The lab tries to “extend the vision” of the healthcare marketer, who is often stuck in the day-to-day execution of tactics that roll up to strategies that meet business needs.
We consider creativity as it relates to innovation. While all agencies can claim they are creative (who wouldn’t?) figuring how to apply creativing in new and exciting ways is what the lab is all about.
All day, every day (and many nights) we think about, organize and assemble creative thoughts, ideas, products and innovations. We wonder about them. We get them out on the table and push it around. Sometimes, they push us around.
At the lab, we look at healthcare and hear a lot about mature markets, which can be best described as areas where regulations, processes and “the way it has always been done” are thought to limit what can be done.
We disagree. Creatively applying innovations can elevate a brand, increase business and make experiences better for the consumer. But you have to be willing to think a little differently, apply solutions (maybe from another industry) where they haven’t been applied before and (most important) be open to possibilities.
Kids now average 7.5 hours a day watching TV + online … and that number is really more like (gulp) 11 hours a day including multi-tasking, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation (see slideshow).
Here’s the press release which points out that among black and hispanic youth surveyed, the time watching TV daily averages six hours.
That means a lot of things to a lot of people, but for pharma one message is clear: the next generation is totally digital.
Want to reach them? The sooner you get fluent on digitial, the sooner you reach them.
Without a fully digital mindset your brand is going to miss some cycles.
Why would you risk that? Going digital isn’t something for the future. This is the way the world works today …
Last week, we posted an article about Cisco in telemedicine. But for anyone not sure that high tech was focusing on pharma, look no further than Oracle’s purchase in April of Phase Forward, which sells software for the drug development process.
Included among the Phase Forward clients: AstraZeneca and Boston Scientific.
Last year, Oracle (databases) acquired Sun (hardware, JAVA) and now software, which means it will focus on selling end-to-end solutions to pharma. Adding Phase Forward means Oracle (which advertises on Pharma.Live, by the way) will be turning an even larger focus on healthcare, specifically pharma. Does that mean all your tools will work together — from the database to the live info from the field — tomorrow? Probably not, but soon enough.
Togetherville’s mission is to teach children about social media and the internet – together at first – and helping children become “responsible digital citizens,” according to its site.
A safer version of the internet? Togetherville bills itself as “a new type of online community for families whose kids are too young for Facebook where kids get the experience of adult social networking in a fun, age-appropriate environment and parents and other trusted adults get in on the act.”
Funded by angel investors and Floodgate (founders of Digg, Gowalla, and Twitter) , which has an impressive list of investments, the Palo Alto-based Togetherville is ambitious in nature and scope, although you have to wonder if it will survive.
Or will it change the way children use the internet and social media?
Either way, Togetherville is worth watching for all marketers.
