I will share two stories that occurred in our first year, 1998. We rented a room in a house that had been converted to an office building located in Brookline Village, MA. We were directly behind the famous Village SmokeHouse www.villagesmokehouse.com. Each morning Beth and I would enter our office to waffs of barbecued meat. I am not a vegetarian but that was rough at 7am. Alan the owner (and alleged mobster) would occasionally cook in our parking lot if he had a big catering event. A women named Nancy also rented an office in the building. She did not like Alan nor did she approve of him using our parking lot as a kitchen, in fact she called the fire department frequently. Nancy was an angry woman. One day Beth and I hear this “pssssss” sound coming from the parking lot. We look outside, Nancy had poured some fluid all over a rack of ribs that could have fed fifty. Alan must have heard the same sound. He came outside and witnessed what Nancy had just destroyed. He was irrate AND he had a 10 inch butcher knife in his hand (presumably to cut the meat). Nancy saw the anger in his eyes and took off running. Alan ran after her, knife in hand, as she screamed bloody murder.  I am not making this up!

A second story I shared yesterday was a trip to NYC. Beth and I were intent on winning Pfizer’s business ASAP. We convinced one of the Internet marketing managers, Fred, to meet us for drinks. We jumped in the car and drove to NYC (at the time we did not have the luxury to pay for two plane or even train tickets). We parked the car around the corner from the restaurant. We had a great time with Fred (and eventually won some business).  As we got up to leave we told Fred we were going to the airport to jump on the next shuttle to Boston (portraying that we were an established agency). Fred, being the gentleman that he is, told us he would hail us a cab. We told him we were all set, but he insisted. Beth and I walked to the corner, I see Beth’s car in the corner of my eye and smile at Beth. Fred opens the cab door and we jump in. The cab driver barks, “Where you going?” We ignore him and continue to smile and wave to Fred. He barks again, “Where are you going?” Fred turns the corner, we jump out of the cab and run as fast as we can to Beth’s car. We sit for ten minutes…waiting for the coast to be clear. We drive back to Boston laughing at ourselves and praying this Catalyst thing will be worth it.

I am proud to say ten years later it was and still is a great experience. Catalyst went from a two person shop surrounded by raw meat and crazy people to today announcing our integration into WPP/GroupM search enterprise, the largest search enterprise in the world, http://www.catalystsearchmarketing.com/resource-center/pdfs/GroupM%20-%20Catalyst%20Announcement.pdf. Yesterday was a good day for Catalyst, for me, for Beth, for our employees, for our clients and for WPP www.wpp.com. There are a couple people (first clients, now friends) who have provided longstanding support, Rick (our first meeting with him was at the Village SmokeHouse), Sue, and Kate. We thank you for your support and vision that search marketing was (ten years ago) and will continue to be a viable communication channel. We also thank our employees who have been with us for many years, Rich, Lee and Tim. I will sign off before I get too sentimental, thanks for listening. I hope you enjoyed the stories. I am happy to report we are still having a good time!

I am not sure where this is going but we absolutely need to monitor and report on user interaction with these evolving communication models. Happy Friday!

“Despite accounting for an ever-increasing spend of online ad spending, the pharmaceutical industry is still failing to embrace the Web 2.0 strategies that could help it better engage consumers looking for health care assistance, according to eMarketer research.”

The industry is tracking to spend $975 million online in 2007, 4.5% of total Web spend, and is predicted to spend $2.2 billion by 2011, 5% of total Web spend.

The article goes on to say, the pharma industry is not exploring with blogs, social networks, etc. Well we all know why. Interestingly, the article highlights the Rozerem website and the video aspect of the site. I think the idea is good, the site continues the DTC experience with the three characters in the TV ads. This example of Web 2.0 is safe, it is in video form, so the content is controlled. This site is a very basic example of the use of Web 2.0. The bar is low.

We as an industry can do some exploratory work without ruffling the regulatory committee’s feathers. I also noticed they are doing a pretty good job with their search marketing efforts relative to their competitors. Rozerem could further leverage their video assets by optimizing the videos and other digital assets for GUS, Google Universal Search.

Ironically for pharma, the internet is about consumer empowerment. How do we work in a world where the internet is about consumer control and the industry we work in is heavily regulated by the FDA? (I think if we ran a keyphrase density analysis on my presentation “educate” would rank well…)  We as marketers have to educate our regulatory teams, educate the FDA and DDMAC and establish a safe, effective solution to interact, educate, and empower consumers, patients, caregivers and HCP. I know, I know easier said than done!

Here are the materials from my  presentation on Search for regulated Industries:

Regulated Search PPT

Regulated Search Handout 

40 years ago – newspapers, Broadcast TV, Broadcast radio, magazines

20 years ago – add cable TV, Computers

Now – Internet – add email, blogs, online video, cell phones, mobile internet, mobile video, text messaging, podcasting, IM, blogs, social networks, I could keep going and going.

Most notable and popular at this year’s conference (with over 6,000 attendees) was the emergence of what some are calling the “User Revolution”

Communitainment (Communication and Entertainment) sites – Yahoo Answers (social search), My Space (social networking), Wikepidia (online encyclopedia), You Tube (online video), Blogger (blogging) and Facebook (social networking) all over 15 million UNIQUE visitors a month! According to Piper Jaffray over the next 10 years more than half of the internet usage will be Communitainment.

As a marketer how do you communicate with the consumer? The answer to this question will be the challenge for the foreseeable future. However, where there is challenge there is excitement and opportunity. The consumer decision making process is becoming more sophisticated.

My two cents…no matter what your marketing strategy may be in the next few years, search will remain the navigation tool for the consumer, and will assume an even more central role. Today there are 600 million searches daily and the world is just starting to get confusing! What does that mean to today’s marketer? Create a comprehensive, cohesive search strategy today! What does this mean to the pharma industry? Consumers are turning to search for health info & finding information from peers. Social media represents a new way for consumers to instantly discuss products and treatments, representing a huge fundamental shift in healthcare.

An excerpt of Mike Moran’s post,:

[My] favorite part of the day was listening to Eric Papczun of Performics…..I was most interested in the stats he showed about the pharmaceutical industry:

• 58% of Americans say that online information is their most important source for health information (Pew Research)
• 54 million Americans look for information on pharmaceuticals on the Web (Manhattan Research)
• 80% of Americans (113 million) have researched health information on the Web (Pew Research)

Mike continues:

I haven’t worked with any pharmaceutical companies on their search marketing programs, so I was interested to see what health searchers do. Not every industry is as large as health care, so you may not have industry-specific statistics for your industry. But if you do, they can go a long way to convincing the boss that search marketing can’t be ignored.

Catalyst thought the Exl Pharma SEM conference was very successful in providing pharmaceutical marketing leaders a forum to share their opinions as well as their challenges. For those in attendance, there was little doubt that the opportunity for search marketing in the pharmaceutical industry was bountiful, yet the challenge of executing an effective search marketing campaign in a highly regulated industry, managed by conservative management makes for a daunting task for any individual or small army. However, I assure you that even though many pharma companies are just starting to navigate their search marketing path, there are already pharmaceutical companies who have forged ahead and are reaping the benefits of establishing themselves and their brands online – where their consumers research.

My hat is off to those pharma marketing evangelists who take it upon themselves and their team to continually educate management and prove the value of search marketing in the healthcare industry.

Mr. Skrenta intends to switch his site over to the more popular .com Web address from .net soon to help eliminate confusion and increase credibility with consumers.

Such a simple change, Mr. Skrenta has discovered, could have disastrous short-term results. About 50% of visits to his news site come through a search engine — and about 90% of the time, that is Google. Some companies say their sites have disappeared from top search results for weeks or months after making address switches, due to quirky rules Google and other search engines have adopted. (Full article)

(more…)

Avenue A and Greater than One followed with a very technical presentation of SEM. Our client Chris Smith, Genzyme, followed with a salty commentary of Google’s content match product. He has some great suggestions, humbly suggesting to Google how to improve their AdSense product. Frank Viscotti from Novartis had the same comments at the IIR conference in January in Philly. Side note – will someone have a conference in Boston please?

Next Steve Krein, OrganizedWisdom.com, a great presentation. However, he was challenged with lots of clamor! The guy was trying to enable the pharma industry to participate in the consumer generated content phenomenon. A women from Roche told him she sees no value in his product! What a resume Steven has, it gives me hope pharma and social content may work….eventually. I do remember eight years ago presenting SEM to a number of large pharma companies and they told me SEM was unethical and they would never participate. Another reason I do believe consumer generated content with pharma participation with prevail! Finally, to end the day, Bill McGee presented Healthline vertical search engine with some great tools. Phew, we made it!

On the plane back to Boston, I am musing about the day…most of the day was negative! We (myself included) talked regulatory, click fraud, more regulatory and of course technical. As a SEM vendor, my plea to all my competitors, Chris N, Brad A, Chris O, Rob M, we need to talk to our clients like marketers. Stop talking 301 redirects and talk reach, engagement, transaction – basic marketing speak. I do not think any of those words were spoken at the SEM day in Philly. I am among the guilty. Perhaps that is why SEM is still only 5% of the pharma marketer’s budget.

There is a great deal of buzz about the upcoming SES conference in NYC beginning April 10th, with plenty of “new for NYC” topics, including video search optimization to kick off the conference! After Google’s YouTube purchase (and now the Viacom lawsuit) what else would we expect? Last year the conference had over 6,000 registrants. We are all grateful the conference is in April this year, spring in NYC should be a lot more fun than last year’s February SES conference. Thank you Danny!

Please come listen to me speak on the four star rated topic of “Search and Regulated Industries”. And don’t miss our in house expert, Sherwood Stranieri speak on the hot topic of video search. See you there!