Medical marketing awards events are exciting. A great excuse for a new dress. A night of sweaty palms, high fives, and team celebrations.
Even if you tend to skip these sorts of competitions—as we do—because “It’s all about the results, not awards”—you’re secretly glad when a client enters a campaign you’ve sweat blood over. I still remember the first time it happened to us decades ago. Unbeknownst to us, our client–the entity now known as Quest Diagnostics—had entered a campaign we created and brought home some trophy bling. We were so proud! That’s probably one reason why it’s still one of our favorite campaigns.
But those experiences are just stories of personal triumph, right? With no relevance for those of us who don’t enter? Wrong. Following the winning campaigns helps us track trends, discover new strategies and techniques, and, importantly, be inspired.
Get Inspired by 2016 Winners
Medical Marketing & Media makes inspiration very accessible with its Book of the Night: MM&M Awards 2016. It IS 72 pages long, however, so if your time is limited, allow us to give you the key takeaways. (To look up the campaigns in the MM&M Book, use the page numbers listed in each reference below.)
While most of the entries come from pharma, there is still plenty to interest medical device and diagnostics marketers in the book. We observed three relevant trends for non-pharma marketers:
1. The continued rise of DTC—beyond pharma to diagnostics and devices
2. Storytelling persists as a critical brand engagement tool
3. Increasingly stringent regulatory environments make creativity more—not less—important
1. Direct to Consumer: The Age of Empowerment Continues
Almost 40 years into the DTC trend (begun largely in print by NSAIDs like Naprosyn in the mid-70s), we see no sign of DTC slowing down–despite increasing FDA regulation. Consumers continue to play a more active role in their healthcare decision-making, using information gleaned from DTC ads, social media, and other sources. That's not going to change.
Two MM&M winners with stand-out DTC non-pharma campaigns are:
- Abbot’s Lasik campaign targeting Millennials
- Medela’s consumer website/social community for potential breastfeeding device users
Abbott’s“Eyeful” Tumblr campaign taps into Millenial’s FOMO (fear of missing out) with a “Limitless with Lasik” positioning strategy (Page 9). Check out the headlines for the “Eyeful” campaign: “5 reasons spring break isn’t a dream vacay if you have contacts,” “6 reasons your glasses take the fun outta theme parks,” and my favorite, “Your first internship and 4 ways contact lenses could blow it.” Abbott really engages Millenials where they live from both a creative and media choice perspective, generating both enormous traffic to Abbott’s DTC site, and conversion rates five times higher than traffic from other sources.
Medela is similarly successful in engaging consumers with its “Through It All” website by tapping a key emotion shared by its target customers (Page 15). While Abbott, in large part, creates anxiety with its FOMA approach, Medela acknowledges existing anxiety around breastfeeding and positions the “Through It All” site—and by extension, its products—as a tool to relieve that anxiety. The site features a number of videos featuring diverse families who find realistic ways to make breast-feeding work.
THE TAKEAWAY: whether targeting the consumer or the healthcare professional, truly understanding and tapping the emotions that drive your customer is increasingly important to engagement.
2. Storytelling: A Science Rooted in Emotional Engagement
Even with the scientific proof that storytelling works, some healthcare marketers still resist—especially with sales aids. The attitudes of field sales teams contribute to this resistance. Physicians, they say, won’t give them time to tell the brand’s story and just want the data and the science.
Genentech’s winning interactive sales aid for Gazyva proves them wrong (Page 33). The physician drives Gazyva’s interactive sales aid presented on an iPad. The self-guided story involves the physician in operations, requiring various hand gestures to move the story forward and triggering auditory reward mechanisms. Physicians have reacted very positively to this immersive approach, and were exposed to story nuances that normally would have gone unnoticed, thanks to the interactivity.
Insmed, the manufacturer of an investigational treatment for Nontuberculous Mycobacteria (NTM), launched “A Thousand Words” to increase awareness and testing for this rare disease (Pages 9 and 32). A diverse range of artists worked with individual patients to represent their struggles in images. While the campaign proves the adage that a picture is worth 1000 words, written case studies and videos on the website also contribute to communicating the patient experiences. Physicians were 5 times more likely to test for NTM at the conclusion of the campaign.
A number of other award winners chose to use storytelling around the patient’s journey to drive physician response. Rexulti, according to MM&M, rode this approach to “blockbuster status.”
THE TAKEAWAY: a relavent story engages physicians with your brand—with or without technology to create interaction.
3. Creativity: The Regulatory Environment Makes It Critical
It’s clear from the campaigns that took home the trophies and drove product sales that creativity is critical to capture attention and engage your customer with your brand—especially in the face of regulation. The best example in the MM&M field is clearly Genentech’s Bone Conduction Café (Page 29).
With the Sunshine Act and other regulations, driving booth traffic at conferences is a challenge—especially when you don’t have a new product. Genentech faced this challenge by creating stations that invited physicians to watch iPad presentations about the year-old drug Gazyva. They instructed them to use their forearms to conduct the sound to their ears to deliver the audio portion of the presentation. Physician curiosity about the role of their own anatomy in the sound conduction drove 133% more visitors to the booth than the year before (when the drug was first introduced) and they stayed 30% longer. Active viewing increased engagement and retention, causing Oncologists at the American Society of Hematology to rate the booth “most memorable” and rate Gazyva as the product they “learned the most new information about.”
THE TAKEAWAY: Don’t fall into the trap of taking the easy path of “just the facts.” Find a creative way to appeal to the human side of your customer–in addition to the intellectual side. Better yet, combine them in the concept you choose.
So, congratulations to the winners and thanks to both the winners and MM&M for shining a spotlight on important issues in medical marketing.
Julia Darden is the Branding Strategist for DardenLentz, a B2B Marketing and Branding Agency focused on healthcare and technology, and she is the firm's managing partner. Julia is passionate about building memorable brands that connect emotionally with customers. She has successfully managed major creative and branding projects for leaders in the technology, diagnostics, medical device and medical informatics industries.