City of Paris

The consumer decision journey, published in McKinsey Quarterly, challenges the traditional metaphor of the decision funnel and suggests a more complex model powered by (you guessed it) the exponential rise of new interactive communication channels and nuances in customer loyalty uncovered in a study of “almost 20,000 consumers across five industries and three continents.” For those of us who work primarily in the B-to-B realm, the new framework offers gems of ideas that we should consider as we develop our communication plans.

One important proposition of The consumer decision journey is that the decision process is not necessarily represented by a funnel, whereby purchasers narrow down their choices as they get close to the buying decision. Rather, as they start from their initial-consideration set (which is, largely, the fruit of investments in brand building), they are very likely to expand the number of brands being considered in the next, active-evaluation phase. The takeaway is that (a) brands cannot take their position in the initial-consideration set for granted and (b) there is an opportunity to interrupt the decision-making process even if your brand has not made it in the first cut. Whichever category your brand may fall into, the key is to be communicating with your target audience as they enter this next phase, with information that is relevant to the current business context. New regulatory or policy guidelines, current socioeconomic forces and competitive dynamics are just some of the factors that can change the decision-making dynamics. The consumer decision journey cites Hyundai’s offer to allow buyers to return their cars if they lose their jobs as an example of a game-changing tactic to break into the active-evaluation phase.

A second point that I gleaned from this article is how we may have to rethink peer groups. Healthcare professionals and scientists have always placed a great deal of weight on peer review and recommendations in purchasing decisions. Just as in the consumer world, new media that accelerate the dissemination of user experiences and opinions, both favorable and unfavorable, are amplifying this reliance on friends and colleagues. What is also interesting is that new media have leveled the playing field to the extent that they have given voice to more people—you don’t have to wait to post an opinion—and therefore the bar is lower for aspiring influencers or “experts.” A brand that is actively engaged in this open dialogue—as a participant, facilitator or sponsor—will improve its chance of being in front of the prospective customer when buying decisions are being shaped and, better yet, have a proactive role in shaping those decisions. Hint: Your communication plan had better have a strong Internet component.

A third takeaway for me is the identification of two types of customer loyalists: the true loyalists (what the article calls “active loyalists”) who will keep buying and recommending your brand and the “passive loyalists” who are staying with you out of inertia (e.g., a long-term purchasing contract) but can be coaxed into moving away from your brand. Clearly, the two distinct groups call for very different communication strategies.

GM’s decision to feature Chairman Ed Whitacre in advertising sparked some debate and numerous raised eyebrows in the advertising community. Advertising Age quoted several industry pundits, none of whom showed much enthusiasm for the concept of the executive spokesperson. It boiled down to four key reasons:

• The rising power of digital tomato throwers in this age of digital media
• Current social bias against senior executives
• Risk in associating the company with one person with no track record
• Difficulty in making an impact with a tired concept

All of this reminds me of one of my favorite quotes.

“If a client moans and groans, make his logo twice as big,
And if he is still refractory, show a picture of his factory,
But only in the dire cases, should you show the client’s faces.” David Ogilvy

Realistically, though, the chief executive—for public companies as well as startups—has always had a public role as a company spokesperson, even if few subjected themselves to advertising stardom. And, before the days of digital media, they were more able to select their audience as they directed their comments to specific groups such as the business and investment communities. So, for healthcare communication professionals today, it’s not a matter of whether or not we use the CEO as a spokesperson, but how best to deploy him or her for specific communication objectives.

• Defining a role: What is the most credible role for the chief executive? Should he/she be a product champion, like Fred Perdue, who made his chicken famous because of his distinct and befitting mannerisms? Can he/she play a credible role as a corporate visionary along the lines of Lee Iacocca or Richard Branson?
• The right media: While few can achieve stardom in 30- to 60-second commercials, most chief executives can find their voices in the host of other media options available today. Chief executives who are thought leaders but not necessarily charismatic public speakers like Steve Jobs can Twitter, blog or otherwise write commentaries. Many can be trained to become polished speakers in one-on-one interviews or panels.
• The message and living up to it. Today’s digital content “feast” breeds extremely discriminating audiences who need to be actively engaged with relevance, newsworthiness and the authenticity of the message and its delivery. Now more than ever, a combination of public skepticism as well as powerful archiving and, more important, search capabilities makes it easier for audiences to hold the spokesperson to his/her words.

Please post your comments and share your experience helping senior executives craft, deliver and manage their messages.

Belatedly, I finished reading Chris Anderson’s somewhat controversial Free and his friendly volley with Malcolm Gladwell. Actually, it was Gladwell’s review that prompted me to buy the book (even though one can download it for free—but I don’t like reading on screen and I like supporting my local bookseller, Kepler’s). Free is well written and engaging, and offers many new ways to look at economics and business. While I can’t say I am sold on all of Anderson’s bold assertions, I did come away with two concepts that I can put into practice. The first is the idea of the reputation or attention economy—Anderson even uses this concept to value Facebook at $1.8 billion. So our “friends,” “followers,” “connections” etc. are reputation currency we are acquiring, unit by unit, that we can trade in one day to help us land that prized appointment, assignment, partnership or contract, based on which we will be duly rewarded by units that are anything but free. And this idea of reputation currency applies equally to our personal as well as our product brands. Here’s another tangible example. Recently, a highly respected consultant to the clinical diagnostics industry, The Dark Report, started a new service http://www.darkdaily.com/ where companies can post white papers on their site, for a fee, to reach senior executives who have been loyal subscribers to The Dark Report and its now famed Executive War College. Downloads by the executives are, of course, free.

My second take-away is that, whether or not we completely understand and/or buy into this new “free” economy, Anderson is right about “free” being an inevitable force of gravity, at least for now. So, for those of us who are not economists and who cannot or do not want to get to the bottom of why things like YouTube or Google searches should or should not be free, we can take Anderson’s advice. We can take advantage of what’s free and build businesses around this “free” economy as it stands today. Why not post educational videos on YouTube? Why not use social media to engage customers and, even more important, get to know them by listening to them? Why not use the dazzling array of free services and tools to bootstrap a new business venture? After all, most of us would rather be at the receiving end of “free.”

For the latest updates, see Using ‘Free’ to Turn a Profit and the debate about the value of content in Sacrifices made in hunt for new model.

At a recent media briefing with a trade healthcare publication, the editor, who has a reputation for being a stick-in-the-mud about not “contaminating” editorial with promotional messages, surprised (shocked) me with her plea at the conclusion of the meeting. Turning to my client as she stood up to leave, she said, “And I hope to see you advertise in our publication.”

Ad pages are down, and print publications are suffering. It is physically noticeable as many controlled-circulation publications get thinner by the issue. More and more, editors speak of slated articles being postponed to a future issue because the final page count is dependent on the number of advertising pages the publication is able to sell. Meantime, clients are allocating more of their scant marketing communication dollars to public relations, using the classic strategy of getting “free ink” by paying PR people to pitch stories and place articles. So, should we encourage clients to place ads in certain issues just to make sure their articles appear as scheduled? Ugh.

Somewhere along the road, healthcare marketers seem to have forgotten many of the good principles of marketing communications—the value of advertising in developing and establishing a brand, the synergy between different elements within a communication mix and, above all, that a well-thought-out, strategic communication plan is the best way to achieve results in the market, justify your decisions to your management and preempt reactive budget cuts. And indeed, tactical, reactive decisions to place an ad here and there, when budget allows, set a marketing team up for failure, since these one-shot efforts rarely bring results.

In many ways, ad agencies and marketing communication consultants like us have to accept responsibility for not successfully selling clients on the value of advertising. We, too, get caught up in the scramble of budget constraints, incomplete briefs and all those things we blame clients for. And to our dear friends in publishing, I would like to suggest some changes in the way ad pages are sold. Nowadays, many clients place media directly, in part to save the agency commission, some of them without any semblance of an annual plan and often in response to media reps calling about “special issues,” “bonus circulation” and other incentives to react. At the same time, few healthcare agencies offer expert media counsel, and so the myopic view about advertising is propagated.

Obama Health-Care Effort Gets $150 Million Boost From Unlikely Ally
Good news for all supporters of healthcare reform.

Health 2.0 could shock the system
Call me conservative, but I am generally skeptical about the morass of data mislabeled as information, simply inaccurate or unproven claims and (some) good information on health floating on the Internet. So I was skeptical about Esther Dyson’s commentary in Financial Times. It turns out to be a rational perspective on where all this is leading us.

Should doctors friend their patients on Facebook?
Well, yes. Health 2.0 is here.

Dako, Genentech to Seek FDA OK on HER-2 Companion Tests for Herceptin in Gastric Cancer
Let’s hope the value of diagnostics is more fully recognized this time around.

Eccolo Media 2008 B2B Technology Collateral Survey November 2008
A client brought this to my attention. This is a very good, analytical look at how sales literature is used in the different phases of the selling process.

While reports of the demise of print publishing and the decline of advertising, in general and especially in print, continue to dominate discussions of marketing communications, PR is emerging as a winner in the changing media mix. Forecasts reported by The New York Times last week included a projected 9.2 percent compound annual growth rate from 2008 through 2013 for “word-of-mouth marketing and public relations.” During the same week, I also noticed a good number of tweets deriding PR in some way or other.

This rise in the importance of PR is consistent with my recent experience with clients, especially as many of them discover the power of product publicity at times of declining marketing communication budgets. At the same time, I believe that clients and practitioners alike can benefit from a better understanding of PR—resetting expectations on the client’s side, and honing execution skills at the practitioner’s end. Like some of my fellow tweeters, I have been surprised by a general lack of common sense, as when clients expect coverage even though there is no real news, or when PR people take their target audience for granted, forgetting how much competition there is for editorial attention.

To my mind, PR is about shaping perception through clear and consistent communications grounded in facts. It takes time. It takes discipline. And it takes follow-through. (Dear Client: Please don’t leave on vacation right after media briefings where promises for follow-up information have been made.) PR is also about building credibility with journalists and establishing a relationship with them. (Dear PR Practitioner: Please do customize your pitch, which means knowing and respecting your audience.) By the way, we used to blame PR faux pas on junior staff, but increasingly I am finding that even senior people fall into the trap of sloppy writing and ignoring basic etiquette such as responding promptly to queries.

As PR becomes a larger piece of our marketing communications mix, it behooves all of us to improve our understanding of the underlying strategies and tactics. Suggestions for some good readings, anyone?