So it’s only day two at SXSW and already I have to walk back something I wrote Friday. I groused a little bit about how the folks in the health track don’t really get to rub shoulders with the actors, filmmakers and musicians. And while it may be true that Meghan, Duchess of Sussex and Samantha Bee didn’t show up at the talk about AI’s uses in clinical health care, there’s plenty of opportunity for intrepid medical marketers to take in screenings and fireside chats. I doubt I’ll be able to get into the talk by Conan O’Brien and the genius Robert Smigel (you may know him better as Triumph the Insult Comic Dog), but it won’t be for lack of trying.
Marketers themselves are doing a good job at bringing together disparate points of view to solve some of the more intractable issues they face. As part of its Healthcare Innovation Weekend, Real Chemistry produced a panel called “Learning to Love the Uninvited Guest: Healthcare Advertising.” The provocatively titled panel featured a celebrity chef (Josh Capon), a creative director (Lauren Pollina), an investigative journalist (Ashley Benecchi) and a pharma CMO (Erica Taylor), if not resolve, why some healthcare advertising work is just so, well, bad — and what can be done to make it great. Upshot: Think hospitality, which encourages people via a great experience, to come back over and over again.
Though not limited to healthcare, one of the more intriguing and useful activations I’ve seen here was staged by The Female Quotient. The group says that, with 3 million members, it is the largest global community of women in business. Its Equality Lounge features panels and networking as well as a booth to take stylized headshots for visitors to use on LinkedIn pages. Traffic to the Lounge — located in the Austin Rowing Club, just a stone’s throw from the convention center — was as brisk as Saturday morning’s weather.
The smartest idea I’ve heard since I got here came from a speaker on a panel at an all-day event hosted by Finn x Humble Ventures, who described a new way to recruit people for clinical trials. They proposed flagging prescriptions for patients taking a medication which suggests they have a condition for which the trial is testing. Brilliant. So brilliant as to be obvious.
But sometimes the obvious is out of reach. At convergences of smart people, sometimes, the obvious becomes clear.
