Bottom-Up Innovation

Branding Science’s approach to generating the new and improving on the old

I started Brand Garage as a fresh-out-of-Uni Research Executive, looking for a forum to voice my opinions on the wide range of approaches and methodologies in market research that I found can either be wildly progressive, or downright ancient.

This space would have to be absent of fear and ego. I wanted to avoid situations of someone more senior than me saying: “I’ve been in this business for years and trust me, that isn’t going to work.” Or “That’s how we’ve always done it, and it’s not a good idea to change.”

I’m a firm believer that ideas are not for shooting down, but for dissecting and re-assembling, until it is the idea that solves the problem. Or re-defines the problem for you, which can be equally useful.

Thankfully, the team at Branding Science gave me that forum, appreciating its potential for innovation, to the point where Brand Garage – our internal ‘think tank’ – is not only supported, but celebrated.

So, how do we ensure innovation in Brand Garage?

• No-one above a certain senior level is permitted to attend these meetings (we range from grads to REs, SREs and RMs)
•  We’re encouraged to argue, to challenge, to rip something apart
• We are creatively agile - we achieve this through allowing ourselves to be iterative, constantly re-defining, readjusting and reflecting on our ideas
• We don’t put pressure on outcomes. If we don’t end up creating an innovative solution, but come up with another question instead, then that is still a success in our minds
• We will split the team into two smaller teams to explore different avenues of thought, rather than allow in-fighting to take over the innovation process

 (We’re also encouraged to go off site to meetings and order Pizza, which totally helps!)

As a result, Brand Garage has looked at:

•          New ways to uncover emotional brand perceptions
•          New ways to validly test TPPs
•          New ways to trigger creativity internally during our analysis sessions

I’ve no doubt that this trust in the ‘people at the bottom of the pyramid, the young sparks, the people closest to customers, as the source of innovation’* is why Brand Garage has, and will continue to be successful in the future.

Email Branding Science at info@branding-science.com  to find out more about Brand Garage, or how our approach to innovation might be applied to your organisation! We look forward to hearing from you.

   

*quote taken from the TedTalk: How to manage for collective creativity, by Linda Hill 

(http://www.ted.com/talks/linda_hill_how_to_manage_for_collective_creativity/transcript?language=en)  

Written by Sofia Fionda, Research Manager at Branding Science

Accidental Blockbusters: Warfarin

“Of course, that’s how life is. A turn of events may seem very small at the time it’s happening, but you never really know, do you?” Tom Xavier

Warfarin is an anticoagulant currently prescribed to prevent blood clots. However it was originally introduced to the consumer world as a rat poison due to its haemorrhaging abilities.

In the early 1920’s a bizarre number of cattle in the US kept spontaneously bleeding profusely. Food sources in the area were scarce and so the cattle were being left to eat the damp, mouldy hay that was no good to anyone else. A Canadian vet twigged that the link between all of these haemorrhaging cattle was that they had consumed this unsuitable hay, and discovered that by removing the hay from the cattle’s diet, they returned to full health.

Thirty years later, the compound in the mouldy hay was finally characterised and was launched into the US market as a rat poison, proving an instant success. However a US soldier, unsuccessfully, tried to commit suicide by overdosing on this new toxin. Having been rushed to hospital, he was treated with vitamin K, the antidote, and made a full recovery, yet this started an investigation into the potential therapeutic use of the poison. And three years later, it was approved for use as an anticoagulant, with one of its first recipients being the US president at the time; Dwight D. Eisenhower.

One conspiracy theory, highlighting the dangers of warfarin and the complexity of its dosing regimen, suggests that Stalin was murdered using warfarin. As warfarin is tasteless and odourless, making it such a good rat poison, Stalin could have easily consumed it without knowing so, and he exhibited many of the symptoms commonly found in a warfarin overdose when he died.

This post was written by Graduate Research Exec Becky Geffen.
For more weird and wonderful pharamcetuical facts follow us on: @brandingscience

The Benefits of Becoming a Cyborg: improving outcomes by keeping us honest

 

One of the most exciting current developments in mobile health technology is the increasing availability of smartphone-based health monitoring accessories.  Devices currently on the market are mostly focused on cardiovascular monitoring or diabetes testing, but as the space evolves, more diverse technology will become available. 

Why are these tools so valuable?  At a topline level, it’s because they keep us honest.  As market researchers, we’re well aware of common human biases that affect how all of us self-report information to others.  For instance, humans have an inherent bias towards optimism which may cause us to gloss over negative items in our health history, sometimes depending on how they were experienced (see work from Daniel Kahneman, e.g. Thinking, Fast and Slow, 2011).  We might forget how many times we’ve felt terrible due to a chronic condition; or, at our annual check-up, we may neglect to mention the few small health quirks that made us think “huh, that seems weird, I should mention that at my checkup…” over the previous year, especially if we ultimately felt ok after they had passed.

Further, the way each patient talks about their disease can be unique.  A worried or scared patient with a newly-developed issue might recall their symptoms as much worse than they were at the time.  Or, a patient who’s hoping to avoid medications might gloss over or downplay the significance of their symptoms.

 

For doctors and researchers alike, it’s essential for patients’ health information to be as correct, standardized, and reliable as possible.  Wearable health monitors not only ensure that patient data is collected accurately, but they also allow healthcare providers to capture a wide picture of the patient’s health in a variety of settings, granting a more complete picture of health.  For instance, sometimes a patient may come into a doctor’s office with a complaint that can’t be replicated while the patient is there (e.g. heart palpitations or muscle spasms).  More continuous monitoring of the patient’s health can help doctors to gain an accurate understanding of just how frequently and severely these issues are occurring in the patient’s daily life.

 

Who may want to take advantage of wearable health monitors?

In some cases, patients may feel that their annual readings at a doctors’ office aren’t providing their doctor with a full and accurate picture of health.  For instance, a patient who’s nervous about their blood pressure readings (or even just interacting with a doctor in general) may start to panic right before that test is given, resulting in a reading that’s more extreme than their usual levels and subsequently, a bit of a misdiagnosis.  In a case like this, a portable health monitor worn during the patient’s everyday life could help give a concerned doctor a broader look into the patient’s blood pressure in a variety of settings.

 

Other types of mobile health tools, such as cardiovascular monitors, can save patients the time, cost, and effort of coming into a healthcare provider’s office just to have a certain test done.  Though current technologies may not be at this level yet, in the future, perhaps patients who require regular monitoring after surgery or a prescription change can electronically submit their test results directly and securely to their physician, helping to reduce costs to the patient and freeing up the healthcare staff to spend more time seeing patients for more substantive visits.

 

Some devices, like the Scanadu Scout, are designed for a future where we can all monitor all of our vital signs for early warnings of negative events.  In its early stages, such a device might cause a lot of false alarm, as patients may be unable to make reliable, educated judgments from their data.  However, in time, perhaps systems like these can monitor a range of vital signals and health outcomes that are relevant to an individual’s specific risk profile and baseline health (e.g. perhaps a complex disease runs in one’s family, and monitoring for just one vital or another alone wouldn’t catch it effectively). 

At Branding Science, we’re passionate about information and data, and we’re also firm believers that well-organized data tell a story.  The true value of such monitors is in their ability to work in the context of other forms of treatment and help a physician make sense of a patient’s symptoms and future potential for illness.  We look forward to seeing how current and future technologies make sense of large amounts of health data to make a difference in patients’ lives!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJBL-j6jgt0

Written by Brittani Baxter in our San Francisco Office

Technology wonders

The article Coming Next: Using an App as Prescribed recently published on the New York Times discusses recent innovations in smartphone applications dedicated to healthcare.

In particular, it gives examples of applications designed to collect patient data, take those through a specific algorithm and send treatment recommendations to healthcare professionals in charge of managing the patient.

Although the level of precision of recommendations may vary, such a process would clearly represent a major concern for pharmaceutical companies, who would need to ensure their treatments are included - and fairly presented - amongst the available alternatives that will shape the recommendation.

Physicians will also consider these applications and their recommendations with extreme caution, particularly in the early days, but could the current trend for cost-saving accelerate their adoption?

If you are a brand manager in the pharmaceutical industry, you certainly want to keep an eye on these apps and even more on the guidelines the FDA will publish later this year, as it could mean opportunities  not to be missed.

The author: Axel Rousseau is brand scientist (SRE) at Branding-Science and has been working on international market research and consultancy since 2008.

So what does the Rapid Physician Decision task look like?

A short demo.....

So how does RPD differ from traditional qualitative research techniques and just what does it add? Here’s an example of how it can be used in treatment decision making research based on patient profiles -

-          Physician is presented with a self-guided computer based task

-          The test begins; the physician is presented with a set of patient profiles to read

-          After each, the physician is then asked to pick his 1^st/2^nd/3^rd line of treatment, with a number of treatment options given (to mine real gut instinct and avoid ‘driving blind’ through the test, questions can be time limited and options randomised)

-          Once complete, the moderator has a full set of responses available with which to challenge respondents

And what does it all mean?

This example merely scratches the surface of what RPD can offer. We believe this is real ‘next generation’ market research. For our work in antifungals, it produced thought-provoking results; physicians often contradicted their decision-making in open conversation, providing insight into how decisions are often unconsciously guided by herd behaviour but sometimes difficult to verbalise within discussion.

In our experience, the RPD has enabled us, and our clients, to see beyond the obvious, offering critical ‘actionable commercial insights’.

The author: Ben Jones is Senior Research Executive at Branding Science. He has a special interest in digital and how research can harness new technologies to generate deeper insights.

The BHBIA conference – beyond expectations!!

As a first time delegate, I did not know what to expect from the BHBIA conference.  It’s fair to say, my expected highlights were the awards dinner and guest speech by Mark Foster, one of the UK’s most decorated sportspeople. 

From my tower of cynical ignorance, I had two main preconceptions about the conference as;

1.   A backslapping exercise for the main sponsoring agencies/client companies

2.   A platform for agencies/service providers to hawk their wares, with harassed clients fleeing successive sales pitches as they make their way from coffee pot to  paper-presentation

My opinion, however, rapidly and considerably changed for three key reasons…

Collaboration

As I listened to the first paper-presentation, I was struck by the atmosphere of togetherness and partnership.  The transparent discussion of innovative methodologies and success stories was inspiring.  Imparting this “winning feeling” to us all and initiating new directions of thinking was not just refreshing…it was incredibly motivating. 

Pride

It was very easy to see the pride delegates have in the Pharma industry. Highlighted at every point was how business intelligence adds value to all aspects of a brand’s life cycle.  There is real scope for change, real opportunity for innovation and real need for the business intelligence community to make the difference.  I doubt any delegate left without a feeling of purpose and energy.

Receptivity

Opportunity to talk with client and agency colleagues with the sole agenda of promoting better business intelligence was very powerful.  Existing pre-conceptions and relationships were set aside, as delegates openly discussed issues and brainstormed solutions.  This added to the positive feeling of the conference and likewise to my belief in what I/we can achieve to improve healthcare in the UK.

As for looking ahead? I will certainly attend the 2013 BHBIA conference, and hope this summary encourages thinking into what a creative forum like this could mean to your company and team’s approach to business intelligence.

Oh, I almost forgot, the awards dinner and Mark Foster speech were also sensational!

The author: Joe Gadilhe is Senior Research Executive at Branding Science. With experience across therapy areas, he has managed research projects exploring the views and opinions of payers and physicians in the UK and abroad.

Rapid Physician Decision Making Task

”Instinct is intelligence incapable of self-consciousness.”
John Sterling, author

Mining gut instinct in pharmaceutical market research.......

In the world of healthcare, millions of life-changing decisions are made by physicians daily - which treatment pathway to follow, which drug to choose, when to switch and what to switch to? Guidelines may inform these choices but physicians, like all of us, are creatures of habit and make many of their decisions from a gut instinct, formed and reinforced by experience. As market researchers the real value of our work is in finding out the triggers for these ‘gut’ decisions – but how can we be sure we are getting their genuine decisions, and not what they feel is expected of them

This problem lay at the centre of a recent piece of research carried out by Branding Science in antifungal therapy. Here a variety of drug choices are available but decisions tend to be uniform and quickly made. We needed to determine the genuine ‘instinctive’ decision (or dare we say, prescribing habits) of physicians- but felt that traditional qualitative methods wouldn’t allow physicians the ‘time and distance’ to elicit this gut response. To do this we needed to get as near as possible to the real life prescribing environment- to get out of the interview room and into the operating room.

The Rapid Physician Decision (RPD) task.......

To combine the benefits of qualitative research with the statistical edge of quantitative research, we looked to the annals of cognitive psychology for inspiration- and the Rapid Physician Decision (RPD) task was born

This is essentially a computer-based task measuring instantaneous physician responses to a series of rapid fire questions- which are then promptly incorporated into qualitative research interviews. This allows us to contrast ‘gut’ vs. considered responses, and probe where inconsistencies arise- really getting ‘under the skin’ of the decision

RPD allows us to quantify gut instinct in situations where it really matters, like treatment decisions, message testing and logo/concept refinement. RPD is flexible enough to cater for all; whilst even technophobes can produce a basic ‘preference test’ within an hour, more confident technophiles can introduce ranking and routing elements and even measure speed of response to see just how ‘hard wired’ decision choices are. 

Please follow this blog, as in my next post, I will be showing you how it works !

The author: Ben Jones is Senior Research Executive at Branding Science. He has a special interest in digital and how research can harness new technologies to generate deeper insights.

Implicit or Explicit Brand Choice?

How do we really get to the root of barriers and drivers to physician prescribing? Are our brand preferences rational or emotional? And does bias in the line of prejudice play any role in product selection?

We often look to social psychology research for tools when compiling our market research methodologies. Where social psychology meets cognitive psychology we see a series of fascinating (and sometimes controversial) cognitive tasks aiming to uncover the true biases influencing our decision-making.

One such task is the IAT (implicit association test). This computer-based test has been validated in a range of scientific research settings, and more recently, in the consumer setting. Basically, the IAT aims to uncover uncontrollable behavioural responses, demonstrating an association between a brand/group/person and pleasant attributes and another brand/group/person and unpleasant attributes. Typically, the IAT scores are interpreted in terms of association strengths (socially learned or developed associations) by assuming that participants respond more rapidly when the concept and attribute that map on to the same response are strongly associated (e.g. Coca Cola and pleasant) than when they are weakly associated (e.g. Pepsi and pleasant).

What does this all mean for pharmaceutical market research? Well, implicit bias may indeed influence our explicit decision-making. Self-reported experience and anxiety have both been seen to correlate with implicit associations as measured by the IAT. When it comes to Rx or OTC brand selection, this type of implicit information is a critical step to unlocking prescription barriers and drivers amongst physicians.

Stepping outside of our research comfort zones into more experimental methodologies may seem daunting at first, but this leap can potentially offer quantifiable insight difficult to uncover with more traditional techniques. The concept of including a computer-based cognitive task in a qualitative research paradigm sees the fusion of quant and qual methodologies. But isn’t it always the meeting of two great minds that offers the greatest insight?

The author: Dr Pamela Walker is Research Director at Branding Science. After a PhD from the University of Oxford in Neuroscience and Psychology, she gained strategic consulting experience in the pharmaceutical industry. She is now leading the neuroscience taskforce at Branding Science.