At Compass, we believe that a brand is not a benefit, a formula, a name, or a logo. A brand is a contract with your targets.

Our job as marketers is to create and articulate your brand’s identity so that it is interpreted by each of your targets on terms that are relevant to them in their lives. Your brand’s name, logo, and graphics are tangible expressions of this identity while your brand’s promise, personality, and tone, are intangible expressions.

How do you develop your brand so it will grow and become a valuable asset to each of your targets?

The answer to this question is much different today than it was even five years ago. Why? Because of the Internet. The Internet has allowed us to think in and market to multiple targets and segments. Your brand may have to appeal to several very different audiences, each of which has a different set of expectations, perspectives, and reasons why they have come to interact with your brand.

These target audiences are the ones who define the relationship with your brand and what it will and will not mean to them. Another way to think about this is: What do your target audiences say about your brand when you’re not in the room? What do they believe to be true about your brand? Because it’s what they believe, not what you intend, that matters.

Consider these statistics:

• 25% of search results for the World’s Top 20 largest brands are links to user-generated content. (Source: Marketing Vox and Nielsen BuzzMetrics SES Magazine June 8 )
• 34% of bloggers post opinions about products & brands. (Source: Universal McCann’s Social Media Research Wave 3)
• 90% of consumers trust peer recommendations. (Source: July 2009 Nielsen Global Online Consumer Survey)

The communication of your brand—or where your targets learn about it these days—gets a bit tricky. This is especially true online, which is generally the first place your audiences will be introduced to your brand. Many aspects of communicating your brand online are not in your control, especially with the advent, growth and strength of social media. So make sure your intended brand identity is consistent among all your targets wherever you mention it. Know that others may take it and redeploy it—possibly into areas that you may not have even considered.

The Internet also allows you to target and reach each of your segments with the exact message you know your audiences will find valuable about your brand. It is the one medium through which you can deliver a direct, unfiltered definition of your brand and the experience your brand represents—the whole story with less interpretation—keeping it as true as possible to each segment that views it.

Here’s how to do it:

Think in multiples: Multiple segments. Multiple audiences. Multiple interpretations (because now you can). The question is no longer: What is the one message I want to convey? It’s: Who are the multiple segments interacting with my brand? Once you determine this, you need to understand how each segment wants to interact with your brand—on the phone, online, in person—and when they need the information.

Because you can now position your brand to multiple customer segments, you should do your segmentation research when you begin your branding research—even as early as Phase III and label design—and not afterward. Use the segmentation research to identify criteria on which your audience clusters (eg, practice areas, specialties, etc). Explore not only what your key message drivers are, but why, which is the most valued, and how will your messaging be delivered to each segment. Different segments respond to specific articulations of your brand’s identity. Emphasize nuances within your brand’s promise, personality, or values while making sure to maintain consistency on the external expressions. They are like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that when put together, need to consistently display your brand’s identity. If your pieces are different or disparate, that puzzle will be a mess.

As your message and brand architecture are developed, make sure they are on a flexible platform that can be translated into multiple mediums to different segments—all while ensuring consistency in your brand essence. Next, develop strategies for each segment to receive messages in the form most suitable to them.

None of this is easy and it can’t be learned overnight or performed by older, more traditional agencies. It takes years of living in the segmented marketing world to be able to successfully build and promote a brand in it.

1. Be realistic about what you can achieve.

Have you ever found yourself in the middle of a great meal at a favorite restaurant when you suddenly – and regrettably – realize that your eyes were bigger than your belly? Project bloat causes that same queasy feeling. When new project enthusiasm morphs into to a mile-high stack of manuscripts, wireframes and design concepts on your desk, you know you’ve ordered more than you can comfortably swallow – and that you’re not going to meet your deadline. The cost of extending your project’s budgeted duration can lead to significant cost overruns. Time is a silent budget killer. Not only is it costly to keep your team (and your agency’s team) engaged in a project that’s beyond its planned duration, but you’re delaying ROI and missing opportunities to engage those teams on new projects. Even worse, delays can result in missing the window of opportunity to capitalize on the market insight that led you to invest in the project in the first place. To avoid these hazards:

• Be honest about how much time you can carve out of your schedule to work on each program or project in your marketing plan. Share this with your partners so that they know what to expect and how to engage you.
• Be aware of the effort and timing impacts of other projects in your pipeline on your staff and your organization.
• Launch content and features in phases. If launching a new site, start with a placeholder site or HCP-focused content to establish a presence and then follow up with additional content and features.
• Avoid “over-socializing” your project within your organization in the early stages – which can lead to scope additions and time drag from stakeholders not directly invested in your project goals.
• Come to terms with the reality that it’s probably going to take longer than you think – and budget accordingly.

By setting bite-sized, realistic goals you give yourself and your team an advantage in delivering a successful, timely program on schedule and on budget.

2. Make regular, clear communication with partners and vendors a top priority.

You want the best-of-the-best working on your brand for each thing that you do. But what happens when you can’t remember if you told the PR agency or the branding agency or the offline agency or the interactive agency about the new market research insights you received last week? This is an issue with which nearly every busy brand manager struggles. Clear and consistent communication can help to avoid the extra time, effort, churn and rounds feedback. As a start:

• Take the time to talk with your partners each week. If a weekly “status report” format feels like a root canal, be open with your partners about what format works for you.
• Get your agencies and partners together on a regular basis and encourage inter-agency collaboration. Insist on inter-agency cooperation.
• Conduct all-agency calls at least quarterly to ensure that everyone is on the same page.
• Ask for feedback from your partners regularly. Invite them to tell you what they need from you to deliver their best work.

Excellent communication ensures that all of your partners are working as efficiently as possible, with the most current brand and company insights, to deliver a cohesive and impactful brand experience.

3. Schedule an early stage concept review with your med-legal team.

At Compass, we’ve had the great fortune to work with clients that have a passion for innovation and exploration. We’ve delivered some of our best work as pioneers in uncharted territory (see www.pku.com). Key to our success has been early partnership with our clients’ medical / legal / regulatory (MLR) teams. People support what they help to create. Early concept reviews help to:

• Provide insights that can put your marketing program on a path to “approvability”.
• Save time and budget dollars that would otherwise be spent on creating potentially troublesome program elements.
• Minimize costly rounds of review.
• Foster a relationship of trust and collaboration with your MLR board that makes them want to find ways to help your program succeed.

Whether we’re sharing a strategy deck, storyboards, wireframes or an interactive prototype – at Compass, we believe early support from MLR is essential to successful innovation.

I was first introduced to the use of behavioral targeting in Gmail. For anyone who uses Gmail I’m sure you are familiar with the column of paid search ads running down the right side of your conversations. One day, I noticed that the ads for beach house rentals was particularly relevant to an email exchange with my friends over our pending long weekend at the beach. The coincidence stumped me for a moment, but then the realization came. Gmail was using keywords in the text of my conversation to display relevant and targeted paid search ads to me. And if this was momentarily baffling for me, it must be for others not so internet savvy, especially when it is used in display advertising and not in something as obviously personal as Gmail. So when I stumbled across the recent New York Times article discussing a new icon meant to inform consumers about the use of behavioral targeting I felt compelled to put fingers to keyboard.

The use of targeted ads is on the rise. Government criticism to the practice is becoming louder. More and more consumers are questioning the “why” behind the ads that they are seeing. A little icon, an “i”, developed by the advocacy group, the Future of Privacy Forum, is supposed to help. The idea was to create a symbol that would become as synonymous to information about targeted ads, as the three-arrowed triangle is to recycling. The “i”, within a circle on a blue background, will direct users to a page explaining how their web history and demographic profile was used to determine that they would see this particular ad.¹

More marketers plan to utilize behavioral targeting in their media buys, but face resistance over using that data from consumers and the government. In a recent eMarketer report, it was estimated that behaviorally targeted advertising is expected to rise at a steady growth rate of approximately 20% year over year from 2009 to 2014, topping off at $2.6 billion in 2014.² Marketers view behavioral targeting as an effective way to cut through the ad clutter that consumers are increasingly getting bogged down with and therefore have a tendency to ignore. The “i” is meant to be an important step towards making consumers and the government more comfortable with the practice.

So what does it all mean? For marketers, as the use of the “i” becomes more ubiquitous, creative will need to be developed or adapted to accommodate the symbol (and creative folks will need to get used to a little icon interfering with their aesthetic). Education will need to be given to clients and to other internal stakeholders within their organization, about it and what it means. Also, it’s yet to be determined if the web page explaining the “i” and the use of behavioral targeting will be a standard link, or if each company will be responsible for developing and hosting their own page.

It’s still debatable whether or not all consumers will embrace targeted advertising as it grows in usage. Providing an informational tool to increase the transparency between consumers and advertisers is certainly a good step, but I have to question if it will truly alleviate any unease that some consumers may feel at having examples of their captured behavior staring them in the face. Personal privacy, especially online, is a growing concern for many. For every user that doesn’t like it, I’m sure there will be many others who already do welcome targeted ads and will continue to welcome them even more as they grow in prominence. If you have little control over the fact that you will see advertising online, almost equivalent to the amount of control you have over exposure to television ads, why not embrace ones that will be much more meaningful to you?

In my opinion this is a win-win for both consumers and advertisers. At the very least, targeted ads will translate to increased brand awareness, if not click through rates, while consumers will be exposed to new products, services or messages that are much more meaningful to them.

1. Clifford, Stephanie. “A Little ‘i’ to Teach About Online Privacy.” New York Times 26 January. 2010. Media & Advertising. 2 February. 2010
2. “Privacy Restrictions May Open Ad Targeting Doors.” eMarketer 1 February. 2010. eMarketer Daily. 2 February. 2010

With viewers “tuning in” to watch video online, the consumption of broadcast content will continue to morph dramatically. Pepsi opted to skip advertising in the the most widely-viewed sports events to focus on social media efforts. Soon, Hulu could become more of a threat to traditional television than DVRs. Some companies continue to use long-form video, such as GlaxoSmithKline and the Alli-themed documentary, but brief, serial clips may yield an advantage for continued engagement.

In pharma, the opportunity is yet to be fully seized. Nearly half of online physicians in Western Europe reported watching Web videos for professional purposes. At the FDA social media hearing, we learned physicians watched instructional videos online the night before performing an orthopedic surgical procedure. And this doesn’t change translating from professionals to consumers. Video can be extremely effective in communicating with patients and caregivers beyond simple text. Video can communicate complex ideas, such as mechanism of action, more easily than the written word. Patients telling their own stories in their own words yields greater emotional engagement. And, very often it becomes viral.

This should encourage brand managers to recognize the unique benefits of video and leverage these assets online – whether on corporate, unbranded or products sites, or shared on social media channels.

The growth and usage of “new media tools” will always surpass and ultimately replace “traditional methods”. Smoke signals were replaced by guys with sandwich boards, who were replaced by newspapers, then radio then print and TV. There will always be a constant evolution. Marketing doesn’t change, the mediums that we use will always change, but at the end of the day, it is still marketing.

Having said that, how we approach marketing is changing, and quickly. In this past year we have heard a lot about Relationship Marketing or (RM). It was first discussed in the form of patient compliance programs, and most recently, given the changes in the sales force structure, size, and regulations, HCP RM. Both are the same, it’s about marketing to specific segments.

Segmented marketing the ability to identify and successfully reach and market to multiple different and distinct target audiences which has been pioneered and perfected by Interactive will continue to evolve as the marketing approach. In the past promotional campaigns consisted of leveraging one benefit into one message and then communicating that message through the reps, journal ads, and TV. The Intent has allowed us to think in segments. Going forward the agencies that will serve their brands best are the ones that internalize this approach across everything they do, from label design to brand messaging to all the promotional activities.  It is no longer what is the one message, it’s which segments do I want to reach, influence, empower; how do they want to consume my message (with or on the phone, online, in person, etc) and when do they need the information?