pharma marketer who is now running Business Development at Bridge Worldwide. Richman recently created a new blog, Dose of Digital, where he has attracted a huge following to his posts on pharma and health care digital marketing. He provided some very compelling arguments that the FDA is doing the right thing by questioning the Cheerios claims:

This protects the public because it ensures that there is consistent enforcement of very clear rules for making medical claims in this country. If a pharma company didn’t bother to do a randomized, controlled trial and claimed that their new drug improved cholesterol, there would be an outrage in the public and the FDA would act almost instantly. Why is it different when a cereal company does it? If you let one company get away with it, you embolden others and lose all of the precedent that the FDA has carefully created over the years.”

Richman’s recommendation is for Cheerios to either drop the claim or to invest in the randomized, placebo-controlled trials with tens of thousands of people like pharma companies do. After 2 to 3 years including study time and considerable expense, the brand might have something that it can take to its advertising agency for TV and print ad production.

Richman and other experts predict that Cheerios will press the issue a bit but will eventually have to withdraw its claim and pull the heart off the box, as it should. But it didn’t have to be this way. I believe Cheerios missed an opportunity to make more of a commitment to its consumers by going beyond a claim and developing a program that can make a real, proven difference in people’s lives.

Let me share the example of one of our clients, the Glucerna brand at Abbott Nutrition. Glucerna is a brand of shakes, cereals, and bars for people with diabetes. These products offer a meal replacement or supplement for a group that has to watch its food carefully. Glucerna has a slow-absorbing carbohydrate, among other benefits, which helps avoid blood sugar spikes.

More than seven years ago, the Glucerna brand saw an opportunity to make a meaningful difference in the lives of people with diabetes. In 2002, it created Diabetes Control for Life, a customizable program that helps people change their lifestyle and eat better, exercise more, and measure their blood sugar levels more often. The program does not require people to eat or drink Glucerna, but it suggests meals and snacks where its products are a good choice. Other foods can easily be substituted in the plan.

The company funded a 24-week clinical study to prove the benefits of the program, which were significant:

  • Average of 7.5% weight loss
  • 61% reported lower A1C levels.
  • 73% felt more confident in managing their disease.

Five years ago, we moved the Diabetes Control for Life program to the Web, which includes a very in-depth interactive meal and exercise tracker. We have continually added many other features to help people with diabetes, including a diabetes glossary, discussion board, and ability to IM a dietitian. Traffic continues to increase and other retailers and brands have partnered with us to expand the program.

Cheerios could have done something along these lines. A vast majority of its spending has been on traditional marketing of its claim through mass media. At Cheerios.com there are a few resources for overall cholesterol improvement, essentially a handful of articles and a printable PDF tracking sheet.

With a more comprehensive plan that offers more resources and doesn’t require Cheerios consumption, plus proven test results over many weeks, the brand might have been able to make more than a supposed 4% improvement in cholesterol levels, and it might not have the FDA breathing down its back today.

But it’s not too late! If the brand truly believes that it can make a difference and is truly committed to improving consumers’ health, it can pull back for now, and build out a bigger and better program. So, General Mills, call the lawyers back, pull the claim off the market, and drop us a line if you’re ready to embrace true marketing with meaning.

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Posted in Marketing Without Meaning, healthcare | No Comments »