2019 Marketing Microstrategies We’ve lived in an Age of Accelerations for the past decade.

The sheer speed at which technology, media, marketing and medicine are changing is bringing new hope, new opportunities, new possibilities…and so many new distractions.

In fact, what it often feels like is that we live in an Age of Congestion—where just breaking through and earning a clear lane of attention can feel impossible.

How do some brands break through while others are overrun by the noise and competition for time and attention?

We identified 40 microstrategies brands are using today to connect with people in innovative and unexpected ways.

This tool kit will help you begin to answer critical planning questions like:

• What do people want right now?

• How do we better connect with them and engage them?

• How can we excel in their channels of choice? Decoding these new strategies is about more than understanding the healthcare space. It’s about understanding how brands around the world are resetting customer experiences for everything from engagement to education to ongoing support.

That’s important because [insert your healthcare brand here] likely does not think of Starbucks as a competitor. But it’s companies like Starbucks that are actively shaping people’s expectations for how a company should behave and engage with its customer base.

In fact, your healthcare customer’s expectations are constantly being reshaped, rewired and remodeled by new and innovative experiences with brands, media, peers and technology. Brands that don’t deliver experiences that meet or exceed these rapidly changing expectations are increasingly being ignored, brushed aside or deemed irrelevant.

If we want to keep pace with our audiences, we need to accelerate our thinking and evolve our tactics. Learning from leading brands in healthcare and far outside of it is how we start. Dig in. Replacing Information 1 with Inspiration The appetite for information is quickly filled; the appetite for hope is bottomless. People facing a health challenge go online to look for information. There’s a wealth of it there. But once people have fulfilled that transactional need, they look for hope. Brands are building entirely new ways to fuel the human capacity for resilience and confidence against every odd. 1 Replacing Information with Inspiration

CASE STUDY 1 Pfizer: People Like You Fight Like This

Pfizer’s This Is Living With Cancer was borne of two insights: People with cancer want to live, not be defined by an illness, and they want support—they know they cannot do it alone. At the center of the program is a documentary; nine people, sharing stories about what it’s like when you get the first, second or third diagnosis, and the everyday ways they heal, cope and live on. The stories are honest, powerful, sometimes funny and full of the personal inspiration needed to fuel what the rest of life can be.

CASE STUDY 2 Unbreakables: A Window into the Everyday

A new media platform and television show is coming to Fox: one all about the real lives of the people others call patients. Unbreakables is a branded entertainment platform that tells stories about people who have overcome or addressed a challenging health event. This program propels healthcare storytelling into a new era of entertainment. They’re already following 300 stories and experiences from cancer to sports injuries. That rich depth of content will let Fox tailor each show to the brand it’s attached to. Using Humor to Be 2 More Human A life-altering health challenge is nothing to laugh about. Until there’s nothing left to do but laugh, that is. For years, healthcare marketers worked to perfect empathy and understanding of four of the five most overwhelming feelings and emotions: shock, fear, grief and denial. But they stayed carefully away from the fifth: laughter. Laughter for relief, human connection and simple recognition or understanding. This year, healthcare started to crack a smile. 2 Using Humor to Be More Human

CASE STUDY 1 Takeda: Take a Lighter Side

Takeda’s research found that people with depression often use self-deprecating humor to talk about the condition and their daily symptoms or challenges. They laugh to overcome the stigma and the discomfort. Lighter Blue joins them in that dry humor. He’s a little blue character with a cat companion who breaks down stigma and delivers you-get-it cartoons made for social media. Lighter Blue talks about symptoms, coping mechanisms and feelings in a very human and often funny voice. He appears on the website and in inboxes and feeds to keep the discussion going.

CASE STUDY 2 Dexcom: LOL Radio

People living with diabetes regularly have to check their blood by pricking the tip of their finger with a needle. Needless to say, few enjoy the prick. Dexcom’s new product is able to monitor blood with no needles. So, they had a little fun with wordplay. The ad tells a story about @RYANANDSUZIEGLOBALTRAVELLERS, a couple just back from a package getaway. That status update is followed by nearly 20 increasingly obnoxious hashtags (#GetYourBeachOn) and ultimately paid off with, “The world is already full of pricks. So we made a glucose monitoring system for diabetics that doesn’t have any.” Investing in 3 Open Innovation The new competitive advantage is collaboration. Healthcare leaders are opening up their doors and their databases to new ideas and new interpretations. Makers, scientists and innovators are leaning in to be part of creating new treatment discoveries and new ways to connect with and support people. This second wave of open innovation is made more powerful by clearer metrics, structured challenges and a fast-growing community of consortiums and collaborators. 3 Investing in Open Innovation

CASE STUDY 1 GSK: Inviting Innovators In

GSK’s consumer innovation team invites scientists, developers and designers to answer specific health product challenges in categories like digital health and packaging innovation. Each challenge comes with a brief about what GSK wants to accomplish and what stage they’d ideally like to collaborate in. When a match is identified, the innovator has access to the development and commercialization resources of GSK, opening doors to sophisticated R&D labs, deep consumer insights, and expert sales and marketing teams.

CASE STUDY 2 Strava: What Can You Find In Our Data?

Strava is one of the most popular activity and exercise tracking apps in the world. It works with most phones and favorite wearables to let runners and cyclers record their data and then go deep into what it means + how it compares. Strava has made anonymized versions of its massive data sets available to researchers. City planners have found cycling routes and challenges; scientists have better understood heart rate. Oh, and, fun fact, students found scandal: An Australian student used the data to reveal possible military and covert operations sites based on activity (like patrolling a perimeter). Leveraging 4 Healthy Nudges Motivation is fleeting. Most advertising and marketing is focused on drawing someone toward something. But behavioral science shows us that we can’t just turn that interest on and trust that it will stay on. This year, we’ll see more teams focused on constantly refilling the motivation bucket with context and consistent support/ reminders that will help turn that interest to action, action to commitment and commitment to resilience. 4 Leveraging Healthy Nudges

CASE STUDY 1 Penn Medicine: Nudge Unit

Adherence has been called the last mile of medicine. The problem and costs have been understood and analyzed for years. Recently, a number of hospitals and healthcare innovators have started to leverage principles of behavioral science to fuel motivation and resilience. For example, Penn Medicine’s Nudge program is building incentive programs designed to increase patient willingness to follow through on behavior change, and treatment based on each individual’s motivation style. The Nudge team is incorporating motivation as part of a holistic data-driven precision medicine commitment that combines the science of medicine with the science of behavior.

CASE STUDY 2 J&J: Proactively Preparing Patients

Johnson & Johnson created the Health Partner platform to help people prepare for and recover from knee, hip or weight-loss surgery. The toolset is designed to ready people both physically and mentally. It includes an educational website, an app that guides users through surgery prep and recovery, and a real-time portal that lets the patient collaborate with the care team. All the elements of the program include opportunities to understand and activate underlying motivations. Health Partner content and prompts evolve and change over time to give each patient just the right kind of support and encouragement needed for individual success. Standing By 5 Distressed Docs The mental health of healthcare providers is coming into sharp focus as we enter 2019. Two- thirds of U.S. physicians report that they’re burnt out, depressed or both. Physician suicide rates are double that of the general public. Doctors say they’re overwhelmed by the stress of the job, the constant influx of information and the endless administrative tasks. Advocates and partner brands are looking for new ways to ease their burden. 5 Standing By Distressed Docs

CASE STUDY 1 &Me: An Anti-Stigma Campaign

&Me (#AndMe) was created by the Doctors’ Support Network because many people in medicine face mental health challenges but few feel able to speak out due to perceived threats to their authority or even their careers. The &Me campaign seeks to show strength in numbers by asking people to stand together, support each other and ultimately challenge the stigma. Through events, articles and social media, many senior healthcare professionals have already stood up and shared their stories with the goal of making being open and seeking help easier for a new generation of doctors.

CASE STUDY 2 New Book: The Thriving Physician

Wayne Sotile and Gary Simonds, MD, teamed up to write a new survival guide for their peers: The Thriving Physician: How to Avoid Burnout by Choosing Resilience Throughout Your Medical Career. The book starts with understanding the natural stressors of the job, from the rigor of medical school to the drudgery of multitasking and data entering. Then it introduces new strategies for coping in this new era of medical practice. Sotile and Simonds also give doctors difficult questions to consider and reflect on as they reshape their approach to their profession. Sharing What 6 Fascinates Us Brands are creating new content for enthusiast customers that let their biggest fans learn from each other’s experiences and get exclusive access to important writers and great stories. The topic: anything that fascinates both brand and customer. This next era of content marketing is packaged in books and magazines, as well as dedicated streams and feeds, to keep their customers coming back and planning how they’ll use the brand next. 6 Sharing What Fascinates Us

CASE STUDY 1 Casper: Woolley

Casper is a mattress company that makes a magazine called Woolley in partnership with the team at McSweeney’s. The content is exactly what you might want to read on a great mattress. It’s focused on comfort and wellness in modern life. In fact, the magazine describes the content in its most recent edition as including “a love letter to comfort pants, confessions from your yoga instructor, a non-chronological history of snoring, a skeptic’s guide to crystals, introvert workouts, alternatives to counting sheep, and an adulting coloring book.”

CASE STUDY 2 AirBnB: The Magazine

Airbnb the business and Airbnb the magazine invite people to see the world through a more local lens. Its quarterly publication is free to hosts and available to all travelers. It includes top travel writers and photographers showing off exciting destinations, inside travel tips from Airbnb hosts, and answers to things you’ve always wanted to know, like how did the chili pepper take over the world? Its print version may be the height of airport-lounge reading, but if you’re looking for something on screen, all the content + updates are built right into Medium. Powering Conversations 7 with Machines As we enter 2019, there will be 100 million smart speakers in homes around the world, representing 2.5x growth in just a year’s time. By 2020 that number is expected to grow to 225 million. People are increasingly talking to those machines and the voice assistants on their phones to shop, explore and learn “how to.” The year ahead will add fascinating new capabilities that let brands use those voices even more. 7 Powering Conversations with Machines

CASE STUDY 1 Snap: A Lens for Voice

As voice navigation becomes a consumer expectation, brands are evolving their interfaces and experimenting with new ways that users can talk where they once would have typed. Snap is using voice to expand its lenses. The most recent launch included lenses that will respond to voice commands. When a selfie-taker uses words like hi, love or wow, the lenses will animate over the photo. In one, saying the word OK prompts a little cat paw to make the OK sign over your photo.

CASE STUDY 2 Branded Voice: New Year, New Possibilities

Brands around the world are investing in re-optimizing their content for the questions people might ask out loud vs. type or tap into a search engine. That’s creating new best practices in cross-interface SEO. They’re also planning ahead for what custom content they might create next. The possibilities for 2019 include integrating voice interfaces, like Amazon’s Flash Briefing, into daily use; giving chatbots and AI-driven voice interfaces more personality; and publishing content and support customized for conversation. Creating 8 Fast Lanes Brands are moving aggressively to reduce friction and increase speed for the growing number of people who are simply not wired to wait. They’re creating opportunities to skip the line, have certain tasks done for you and get what you want at the very moment you want it. In 2019, it’s no longer about absolute time; instead it’s avoiding the perceived stress and inconvenience of nearly any wait. 8 Creating Fast Lanes

CASE STUDY 1 Sainsbury’s: Scan and Go

Sainsbury’s, an early leader in smart grocery shopping technology, is now piloting Scan and Go to let customers skip the checkout process. Shoppers scan their items on their smartphones as they shop and can pay via an app or a self-service checkout. Amazon Go is piloting a similar store concept. Other retailers are taking the shop out of shopping, letting customers pick up all their pre- packaged goods right in the parking lot. These click-and-collect retail offerings promise full-service, personalized grocery shopping and deliver your full list bagged up and ready to go home.

CASE STUDY 2 Lifebuoy: Skip the Wait

Lifebuoy is a anti-bacterial brand that launched 22 years after the category leader in China. To avoid getting lost in the highly commoditized category it needed a bold launch, so the team created the 24-Hour Doctor. In China, there are only five doctors for every 10,000 children. Wait times are long. Parents often resort to online content and maternity apps to determine if a visit is urgently needed. The 24-Hour Doctor gives them free, live access to credible medical professionals that can give them advice and an initial diagnosis. Within five months, Lifebuoy’s share grew to 3x that of its largest competitor. Embracing 9 Stunt Marketing Brands are getting back in the surprise business with carefully crafted one-time stunts designed to delight otherwise attention-starved, distracted customers. These advertising antics are most often connected to big events where people are already likely to be spending time. They’re carefully crafted to earn photo taking, online sharing and—if they work incredibly well—a long line of brand fans. 9 Embracing Stunt Marketing

CASE STUDY 1 Bud Light: Join the Celebration

The Cleveland Browns entered the 2018 season as a bit of an underdog. The team hadn’t won a game in nearly two years. To rally fans, Bud Light made an unusual promise: if the Browns win, free beer for Cleveland. The brand installed beer coolers around the city, each stocked with cold beer and locked tight with a padlock. On Sept. 20, against all expectations, the Browns beat the New York Jets 21-17. Dilly dilly, the coolers opened, starting a huge party downtown and likely giving Bud Light more tweets and media coverage than the actual big win for the Browns.

CASE STUDY 2 Diesel: Spot the Fake

Savvy shoppers at New York Fashion Week noticed that the pop-up shop named “Deisel” appeared to be selling knockoffs of the popular Diesel brand. The store was filled with cardboard boxes, plastic hangers, handmade signs—nothing like the real brand and not a place to be seen in during Fashion Week. Then Diesel revealed that the products inside were in fact authentic and super-limited editions. Top Instagram fashion icons shared the news. A line quickly formed down Canal Street and products were resold for many times their in-store prices. Redefining 10 Influence What does influential really mean? Companies are getting pickier about whom they team up with to influence consumers and professionals alike. In 2019, numbers of fans, followers and publications aren’t enough. Instead, brand leaders are looking for the influencers who are most approachable and tightly connected to their audience. They want to know: Whom do you trust? 10 Redefining Influence

CASE STUDY 1 Nanoinfluences: For Love and Product

Paid online influencers have historically been the people with the biggest soap boxes. They were top opinion leaders or enviable celebrities. But over the years, the point of influence has gotten quite a bit smaller. Brands are working to find approachable, compelling digital content creators who have as few as one thousand followers. This new nano-class is talking to a smaller group of people, many of whom know her in real life as well as online. These nanoinfluencers carry a different kind of credibility and often come with a much smaller price tag, happy to trade in free products instead of big paychecks.

CASE STUDY 2 Influence: Beyond Instagram

A recent study found that over one-third (38 percent) of people who engage with influencers trust what an influencer says about the brand more than what the brand says about itself. Where do they find these influencers? So much branded content focus is on Instagram, but the influential content is much more dispersed than that. In fact, Twitter is the most widely used platform by all influencers. Between 45 percent and 58 percent of all social posts are on that platform. As we enter 2019, brands will be challenging measures of influence, destinations of influence and measurement of impact. Making the 11 Right Invitation How do you convince someone to do something uncomfortable? Today’s invitations balance emotional storytelling that compels people to get involved with frictionless calls to action that make it incredibly easy to say yes. In 2019, look for new ways to use these invitation strategies to create specific, actionable ways for people to raise a hand and get involved. RSVP: yes! 11 Making the Right Invitation

CASE STUDY 1 Santa Casa: Hemoji

The largest philanthropic hospital in Latin America had a chronic shortage of donated blood. It ran mass campaigns, but few respondents had the blood type needed at that very moment. To create awareness of the need and make it easier for the hospital to find donors with the most-needed blood types, they turned to the simplest of devices: the emoji. To identify yourself as a blood donor, Santa Casa asked people to add an existing AB/A/B/O emoji with the + or – sign next to their screen name to become a reachable donor.

CASE STUDY 2 Montefiore Hospital: Corazon

Montefiore Hospital premiered a film called Corazon at the Tribeca Film Festival to raise awareness about the power of organ donation. The film is based on the real story of Elena Ramirez, a young Dominican woman who worked as a prostitute to provide for her family. She learned that her heart was failing and she only had months to live, putting her family in an even more perilous situation. Dr. Mario Garcia offered her the opportunity to get a new heart at Montefiore in the Bronx. The film follows her journey there. Right after watching the movie, viewers were able to use an app that enabled them to donate their heart in 15 seconds. Pivoting from Patient 12 Centric to People Centric Our industry has long sought to balance our scientific excellence with equal empathetic acumen. But calls for patient centricity didn’t get us there. Instead they put a person under a label they never wanted and focused on the part of their lives they most wanted to downsize. Now brand leaders are moving to people-centric efforts to better understand and support the whole person, not just the sick part of them. 12 Pivoting From Patient Centric to People Centric

CASE STUDY 1 Boehringer Ingelheim: Real Life

Many studies have shown bias in how healthcare providers see people who have diseases caused by smoking. They blame the patient. They say everyone knows smoking kills. It does. But before that, it causes daily misery through diseases like COPD and patients really need their help. To create some empathy for what every day feels like, Boehringer Ingelheim created striking commercials that show real COPD patients in environments that symbolized what it is like to live with the disease. Patients are seen sitting in normal household rooms filled with ash, dust, no light and other complications.

CASE STUDY 2 National Down Syndrome: C21

The National Down Syndrome Society invited many of Washington, D.C.’s elite lawmakers and politicians to a high-end dinner at a new restaurant, C21. What they did not tell them was that the entire restaurant was run and operated by people with Down syndrome—every waiter, musician, sommelier and chauffeur who worked with them that evening had Down syndrome. The purpose of the evening was to challenge laws that keep people with Down syndrome from working full-time jobs. At the end of the evening, when handed the “check,” patrons opened it to see a message: “The bill is on us. Changing the law is on you.” Solving for 13 Life Disruptors Medical care can interrupt, well, almost everything. A single appointment can introduce new needs for everything from time off work to child care to transportation. Brands are starting to think of “access to healthcare” through this disruptive lens. It’s not just the cost, it’s the every day reality of managing real life and ongoing care. 13 Solving for Life Disruptors

CASE STUDY 1 Lyft: Free Rides for Cancer Patients

The American Cancer Society (ACS) teamed up with ride-sharing company Lyft to offer cancer patients free rides to and from treatments in New Jersey and major U.S. cities including Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Houston, Miami, Las Vegas, Cincinnati, Denver, St. Louis and Atlanta. The costs are covered by the ACS; patients can coordinate with the organization by calling (800) 227-2345 or visiting www.cancer.org. Blue Cross Blue Shield also worked with Lyft to help people in isolated areas get access to hospitals, and Uber has partnered with Bracket to offer a similar free ride service for clinical trial participants.

CASE STUDY 2 OhioHealth: Food for the Food Insecure

OhioHealth Riverside Family Practice in Columbus, Ohio, is piloting a Food Is Health program for people living with diabetes. In early 2018, the practice started routinely screening patients for food insecurity (unreliable access to affordable, nutritious food). Patients who screen positive are offered an opportunity to join the program. Members visit the practice every two weeks and are given nutritious foods, including fresh produce and canned goods. Each visit includes a roughly 20-minute appointment with a resident who provides nutrition education, recipes, and tips on preparing and storing food. Reconnecting 14 with Men What does it mean to be a man in 2019? In the wake of the #MeToo movement, an international reckoning on gender disparity, and major changes in work and family life, men are stepping forward to redefine what masculinity means now. The answers will change a generation and give men new things to aspire to and challenge themselves against. Brands are paying attention and connecting in new ways. 14 Reconnecting with Men

CASE STUDY 1 Gillette: Showing Empathy

There have been 4,000 razors designed to shave yourself and only one razor designed to help you shave someone else. Gillette worked with caregiver Kristian Rex to bring the reasons why that matters powerfully to life in a happy-cry-worthy story of taking care of his father after a stroke. The Treo razor may be the functional takeaway, but the fulfilling aspects of being a caregiver and part of three generations of men who clearly love one another are definitely the emotional ones. The men in this aren’t shying away from intimacy, they’re leaning into it.

CASE STUDY 2 Libero: Cracking Jokes

Twenty-six years ago, in an iconic sports moment, the Real Madrid soccer team’s José Miguel González Martín del Campo, known as Míchel, grabbed Colombian superstar Carlos Valderrama’s testicles, in a seemingly friendly, markedly prolonged gesture that made headlines. Líbero got Valderrama to star in a new commercial, in which he thanks Míchel for performing a testicular-cancer check on him back then. Making use of a famous moment that everyone remembers, alongside the famous athlete’s unique star power, the company helped raise awareness of testicular cancer and the protocol of self-checking. Making Everything 15 Easier to Understand The world is becoming ever more complex. But content? It’s getting simpler. Brands are stepping in to translate, decode and generally make big, challenging ideas a lot easier to understand. They’re replacing fine print with simple visuals, swapping out long-form explanations for short- form analogies and illustrating what it means to the one person who matters most: you. 15 Making Everything Easier to Understand

CASE STUDY 1 Burger King: Simplifying the Complex

The repeal of net neutrality is a hot topic in America, but it can be very difficult to understand. That’s why Burger King created Whopper Neutrality, a social experiment that explained the effects of the repeal of net neutrality by putting it in terms anyone can understand: a Whopper. Customers in stores were made to wait extra long for their Whoppers, get chicken sandwiches instead of Whoppers, pay outrageous prices for one or not get one even if it was ready—to demonstrate the unfairness of repealing net neutrality. Burger King believes the Internet should be like the Whopper: the same for everyone.

CASE STUDY 2 Pediatric Brain Tumor Foundation: Taking Out The Scary

Any cancer diagnosis is scary. But when you’re a kid the procedures and terminology can be absolutely terrifying. The Foundation wanted to create a way to deliver education that kids could easily relate to. They learned from cancer survivors that one of the ways they coped were imaginary friends who would stay by their side when they were in the hospital. Those experiences triggered a creative idea: create a group of fun, fictional characters who could deliver the cancer-care information kids need in a way that would be familiar and entertaining. Leading hospitals have permanently adopted the Imaginary Friend Society film series into their in-patient entertainment network. Being Part of 16 Tonight’s Story What do twice as many people visit as Snapchat every day? Instagram Stories. Every day, 400 million people can’t stop swiping through the addictive personal feeds of photos and videos that expire after 24 hours. To be part of tonight’s Insta binge, brands are working with influencers to create first-person-experience stories, and building their own content designed to be memorable and incredibly native to the medium. 16 Being Part of Tonight’s Story

CASE STUDY 1 National Geographic: Swipe-Up Activism

Who has been serving up powerful storytelling and photography longer than National Geographic? Since its launch in 1888, National Geographic has continued to evolve how it engages in every era. Today, it’s found an unlikely new home on Instagram Stories, where it works to promote conservation and educate followers about conservation work being done by standout organizations and individuals in the world. National Geographic uses Instagram Stories’ swipe-up actions to give readers small ways to make a difference, like swiping up to a pledge form to commit to personally reducing plastic usage and waste.

CASE STUDY 2 Miquela Sousa: Virtual Influencer

Miquela Sousa is an entirely new kind of influencer and Instagram star. She is 19, half Brazilian and half Spanish, and lives in Los Angeles. She’s a model and recently released a first single “Not Mine” on Spotify. But none of that is what makes her different. Miquela, who many call Lil Miquela, isn’t a person. She’s an AI-fueled avatar. Over 1.5 million people follow Miquela for her combination of fashion advice—she wears all the best brands, including Diesel and Chanel—and her opinions on some of the most complex issues of our day, from the Black Lives Matter movement to justice for youth. Supporting 17 Mental Health The stigma around mental health challenges is rapidly falling away. In its place are critical new conversations about how to best support friends, colleagues, family and patients in their incredibly personal journeys with life and health. For our teams, part of those conversations is understanding how other health challenges (like cancer or chronic disease) impact stress, anxiety and depression, and defining what new tools and attitudes are needed. 17 Supporting Mental Health

CASE STUDY 1 Samsung: Predict to Prevent

Interpersonal conversations can often be the tipping point in depression outcomes. Well-meaning people say negative or judgmental things without realizing that someone is trying to reach out to them about their depression. Recognizing that today 80 percent of communication takes place via text, Samsung created “Predict to Prevent,” which operates like a normal AutoCorrect or predictive text function, but instead changes not-so-thoughtful response to more productive ones, like updating “You’ll be fine” to “We’ll make it through this together.”

CASE STUDY 2 Novartis: Mental Health + MS

Novartis is teaming up with Pear Therapeutics to develop new ways to address the mental health burden in patients with multiple sclerosis. This first focus: schizophrenia and multiple sclerosis. The partnership will combine traditional medicines with digital therapeutics. Pear’s prescription digital tools deliver clinically proven treatment approaches like cognitive behavioral therapy through mobile and desktop applications. Over the next several years, they hope to evolve Pear’s THRIVE digital therapeutic for patients with schizophrenia, and create a new therapeutic application for mental health. Fostering Family 18 Consensus Health decisions and commitments aren’t made by individuals, they’re made by families, caregivers or partners who need to be all in on helping the patient succeed. Brands are increasingly acting to support that team decision-making with tools and sparks designed to start hard conversations and help every participant be both educated and engaged. 18 Fostering Family Consensus

CASE STUDY 1 Novartis: Ask for Help

Novartis’ recent Set Your Life Back in Motion commercial will be a favorite of all fans of the movie Up. The delightful animation starts the story with a squeaky little boy’s voice telling us one night grandma’s heart turned really bad. We see it slow her down, swell her feet and trouble her sleep. Until finally she sees a doctor and we see the real people behind the heart-warming, heart-helping story. The language and examples make it easy for families to have more comfortable conversations about the impact of seeing a doctor for symptoms that may otherwise feel inevitable.

CASE STUDY 2 Pedigree: Ask for the Puppy

Pedigree recognized that many parents may reasonably object to their kids’ request for dogs on the grounds that it’s a lot of work and not nearly as fun-all-the-time as it looks on TV. So Pedigree launched a five-week educational program in schools to teach kids how to talk to their parents about getting dogs and how to take care of them. First Grrrade was the first-ever class designed to help kids convince their parents that they are ready to have a dog. It included dog specialists educating students on both theory and real-world practice with volunteer pets. Successful students take home a diploma to start the conversation. Lifting Up 19 Your Customer The everyday work of healthcare or travel or raising a family can sometimes seem like drudgery. It’s easy to lose track of the why behind what we do or see the real horizon of impact it might have. Brands are increasingly taking a minute to point out that impact and give their customers a bit of an internal rock anthem to keep them going. One that just might get them ready to take on the world. Let’s do this! 19 Lifting Up Your Customer

CASE STUDY 1 Delta: Get Out There

Have you ever liked catching the first flight out in the morning? Delta’s 4 A.M. video just might make you love it. The story starts with most of the world still asleep except for the early risers who we see brushing their teeth, packing their suitcases, tip-toeing around quiet houses and catching taxis (Ubers?) to their business trips all while “Heigh-Ho” from Snow White and the Seven Dwarves plays in the background. Delta’s sign-off salute to their road warriors: “Here’s to all 180 million of you early risers, go- getters and should-be sleepers…the ones who truly change the world are the ones who can’t wait to get out in it.”

CASE STUDY 2 Starbucks: Fans of Fall

Tired of people making fun of your obsession with all things pumpkin spice? Starbucks has a safe space. They built an ad-free Facebook community for fall enthusiasts to buzz about all things autumnal. These are some of their biggest brand fans, and they want to talk about fall and the PSL all year long. The group is called the The Leaf Rakers Society. It has 27,000 members who act as an always-on recommendation engine for one another. There are just a few rules to follow, like “No hatin’ on fall” and keeping topics “fall-themed.” Taking 20 Sides In these contentious times, many people are vowing not to talk about politics. But not brands. They’re stepping up to take a stand on the most important issues of our time. And committing to stand with their customers to protect their rights and create meaningful change—for a brighter future, safer planet and more just world. Thanks, brands. 20 Taking Sides

CASE STUDY 1 Nike: Take a Knee

Nike’s 2018 Just Do It commercial was packed with even more stories of awe-inspiring grit from athletes who did what seemed impossible. But Nike did a little of its own impossible: the voice and host of the spot was Colin Kaepernick, the San Francisco 49ers quarterback who became known for protesting racial injustice by refusing to stand for the national anthem. The issue had become so divisive in American culture that few politicians were brave enough to talk about it. But Nike put Kaepernick front and center to the brand, delivering lines like, “Don’t ask if your dreams are crazy, ask if they’re crazy enough” and ”Believe in something, even if it means sacrificing everything.”

CASE STUDY 2 Airbnb: #WeAccept

Airbnb took to the airways to take on President Trump’s nation- dividing travel ban. During the Super Bowl, the brand ran a spot that declared, “We believe no matter who you are, where you’re from, who you love or who you worship, we all belong. The world is more beautiful the more you accept,” followed by the hashtag #weaccept. The company’s CEO also released a new commitment, promising “to provide short-term housing over the next five years for 100,000 people in need” and contribute $4 million to the International Rescue Committee to support the needs of the globally displaced. Customizing for 21 Socioeconomic Context The experience of accessing healthcare is radically different based on where you start. From location (urban vs. rural) to income to literacy, socioeconomics can become healthcare destiny. Brands are standing in access gaps with new educational tools and new commitments designed to make sure everyone gets both the healthcare and the support they deserve. 21 Customizing for Socioeconomic Context

CASE STUDY 1 DHA: Rx Prescription Stickers

The Dubai Health Authority (DHA) wanted to help the country’s 750,000 blue-collar workers, who are mostly illiterate or have limited literacy, better manage their medications. Many were unable to read the labels and made mistakes on dosing that could either impact the efficacy of the drug or put them at risk of overdose. The DHA ultimately built icon-driven stickers that are applied to the medication at the pharmacy, where the pharmacist can mark each section of the label—circling the time of day, number of pills, number of days, etc.—to make sure the patient can easily see what to do, without reading a word.

CASE STUDY 2 Mahindra Rise: The Health Purse

The single biggest barrier to early breast cancer diagnosis in India is lack of awareness about self exams. A leading federation of companies decided to invest in encouraging more women to learn about self breast exams. They started with an existing behavior: women in India tuck small purses into their tops, against their breasts, to protect their money. The advocates created their own small purse. Each beautifully designed clutch included a discreet external reminder to perform a self exam and inside had detailed instructions on how to do it properly. Entertaining 22 to Educate Making “edutainment” was once a recipe for wrapping dry learning content in a sprinkle of entertainment. Today, brands are partnering with gamers, filmmakers, celebrities and storytellers to create immersive entertainment experiences that have an educational purpose. This next generation of entertainment + education is earning time, fans and lots of new competencies. 22 Entertaining to Educate

CASE STUDY 1 Cigna: TV Doctors of America

A cross-generational cast of TV doctors, from McDreamy to Doogie, joined up with insurer Cigna for another season of encouraging people to schedule annual preventative care. The “TV Doctors of America” go through elaborate parodies of the most consistent tropes of medical dramas, from scandalous romance scenes to ridiculous plot twists. They end every spot telling viewers how to avoid drama: schedule an annual check-up. The doctors also took to Instagram to play teledocs, stumbling through pretend exams. Then they turned on their “pagers,” letting people text to set up an appointment.

CASE STUDY 2 Cipla Medpro: Bronki Boosters

When kids with asthma head off to school, they have to be able to use their inhalers correctly without assistance. Bronki Boosters help ensure their success. The platform is a cartoon show, comic book series, instructional video platform and product line all focused around inhaler confidence. The story follows Iggy and Wisp in an intergalactic battle for air against the evil. Armed with magical inhalers called Bronki Boosters, they perform the same ritual that young kids with asthma struggle to remember every day. Fans can even buy inhalers that look like the pumps in the cartoon. Showing People Where 23 They Can Make an Impact

Sometimes the hardest thing in healthcare is knowing what you can do. It’s much easier to act when you know your specific role in change. Brands around the world are closing that gap by giving people specific, actionable ways to raise a hand and get involved. They’re showing advocates how their small individual investments of time or learning are summing up to a whole world of good. 23 Showing People Where They Can Make an Impact

CASE STUDY 1 Novartis: Treat Me Kindly

Novartis partnered with Argentina’s National Theatre to help answer the critical question: What’s the right thing to say to a friend, neighbor or loved one living with cancer? They did research in more than a dozen countries to better understand the feelings of patients around everything from finances to worklife to how they relate with the people who are—or can be—their best sources of support. The resulting videos make sure those people know how to support them with compelling recommendations right from the voice of the patient. Actors play out the before and after of critical conversations: what you said; what I wish you said.

CASE STUDY 2 MagicMakers: Take a Seat

In Romania, thousands of children are fighting cancer. When they’re in the hospital, parents sit by their side day and night in a simple chair. To raise money for kinder accommodations, MagicMakers recreated a hospital room in a famous gallery. Next to the bed sat a single hard chair. For nearly 20 days, people— including celebrities—changed shifts relentlessly, making sure someone was always in the chair. They displayed real-time donations in the gallery window and live-streamed online. The effort was a huge success: This summer, a shelter for parents who cannot travel or afford accommodations will open near the country’s biggest oncology center. Putting Our Work 24 in a New Context Healthcare has long invested in campaigns and ads focused on redefining value, specifically showing the kind of personal commitment and financial investment that goes into bringing a life-changing treatment or service to market. Now, we’re seeing leaders changing the context of healthcare innovation. Today it’s not just healthcare change; it’s invention in its highest form. 24 Putting Our Work in a New Context

CASE STUDY 1 Merck: Inventing a Cure

Merck asked people: What invention can’t you wait for? The answers captured on video went from the mundane (transparent toasters to better see when your toast is done) to the kind of brilliant (teleporting ovens to have your grandma’s stew delivered right to your microwave). And then the ultimate answer was: a cure. The spot says: “95% of people do not think of medicines as the most impactful inventions. We think they’re the most important kind.” That’s the kind of invention that inspires this industry. Not another gadget or a better phone, but the possibility of better, longer lives.

CASE STUDY 2 Novartis: Open Innovation

Novartis recently launched a digital health innovation network named Biome to accelerate its digital evolution. The investment puts Novartis in a new community, a health-tech ecosystem of inventors and disrupters. The project’s goal is to empower early innovators and show them a clear on-ramp to work with Novartis. Biome is proactively scouting for technology, seeking referrals to high-potential start-ups and issuing challenges through an initiative called the HealthX World Series, the first open innovation challenge focused on solving unmet needs around heart failure, Adding Utility 25 Everywhere Magazines are still full of healthcare print ads accompanied by a spread of tiny print. But the ads and tools that are winning awards and changing the future of healthcare creativity are much more utilitarian. The new expectation is awareness + function. In 2019, it’s not enough to say something; you have to do something. 25 Adding Utility Everywhere

CASE STUDY 1 H4H: Dissolving Poster

The Aedes aegypti mosquito is causing a large number of diseases in Brazil, including dengue, Zika, yellow fever or the chikungunya. To raise awareness, Habit for Humanity created education posters for the hardest hit communities. The posters aren’t just words, they also hold an anti-mosquito solution. Each poster is made of soluble rice paper, so it easily melts with rain and becomes a larvicide that prevents more mosquitos from infesting the area. One poster can treat 200 liters of water for 60 days.

CASE STUDY 2 Cochlear: Hearing Test in Disguise

Did you hear “Yanny” or “Laurel”? This short film uses a similar audio trick to test hearing without the listener even knowing. “Does Love Last?” has two different endings depending on the viewer’s level of hearing loss. For those who hear well, the couple’s relationship remains happy, but the production team used audio editing, sound design and special choreography to create a storyline that could be mistaken for the couple’s relationship deteriorating if hearing loss keeps the viewer from picking up every cue. What will you hear? Translating Awareness 26 to Self Awareness What we ask of people in healthcare is no small feat. We want them to challenge their doctors, talk about the feelings that scare them and speak frankly about symptoms others can’t see or feel. Healthcare leaders are increasingly leaning in with new tools, new language and new education to help people translate what they know about health to what they see in themselves to spark new conversations and more self advocacy. 26 Translating Awareness to Self Awareness

CASE STUDY 1 JOA: LOCOMO Challenge

Too many older people in Japan find themselves unable to walk and confined to bed for years before their death. Their limbs actually start losing strength in their 40s, but not in a way that’s easy to notice or track. To start new conversations about increasing weakness, the Japanese Orthopedic Association first gave the orthopedic deficiencies a name—Locomotive syndrome (LOCOMO)—and then helped people diagnose it. The LOCOMO Challenge lets people—at home or with their doctors—assess their strength and compare to their peers. Want to try it? Stand up from your chair and onto one foot. Go!

CASE STUDY 2 United Airlines: Are You Closer?

United Airlines moved all of its New York City-area flights from JFK airport to Newark. But New Yorkers didn’t automatically move with the airline; they thought that JFK was closer and more convenient. To show travelers the real distance, United outfitted 125 taxis with GPS trackers synced with real-time traffic data. On digital mini billboards mounted on top of the cars, the system compared travel times to each airport. New Yorkers saw that Newark was actually up to an hour faster depending on where they came across one of the taxis. People took notice—810,000 new travelers switched to Newark. Borrowing Out-of- 27 Category Conventions Healthcare brands are increasingly looking outside of our space to find new ideas and new inspiration. They’re borrowing big cultural references, standing up new partnerships and leveraging out-of-category conventions. Their goal: breaking through to get people to take a fresh look at some of the most serious issues in life and health. 27 Borrowing Out-of-Category Conventions

CASE STUDY 1 CHH: The Tiniest Listing

Last year’s fundraising initiative at Cook County Hospital focused on taking care of babies born prematurely. A single night in an incubator can cost up to $4,000, which isn’t entirely covered by Medicaid, leaving hospitals to raise money to give the best care. To reach new donors, they borrowed from an increasingly common behavior: people go online to book accommodations for everything from treehouses to igloos to the smallest of apartments. Why not an incubator? For the duration of the fundraiser, TheTiniestListing.com let donors book a night for a preemie baby and learn a lot more about protecting women and girls in Chicago.

CASE STUDY 2 Sick Kids: Performance Fundraising

What if you felt empowered to take on anything? That’s the Rocky-running-up-the-stairs feeling you get watching just seconds of “SickKids vs. Undeniable.” The video was created for a fundraising effort designed to get millennial men off the sidelines and involved in supporting sick children. Instead of going the usual nonprofit approach and focusing on empathy and personal stories, they followed the lead of performance brands and built what is just short of a college football hype video. The fierce fighting story won them donors and also created something much more: an anthem for the fight of these families lives. Bringing the Problem 28 to the Street As screen fatigue saps our attention for even the very best ad or video, brands are finding more physical ways to share their messages and ideas. Through unique installations and clever outdoor displays, they’re bringing their brands into the streets with memorable, photo-worthy creativity that stands out in the moment and in our broader cultural dialogue about change. 28 Bringing the Problem to the Street

CASE STUDY 1 CALM: Making It Real

Suicide is the biggest killer of men under the age of 45 in the UK, and men represent 75 percent of all suicides in the country. To raise awareness of the scale of the health crisis, CALM (Campaign Against Living Miserably) installed 84 statues of men atop London’s prominent ITV tower. The statues represented the 84 men who commit suicide in London every week. ITV produced a week’s worth of programming about Project 84 and the issue of male suicide, driving many men who were previously suffering in silence to reach out to CALM for help.

CASE STUDY 2 Brady Center: Protest Art

Chicagoans are used to seeing bike-sharing stations on their sidewalks, but not gun-sharing stations. The Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence created one such station to illustrate just how easy it is to obtain a gun. The protest piece contained 10 replicas of automatic weapons that looked like AR-15 rifles, each set in a sharing station for easy checkout. Next to the display is a “Metro Gun Share Program” sign. While visitors to the exhibit can’t actually take out a gun, they can make a donation to the Brady Center and learn more about the campaign’s gun safety efforts. Going Live 29 From... Since Internet speeds rose above a virtual crawl, video has been its most popular content medium. Studies expect video to account for 85 percent of total internet traffic by 2019. What’s driving this next stage of growth? Real-time content. Brands are increasingly broadcasting live to give consumers and professionals an authentic front-row seat to an event or moment that fascinates them. 29 Going Live From...

CASE STUDY 1 Skittles: Watching the Watchers

On the Super Bowl’s TV broadcast, $5 million buys you 100 million viewers. But Skittles decided to go after a differently sized audience with its Super Bowl spot. Skittles showed the commercial to just one super-fan, a teenager named Marcos Menendez. The fully produced multimillion-dollar production featured actor David Schwimmer. Teaser ads popped around the Internet featuring Schwimmer and telling viewers only Menendez would see the spot—but that they could watch him watch it. Fans went to Facebook Live to watch the 18-minute reveal where Menendez saw a spot so personalized it included doppelgangers of his mom and best friend—with Schwimmer, of course.

CASE STUDY 2 J&J: See the Demo Live

When Johnson & Johnson acquired Dr.Ci:Labo (DCL), they wanted to duplicate the cult following the cosmeceutical had in its home country of Japan in other regions. The first target: China. The company found a unique Japanese way—“puru puru skin”— to describe healthy skin, and leveraged it to introduce both a new product and a new skincare goal to the Chinese market. To demonstrate the meaning of puru puru skin, the team built live-streamed workshops that included demos with a Japanese wagashi dessert that acted as a metaphor for healthy, bouncy skin. Online sales spiked 1,100 percent during the live- stream demonstration. Rediscovering 30 Print In an all-things-digital world, brands are seeing a resurgent role for print and content that people can touch, feel and dogear. They’re creating provocative publishing strategies that bring new voices and clever interactive dynamics to the page to create printed artifacts that people can’t resist spending time with. This isn’t retro print that simply binds up pages; it’s reinvented to make the medium mean as much as the message. 30 Rediscovering Print

CASE STUDY 1 UAB Alma Littera: Book of Broken Silence

In Lithuania, suicide feels like an epidemic. That country has the eighth-highest suicide rate in the world and the highest in all of Europe. What’s worse, it’s infectious, passing between friends and family. To get people talking, Lithuania’s biggest publisher and mental health experts teamed up to create the “Book of Broken Silence,” 18 stories from 18 people who saw someone close to them take their own life. To read each story, readers literally have to break the silence, tearing apart the pages to reveal the experiences. The book sold out in the first week and was a best seller in the country for six consecutive weeks.

CASE STUDY 2 Mars: The Curious Cat Book

Whiskas is a pet food brand that believes that a curious cat is a heathy cat. Their purpose is to take care of what makes cats ready to explore the world. This year’s goal was to create a direct marketing program for influencers and strategic partners that fueled the curiosity of cats and humans alike. The result is the “Curious Cat Chronicles,” a book that is made to be enjoyed by both with beautiful illustrations about traveling the world for humans and pop-up toys and exercises on every page for cats. We’ll bet you weren’t expecting that one! Changing 31 the Channel Is the press release dead? Maybe not, but it definitely has a new channel—or channels. Brands are increasingly turning to messaging services to deliver right-size content in the tools their influencers and audiences use most. This personal, direct approach earns immediate attention and higher open and interaction rates. 31 Changing the Channel

CASE STUDY 1 Deutsche Telekom: Message Me

Deutsche Telekom, the largest telecommunications provider in Europe, uses a number of messenger services, including WhatsApp, Insta and Telegram, to share its latest news and content. The core content program includes summaries of recent highlights from press releases, blogs and YouTube videos. The brand also breaks down that content into bite size messages that are pushed to different audience segments three times per week based on their interest areas and previous interactions.

CASE STUDY 2 Netflix: Netflix and Chat?

Previously mainly email based, Netflix has started talking to its subscribers in India on the world’s largest messaging app, WhatsApp. Netflix is so prevalent that it’s nearly synonymous with relaxing at home, and—by delivering TV and movie recommendations to viewers’ own WhatsApp accounts—the streaming service is cozying up to customers even more. This is made possible by the new WhatsApp Business platform, which monetizes the app and is beginning to attract airlines, banks and more. Back to the 32 Big Screen New products and new possibilities are leading pharmaceutical leaders in the U.S. back to television advertising for both direct-to-consumer education and healthcare provider influence. Targeting technology is making it possible to better identify and connect audiences and screens. Scientific breakthroughs are introducing vast unmet needs for advocacy and education that mass communications can serve. 32 Back to the Big Screen

CASE STUDY 1 Eli Lilly: Educating Proactive Patients

Big advances in science—like immunotherapies—brought oncology brands back to television. The new approaches to care required new education and understanding. This year, more oncology brands are leaning in and using the big(ger) screen to empower patients to act as their own best advocates. Eli Lilly’s Verzenio is a prime example. It’s a twice-daily pill to fight metastatic breast cancer. The brand developed its 90-second spot after spending months talking to hundreds of women about what matters to them most in the fight, and what they need to see and hear to inform their own incredibly personal journeys.

CASE STUDY 2 AT&T: Just the Right Homes

In 2018, healthcare brands moved from piloting addressable television to integrating it as a core part of their strategies. Companies like AT&T are fueling the shift with platforms that help companies identify which households are likely to be impacted by a health condition (or other criteria) and delivering content and commercials just to those subscribers. Household matching to existing brand lists, like CRM, can enable even more personalization. Increasingly, these services also work across screens, letting brands deliver, for example, an awareness ad to the television and a personal evaluation tool to a phone or tablet in the same room. Betting Big 33 on Loyalty There’s never been a better time to bet big on loyalty. Nonadherence continues to hold back the potential impact of novel medicines for both patient and manufacturer. Deeper franchises are creating new opportunities to continue to introduce patients to better-fit, more innovative treatments. All at a time when the tools and technologies to fuel loyalty are more compelling than ever. 33 Betting Big on Loyalty

CASE STUDY 1 Onduo: Give Virtual Care

Sanofi and Verily teamed up to launch a virtual diabetes clinic that is designed to bridge gaps in care and ultimately help people living with diabetes lower clinical measures, like A1C, and live healthier lives. Onduo has partnered with private insurance companies to make the service free to their members. The virtual support includes things like a dedicated coach, connected blood glucose meter, and test strips and supplies delivered to your home. The program is controlled and experienced through an app that lets the patient track progress and share with a doctor or care partner.

CASE STUDY 2 BI: Reward Behavior

Boehringer Ingelheim’s (BI) RespiPoints program is a branded online experience to increase adherence for COPD patients. The average user is 71 years old and spends up to 50 minutes per week on the site (demographic bias buster!). The program was built with HealthPrize to reward customers for verifying prescriptions, reporting compliance and engaging with positive educational experiences like quizzes, surveys and videos. The nine-month program led to an increase of 2.8 incremental fills for all participants, representing an adherence lift of 3.7 additional refills over a 12-month period. Making It Just 34 for You Coca-Cola supercharged consumer interest in finding a little bit of themselves in a brand’s promotions and packaging. Their personalized soda bottles inspired other brands to find clever ways to let consumers personally identify with a product through packaging that is totally selfie worthy. 34 Making It Just for You

CASE STUDY 1 Exedrin: We Get Your Pain

What’s causing your pain? GlaxoSmithKline used social listen to identify common headache starters, and used the top descriptions to develop powerful TV ads and videos. They also added those top headache culprits to custom-printed boxes of Exedrin. Boxes read: “Adulting,” “Commuting” or “Bad Dates” over the Exedrin Extra Strength brand. More than 11,200 custom-labeled samples were ordered on the website on launch day. The team also distributed 2,300 samples of the Commuter box to people at Penn Station in New York the same morning.

CASE STUDY 2 Snickers: Your Kind of Hangry

Snickers set its brand name aside to name your kind of hunger. Its packaging featured 21 different symptoms of hunger—from spacey to snippy—in the brand font. Snickers encouraged people to gift their friends with “hunger bars” as part of their larger “You’re Not You When You’re Hungry” campaign. The initial campaign also included video and commercials showing a dispatcher quickly triaging incoming calls to diagnose hunger symptoms and send a bike messenger to the spot with just the right bar. Connecting Video 35 to Action Why just watch when you can touch, scroll, explore, shop and even walk right into the scene. Today’s videos are getting more interactive, creating opportunities for people to rapidly shift from passive watching to focused engagement. Whether they’re digging deep into the content that’s of most interest or starting a conversation with a fellow watcher, the new expectation is: pressing play is just the start of the experience. 35 Connecting Video to Action

CASE STUDY 1 Snap: Meet the Originals

Snap Originals features exclusive shows told by some of the world’s greatest storytellers and it releases new episodes every day. The first season includes “Co-Ed,” a new comedy from the Duplass Brothers; “Class of Lies,” a mystery thriller from one of the creators of “Riverdale;” and “Endless Summer,” a docuseries following rising stars in Laguna Beach. The programs each include a show portal that lets users swipe up to step inside a specific scene and experience the story themselves. The Originals also haves lenses, filters and other ways for users to share their own personal show experience with friends.

CASE STUDY 2 Alecia: Immerse and Shop

Alecia is designed for people who like to shop by watching. If something on the screen catches your eye, chances are you can tap to buy it without ever leaving the program. During the day, Alecia features short lifestyle videos that are designed to be watched in a few minutes to answer a question or just get a tip on something you’re interested in. Topics include cooking, fitness, parenting, pets and more. In the evening, Alecia changes the channel and delivers shows designed to spend time with. Ones that will captivate and transport, while still being shoppable, of course. Content includes drama, comedy and thrillers. Modeling the 36 Possibilities A testimonial used to be the height of marketing possibilities. People wanted to know: What will it really be like? Today, they don’t need their peers to tell them. Instead, tons of new experiences are making it possible for people to find out for themselves through technologies and clever simulations that let them try out alternate futures before they buy. 36 Modeling the Possibilities

CASE STUDY 1 AJE: Taste the Future

To give people a real taste of global warming, the Association of Journalists for the Environment (AJE) launched a new wine: Bordeaux 2050. The group partnered with researchers, scientists and wine experts who used climate and weather data projection on the next 30 years to simulate the exact taste of a Bordeaux grown in 2050, if climate conditions don’t improve. The result is a diminished, bitter, unpleasant taste that forces people to viscerally experience the future consequences of global warming.

CASE STUDY 2 Modiface: See the Future You

L’Oreal recently acquired Modiface, the company behind augmented reality beauty apps that let people upload photos of their faces to reimagine what their future selfies could look like. The company’s apps let users try on makeup, change their eye color, have their skin health evaluated and get personal recommendations on products and new styles. L’Oreal has previously launched apps with Modiface that let customers change their hairstyles and try on the new colors and innovations in makeup. Modiface manually annotated 22,000 facial images to create the experience. Cracking Your 37 Personal Code People know healthcare is personal. The way one person reacts to a diet or medication may be totally different from how another person reacts to the same thing. Brands are increasingly giving people tools to understand how they are likely to respond and which possible approaches to nutrition, prevention or medication might be most right for them. 37 Cracking Your Personal Code

CASE STUDY 1 DayTwo: Find Your Diet

Direct-to-consumer genetic testing kits for fitness and nutrition are helping people understand their likely responses to certain foods and exercise. The theory: if fitness and nutrition advice isn’t working for you, it’s probably because it’s based on averages. A genetic profile can show how your genes, microbiomes, environments and lifestyles—which vary widely—can and should change how you think about exercise and nutrition. Early studies stand behind the test. A large study based on the DayTwo app and published in the journal Cell found that people’s blood glucose levels response to the same food can vary widely.

CASE STUDY 2 Veritas: Map You

Veritas Genetics’ myGenome program combines genome sequencing with pharmacogenomics testing. With just one at-home test, users can collect Insights on their disease risks, drug sensitivities and what they may pass on to their kids. Consumers in San Francisco and Los Angeles can do even more at Forward, a membership-based healthcare start-up founded by former Google executive Adrian Aoun. There, body scans, blood testing and genetic testing all happens on-site. Results are fed into Forward’s AI and the Forward mobile app, which supports patients in the exam room and in the real world. Creating a Self-Service 38 Expectation Leaders are increasingly looking to customers to roll up their sleeves and be part of creating their own experience. Whether that’s requiring more self service or inviting in customer creativity, brands are retraining their customers about what to expect from both the brand and themselves as they build a new future together. 38 Creating a Self-Service Expectation

CASE STUDY 1 Souvla: Put the Diners To Work

Souvla in San Francisco is just one of many high-end restaurants that are finding ways to reduce the need for servers and other staff by having their diners do the work. Diners are charged with finding their own seats, acclimating themselves to the menu, placing an order via a machine and even pouring their own drinks. These expectations might be no surprise for fast-casual restaurants, but the meals these runners are bringing out are high-end, gourmet plates. As the economics of the restaurant business change in big cities, restaurant owners are looking for new ways to reshape what customers expect without diminishing the core product.

CASE STUDY 2 MakerNurse: Create It For Yourself

Anna Young created MakerNurse and MakerHealth to help nurses develop new medical devices in the environments they already work in. Young, like many other nurses, has been pushed by scarcity to create practical solutions with what’s at hand. MakerNurse is transforming that bootstraps creativity with a network and physical spaces that allow nurses to design and create a future of healthcare tools and devices that are informed by the practical challenges of the very frontlines of healthcare. Many of the maker labs are built right inside hospitals to help nurses prototype and test in real time. Rewriting the 39 Creative Brief Leading brands around the world are rethinking how they inspire life-changing creativity. They have new expectations for what healthcare engagement should ultimately look like and they’re changing their briefs to focus on and inspire their unique understanding of how to connect with and empower healthcare consumers and professionals alike. 39 Rewriting the Creative Brief

CASE STUDY 1 Merck: Irresistible Creativity

Merck wants to make healthcare brands irresistible by creating experiences that consumers stop, watch and engage with, even in low-interest categories. Their new brief: make creative irresistible. The Irresistible Brief has three components: (1) Start with a shared aspiration that aligns closely with what the HCP or patient want to accomplish. (2) Communicate with emotion. No matter how attractive a person or campaign, it’s emotion that makes the connection. (3) Fuel love at first sight. In crowded categories, filled with so much sameness, think about the aspects that can attract and stand out.

CASE STUDY 2 GSK: Trust Brief

GSK’s consumer division believes their products can’t rely on the typical marketing science of creating category-defining brands that consumers love. Why? The difference between buying a generic and buying one of GSK’s consumer brands doesn’t appear to be love. Instead, it’s trust. Trust that the product will work, trust in its quality and trust that the people behind the brands understand customer needs. To build brands trusted for life, GSK believes it has to make a critical shift: from demonstrating efficacy with science to showing empathy and purpose through insight. Finding and 40 Removing Friction How do you make it easier to work with your brand? It’s simple: just make it easier. Leading companies are working to uncover every point of friction that slows customers down or frustrates their interactions. Then they’re leveraging “of course, it should have always worked that way” solutions to make every touchpoint more seamless and earn even more customer loyalty. 40 Finding and Removing Friction

CASE STUDY 1 Align Biopharma: One Login

An average practice has lists of logins for disparate systems that don’t talk to each other, and each one requires a different password format and unique identity. In 2017, six pharmaceutical leaders came together to try to simplify the experience of accessing industry content and services through a one-step, universal login. The group, Align Biopharma, brought together Allergan, AstraZeneca, Biogen, GlaxoSmithKline, Novartis and Pfizer with the goal of creating two new industry standards: one focused on identification and the other to collect consent and preferences across the various pharmaceutical sites.

CASE STUDY 2 1-800-FLOWERS: The Easiest Gift

What are the three biggest pain points to sending a gift? According to research at 1-800-Flowers, they’re not knowing the address, not knowing what to give and being unsure when to ship. Just before the peak holiday season, the mega-florist piloted a new way to address all three. Customers select the gift they want to send online. The recipient receives an email with both the sender’s sentiment and a notice that a physical gift is on the way. Recipients can choose when and where they would like the gift to be delivered and even swap the gift for anything across the 1-800-Flowers.com family of brands—before it even ships. Syneos Health Communications (previously inVentiv Health Communications) is the only healthcare communications network that is part of a company on the frontlines of healthcare, with a clear view into the everyday complexities of life and health. As part of Syneos HealthTM, our advertising, branding, public relations, managed markets and medical communications agencies are engaged in every point of influence in health, providing real-world insight into markets and audiences.

We work in scalable, collaborative teams that partner across disciplines and geographies to deliver integrated communications strategies that accelerate brand performance. We create ideas that will work in the real world because they were built there.