public relations

This post comes to us from Renato Póvoas, Founder and Managing Partner of GLOBALHealthPR Portugal partner, Guess What.

Despite being somewhat averse to speculation, Guess What‘s editorial board asked me to write about trends for 2017. I leave here my 12 guesses. At the end of the year, we will take stock of what has actually materialized.

1. Predictive analysis: Use of data, statistical algorithms and machine learning techniques to anticipate consumer behavior.

2. Customer-Centric Culture: Put customers ahead of the direct interests of your brand. Surprise and provide an unforgettable experience to your client that he or she will defend your agency owing to fantastic results.

3. Geo-location: Massive spread of the use of consumer data via geolocation. With the ever-increasing use smartphones, there is great potential for collecting and processing this information, being a precious tool for brand marketing.

4. Native advertising: With the proliferation of ad blockers, it will become increasingly common to use native advertising in various media and formats. This type of advertising has the advantage of not being interrupted by the intrusive banners and pop-ups that disturb us daily.

5. Multi-touch Attribution (MTA): A system that lets you know which clicks are the most important in converting customers online and how they relate. An extremely important topic for communications agency wants to make money providing digital services. Coming in the very near future.

6. Data-driven marketing: Base decisions and actions on marketing through concrete data. Get to know people and customers to the smallest detail. This implies looking at the marketing, communication and commercial areas from an integrated, 360º perspective.

7. Targeted Creativity: Develop creative and relevant content for your customers. From the digital point of view there are numerous tools that allow you to adapt and segment content so that your campaigns are increasingly effective.

8. Cross-device: It’s already coming out of 2016 and will continue to be a reality this year. The mix is ​​getting bigger and bigger. The challenge is to integrate the contents with coherence and in an appropriate way to the support.

9. Live video: Explosion in the volume and level of interaction of this type of video. YouTube, Facebook and Instagram have recently incorporated more and more features in this field, thus contributing to the popularization of these videos, namely at the level of public events. It will not take long for brands to seize this opportunity.

10. Content marketing: It has been said and recognized for some time now that “content is king”. Therefore, I believe that the content evolution that we will see in 2017 will be with regard to the level of sophistication, creativity and format.

11. AR / VR (Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality): With some experiences in this area – Pokemon Go is perhaps the most universal example, there is still a long way and a lot to do in this specific field. Technology is important, but content and creativity are equally critical.

12. AI (Artificial Intelligence): This will be the year in which more and more companies and brands will advance in this area. Personal assistants, chat bots and other instant messaging programs promise to give birth to a new generation of digital services.

What do you think will be the top communications trends in 2017? Leave a comment to let us know!

A version of this post originally appeared on the Guess What blog.

 

I’ve been in Sydney, Australia for just over a week now as a part of the GLOBALHealthPR® Professional Exchange Program. While I’ve done “heaps” of touristy things like check out sweeping views of the city from the Sydney Tower Eye, watched surfers catch some waves at Manly Beach and hung out with koalas at the Wild Life Sydney Zoo, I’ve also gotten a taste of what it’s like to live as a local Aussie. Here are a few things about working with colleagues at our partner agency Team VIVA!  that I wanted to share:

PATIENT FOCUS

I’ve found my work at VIVA! to be highly patient-centric, and find it surprising that a recent Pharma In Focus white paper reports that one in three Australian pharma marketers felt they failed to focus on the patient. Most campaigns include regional or State-specific patient spokespeople who can provide first-hand commentary on what it’s like to live with a certain disease or condition. VIVA! has a real knack for media relations, and develops comprehensive patient case studies, videos and infographics (both still and animated) that are really easy for the media to reference and extract for use in their stories

NO PRODUCT MENTIONS

Under the Medicines Australia Code of Conduct, you cannot mention the names of specific pharmaceutical products or anything that might imply a specific type of treatment in communication to consumers beyond a new product launch, or when the product secures a second indication. So PR and marketing firms need to get creative and find ways to connect with consumers in meaningful ways on behalf of their pharma clients. Programs are often implemented through unrestricted grants to advocacy groups and tend to focus on disease state awareness.

COLLABORATIVE TEAM

VIVA! starts each week with an all-agency meeting. The team works well together, and sometimes it’s all hands on deck. Even the agency’s Principal is not afraid to jump in and help, lending her expertise and experience to all aspects of client service. I’ve also found Australians to be quite direct with each other – no sugar coating feedback or direction – which helps keep projects moving along efficiently and boosts camaraderie within the agency, resulting in the best work for clients.

LIFE IN SYDNEY

The public transport in Sydney is very user-friendly. After only a few days, I was navigating the system like a local. The Opal card, like DC’s SmarTrip or New York’s MetroCard, is really simple to “top up” and each station has easy-to-read digital screens with a clear look at what stops are up next. Plus, the card works seamlessly for the train, bus and ferry systems.

From what I’ve seen, my colleagues and their fellow Sydney residents are a pretty active bunch. Most folks on Team VIVA!  take a walk midday, go for a run after work, or hit the gym a few times a week. Overall, Aussies thrive on the outdoors (who can blame them with the country’s natural beauty and proximity to the beach?), which fuels a healthy outlook on life.

Kaitlin Bowen is participating in the GLOBALHealthPR Professional Exchange Program representing exclusive U.S. partner Spectrum. The Program aims to enhance the connectivity of GLOBALHealthPR agencies through collaboration, best practice sharing, and insights into the drivers that affect health and science communications in different markets worldwide, and to build professional relationships with other GLOBALHealthPR personnel around the globe.

Kaitlin is an account director at GHPR U.S. partner Spectrum. To follow her experiences on the GLOBALHealthPR Professional Exchange Program online, use #GHPRConnects to join the conversation and see all of the 2016 exchange programming.

In today’s post, Paola de la Barreda of our GLOBALHealthPR Mexico partner, PRP, explains how rebranding is much more than just a tale of two logos.

When we founded PRP, we were two young women, not particularly well-known, launching a company in an industry of well-established multinational and local competitors.

With this in mind, our logo—the core of our identity—was serious and formal, designed to communicate our professionalism and capability to represent big brands. The logo also included the words “PR Partners” below PRP, because at the time we felt the need to explain what we did.

Fourteen years later, PRP has had the honor of handling prestigious brands and multinational companies, from healthcare to consumer industries. [Read more…] about Ready to Rebrand? Here’s What You Need to Know

Today’s blog post comes to us from Nallely Moreno of GLOBALHealthPR Mexico partner, PR Partners.

Quantifying the social impact of any discipline is not easy, and public relations is no exception. Globally, when it comes to establishing specific parameters to properly measure social impact, there are still “gray zones.” [Read more…] about Finding Solid Ground: Using PR to Transcend the Intangible

I have been counseling pharmaceutical and other healthcare brand managers about public relations for 35 years. And while brand managers today are much more sophisticated and analytic than they were back in the 70s and 80s, I continue to be at least a bit dismayed about the way they perceive public relations and how it fits into the product marketing mix.

Perhaps what follows are the musings of a public relations person who is past his prime and ready for whatever ultimate fate awaits people who do what I do for a living, but the biggest mistakes I still see healthcare brand managers make about PR are as follows:

1.      Bringing the PR Consultant in too late
2.      Failing to accept that all products (and companies) are flawed
3.      Underestimating the power of patients
4.      Stinting on evaluating the impact of PR on audiences
5.      Assuming that PR is a commodity

[Read more…] about Five Mistakes Healthcare Brand Managers Make about Public Relations

Today’s insights come courtesy of Nallely Moreno of our GLOBALHealthPR Mexico partner, PRPartners.  

Throughout the world, the Mayo Clinic is known as a top source for scientific research and medical education and care. Because the media already uses Mayo Clinic as a reference, the organization has a distinct advantage when it has news. Whereas traditionally, a press release is not sufficient to gain media attention, the Mayo Clinic has an already-primed audience watching for news. In 2012 alone, we managed to get 627 stories and articles published for the Mayo Clinic. [Read more…] about Modifying Tactics to Help Mayo Clinic Succeed: A Lesson in PR