Living in a digital world

Nick Bartlett
Digital Strategy Director

Sitting reading all the blogs, tweets, awards and press coverage of digital marketing in the pharmaceutical industry you might be led to believe that we’re actually at the forefront of this dynamic industry, showing other B2B industries and even some of those consumer wannabes how it’s done.

With so much back slapping going on it’s easy to get distracted. The bright lights of digital seem to have distracted many from the end game. Patient groups remain aggressively independent online and doctors groups highly cynical of pharma’s digital engagement. Strategies seem to evolve around the same old game of pushing information at an audience in the hope that some will engage. Luckily for us, the fact that it’s now on an ipad guarantees results!

Until we approach digital planning with a long term attitude, one that is based on a philosophy of engagement, listening and understanding we stand little chance of maximising the opportunity that digital offers.

Wanting to “own” a brand’s digital space crops up in far too many briefing conversations and is indicative of the approach that needs to change. Digital marketing is not about the brand owning anything, it’s about what that brand can do for its customers using the digital tools available.

Getting to grips with your brand’s Online Value Proposition is the key to unlocking its potential and to do that you need to take a breath, listen, think and then act. What can your digital strategy offer that no other marketing avenue can? The old adage of “ready, fire, aim” still holds true in pharmaceutical digital marketing, hence we have a lot of great looking tactical outcomes but few that add long term value to the brand, its customers or indeed its patients to.

The secret equity in digital marketing is for brands to get to grips with the language of its online self. When a brand takes its time to understand the meaning of its digital language, the words, their meaning to all groups, its context, the gaps in conversations, connections, grammar, negatives, syntaxes, then your every strategic move is built on a foundation of knowledge and strength.

There’s no awards for language, no apps, no widgets but then our online communities aren’t interested in that. Pharmaceutical digital marketing needs to decide what it’s most interested in.

Two Become One

Greg Porter
Operations Manager

It’s February, and that always provides two reasons to be cheerful – the fact that it’s no longer January and of course that magical date that comes but once a year. No, not Christmas (unless you’re a divorce lawyer) – we refer of course to Valentine’s Day. Such a celebration of successful partnerships got us thinking about duos that have proved so fruitful in the past – from Torville and Dean to Batman and Robin via Cameron and Clegg, history shows us that more often than not, two heads are indeed better than one.

The same can surely be said of business partnerships and collaborations. Though a thriving working relationship between client and agency might not involve cupid’s arrow and a previously-untapped longing to listen to The Carpenters, many of the fundaments remain the same as a successful personal affiliation. Striving for the same end goal, plenty of open discussion, patience and understanding, positive reinforcement and advice on matters that need to be worked on and, perhaps most important of all, honesty and trust are all familiar bedrocks, and are equally essential in any successful working relationship. Plus any agency worth their salt will not turn down a request on the grounds of a headache.

Like the course of true love, a successful industry alliance will not always be smooth plain sailing. The satisfaction that can be gained from a rewarding collaboration make any teething issues worthwhile though – after all, what good is accomplishment if you have nobody share the moment of triumph with?

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas…

Greg Porter
Operations Manager

Really, it is … the PLBR team have been braced to deck the halls and jingle their bells for a while now, and now it seems the festive season is well and truly upon us again. The Christmas party has been and gone (and, once again, without a single fatality – a record your humble narrator remains proud of, despite a few close shaves over the years). Those of us who originate from more exotic locales than Essex and Surrey have began stumbling into the office laden down with suitcases prepared for their trips back to infinitely sunnier climes. Public transport in and around London has gone into meltdown as somebody heard it may by snowing somewhere in mainland Europe. Is it just me who wouldn’t have it any other way?

This time of year is the final stretch, the home straight, the big push over the top before the luxury of a lengthy December break. It’s a time sit back and bask in the successes of another business year, while keeping both eyes on lesson learned that can be implemented during the next twelve months. It’s a time to ponder aloud how the time goes by so fast and the festive season has crept up on us, while smiling inwardly at how we remembered to get those train tickets booked months ago. It’s a time for every man who would ordinarily burn a Pop Tart when attempting to cook suddenly turns into a domestic king, and a bona fide expert on poultry manufacture and seasoning. Most of all, it’s a time when the challenges, successes and adventures of work take a back seat for a short period to be superseded by concerns about the Boxing Day football results, just how Mr. Blobby got to be Christmas Number One and who gave Great-Aunt Ermintrude one sweet sherry too many that has somehow led to her getting up on the roof.

Good luck to all our colleagues, clients, friends and followers for their own big push for the final week of the business year, and please allow the PLBR team to wish you a very merry Christmas and a happy New Year. We’re already looking forward to another challenging and prosperous working relationship starting up in January – but until then, take it easy.

MOVEMBER – The Power of a Good Idea

Greg Porter
Operations Manager

We live in a world where Bad Ideas can be prevalent, and in this digital age impossible to erase from the landscape. HD-DVD? Expensive flop, by all accounts. Investing a lifetime of hard-earned savings in your local branch of Northern Rock? You may be ruing that as a bad judgement call. Continually allowing Bono access to a microphone in public places? Don’t even get me started. Even our own industry has been known to drop a clanger – just how many advertising high-fliers at major corporations were left with their heads in their hands this June as the national team they had invested so much jingoistic branding to capitulated at the World Cup?

The good thing about a bad idea is that it makes a good one that much more prominent, and the now-famous Movember campaign belongs firmly in the latter camp. For the uninitiated, Movember is a worldwide charitable occasion so blissfully simple but effective it’s a wonder that nobody thought of it sooner – throughout the eleventh month of the year, gentleman the world over fight off the winter chill by growing moustaches to raise awareness for the Prostate Cancer cause. After a quick straw poll to ensure there are no pogonophobics among our ranks, PLBR have embraced this concept whole-heartedly – the men (and a couple of the ladies, but we find it politic not to comment on that) of our agencies have been sporting soup catchers in a variety of shapes and sizes, from the noble handlebar to the elegant Fu Manchu, via the lampshade and the chevron.

With celebrities, executives, students and royalty all getting in on the act, Movember has started as a devastatingly simple idea that has grown into a cultural phenomenon – all in the name of charity. So when you’re tucking into dinner this evening and pondering why your waiter looks like a Freddy Mercury tribute act or you step into a meeting and wonder why Magnum PI is taking the minutes, resist the urge to smirk –Movember is proof that just sometimes, the quirky little ideas are the ones that can run and run.

Life Behind The Screen

Nick Bartlett
Digital Strategy Director

Where are we goin' this fine morning?

What are we doin' this fine day?

We're doin' the same as ev'ry morning!


We're stayin' inside on this fine morning.

Stayin' inside on this fine day.

We'll stare at a screen, like ev'ry morning.


And outside the window, spring is here,

And we're gonna hibernate all year.

Under a pile of A4 snowflakes.


Cause we're the new generation,
generation!

We are the battery human!

I first heard this song a year ago, and last night I was lucky enough to hear Stornoway sing it live at their biggest ever gig at the Shepherd’s Bush Empire. They played this unplugged, at the front of the stage, and played it beautifully to two thousand enraptured fans.

In hindsight, two things fascinated me about this moment. Firstly, the number of people filming, taking photos and generally faffing around with bits of tech. Instead of grabbing the moment, these individuals failed to get the point of being at a live gig and, ultimately, whilst trying to capture the experience, they missed it.

Lessons learnt – just because you have technology doesn’t mean you have to use it at every turn – experience drives the senses, and the senses in turn drive emotional reaction. If you don’t balance technology, experience and reaction, you’re left disappointed. No-one likes to be disappointed, so why would you want to ever repeat it?

Secondly, the audience had to be absolutely still so that the band had the chance to be heard three tiers above. In the four minutes they performed “Battery Human” the assembled mass of fans quite literally became one. The combined respect and attention the crowd gave the band culminated in a brilliant performance and an enormous wave of appreciation from their loyal community of followers.

Lesson learnt – tell an audience what you need them to do, give them what they want and you can keep their attention fixed, joining them together through a shared experience. The result: Twitter this morning was alive with great feedback for the gig and as a result the viral noise about the band and their music will have spread to many more people.

As the final verses point out below, it’s all about “reception.” Understanding, interpretation and empathy are the keys to a great reception; remember this next time you’re building your brand online.

We've got the whole world at our fingers.

We've got the whole world in our hands.

We get the blues as we grow richer.


Cause we need to fix our loose connections.

Out in the natural World Wide Web.

We’re humans evolved in three-dimensions.


We were tuned in by natural selection.

And we need to go online each day.

But inside we don't get no reception.


So join the new revolution, revolution!

To free the battery human.


Cause we were born to be free range, free range!

View the clip here.

Advertising? A piece of cake

There are a few things that unite us in the whirlwind world of agency life: the prospect of a new business win, an opportunity to band together and impress a client, the free bar at the Christmas party … and now it seems that delicious baked goods in the name of a worthy cause can be added to that list. This week saw Publicis Life Brands Resolute take part in Macmillan Cancer’s World’s Largest Coffee Morning, with the team donning their pinnies and reaching for those cookbooks that have sat on the shelf since last Christmas when we had finished looking at the pictures of Nigella and sighing wistfully.

Running for two decades now, the Macmillan Coffee Morning is a charitable event whereby companies bake up a storm and sell the fruits (and nuts, and sprinkles) of their labour – almost £6,000,000 has been raised at the time of writing. Drawing in crowds from as far and wide as the third floor of our building, the PLBR event proved a roaring success – cakes were consumed, sugar rushes were endured, emergency gym appointments were frantically arranged and a substantial amount was raised for Macmillan. With a second event taking place the next day at our ‘other home’ in Tower Bridge, the charitable juggernaut of good taste and good deeds shows no sign slowing down just yet – which is more than can be said for your humble scribe, who won’t be running any marathons in the near future after a hefty slice of chocolate indulgence.

Keeping ourselves organised.

Nick Bartlett
Digital Strategy Director

This week, I’ve gone against all of my principles and actually organised what my family and I are doing for Christmas. I’ve eased my conscience a bit by thinking that it is only 12 weeks away, but even so it seems unnecessarily diligent. We normally just wait around, safe in the knowledge that the big day will always come and we’ll have a great time whatever. But having this year’s already in the bag, we’re already seemingly enjoying it. We’re planning and scheming behind the kids’ backs, talking in excited whispers and counting down the days.

The joys of planning are much maligned, often pushed aside for the immediate, the needy and the demanding shouts of today. Yet time invested in thinking about tomorrow helps to set expectations, understand what’s needed, and, when tomorrow finally arrives, the results are evident in a calm, well-prepared team who deliver the goods.

The complex and curious sign-off procedure within pharma marketing means that digital projects are all too often the victim of a lack of future-proofing. Initiatives take longer than anticipated to get finished, with worn-down stakeholders dragged away to long lists of other initiatives that have had to be ignored until now. Once a back is turned, we enter the vicious circle of reactive rather than pre-emptive planning, and as a result the project’s business objectives get blurred and it lacks the inertia needed to capitalise on any potential.

Planning for digital success is crucial. Website communities, social media groups, bloggers and individuals engage with us online on the basis that we promise to deliver every time. A digital strategy that doesn’t take into account the months following phase one delivery is not a strategy for success. As 2011 approaches, now is the time to start thinking about next October. What will we have achieved? How will we have done it? Who do we need to include to make it happen? And how much money do I need to retain my digital relationship with my customer?

For me, I’m not sure I’m going to be able to hold out much longer before blurting out to the kids the adventures planned for them; the trouble is 12 weeks could become a very long, noisy and exciting time!