Danny & Annie

This remarkable couple personifies the eloquence, grace, and poetry that can be found in the voices of every day people if we take the time to listen.

Danny & Annie from StoryCorps on Vimeo.

Step off Tony Robbins

Motivation comes in the form of a 15" female robot:

“The test was not to see if the patients lost weight, but to see if they made a relationship with the robot. One person named it; another put a hat on it, they treated her like a buddy. Robots might one day help busy physicians... I have patients on diets who come to see me weekly because they need to be accountable to someone, but I can’t be there for everyone.”

Dr. Caroline M. Apovian, director of the center for nutrition and weight management at the Boston University School of Medicine was adviser to a study to see whether people would accept a robot as a diet coach.

Sweat the small stuff

Acquisition vs. Lifetime Value

In our DTC world of U.S. Rx/Biologics, the sales model is based on acquisition not lifetime value (LTV). But LTV, as a business model, is far more relevant to the majority of Rx, and is already embraced by many OTC products. In the post-Reform world, DTC, Social Listening and Insight will feed each other to start to level out the drop-off:

Pharma and many other healthcare related categories lose 50% of their customers in 120 days.

One of the challenges of adherence programs has always been reach and scale. What would it be like to see an entire commercial dedicated to telling people taking a drug to sign up, call or go online to get free support? Spend a little against that and watch your database take off. As a matter of fact, Ally and Chantix do it now, for the most part.

To shift from Acquisition mode to Adherence and LTV is not a one-or-the-other choice; right now it is so lopsided that Adherence is still sitting at the kiddy table. And reality is that given where the Brand is in its Lifecycle, investment and strategies need to deliver against that timing. But the forces that create true change are upon us – from digital adoption to Health Reform to information restrictions. And TV and print DTC driving to an adherence program might be far better for your business, your database, and patients’ lives. DTC surely has grown up.

Full article here

It's all about the LTV

Statistics to support strategic shift from acquisition to adherence to increase life time value (LTV):

• Acquiring new customers can cost five times more than retaining (and satisfying) current customers
• A 2% increase in customer retention has the same effect on profits as cutting costs by 10%
• The average company loses 10% of its customers each year (Pharma loses up to 50%)
• A 5% reduction in customer defection rate can increase profits by 25-125%, depending on the industry
• The customer profitability rate tends to increase over the life of a retained customer

Source: “Leading on the Edge of Chaos”, Emmett C. Murphy and Mark A. Murphy