Tapping the Full Potential of the Tablet PC the e-arena Forrest King, Managing Partner JUICE Pharma Advertising Creating Powerful Content for Tablet PCs Here are seven DOs and DON’Ts for managing a remarkable emerging medium: DO think pull, not push: build your content to answer the questions physicians are most hungry to have answered. DON’T simply repurpose your print to the PC: brochureware isn’t just boring to the physician, it’s embarrassing to the representative and potentially damaging to your company. DO make the sales call a learning experience for the physicians. DO think in terms of building a long-term relationship. DO give the representative the opportunity to control the flow of information without being overshadowed by gratuitous animation. DON’T falter on execution: physicians experience state-of-the-art graphics, sound, and interactivity when they use PCs for Web surfing, games, and applications, so they expect top quality. DO stretch the limits of this medium: challenge your agency to find the best way to tell your story — static screens, animations, video, or combinations of all of these. As each story finds its optimal delivery, your sales team will maximize success. Remember when the World Wide Web first emerged, and many marketers simply took their printed materials and uploaded them to their new sites? Not surprisingly, most online “brochureware” soon proved ineffective. Something similar is happening today in pharmaceutical field sales with tablet PC-based sales aids. While some marketers have jumped in with digitized versions of print-based sales materials, others are using this new medium to create a more powerful sales call that resonates with physicians as never before and transforms the physician-representative dynamic. To do this, however, calls for custom-created, multimedia content to support and extend that interaction. Physicians Sense What’s Genuine Physicians have an innate sense of what’s genuine. They can tell immediately when tablet PC-based sales aids are nothing but repurposed sales brochures. They can also tell when the content is authentic to the medium. Physicians respond enthusiastically to genuinely interactive, nonlinear communications created specifically for tablet PCs. Today’s tablet PC offers a completely new way to engage and interact with physicians — the ability to customize the experience to the interests and needs of physicians, interactively, for a level of engagement not previously possible. Customization Builds Unprecedented Engagement Nonlinear storytelling allows the physician to follow his or her own line of inquiry through the brand’s messages, getting answers based on specific practice needs. More like a customer-relationship management (CRM) mentality than a traditional sales pitch, it makes each call more relevant and meaningful than it could have been with any other medium — and far more powerful than repurposed brochureware. The implication for marketers and their agencies is clear: to realize the great potential of touch-screen technology to add value to the sales call, pharmaceutical marketers must be authentic in creating promotional materials for this platform. Appropriately created content can transform the sales dynamic. Some of the benefits of custom-created, interactive content include: • Longer, more substantial sales calls; • Greater clarity and comprehension; • Improved message recall; • Enhanced ability to communicate complicated science and data, achieving deeper physician insights into brand value; • Overall improved sales representative performance and credibility. Eyes Wide Open: Adapt to the Times New technology always challenges creativity. The first TV shows repurposed radio dramas; it took time for the uniqueness of the new medium to take root in new situations, scripts, and themes. The same creative evolution needs to happen with tablet PCs. Sure, it’s inexpensive to adapt existing copy and art. Designers can even make bars on charts zoom up or down without much effort or thought — and there’s far too much of that out there already. So the message is this: don’t miss out on the opportunities tablet PC sales calls offer. It is important to create unique, interactive content for the tablet PC, to enrich and deepen the physician-representative relationship. Today, physicians hold pharmaceutical companies to the standard of digital excellence they experience online. Let’s make sure we don’t let them down. New technology always challenges creativity. Don’t miss out on the opportunities tablet PC sales calls offer. Juice Pharma Advertising, New York, is a creative and strategic advertising agency that provides highly disciplined, evidence-based solutions that integrate the latest wave of emerging technology to cover the complete spectrum of solutions, from traditional print to Web-based new media and tablet PCs. For more information, visit juicepharma.com. September 2006 VIEW on Marketing

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