Characters have advantages in online world	May 2008

Med Ad News spoke with Debrianna Obara, VP, media, with the Philadelphia office of Avenue A | Razorfish (avenuea-razorfish.com) about the importance of memorable creative in the development of digital messaging.

Med Ad News: Are marketers able to make use of the iconic, memorable characters and imagery they develop in their television advertising to bridge consumers over to their online messaging?

Debrianna Obara: I think that one tremendous benefit of having those types of icons is that it’s easier to secure the digital rights. For example, I know that we had a cholesterol client a couple years ago who had gotten a celebrity endorser to be in their television ads, but whoever did their contracts had neglected to have the digital rights to that celebrity online, so there was no synergy between the offline and the online. And when they went back to negotiate the contract with this celebrity, he had asked for so much that the company wasn’t willing to pay for it. So, they basically had a distinct offline campaign versus an online campaign.

When you create a cartoon or some kind of icon such as that, you don’t have to worry about those types of negotiations. You can secure the digital rights at cost, and I think there’s no reason not to have an integrated online/offline campaign from a technology or a distribution.

Med Ad News: Why is an integrated campaign important?

Debrianna Obara: I would say there are a couple thoughts I have to answer that. One, is currently right now people spend 18 to 20 hours a week online, while pharma as a vertical spends about 5% of their actual ad dollars online. So people are spending a lot of time online, and as a rule, pharma is under-spending against their actual usage numbers. If you do an integrated campaign, where you have that synergy between online and offline, you have the ability to potentially tell the complete story to people no matter what their media mix is.

As long as the story is being told in a way that is on-brand and on-message, nothing gets lost between the two media. In fact, I think the media work off of each other to the benefit of educating the consumer, if it is done well.

Med Ad News: As far as achieving that integration, is it important to have one agency handle both media?

Debrianna Obara: I would have to say, I don’t think you need one as long as those partners are in it together and work off of each other. I think there are some agencies that go in and say you need us to do it all. But I think the fact of the matter is, it’s very hard to get one agency who is great at doing all those things. So, some clients say I’ll get the best-in-class offline agency with the best-in-class digital agency and the best-in-class search agency. And even if that is three different companies in the same room, as long as they talk and are communicating, it should work.

Especially in regards to TV, I think a lot of companies miss the opportunity of making sure their paid search and online is taking advantage of an offline campaign. For example, if you spend $2 million to have a spot on the Super Bowl, but you haven’t captured all of the paid search that would be driven off that spot or you’re not making sure your online display media is capturing the same traffic, you’d be missing the opportunity to leverage that. It’s not so much that you need one partner. You should just have really integrated partners with skin in the game. And often times it’s the client who will need to mandate weekly status calls or some kind of communication to make sure everybody knows what the other one is doing.

Med Ad News: In a coordinated effort among agencies, does it tend to be the agency handling the big print and television media spends that drives the creative?

Debrianna Obara: I would say that usually is the way. But we’ve been actually challenging one of our pharmaceutical clients to approach it in a different way. I’ll give you an example why. In the past, often times a drug might get approved and the client and the offline agency immediately go into concepting what they’re going to be doing for their television ads. And often times people start thinking that’s what the brand is: those television ads. Then once that’s created, they say build me a Website that matches to it.

I think that’s probably a backwards way to think about it, because the Website is going to live in perpetuity. It’s not just related to an ad campaign or a creative execution. It really should be the essence of the brand more than anything. Sometimes the flow of things of having an offline agency who is thinking about it from a campaign perspective is probably backwards, and you’d be better off having the Website be first. The destination, the sort of storefront of your brand, be well executed, and then make sure your campaigns ladder back to it.

We’ve been challenging some of our clients to not wait until the brand positioning is done on the offline to start thinking about the Website. We’re actually doing it at the same time as the offline agency and basically saying, whichever idea tests best with the ultimate audience is the idea that’s going to live.

Med Ad News:Are there other advantages to developing iconic characters for a campaign?

Debrianna Obara: One of the things I think is really interesting about it: I mentioned the digital rights aspect. The other part of it that makes icons very attractive, especially for pharma, is you can control it. Pharma is in such a highly regulated environment, and when, for example, Ty Pennington was the ADHD drug spokesperson and ran into some troubles, it sort of tainted the brand by association. I think that it does make sense for pharma companies to use icons because they can control it. It’s something that doesn’t have an ugly divorce or a sex scandal. These are things that are not going to put a brand in a bad light.

The thing that pharma companies need to think about is those types of icons might not be right for every condition area. I’ve seen the Mucinex mucus and Digger the foot fungus guy as well as the Nasonex bee. These are all conditions, especially allergies, that have low to moderate stigma. They’re not serious conditions. I do think that pharma companies need to be careful not to trivialize through these types of cartoons and icons, and they need to use it as a way to educate people and inform. If they do it in too much of an entertainment way, they may be blurring the lines. It seems like the trend in pharma is to create a productive environment for the doctor/patient dialogue and not entertain.

And lastly, the use of those types of icons might be helpful for children. For example, AstraZeneca’s Pulmicort Respules has a character called Pulmi. Pulmi basically looks a little like a frog. He is sort of an example of what a child goes through when they have pediatric asthma, and he talks about breathing and using a nebulizer, which is quite scary, and he has videos and games on his Website. So, that’s an example where Pulmi becomes a friend to the child who is suffering from asthma and guides them through their experience.