Of course, simplicity with focus worked great for Steve, so why wouldn’t it work for pharma?  I think we have to go back, focus on what we do best and strip it down to it’s simplest form.  It is harder than you would think.  The tendency is to strip it down, but overthink it and start adding back in all the crap you took out.

I worked with Seth Godin a number of years ago on site at his office, specifically on our e-sampling sites.  I put my site up for his review and he tore it apart.  And I remember to this day Seth saying, “Janet, if you want the doctor to order a sample, put it right in front of his face.  Like you would put the banana in front of a monkey.”  Awesome.  So, we revamped our sampling site and hot damn, he was right.

So, we’re relaunching SampleServer^®, our very focused, elegantly simple e-sampling program, coming to you via any screen you choose.  And I can see Steve smiling now, as pharma mountains are moved.

Aaron Levie wrote a great blog posts at Fast Company titled The Simplicity Thesis. He points to a Silicon Valley trend moving its way through the rest of the world: The radical simplification of everything.

The classic online example is the Google search screen. Minimal in its design, it offers a logo, a search box and two choices: Google Search and I’m Feeling Lucky.

When I first heard about Google in 1997 or so, I didn’t think much of the design. At the time, Google was competing against the search engines AltaVista, Excite, Lycos, and Yahoo! Among others. What mattered was the results. It worked and because it worked, I let other people know about Google.

The idea of offering the lowest level of complexity for the maximum amount of value is, according to Levie, driving the next great technology and business opportunity. He predicts that any market where unnecessary middlemen stand between customers and their successful use of a solution is about to be disrupted.

Examples in the consumer space include the photosharing app Instagram, the music-sharing app Spotify, and any number of deal-of-the-day websites.

But who is simplifying in the pharmaceutical industry?

What companies are building businesses or solutions around the idea of reducing choices and unnecessary steps, narrowing clutter while delivering maximum value?

Levie mentions startup SolveBio which leverages the infinite computing powers of Amazon to advance medical research. Our friends at Medikly have developed an educational tool that simplifies the creation of courses for healthcare professionals and the measurement of their progress after taking those classes.

Another healthcare example comes from iClickCare, an award-winning telemedicine app that let’s physicians collaborate on care using pictures and video on iPhones and iPads. Users take a picture of a case and send it to their colleague. The remote colleague gets an email that a consultation is waiting and when she has a chance, she can send an answer.

At One Eleven Software, we recently updated the SampleServer® interface to limit the number of choices. We also redefined the tool so that it fits seamlessly into a physician’s daily workflow.

The idea of simplicity isn’t new. At the recent American Telemedicine Association meeting, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak said, “I got better and better at making things smaller and smaller and smaller… The number of chips it took for a design had to be the minimum. And it turns out that led me to some good life philosophies about trying to make everything the fewest steps possible.”

We’re looking for other companies that are hacking away at the unessential. If you know of any, let us know.

According to the release, responding brand teams generally hold their agencies’ performance as negative in categories such as: developing digital marketing strategy, moderating interactive forums, understanding the regulatory environment, maintaining regulatory compliance, executing digital strategy, and demonstrating digital marketing return on investment (ROI).

Across all categories, according to the release, only 22 percent of responses were good, 33 percent were poor, and no one respondent ranked their outsourced digital marketing as “very good.”

Some of this is no surprise – the pharma regulatory environment is tough and constantly in a state of constant flux and pharmaceutical companies expect their agencies to know and understand the regulations.

While the Internet evolves at the speed of light, the FDA does not. The FDA held its first hearing on the Internet back in 1996 and only just recently issued guidelines on social media. Yet most people don’t understand the regulatory environment even though there are resources for learning how to navigate the regulatory environment, few agencies take the plunge.

The negative perception of agencies is appalling (but nothing new) because: (1) while digital strategy is relative new and ever-evolving it’s not that difficult to do well; and (2) digital media is quickly becoming the most important part of the pharmaceutical marketing mix.

It’s easy to bash agencies. It’d be interesting to know what the results would be if we were talking about advertising, public relations, medical education or any other agencies serving the industry. At the same time, the pharma-agency relationships aren’t going away. In fact, they are likely to grow deeper given the evolution of the pharmaceutical ecosystem, the constant layoffs at big pharma and the evolution of pharmaceutical companies into big marketing companies.

In an ideal world, the agency would educate their clients on how a digital campaign can be executed, what is possible, what is being done outside the industry, and how it fits with regulatory. But it always has to start with the basics – who is the audience, what is the strategy, and what our expected outcomes. Some agencies excel at this.

Finally, when we read releases like this we wonder who has an ax to grind and why. In this case, Cutting Edge Information is promoting a report “Pharmaceutical Digital Marketing and Social Media. That $7695.00 report promises to help marketing teams prioritize objectives, built team structures, and create a team equipped to meet current and future digital marketing challenges.

It’s probably a great report.

It always feels a bit “scammy” when you’re online and have an online subscription, but have to cancel by calling in. However, in December, I called their 800 number and canceled my account. After rebuffing their approaches for “more time”, I was able to cancel my account. Only, it wasn’t canceled.

I called again in January twice and then a few weeks ago. All 3 times, I was assured my account had been canceled, but it wasn’t. Here’s the problem. I had no proof, no email confirmation that I canceled my account. I was at the mercy of their account reps, who apparently have been told never to cancel accounts…I was told, “well you had access for the past few months, so we can’t credit your account.” The problem is, I deleted the app from my iPhone when I thought I was canceled so I didn’t access the site. Somehow, they were not able to make that connection.

Thank goodness for American Express, who does have good customer support. After being told by the Times I, “never called to cancel,” American Express stepped in and is crediting back the amount that the NYTimes took out of my account.

Here’s the thing, if you’re going into this brave new world of the internet, please make sure to have the technology to keep up.

I think a lot of marketing people make choices for their brands based on the Mom factor, thinking to themselves that if my Mom sees this, she’ll be proud. Having a national TV commercial may be one of the most useless ways to spend marketing dollars, but hey, you can say to your Mom “look at my cool commercial”. Hell, I get it. I’ve even done it – ten years ago. Print and TV are something you can show your mother.

Our pal, John Mack accurately pointed out at ePharma and in his blog that ePharma marketing people are the 1%. Since we have been in this space for 17 years, we sure understand his viewpoint.

We intend to keep innovating in the e-sampling space until it becomes such a *&^%*$* no-brainer that even your mother will get it.

And be real proud of you.

I have a fortune cookie fortune I have saved for years that says “Don’t give up, the beginning is always hardest”. Well, yes and no. In the beginning, everything is possible, you are excited about the new idea and no one has thrown cold water on you yet. The doubters and nay-sayers haven’t shown up. For me, the beginning is a high. Starting to train for a half marathon or cutting 10 lbs? Now that’s a different kettle of fish.

We’ve created our big idea. And we are excited. So is everyone else. We are hearing excitement in meetings and getting immediate calls back. But we are entering the nitty gritty stage. Exactly how much does this cost? Exactly how will it be done? Why should I do this program instead of the other 10 programs I have going?

Good questions – and we have answers for each of them. Solid answers. We are not quite to the point that we have heard EVERY question possible, but we are closing in.

To me, this is the struggle. This is the hardest part. The waiting game. Everyone is nodding, everyone knows it is the right thing to do. Someone has to sign the dotted line first. And I can’t do it for you.

I took two calls just the other day, both saying the same thing – “Hey Janet, read about the programs you are talking about on your web site and I think that is AWESOME. You should be really proud.”

We are. I am. C’mon pharma – stop nodding your heads and start making the world a better place. It can be done and it is in our power to do it.

There are a lot of things to consider when leading a company, especially if you are leading it in a different direction. We considered if it “was safe, politically correct, popular” and decided it was more important for our direction to “be right”.

I can say that I have never been happier to be at work, because I do believe we are doing the right work and that is going to impact the world positively. And even more exciting? People are beginning to follow us and join us in “doing good”. More and more of the leaders I speak with want to do good and are actively seeking ways to merge this into their work.

So as we remember Martin Luther King, Jr. today, I’m pleased to see a positive direction towards giving back and look forward to achieving results I know that we all can be proud of.

A group of researchers out of Harvard analyzed data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s March 2009 Current Population Survey, which surveyed Americans about their insurance coverage and veteran status, and found that 1,461,615 veterans between the ages of 18 and 64 were uninsured in 2008. Veterans were only classified as uninsured if they neither had health insurance nor received ongoing care at Veterans Health Administration (VA) hospitals or clinics.

“Like other uninsured Americans, most uninsured vets are working people – too poor to afford private coverage but not poor enough to qualify for Medicaid or means-tested VA care,” said Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, a professor at Harvard Medical School who testified before Congress about uninsured veterans in 2007 and carried out the analysis. “As a result, veterans go without the care they need every day in the U.S., and thousands die each year. It’s a disgrace.”

Who doesn’t want to help the people who have served our country? That’s right, we all do. We are getting conversations started at pharma companies as to how we can provide our Veterans with free medications. And people are REALLY listening. Why? Because this matters. We can actually work together and solve this problem.

It’s doable, it’s right and it’s about time.

Last week, we launched PharmaCares and immediately, industry friends started talking about it in their blogs, in their tweets, and hopefully in their workplaces as well.

Here are a few of the lovely blog postings:
Hale Advisors, Beth Bengtson and Zoe Dunn – http://haleadvice.com/2011/12/pharmacares/

rbv3, Dr. Richard Vanderveer – http://rbv3.com/blog/

We’d also like to thank one of our military social media partners, ArmedZilla for working with us on PharmaCares for Veterans (PC4V) – to give Veterans access to the medicines they need at no or low cost.

It pretty much takes a village to do anything worthwhile and to bring PharmaCares to its true potential, we need the industry’s support.

Help us do this – it is worth it. Thirty-six million people are waiting.

Ok, so a few other things were happening at the same time, oh, like business and family and stuff like that. But I kept thinking about how we could do what we do best and use our software to do it.

And one day, it hit me. All at once, in one big glump. I knew exactly how we would help people, using what we know. We would create a universal donation eSampling closet, powered by SampleServer® – brands with short dated or surplus product would list what they had in our closet, and we would reach out to the organizations pharma already works with and let them shop in the Amazon of donated products. It works for the following reasons:

1. E-sampling is what we do, we know the rules, this is just a twist on the same game.

2. We know which physician-led 501(c) 3 charities pharma works with already (they told us).

3. We know that the charities still have to go around begging to each pharma company when they need products, and here is a “one stop shop” for them.

4. Who DOESN’T want to help 36 million people in the U.S. get the medicines they need??

5. Who DOESN’T want to help eliminate the 200 pounds of pharma waste generated annually??

6. Who doesn’t want to do GOOD, when you have a chance??

So, a year and change later, here we are. Launching PharmaCares™. We have been talking to pharma, but now the time for talking is done. We need to act – and here is how you can:

Go to: www.pharmacares.org
Email me: janet.carlson@pharmacares.org
Call me: 860-672-0043 x111

If you have an Rx or OTC brand to participate, if you have vaccines, medical supplies or short dated literature or you have an idea or you can help spread the word, act now.

Thirty-six million people can’t wait. So hurry.