Leveraging Generational Theory for Health Marketing
Carlen Lea Lesser, (7 minutes) watch video

• Pecha Kucha style (20 slides, 20 seconds per slide)
• Strauss & Howe Generational Theory
• Boomers in Fourth Turning
• Which Star Wars characters map to which generations? (you might be surprised!)

• Social Media ROI for Health Marketers - 4 Seats Left (Feb 24, 2010)
• Social Media for Pharma - (March 31, 2010) Only $495 with Early Bird discount
• Social Media for Pharma - (Feb 23, 2010) SOLD OUT!

• Social Media for Pharma - SOLD OUT! (Feb 23, 2009)
• Social Media ROI for Health Marketers - 5 Seats Left (Feb 24, 2009)

SAVE THE DATE: e-Patient Connections 2010!
=====================================
September 27-29, 2010, Philadelphia Hyatt Bellevue

• Social Media for Pharma - SOLD OUT! (Feb 23, 2009)
• Social Media ROI for Health Marketers - 5 Seats Left (Feb 24, 2009)

SAVE THE DATE: e-Patient Connections 2010!
=====================================
September 27-29, 2010, Philadelphia Hyatt Bellevue

This new, free 40-page guide for health marketers and communicators has just been released. In Using Twitter for e-Patient Communications you’ll get:

• Social Media for Pharma (Feb 23, 2009)
• Social Media ROI for Health Marketers (Feb 24, 2009)
• January e-Patient Connections Distance Learning & Briefing (By invitation only; limited to Kru alumni and clients)
  • Friday January 29, 2010 * 1pm EST * Dial-in info to be emailed

SAVE THE DATE: e-Patient Connections 2010!
=====================================
September 27-29, 2010, Philadelphia Hyatt Bellevue.

• Social Media for Pharma (Feb 23, 2009)
• Social Media ROI for Health Marketers (Feb 24, 2009)
• January e-Patient Connections Distance Learning & Briefing
  • Invitation only; e-Patient Connections alumni and Kru clients
  • Friday January 29, 2010 * 1pm EST * Dial-in info to be emailed

SAVE THE DATE: e-Patient Connections 2010!
=====================================
September 27-29, 2010, Philadelphia Hyatt Bellevue.

How J&J Joined the Twittersphere
Marc Monseau, Johnson & Johnson
(14 minutes) watch video

The topic of social media return-on-investment (ROI) continues to be popular as innovators look to justify their efforts and laggards look for excuses. Compared to more tried-and-true marketing campaigns, the return on investment involved with social media can be hard to quantify.

Think Interval has contributed to the conversation with their white-paper, “Yes We Can: Measuring Marketing Performance for Hospitals and Health Systems.” It reassures health-care companies that while setting up consistent and useful measurement standards can be a difficult and time-intensive project, establishing a system of gauging marketing results in a Social Media (SM) environment is not only possible but crucial. They recommend a three-tiered system of “Marketing Performance Measurements.”

Financial Metrics provide the traditional ROI. How much money has your campaign brought in versus how much it cost? Financial metrics, if you have them, are the easiest to draw conclusions from, but getting them can be difficult, often requiring customer and patient actions to be tracked over long periods of time.

Action Metrics lack the bottom-line punch of financial metrics, but still deliverable measurable, concrete results. For example, a hospital offering a free booklet on the risks of arthritis can measure the number of requests for the information. Often these actions can be roughly equated with a financial outcome. Any campaign that can’t efficiently provide a financial metric should take care to track as many actionable angles as possible.

Attitudinal Metrics simply measure the attitudes and opinions of a selected audience. These could be the results of surveys, polls, focus groups, interviews, or even anecdotes. While these can be a useful gauge of what people are saying about you, it is important to keep in mind that attitudes often do not correlate with behavior. As a result, attitudinal metrics are usually the least useful of the three.

With definitions of what you can measure in hand, the paper goes on to discuss how to measure the success (or lack thereof) of a campaign. The first step, the micro-level, is concerned with figuring out how to measure the results of specific marketing activities. To quote the paper, “your goal is to answer the question ‘Did this campaign work?’ with a definitive ‘Yes, and here’s the evidence to back it up.’” The report offers a fairly detailed run-down of what you should be measuring as results vs. actions, and how exactly you should look at these results. First, define what actions you will be taking. An action can be anything, the paper says, from a simple one-sheet brochure to an expensive television spot. If your metric is your end-goal, then try to include as many activities in this metric as possible. Open-houses, phone reminders, promotional websites-it all counts.

Make sure to set an objective (for example, “200 new appointments this month”) and take note of your current baseline (”75 new appointments last month”) to compare the results of your campaign to (”225 new appointments”). Make sure to look into the relative results of previous attempts to boost the same or similar branches of your organization, and make sure the source of your metrics and whose responsibility each aspect of the campaign falls to are also noted.

We’ve written in the past that at Kru we think social media ROI needs to be based on the purpose of your social media efforts. For example, using social media to “listen” is akin to conducting a focus group, and proving ROI isn’t necessary or practical. But if your goal is to get them to buy your product, or visit your website, then hard ROI metrics are possible and should be pursued.

Kru Research used the ListenLogic social media monitoring platform to monitor social media comments and measure sentiment for two cholesterol lowering drugs, Lipitor and Crestor, for one month (August 2009). An influence ranking of 5+ was used to reduce the amount of spam and irrelevant posts.

The questions we sought to answer were:

1)      What is the total number of comments for each of these brands?

2)      Which sites generate the most chatter (eg, Twitter, Blogs)?

3)      What is the overall sentiment score for each brand?

4)      Is there a difference in the topics or issues that are being commented on for each brand?

Share of Voice: Lipitor beats Crestor 2.3 to 1

After tracking 180 million websites and cleaning out the promotional chatter, we see that market class leader Lipitor had 695 total mentions and Crestor had 302 mentions. Lipitor has been on the market longer than Crestor, and is considered the best selling drug in the world, so it isn’t surprising that it has more activity on the social networks.

Little Difference in Sentiment-Mostly Neutral

When you look at all the conversations and comments about Lipitor and Crestor the vast majority, about 94%, is labeled “Neutral.” This is because most mentions picked up by listening platforms has to do with general corporate news, lawsuits, and investor related articles that mention the blockbuster drugs as part of their description of Pfizer and AstraZeneca. When you look only at health related comments, the picture changes.

Lipitor’s positive sentiment was approximately 9% versus Crestor’s 1%. Negative sentiment was 27% for Lipitor and 18% for Crestor.

Another way to look at sentiment is the ratio of positive to negative comments. Using this approach Lipitor scores .33 to .05 positive to negative sentiment.

Comment Cloud Analysis

The cloud tags shown below reflect that the brand names are being used in a variety of discussions that go far beyond the management of cholesterol.

Websites with Most Activity

Using a 5+ influence rating corrects for a lot of irrelevant chatter that happens on Twitter. However, both products unfortunately have most of their social comments happening on pharma gossip site CafePharma. Major sites that these chole

Of the 695 comments for Lipitor:

• 46 (7%) came from CafePharma.com
• 36 (5%) came from wikio.com
• 22 (3%) came from medhelp.org
• 18 (3%) came from Boards.webmd.com
• 13 (2%) came from weightwatchers.com
• 11 (2%) came from Twitter.com
• 10 (1%) came from blogspot.com
• 9 (1%) came from diabetesdaily.com
• other

Of the 302 comments related to Crestor:

• 17 (6%) came from CafePharma.com
• 12 (4%) came from medhelp.org
• 11 (4%) came from technologyquestions.com
• 10 (3%) came from wikio.com
• 7 (2%) came from Boards.webmd.com
• 6 (2%) came from blogspot.com
• 5 (2%) came from weightwatchers.com
• 5 (2%) came from diabetesforums.com
• 4 (1%) came from Twitter.com

Previously I applauded the efforts of Novartis to embrace social media with the launch of CML Earth, their online community for people with chronic myeloid leukemia. When I reviewed the site I signed up as a member, and yesterday I received this email that shows they just don’t get it (yellow number citations are mine).

Novartis, it’s about personality, authenticity, being a real person who can be trusted! So what’s my problem with this email? Let me count the ways…

1) Subject Line — It’s not terrible, and they get points for being direct. But it’s very “me” centered, generic, and doesn’t provide a compelling reason to open the email.

2) From e-Mail Address — You’ve got to be kidding me. The mail actually comes from “DoNotReply”? I can’t imagine a less personal or caring address. In fact, in this day and age it’s downright offensive.

3) Salutation — This form email is inserting the member name into the greeting which is good. At first the “Dear” preface seemed a bit formal to me, but the average age of someone with CML is mid-60’s so probably appropriate to be a bit more formal in this email.

4) Body Copy — This is admittedly nitpicky but the paragraph block is too long and uses some passive voice which should be minimized.

5) Call to Action — Still impersonal but it’s good they actually have a call to action and remind the reader of the total number of members in the community.

6) Signature — Formal and impersonal. Yuck.

7) Footer — “Please do not reply.” Doesn’t that give you a warm and fuzzy feeling?

“Hey, it’s easy to take pot shots from the cheap seats,” you might say. Well, let me show you how this email should have been crafted.

First, there should be one or more patient leaders who actively lead the community. The monthly emails should come from them, not from a Novartis employee or a “DoNotReply” automated message. I’ll use my own name as the community leader for the example below. A rewrite might look like:

From: Kevin.Kruse@cmlearth.com

Subject: You can now add Caregivers to CML Earth

Hi <FirstName>,

I’m sure you know that CML Earth lets those of us with chronic myeloid leukemia connect with one another online. There are over 2,000 members in the community and I personally have made friends with people from all around the world. But of course we also know that CML affects our family, friends and other “Caregivers.”

The good news is that CML Earth is now open to Caregivers as well. Their stories, experiences and participation with our group will certainly inspire, educate and support all of us.

Please invite your loved ones to join CML Earth by forwarding this email or sending them this link:
http://www.cmlearth.com/welcome

And please log back in to CML Earth yourself to connect and encourage our new members.

Let me know if you have any questions or suggestions for how we can make our CML Earth community even stronger.

Sincerely,

Kevin Kruse

See the difference? Feel the difference?

What is a shame is that Novartis is a great company and Gleevac is a real miracle drug. I know the Gleevac team truly cares about the CML community. Unfortunately, the team managing CML Earth seems to be ignorant of social media, community culture, and maybe even copy-writing which led to an amateurish and probably ineffective email.

What do you think?

Advertising maven, Roy Williams, has been speaking about Society’s 40-year Pendulum since at least 2003. Grounded in the generational theories of Strauss and Howe, Roy Williams has been accurately predicting the changing behaviors of consumers for some time. 2009 was the first complete year of a “new” Civic minded generation (which transitioned since 2003 from an Idealist perspective). We now reject hype the way the baby boomers rejected conformity.

Key takeaways:

1) Authenticity is paramount — “Keepin’ it real” has replaced “being cool”

2) Networks are valued — Belonging has replaced winning

3) We trust our friends — Word of mouth has replaced mass media (WOM always the most powerful form of marketing, and Web 2.0 has eliminated friction and increased the velocity of messages)

Does your marketing and health communications reflect all this? Hopefully you’ve already made the shift; after all, you’ve had the previous six years to figure it out.

But if you need further inspiration, look no further than Madonna (the pop-star, not the Mother of Jesus). She is now in her 50’s and she isn’t the same artist/performer that she was early in her career. Her debut album in the 1980’s was self-titled, full of Ego and she became known as the “Material Girl.” Generations change their views as they progress–as we age–and Madonna today is known for her spirituality, Ray of Light album, and efforts to adopt children from Malawi.

You work in the most noble of professions; you are working for better health. Your drug, or hospital, or health publication, or non-profit is a valuable resource to patients; you are part of their health team. Does your marketing reflect all this? Does the “we” generation understand what you have to contribute?