More from DTC National: Days 2-3

This is the second post of a two-part series reviewing highlights of the three days of the DTC National Conference in Boston April 6-8 2011. First, a few notes:

• Here's my DTC National Day One roundup.
• I also recommend these great insights from Ellen Hoenig Carlson 
• Speaker presentations are posted online here

Day Two at the DTC National

Day two of the DTC National kicked things into high gear and featured a star lineup of speakers – including pseudo-celeb beautiful people Dr. Lisa Masterson and Dr. Jim Sears, practicing physicians and co-hosts of the 2010 Emmy-winning daytime syndicated talk show The Doctors and columnists for USA Weekend.

We also heard from Jamie Turner, Chief Content Officer of the 60 Second Marketer, and co-author of “How to Make Money with Social Media.” I enjoyed Tara Parker-Pope, Consumer Health columnist for The New York Times and blogger for health blog, “Well,” on NYTimes.com. She offered a peek behind the curtain at a major national health blog read by millions, and was a strong and charming speaker.

In fact all of these speakers were strong, entertaining, and effectively held the audience’s attention. But to be honest - I struggled to find the relevance to my and my clients’ day-to-day challenges.

There were, however, two panels that day I particularly enjoyed:

WEGO Health CEO Jack Barrette moderated a panel with others as he presented findings from the WEGO Health survey of Health Activists and their views on pharma’s involvement in social media. This was the same survey WEGO presented so eloquently at the 2009 FDA Hearing, but was updated for 2011.

Jack is always great with the sound bites and the one that resonated to me this time was “Health activists still want pharma to participate in social media. But that sentiment has shifted from a welcome mat to ‘get here fast.’ The presentation and survey findings are posted on Slideshare here.

There were three breakout sessions from which to choose in the afternoon. I attended “The Great DTC Debate – Evaluating Program Success,” which addressed the evolution of measurement tools to keep pace with measuring DTC success. Panelists included Meryl Weinreb, President of Somerset Lake Consulting, Inc.; Asaf Evenhaim, CEO, Crossix; Kathleen Onieal, Consultant, The Monitor Group; and Scott Reese, CEO, Wool Labs.

With the rise of digital marketing, the amount of data to measure, evaluate, and optimize has exploded. I am a big fan of analytics and I’ve blogged in the past on my feelings of why some pharma marketers don’t bother to measure their programs. [see Ignoring Analytics: Ignorance, Arrogance, or Fear?]  This session provided meaningful direction on why that reticence to measure can and should change.

Using tools like Crossix, marketers can use prescription-level data to effectively plan and determine which campaigns, channels, and tactics are getting results. These articles from Crossix in the DTC Perspectives magazine provide a strong sense of how powerful this information can be. Asaf Evenhaim, CEO of Crossix, reviewed this data during the session:

1. Are your savings offers effectively reaching the right audience? When it comes to the types of patients free offers impact, the channel of distribution matters. The Crossix data demonstrated that the majority of "free trial offer" savings distributed via in-office were redeemed by existing patients, while offers garnered through DTC were most often redeemed by new patients. Whether your goals are new Rx's or retention, this is powerful data that could save marketers a lot of money over the long term.
2. How long does it take for consumers to convert to  your brand? It's probably not surprising that the conversion curve for Rx medications depends on at least the product, the category, the tactic and the execution/creative. But even with all of these variables, there are averages and norms that can be derived from Rx-based analyses. These norms run across these variables and can guide brand managers to plan and execute more effective DTC campaigns by using relevant benchmarks along the way.

Also we heard that, using services such as Wool Labs (I'd never heard of them before), marketers can now test campaigns en masse and quickly using the volume and immediacy of social media.

Overall, there was lots of engagement from the standing-room-only audience, and even the Yahoo! reps behind me were gushing that this was the best session of the conference.

 

Day Three of the DTC National
For me, the highlights on day three were DDMAC (surprise!) and Jim Davidson, Chair, Public Policy Group, Polsinelli Shughart PC (a familiar-to-many pro-pharma face, right).  I understand why Jim speaks at many of these conferences – he has an elegant way of presenting dry, complicated political information in an easy-to-digest format. I learned a few things about the status of pharma on the Hill and the impact of healthcare reform on our industry.

I had not ever heard these two DDMAC speakers before – Mike Sauers, Team Leader DTC Group 1, DDMAC and Amie O’Donoghue, Social Science Analyst, DDMAC.

Amie presented findings from a four-year study that began in 2007 (yeah – you read that right - it took four years) on the impact and effectiveness of distractions such as supers in DTC TV ads. I don't do TV, and was a little surprised they weren't doing similar studies in the digital realm. You can peruse their findings here. Really for me the highlight of her talk was when she showed the low-budget DTC TV ad that DDMAC had actually produced themselves to advertise a fake drug to study participants. (She was gracious as we giggled, and acknowledged the industry does a much better job of creating DTC ads.) Mike took us through a couple of recent warning letters ("what not to do") and the Bad Ad program.

To their credit, these DDMAC folks actually took extended Q&A at the end … though it was via index card (not live) and they didn’t provide much new information. (Someone is training these speakers very well!) One tiny new nugget that did emerge from Mike was that DDMAC did not plan to address social sharing specifically. (My caveat: There still certainly could be implications for social sharing in whatever guidance is issued. Whenver it may be issued. No new info on that either) ...

In short, while they didn't say much of anything new, they were brave to be there. And they were even likeable! DDMAC is smart to be reaching out to industry like this and putting a face and even a personality on their presence.

The Final Word

Maybe it's because I usually spend more time at digital and emerging media conferences, but this seemed to me a very media-focused and traditional DTC (as in TV/print)-centric event. Congrats to all the winners of the DTC Marketing Awards and Top Marketers! And it was great to see many familiar faces. Perhaps I'll go again next year? Or perhaps it would make more sense for our Media Director to do so ...