The fast lane Wellness for all Alex Butler, FCIM, has a background in healthcare marketing and technology and is co-founder of Foundry3, a digital creative agency specialising in health. Here, he argues that the knowledge of consumers in a wellness setting offers good medicine for marketers in all sectors interview: Martin Bewick I ve always thought that, as a discipline, marketing is about understanding and engaging other human beings. Over time, it is changes across society and technology that alter the ways we support and engage with people. You can see this in all the major disruptions in marketing throughout the history of TV, radio, cinema and print, as well as with the digital age were in now. This is also the reason that an industry such as pharma [pharmaceuticals] has had to change what it does and what it tries to do. For marketers, pharma is different from most industries. In the UK, its not allowed to promote its products to patients to the consumer and this is an important point in understanding how pharmaceutical companies look to use their marketing communications. What pharma can do complying with all the regulations, of course is to promote medicines to healthcare professionals through factual, clinical data. This means quite different challenges from the wider consumer healthcare sector, where claims might be made for a product that we would never make for a medicine. Drivers of change Just like the rest of the world, pharma is changing. First of all, people now expect to have choice, control and services built around their needs. Historically, healthcare hasnt done any of that. Patients booked an appointment with a GP and explained what was wrong, and a doctor or nurse told the patient what to do they went away with advice or,perhaps, a prescription. People certainly werent expected to challenge the opinionofthe doctor or nurse, and whileall of this came from a good place, it was a paternalistic approach. Today, access to information via the internet has had a profound impact on the way people think about their health. This is often talked about in a disparaging way people using the Dr Google or Wikipedia route of self-diagnosis, which could be harmful. In fact, thats not always true, as some of the information you can find online is very helpful and accurate, and written by medical professionals. But, thats not the whole picture. The internet has had an effect on medical professionals they now expect people to come with some level of knowledge. It has broken down that medical paternalism. Social media has also redefined healthcare radically. Once, if you had a rare disease, you could go your whole life without speaking to someone else with the condition. You wouldnt know what treatment or medicines they had, and what outcomes they expected. Social media has brought people with the same condition together, and they talk to understand their experiences and their options in terms of treatment. This happens across the healthcare sector now you can, for example, find a psoriasis forum with 200,000 people sharing information and updates. Such possibilities have also redefined clinical trials and clinical-trial recruitment, and what our notions of successful outcomes look like. Its also given rise to patient ambassadors. Patients become key and vocal opinion leaders, demanding rights to theirdata or the availability of different treatment options. They play their part in changing how healthcare works. Broadly speaking, this has all been incredibly positive forhealthcare. Finally, for marketers, the rise of smartphones has increased access to people. Through smartphone data, they can know who we are and what were doing. Our phones, with their multitude of embedded sensors, can connect to other wearable devices, tracking heart rate, blood pressure, activity, and through photos calorie intake. Soon, it will be easy to track blood oxygen saturation, too, or to non-invasively read blood-glucose levels or assess whether a mark on your body could be skin cancer. Home labs will work with these to produce laboratory-standard readings in our own homes. Voice technology will help assess the likelihood of a relapse of bipolar disorder and then, of course, our phones will connect us to nutritionists, psychologists or other experts. By giving the individual more control, its redefining healthcare. From a pharma marketing perspective, the entire healthcare journey shifts. It moves from a place where the emphasis was on selling scientifically to healthcare professionals, to one in which we can try to keep people well, or prevent them from having to visit the doctor, or send them to the doctor better prepared. It can also encourage better conversations between the healthcare professional and the patient, which makes the consultation more of a partnership. Then, when someone is prescribed a medicine, the new technology allows for a better patient support programme, and the data from all of this supplies pharma with real-world evidence data that will help us better understand what it is to live with chronic illness. In pharma, this is known as the consumerisation of health a phrase that I dont really like. For me, its clear that everyday people are now incredibly important for pharma companies, who have to work out ways to support them that are not simply about creating and delivering promotions. From healthcare to wellness In the main, weve never been healthier in what we can expect from our lives. Indeed, thechallenges of chronic disease and ageing populations have only come about because of this. The idea of wellness has increased in this digital age. Think about activity tracking via a Fitbit wristband. Much of this is not new trying to achieve 10,000 steps a day, for example, can be traced back to the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, when an advertising agency in Japan latched on to a craze for wearing clip-on pedometers. There was no real science behind the number, and that may be why people stop wearing them after a few months, when they realise this might not be all it takes to achieve their goals. But the current upsurge of interest in wearable activity trackers points to a wider perception around our overall health that we should all strive to be better, happier people. That might be in an expansion of ideas around mental health, including mindfulness. It could be connected to the fact that many of us lead relatively stressful, always on lives. The demands on us are not necessarily harder than they used to be, but they are certainly different. Such stresses have led to a heightened awareness not of how ill we are, but of how well or happy we are and, sad to say, a celebrity-driven culture adds to the questions about how we keep ourselves looking our best. The consumer and service industries are both interested in these areas. Globally, for example, the food and drinks industry is becoming concerned with whether what it sells to people is healthy, and whether what it is doing is morally and ethically right. How can Coca-Cola show it cares about its customers if what it sells is not healthy? This extends into many industries. Can an airline help ensure that passengers wont get deep-vein thrombosis on a long-haul flight? With automotive, what about passenger safety? Cars that connect to the driver and can sense biometrics are now being designed; could it be that theyre about to have a heart attack? Are they showing signs of stress or tiredness? Can the car take over? This isnt science fiction its now, and it means that more andmorecompanies are, in effect, starting to produce healthcare products. Changing consumer expectations People are changing in relation to what they expect from brands and how they engage with them. This is changing what brands do, too. Look at Aviva; it is not just advertising its insurance services, its advertising the things it is doing to add value to customers lives. The company built the Aviva Drive app to encourage safer driving. It is no longer just saying were cheaper or something similar its saying, we care about you as a person and want to make things that help you. I think people now expect that value exchange. Our world is about solving problems and brands need to take this into account. The digital environment is all about action and people doing things. Passive advertising can still work, but there is no real money in it any more, and thats because people want brands to build the tools and services that will add value to their lives. We also know that the best way to connect with people is to reach them on an emotional level and make them feel better. Thats the case with wellness, but anyone who works in marketing should understand it,too. cim.co.uk/exchange From a pharma marketing perspective, the entire healthcare journey shifts Alex Butler says the digital environment is about action