“At MicroMass, we see people, not just their disease or their demographics, but the human inside. Our aim is to understand them, inspire them, change their behavior and reach them where it can make the most impact.”

This is how Rob Peters, EVP, strategy; and Noah Lowenthal, executive creative director, both at MicroMass, explained their approach to changing health for the better during a recent podcast with MM+M’s editor-in-chief, Larry Dobrow.

The conversation took an in-depth look at how leveraging the company’s Human Dynamics — the influences that help people make decisions and engage with information — can help build connections to positively affect a patient’s journey.

Human Dynamics and its relevance to pharma marketers and brands

Human Dynamics builds on the basis of behavioral science,” explained Peters at the outset. “We realized that we’ve got an opportunity to strengthen that approach and the offerings we provide to our clients by leveraging that deep understanding of human behavior and complementing it with the growing volume of data.”

But it all starts by thinking about the person within the patient and building a relationship with them based on their needs or preferences.

“Once we have that understanding, we can craft our creative around engaging with them in a way that adapts to their unique experience, accounting for all the changes that are going to happen with the human dynamic,” Peters went on to explain.

Internally, MicroMass calls Human Dynamics “behavioral science 2.0,” a term that Lowenthal explains as, “It’s one thing to uncover a behavioral psychological truth about how a certain patient with a specific condition views themselves, but, what human dynamics does is it says, ‘OK, how does that inform the creative strategy and what we’re doing when a patient engages with us at different times of the day on different devices?’ What we do is weave the thread of human dynamics and behavioral psychology through it all and integrate it so that there’s more purpose and greater outcomes.”

How Human Dynamics creates a stronger connection between brand and customer

At MicroMass, seeing a person not just as someone with diabetes (for example), but recognizing that they are also a mom, a soccer coach, a spouse and a busy executive influences the way they engage with a brand and make decisions about their condition. 

“By starting there, we’ve got a better understanding of how that person processes information, how they engage and what day-to-day dynamics might get in the way of them managing their condition,” said Peters. “That gives us a better starting point than the typical snapshot of a patient you get through doing market research.”

While a lot of pharma brands talk to patients and learn valuable information in the moment, Peters mentioned that “When that patient goes home and is dealing with all these other factors that weren’t discussed or taken into account, those learnings become outdated.”

Part of the remedy for this kind of siloed intel, as Lowenthal sees it, is to create a connective tissue that binds teams and departments together. “Human Dynamics is a way of approaching patients that informs and unifies each team’s understanding of what we’re trying to accomplish,” he explained. “It’s not a process, but a way of thinking that results in more authentic, relevant and engaging work for the patients who encounter it.” 

The future of Human Dynamics

To Peters, the future revolves around “broadening the exposure of human dynamics to potential clients in order to give them a valid reason to invest in patient marketing sooner and see the impact of their brand goals in a more effective way.

Speaking a little more narrowly, Lowenthal, who was brought into MicroMass recently to elevate agency creative using Human Dynamics, said “the goal is to take the authenticity of behavioral science and connect it to the creative so that we’re more connected to the human condition than what we’ve seen in the past.”

For both Peters and Lowenthal, the industry trend is moving toward authentic emotions and feelings. 

“I think Human Dynamics allows us to recognize the whole human as part of a creative platform,” said Lowenthal. 

“And we look forward to continuing to broaden that exposure to potential clients of Human Dynamics and bring them a solution that drives their brand goals in a more effective way,” concluded Peters.

The future of patients as humans is upon us.

To learn more about the revolutionary Human Dynamics approach by MicroMass, visit MicroMass.com