The Stealth Sell

Last weekend, The Sunday Times Style magazine ran this feature The Stealth Sell (let me know if the link has gone and I'll post the text). Overall, it's an interesting read that succinctly taps into some key live issues in Word of Mouth marketing. It's also fascinating to see that it was in a lifestyle section, not business or news.

What it does by the end of the piece however, is to lump together some forms of marketing that really aren't in the same ball-park.

The bit that I think it gets right, is to point out the deception that's going on by those people who want to exploit the power of word of mouth, rather than work with it. The author sites PayPerPost, who are paying bloggers up to £10 per post to endorse set products.

“This is a new way of looking at advertising,” says Tim Draper, a PayPerPost stakeholder. “You put an ad inside the text, and it’s more subtle.”

It's not more 'subtle' Tim, it's more 'deceitful'.

Whether you think paid posts are wrong or right (is deceiving someone the same as lying? Semantics - they're both wrong) it doesn't make good business sense for anyone involved, apart from Tim and PayPerPost:

• If the blogger is a serious writer who wants people to heed their opinion and come back to their blog (even for commercial reasons), then these paid posts will slowly but surely kill their legitimacy (their brand), and with that their audience. Who wants to read stealth ads masquerading as blogs in their spare time? Perhaps because blogging is online - you can't look these people in the eye to see if they're lying, and there's no editorial control - people who read blogs are ultra sensitive to sniffing out flogs (fake blogs).
• For the company ultimately paying for the post, this is also bad for their brand - unless you want to be known by your customers as the brand who has to pay people to lie about it, presumably because it's not that good, or because you're just the sort of big, evil corporation who likes doing this sort of thing

Where the article goes off track a little is the way it ends off, introducing the shady new art of "tryvertising", actually known for a hundred, if not thousands of, years as "sampling":

“Several years ago, a well-known trainer company went into working-class areas in America and doled out free shoes to a handful of ‘opinion-former’ kids aged between 14 and 18,” says Mark Ratcliff of the research consultancy Murmur. “Then they sat back and waited for demand to flare up. They told me where they appropriated that idea from,” he continues. “Crack dealers.”

A nice little anecdote, but what separates this "new tactic" from paid posts, and to my mind takes it out of the 'Stealth' category, is that no-one is being deceived. Some selected kids got some new free trainers; they could then make up their own minds whether they wanted to recommend them, or even wear them in the first place.

Lessons for pharma

1. If you're thinking about online strategies - don't pay for posts or flog. It'll not only demean your brand, but I'm sure the regulators would rightly take a pretty dim view of deceiving customers and consumers
2. Transpose this to what we do with customers and opinion leaders. Stop looking for ways to make them spout a promotional message, and start thinking of how you can create a situation where the right people in the right context can make up their own minds about your brand. Much more powerful and a win for everyone.
   

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Blogs & Pharma part 1 - Intro

So blogs; if marketing commentators aren't talking about them, they're writing them. But does this make blogs and other social media a force that pharma can't ignore? Should we take the step out into the unknown, potentially risking all sorts of backlash to become involved in this modern communications phenomenon?

Talk to anyone involved in social media and they'll look at you like an idiot if you question the impact of blogging. There were moments like this at the International Word of Mouth Conference earlier this month in Amsterdam. During one pro-blogging presentation, Dr Peeter Verlegh of Erasmus University openly challenged the presenter on what percentage of the general population could actually be involved in blogging - there was stunned silence.

Over a few posts on this fledgling blog I want to explore these questions, challenge a few assumptions and by the end see if there is a way forward for pharma, blogs and social media. I say challenge assumptions because I feel that there's an accepted wisdom building about the power of blogging that reminds me of the blind faith behind the first dot-com bubble (but then I also thought the same about that new search engine Google, so just goes to show...). At the same time, the power of word of mouth in healthcare is undeniable and social media would seem to tap into it. Let's see where we get to.... Read more....

IWOMC '07- is this where WoM is at?

Last week I presented at the 3rd International Word of Mouth Conference in Amsterdam. It was a thought-provoking couple of days with a friendly bunch of people. Good on you Nils for organising it.

Having attended last year, my key thought going into this one was:

"is it just me, or is everyone else using WoM as another media tactic, rather than a fundamentally better way of approaching marketing strategy?"

An avalanche of presentations of the various buzzmarketing agencies resoundingly confirmed the the former. I note that George Silverman also experienced this at WOMMA in the States late last year - see his insightful blog post here.

I believe in 'live and let live' for the buzz guys, but my concern is that "WoM" as a concept is getting niched as a kooky direct marketing tactic, rather than fundamental strategic shift. My presentation (download from here) followed this line of thought and showed how you can build a WoM centred communications strategy.

The good news from IWOMC '07 was that there seemed to be an acceptance that we need to move things 'upstream'.

So the questions I'm left with are:

1. Why isn't WoM being talked about in this way?
2. Who else out there (apart from George) is trying to do this?
3. How can we get this discussion going at events like WOMMA and IWOMC?
   

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My (pharma) marketing philosophy - what this blog is about

For the rest of my posts to make sense, it's important to understand where I'm coming from. So, here's my philosophy on marketing and pharmaceutical marketing.

I 'grew up' as a pharma marketer wishing I was a consumer marketer. Those guys work on brand names people have heard of, they can actually use their own product, and plenty of them get to do the ultimate in marketing glamour - TV. Try telling someone at a party that you're in pharmaceutical marketing. The eyes glaze over (or maybe even squint a little if hostile to the industry).

Not only that (or maybe because of it) as a pharma marketer you're constantly being told just how clever the consumer guys are, and being shown the latest clever ad or piece of viral marketing.

When I first moved over to healthcare advertising, these prejudices were reinforced. The consumer advertising guys have interesting trade magazines and prestigious award ceremonies in places like Cannes. There also seemed to be a lot of money going around, and you actually read about successful admen in proper newspapers.

But then, after working with the consumer guys on a few projects, I got to realise that consumer marketing was definitely no more intellectually challenging or fulfilling than pharma. In fact, selling toilet paper doesn't exactly require mental gymnastics. We'd always been led to believe that Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) was where the buzz was at. For 'FMCG' read detergent or fish-fingers; not nearly so glamorous, or interesting.

So that made me think about what sort of stuff I would like to work on; something mentally stimulating, but important - something that might even help change the world we live in a meaningful way. First up, I thought of computer and information technology, and the way that it's revolutionising everything we do. And promptly admitted that I knew nothing about it, and a lot of it looked pretty dry.

But then another form of evolving technology that is shaping our world came to mind - healthcare. This made me realise that it's not the pharma subject matter that's the problem, it's the staid, myopic view of marketing that we've always applied to it. Why should we ape the tired old ways of classic consumer marketing (becoming rapidly outdated itself) when what we have is a far more complex and interesting marketplace that requires its own approach?

"And hence", to be dramatic, "my quest was born".

Together with my business partners I've set about ripping up all the pre-conceived notions of how we should approach pharma marketing. In their place, seeking out and developing the theories, tools and techniques that work in a marketplace where the customer is rarely the end-user, and colleague recommendation (word of mouth) is the most powerful influence; not advertising or sales reps.

The result is a marketing approach that is not only unique for pharma, but I that believe in places is cutting edge across all marketing sectors. In this blog you'll find all related viewpoints to this - some from pharma, some from other industries. I'd be fascinated to know what you think of them.

Matt

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