Healthcare marketing is finally getting healthy.

Lisa De Bonis
Aug 28, 2017 · 6 min read

Published in Admap, August 2016.

We all know taking care of our health today is about body and mind, prevention not just cure. And the mainstream explosion of health-app-packed smartphones means we can actually practice what everyone preaches. This, combined with the double-edged stethoscope of Dr. Google, has totally disrupted the patient — healthcare professional — brand relationship. Trust in the system and pharma companies is at an all time low.

The big opportunity in healthcare marketing is to help brands regain this trust by opening up and offering genuine utility.

The best thing we can do in healthcare marketing is not to think of it as healthcare marketing. We need to focus less on what we can’t say and use our creative energy and strategic and tech capabilities to improve the brand-patient experience by applying the customer-first principles of design thinking. Not only will this take away the pain points along the journey, but it’s commercially valuable — 63% of consumers are willing to pay more for simpler brand experiences (Siegel and Gale, 2015).

Originally rooted in the world of product development, design thinking has been ‘upstreamed’ and is now being embraced more strategically by the likes of P&G, not just the start-ups, as a creative process that, unlike critical thinking, aims to create an ‘improved future’. It’s fueled by a culture of curiosity, experimentation and an open tolerance for failure.

In today’s digital culture, in which we’re constantly surrounded by innovation and tech talk, these principles may sound simple enough. But creating an environment for this culture to thrive in, especially considering healthcare’s more regulated and relatively conservative industry, is no easy feat.

Here are few of my favourite examples of businesses that have the people and culture that are benefitting from the principles behind this way of thinking.

#1. Be human-obsessed.

The core of design thinking relies on understanding how people actually (really) experience your product and brand. Observation takes centre stage and the best insight is gleaned the varied perspective of cross-functional teams.

A great example of this is from US based company PillPack . The US has a big problem with medication overload. Lots of people taking multiple medication daily means many patients end up with boxes upon boxes of pills in their home, losing track of what they should be taking when. PillPack solves this. As a full-service pharmacy PillPack sorts and delivers all your pills together into a clear (recyclable) plastic wrapper printed with the date and time at which they should be taken. Great observation coupled with brilliant execution delivering a better, simpler experience for people managing multiple medications.

Another stellar example of responding and innovating around real behaviour, comes from our very own Dr. Google, who have created ‘health cards’ — doctor-vetted health information on search pages viewed via smartphone. These digital cards are currently only available in the US, Brazil and India, but with 1 in 20 Google searches globally being health-related, I’m sure you’ll be seeing these in a Google near you pretty soon.

Finally, an insider’s tip from Dr Matt Jameson Evans, Chief Medical Officer of HealthUnlocked — the social network for health that connects patients, caregivers and health advocates with guidance from credible organisations and institutions.

“Go beyond lip-service patient-centricity policies. Appoint a Chief Patient Officer with the muscle to hold the company to account on getting the patient perspective embedded in all company workflows. The impact will be visible in the short medium and long term.”

#2. Test, Listen, Really Listen and Learn.

As Jeff Bezos says in his latest letter to shareholders, “failure and invention are inseparable twins.” One of the hardest ‘design thinking’ principles to activate, is that of testing through prototyping. In our over-achieving society nobody really believed that failure can be a good thing, do they? It’s hard to be ok with ‘good enough’ and yet that’s what it takes to get to great.

But it works. For one of our clients, Solgar, the premium VMHS brand (part of the NBTY Group owners of Holland & Barrett), we ran a 2-day workshop with a large cross-discipline client/agency team ranging from marketing, R&D, sales, pharmacists, strategists, and technologists. We loosely followed (read totally hacked) Google Ventures exhausting but exhilarating sprint process and came out the other end not just with some great prototype concepts but just as critically, ones that the business felt complete ownership of.

Getting to a minimum viable product to put in market is a huge milestone but actually this is only the beginning. Being in constant listening mode, and activating the feedback (and putting aside the resources to do so) is the key to building better experiences and more valuable relationships. The healthcare industry is late in embracing the fact that patients actually want to help make companies more responsive to their needs. 70% of the patients on HealthUnlocked say they want to participate in industry research (and fewer than 5% are motivated by honoraria).

David Cox, former Chief Medical Officer at Headspace, shared the same point of view. In fact, the team at Headspace open the doors to this feedback by being in constant contact with users through social listening and their very active customer service team. The subject matter means the feedback can cover a very broad spectrum of issues all of which feed into the products development strategy.

#3. Change the Model

Once you’ve test, listened and learned, it’s time to go live with your new behaviour and experience enhancing idea. We need to stop adding to the noise that we’re all ad-blocking out (you still with me?) and make fewer but more effective connections. If healthcare marketing is to keep with the times it has no choice but to embrace more modern and collaborative communication models.

Matt from HealthUnlocked recommends “looking at partnerships rather than the traditional command and control approach to improving the brand. Well thought out projects with patient charities, online patient platforms providers and payers can be a way to change the inward-looking corporate approach and also reflect well on the brand.”

As another example, cloud-based services like Medikly are interesting ways of better understanding and engaging with today’s more digital cultured physicians.

And ideas like foldit , a crowd-sourced game that enables human players to contribute to defeating some truly awful diseases by figuring out how the proteins fit together, is a mind-blowing way to ‘advertise’.

#4. Make it Personal.

What is truly inspiring about working in healthcare marketing today, is the degree to which access to data and technology allows brands to implement user feedback to improve and ultimately personalise the experience. Science fiction has become a reality.

For our client Solgar, we are developing a service platform to help people discover the Solgar supplements that could help support their own unique health and wellness needs. In the short-term this means using environmental and lifestyle data to generate a recommended range of supplements that can be ordered online or purchased in-store with the further advice of in-store advocates. In the medium-term the service will be able to integrate with a range of self-diagnosis technologies in order to deliver a truly personal recommendation.

Commenting on Solgar’s approach, Giacomo Di Gerardo, VP Marketing — NBTY International, reflected: “We know that people are proactively seeking VMHS supplements to support their own personal health and wellness, be it beauty, sleep, digestion or many other needs. That’s why Solgar is combining the principles of design-led thinking with data and technology to deliver a service that in the not too distant future will allow people to access a truly personal recommendation of the right Solgar supplements for their unique health and wellness needs. To achieve this we have broken down the traditional structures and created a cross-disciplined team that puts our in-store advocates and consumers at the heart of our thinking to ensure we deliver a personal and ultimately meaningful portfolio strategy now and in the future.”

Design thinking has come of age and is too important to leave it to the designers alone. Let’s spot the curious ones, the collaborators and the right opportunities and let’s take advantage. Let’s create better ways to educate with more meaning. Let’s use data and technology to help people find the right solution for them as individuals. Let’s make healthcare marketing healthy.

Lisa De Bonis
Digital Strategy Partner, Havas London

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