What's Your Digital iQ

Paul Ewing and Tawana Burnett, from Pfizer’s consumer marketing and consumer engagement teams, have found that OTC and Rx have many of the same challenges and can learn from each other to break through the clutter to engage patients and drives value in new ways.

At Pfizer, patient engagement has always been a priority. More patient engagement creates more patient benefit:

• More knowledge (replacing confusion)
• Better decisions (dispersing denial)
• More action (fighting inertia)
• Real long-term behavior (winning over competing priorities)

Those engagements require both education and motivation – in an environment of rapid change:

• Constant real-time access
• Collaboration, triangulation, consultation with a myriad of others on each decision
• Comparison and competition – no need to default to the standard option

All that information creates confusion and questions. To replace that with clarity, experts – like Pfizer – need to establish and maintain a strong voice in new channels and communities. The goal is clarity and trust through dialogue, customization and valued tools.

To break through the clutter and create that clarity, Pfizer is focused on three strategies:

1. 2-way dialog with consumers and patients
2. Increased personalization and custom content
3. Higher levels of engagement beyond the product experience

Tawana pointed to four OTC examples that show best practices:

Centrum: A multivitamin

This a category that’s really confusing – there’s new news and new products every week. Worse, it’s a faith-based category. People take vitamins because they think they should, not because they can see it work.

For this 55+ crowd, Pfizer developed Nutrition Possible with WebMD. It includes personal assessments, content from other experts (like WebMD and Mayo Clinic), and complete nutrition solutions (product plus).

Since the launch in January, 2 million people have taken the assessment.

Robitussin: Cough & cold

This is another really confusing shelf – even if you’ve figured out whether you’re dealing with a cold, flu or allergies, you’re confronted with a sea of possible options to treat it.

To help that confusion and help consumers at their point of need, Pfizer developed an app.  Robitussin Relief Finder helps people find the right product, delivers flu-fan data and creates moments of personalization.

The reviews have been outstanding and people are holding the app up in the aisle to match the product packaging.

Children’s Advil: Fever relief

Today, people – mom’s especially – are putting their questions out to the crowd and looking for information back from people who have similar experiences.

Pfizer wanted to support the conversation between new moms and experienced moms. They used an influencer program to connect with those moms by providing free samples and information at a time when it was really needed (when Children’s Tylenol was taking off the market).

54% of the reviews during that time contained the message Pfizer wanted: 8-hours of relief, top-selling brand.

Thermacare: Heat wraps

Pfizer wanted to build year-round engagement in social channels. The right place to start was a small, passionate community that uses a product year-round, like the Thermacare fans.

The Thermacare Rally for Life brings together a community of like sufferers in a light way – rallying around getting back to what you love to do. Using a Facebook app, 10,000 users built avatars to celebrate what they wanted to get back to – running, biking, hiking.

In the period the app was promoted, total sales increased and coupon redemption was up 50%.