They’re what Google calls micro-moments. Every moment of every day, technology—mobile, virtual, environmental, Bluetooth, and AI-enabled—influences our personal space and enables hundreds of decisions, large and small.

As our technology evolves, behaviorists are asking how we’re evolving as well. Are we the same people we were before smartphones became our constant companions? Before double- and triple-screen viewing became the norm?

Dr. Mary Aiken, author of The Cyber Effect, says no. “Our instincts,” she writes, “honed for the ‘real’ world, fail us in cyberspace. Human behavior is often amplified and accelerated online.” In the wired (and wireless) world, our beliefs about brands and brand interactions have already changed dramatically.

Our ready access to technology has created an environment for us to become more demanding and less patient. We expect immediate gratification when it comes to product delivery and service. We are accustomed to instant answers to complex questions. And we’re ready to disengage with brands just as quickly.

At the same time, market forces are moving us toward a consumer-directed economy. A new study by Pricewaterhouse Cooper’s Health Research Institute suggests that healthcare is beginning to operate “similarly to retail, technology, and hospitality,” in essence putting consumers in charge of their care decisions—or lack thereof.

At the convergence of technology, humanity, and business is a new chapter in the science of behavioral change.

As healthcare marketers, our growing challenge will be to understand the beliefs and behaviors that stimulate customers to stay engaged with our brands and brand experiences.

As we begin to understand these dynamic forces, we see three areas that marketers can explore today to build toward a more robust, customer-centered future.

ONE // CREATE A RICHER UNDERSTANDING OF THE CONSUMER JOURNEY AND CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE:

The typical customer journey is shorthand for a customer’s relationship with a brand: They learn, they choose, they stay. It has become increasingly important to look at the customer through the lens of behavioral change, which asks us to take a deeper dive into those micro-moments. What—and who—is influencing behavior and decisions? What are the emotional triggers for action? Where and how does technology play a part? Today, it’s always exciting to see how much brand teams can identify current behaviors from existing research and a personal understanding of the market.

WHAT’S NEXT: As big data becomes more accessible, expect our understanding of customer experiences in the micro-moments to increase and become more targeted and actionable on a highly personal level.

TWO // ASSIGN MEANING TO POTENTIAL PAIN POINTS:

Our daily decisions, however straightforward on the surface, are driven by a shifting mix of biological, psychological, technological, and social factors. Taking the time to examine why our consumers make the decisions they do by exploring indicators like cognitive biases, social norms, ingrained habits, and outside influences gives us insights to overcome barriers to engagement that typical marketing approaches don’t uncover. Today, our ability to create responses to those pain points are built on well-honed psychological frameworks that drive practical communications solutions.

WHAT’S NEXT: As artificial intelligence becomes more prevalent, technology like the CUI (Customer User Interface) will allow us to “engineer” empathy in our communications—with the paradoxical effect of creating more emotional bonds through highly automated experiences.

THREE // GET IN THE HABIT OF THINKING LIKE A BEHAVIORIST:

While few of us are social scientists, we can learn from thinkers like B. J. Fogg, Nir Eyal, and others to help stimulate new behaviors among our customers and prospects. One of our own behavioral management tools is built on the model of COM=B, which stands for Capability + Opportunity + Motivation = Behavior Change, which helps teams identify and analyze specific behavioral issues all along the customer journey, and apply strategic and creative thinking to motivate new intentions and actions.

WHAT’S NEXT: One of the hot new trends in behavioral change actually revolves around a timeless human concept: conversation. Chris Brandt, chief marketing officer of Taco Bell, predicted in Fast Co. that there will be “a shift from talking at the world to making the world talk. People don’t necessarily want to be marketed to, so brands should look to create engagement and conversations at every consumer touchpoint.”

As both humans and technology evolve, so, too, do our marketing best practices. We look forward to sharing more on this dynamic field.

The rules of luxury branding are well known. They call for precious materials, exclusive distribution, irrational pricing, and “brand mythos.” These practices have held firm through changing fads and fashions for decades, even centuries, and the brands that employ them such as Hermès and Louis Vuitton have prevailed over those that come and go. Until now. Today's elite increasingly look to health and wellness as the ultimate symbols of status and personal success. The rise of rich data enables us to measure previously unknown aspects of personal wellness and performance. Coupled with the ubiquity of social platforms that enable people to brag about their wellness experiences, this recasts the parameters of status for many people.

Of course, the wealthy add the extra spin of exclusivity, too. As gold on the wrist is replaced by the equally expensive personal monitor that reads and understands your vitals in real time, the conversation also moves from Swiss craftsmanship to personal wellness goals and achievements. And so a resting heartbeat of 48 that is demonstrable on a pretty cool LED screen becomes in fact more aspirational than a platinum-bound chronograph.

This new value of “wellth” is perhaps most acutely demonstrated in the changing nature of gyms and health clubs. Billy's Boot Camp, SoulCycle, and high-immersion fitness activities have replaced the nightclub for many young and wannabe-young wealthy urbanites.

The spas and retreats that have long been the genteel destinations of the well-heeled have more recently received a radical technological and endorphin injection. The Mandarin Oriental, for example, has partnered with the Mayo Clinic to create an immersive premium self-assessment and wellness experience involving blood tests, vitamin analysis, and intestinal scoping to accompany an obligatory detox diet and intense personal training. Flotation tanks replace sun beds, and anti-aging gins spike the well-poured cocktails. You get the picture.

Computational health, the acceleration of the provision of care via technology, is unquestionably the future game changer and driver of our industry. All the core competencies of the pharmaceutical industry—drug discovery, commercialization, and marketing—will directly benefit from computational health. Its effects will be vast, pervasive, and seismic across the complex healthcare ecosystem.

Ultimately, these technological advances will improve health outcomes and cost efficiency. Here are a few specific examples of how this innovation and additive disruption will occur:

DIGITAL THERAPEUTICS
We are at an inflection point, a moment in time where we are moving beyond technology “hype” to reality, where the two worlds of computer science and life science are converging at a rate almost beyond comprehension. We will soon cross the threshold where there will be more technology than is necessarily usable. However, one of the biggest emerging use-case opportunities is digital therapeutics—complementary care delivered through technology such as mobile, social, robotics, the “Internet of things” (IoT), virtual and augmented reality, etc.

We are already seeing great success with programs like the Pfizer BeLive wearable patient diary—the first synchronized wearable device and app developed to track pain intensity for Lyrica patients. How patients are feeling is tracked in real time to allow greater control of their condition with a better understanding of pain, its patterns, and the constellation of parameters it affects.

The use of digital therapeutics will increase exponentially in the very near future; DT technology is predicted to become at least a $6 billion market within the next few years. It will amplify the effects of traditional therapies, provide “beyond the pill” possibilities for brands, enable physicians to be more productive, and empower patients to be more informed than ever before.

Digital therapeutics’ ability to gather and interpret biometric data from individuals and broad populations in a matter of seconds will completely revolutionize healthcare as we know it.

THE NETWORK EFFECT
Along with the availability and increasing robustness of big data comes a paradox—more data does not necessarily mean more insights. However, we can achieve deeper insights, or—as Google calls it—“out-of-sights,” from analyzing and interpreting the “network effect.”

Network theory demonstrates that groups have shared beliefs, values, attitudes, and rituals that allow us to move beyond demographics, psychographics, and segmentation to create a fuller picture of our audience. Networks constitute an open-source data mine that shows not only how and why a target audience acts the way it does, but also allows for behavior to be anticipated. With the network effect as a proxy for understanding customer behavior, brands will find a greater degree of confidence and accuracy to provide support. For instance, it will be easier to treat health conditions not only through the body but also the mind for better overall emotional well-being.

PREDICTIVE CREATIVE
When predicting the future of healthcare, it’s also a must to talk about “predictive creative.” Leveraging the rise of machine learning, brands will have the ability to move beyond a transactional relationship with patients to one that is deeper, more meaningful, and symbiotic. Through predictive creative, a company/brand will be able to advance campaign monologues to dialogues where their words and actions align with the expectations, needs, and even unknown wants of the customer.

Predictive creative will deliver proactive experiences, bespoke services, and moments of delight through personalized, curated content with the goal of not just treating existing conditions but offering preventive measures. A parallel extension of predictive offerings can be seen in the delivery of personalized medicine.

The computational health revolution is already in motion. We can seize the moment and start to future-map use cases that will humanize technology via:

ONE // Complementary care with digital therapeutics

TWO // Analysis and application of network effects

THREE // Implementing and anticipating value with predictive creative

The age of collaboration between health and technology for improved outcomes and improved costs is upon us!

Most of us would agree that the truly great creative people we have met or admired are a little different from the rest of us. Recent breakthroughs in neurological research have in fact started to identify exactly how they are different: It’s in the genes.

We all know about left-brain/right-brain separation, but research indicates that the most important identifying factor in great “creative genius” isn’t the dominance of one side over the other as is commonly proposed, but the bundle of fibers called the corpus callosum that joins and enables the two sides of the brain to communicate.

Highly creative people have been found to have a smaller corpus callosum, resulting in less communication between the two sides. Scientists believe that this generates more “divergent thinking,“ a very important element of creativity. The other scientific distinction found in the most creative people is that their brains are more highly networked, the result of which is a kind of neurological openness to diverse stimulation, and an “unfiltered” experience of emotions. In simple terms, their brains are less inhibited.

What relevance does this have to marketers? I think we can draw two very powerful parallels from how a creative person works at this genetic level to the DNA of a great creative enterprise: divergent thinking and openness to outside stimulation and sources of inspiration.

To illustrate, I’d like to use two award-winning examples from WPP agencies in the last year. First, Ogilvy New York’s work for Philips, entitled “Breathless Choir.” Second, the work from Grey on multiple sclerosis awareness in Australia. Both these campaigns succeeded because of the fundamentally divergent nature of the ideas. It is not exactly reasonable to propose that we draw attention to the painful experience of serious breathing diseases by having sufferers sing in a high-pressure venue like the Apollo Theater in Harlem. And it is equally divergent to imagine that we can draw attention to the crippling effect of MS by engineering it into a bicycle and then entering that bike in a race with an accomplished cyclist. Both ideas also demonstrate openness, because they engage in cultural interests that go beyond the narrow world of clinical healthcare and into mainstream culture, via singing and competitive performance in one case, and cycling and lifestyle in the other. This is exactly why these ideas broke through the clutter of clinical sameness, and why they have been so well recognized.

In conclusion, I would suggest that marketers seek to build the greatest partnership in our industry by embracing the creative gene and building it into the very foundation of everything we do to create the best, most effective work imaginable. In an industry where there is a great deal of “convergent thinking” around the right way to communicate about diseases and drugs, and where we tend to employ tried and trusted methods such as “doctors’ trust” or clinical proof, we should instead encourage divergent thought and disruptive ideas. And we should think about our work in terms beyond the specifics of treatment, looking at what it can mean in terms of the greater culture—yes, even popular culture. In this way, we will have the work our peers envy and the creative leaps forward that truly mark progress and success.

STOPPING A HIDDEN EPIDEMIC WITH INSIGHTS FROM BEHAVIORAL SCIENCE

What do signs on a Danish railway have to do with improved disease outcomes? What do letters to delinquent taxpayers have to do with keeping patients healthier? Quite a lot, it turns out. What links these seemingly disparate parts of life is the emerging science of behavioral change through nudges and appeals to social norms.

At our cores, humans are social primates. And as such, we have some very deep-seated behavioral impulses that can be tapped in order to produce behavioral change.

One such impulse is reciprocity. As members of a social group, we’re hard-wired to care about the norms of the other members of the group. This insight, developed through recent behavioral science research, has been put to use to improve legal compliance, social conduct, and even public health outcomes.

In Britain, the NHS Organ Donor Register tried for years to improve the rate at which drivers agreed to become donors when renewing their licenses. In surveys, nine out of ten Britons say they are happy to donate their organs after they die, but only around a third actually agrees to do so. To improve these rates, the Donor Register ran a massive experiment informed by behavioral science research that tested different messages about donation. Some appealed to civic responsibility, others to health, but the one that proved to be by far the most successful appealed to a sense of reciprocity: “If you needed an organ transplant, would you have one? If so, please help others.” This simple message increased donation rates to an expected 96,000 new donations per year. An appeal to group norms also helped drive tax payment rates in Britain. When delinquent taxpayers were sent a standard payment letter, responses were minimal, but when that letter was simplified and included information on the payment rates in the recipient’s community, response rates jumped by 15 percent, which could result in $200 million of additional tax revenue a year. In a very different context, a similar approach reflecting group norms even helped increase the rates at which hotel guests reused their towels.

Behavioral insights were also used to improve compliance with “quiet car” rules in the Danish railway system. Instead of negative messages telling passengers what they couldn’t do (e.g., talk) in the quiet cars, the railway used humorous signs with positive messages telling passengers what they could do in all the other cars: namely, make noise. Passenger reports and staff studies indicated that the quiet cars stayed quieter as a result.

So what does all this have to do with improved health outcomes? Behavioral change lies at the core of the great hidden epidemic of modern medicine: non-adherence to prescription drug regimens. Approximately half of all patients do not take their medications as prescribed, with one in five prescriptions going unfilled. The adverse health consequences that result from poor adherence take the lives of an estimated 125,000 Americans annually. The economic costs of non-adherence are equally staggering. An independent health think tank estimated that the U.S. healthcare system could save nearly $300 billion annually with better adherence and disease management.

From the pharmaceutical industry’s perspective, each failure of adherence represents an unreached patient, and a medication made less effective than intended. Globally, poor adherence is estimated to cost the pharmaceutical industry $564 billion each year, with $180 billion of those losses in the United States.

Behavioral science matched with social and digital media offers new hope for a practical solution. Simple text reminders can now be coupled with visual materials, while behavioral science insights can provide a strong motivator for patients to improve overall adherence scores. Since these communications tools are inherently scalable, they hold the potential for achieving population-scale improvement.

These innovative approaches offer new and better ways to reach people and drive positive change by helping them do something as simple—and crucial—as filling their prescriptions and taking their medicines. Initial trials of behavioral-nudge approaches in the United Kingdom have yielded encouraging signs of success. Even a 1 percent improvement in adherence in the United States could save over 1,000 lives and increase pharma revenues by nearly $2 billion. The 2017 New Year’s resolution for the healthcare sector should be to explore new ways to achieve real success in improving medical-prescription adherence.

“Take two of these and call me in the morning” was the ritual bedside utterance of doctors of yore, and for centuries that was more or less the extent of our knowledge and predictive power regarding the human body. Yet today, the extent of our ability to measure and predict the behaviors of the human body has reached unthinkable realms. Over the last few decades, we have imposed restrictions on who can access information about our bodies. But today we are faced with far greater complexity in managing this information as it begins to be captured in real time and across continents.

For better or worse, we stand at a juncture when it comes to managing healthcare information, one that must now take into account emerging nano-materials and modern sensory technologies. We need to look very carefully not so much at the increasing number of drones over our heads but at the quiet expansion of drones inside our bodies. Every day, sensors transmit data to computers in real time, measuring conditions such as heart and metabolic health, hypertension, and cholesterol levels. Pills are now being developed to contain sensors that can confirm with a doctor’s computer database if patients are in compliance and taking their medication.

In September 2015, Otsuka Pharmaceutical and Proteus Digital Health were granted approval to manufacture a version of Abilify, a common treatment for schizophrenia, that is embedded with a small piece of magnesium and copper. When the pill mixes with stomach juices, the two metals create a small charge that is detectable by a sensor that is stuck to the patient’s torso. That sensor sends information to a mobile app, and with the patient’s permission, to his or her doctor.

Other implantable technologies in development include contraceptive devices that can be turned on and off with a remote control, and capsule-size circuits that monitor fat levels in obese patients and can be set to generate a substance that makes them feel full.

While the use of these technologies at scale is not imminent, it is not too soon to construct an ethical framework for the use of the information they will generate so that humanity can benefit from, and not feel victimized by, these breakthroughs. We believe that there are four basic principles that must be built into any system to make this kind of information both accessible and truly protected. These are informed consent, anonymization, approved usage, and data deletion.

The first principle of this new branch of bioethics must be that each patient consents to the collection of data within his or her body. This is analogous to the firmly established principle in global ethical research standards by which it is illegal to conduct research or tests on any patient without his/her or a guardian’s consent. The second general principle is that all information gathered at the metabolic level and used beyond the boundaries of individual medical care must be anonymized. Taking another cue from the current standards of information retention, we also believe that each new use of this information, even after anonymization, must be explicitly authorized with a complete protocol outlining risks and benefits.

Finally, if informed consent is the bedrock of the ethical uses of personal medical information, then, by extension, each patient should also be entitled to determine when the use of that information stops. To address these issues, we need to open up a rich discussion involving corporations, governments, and nonprofits, as well as researchers and advocacy groups. It is critical that we create a robust public dialogue before we are “swallowed by what we have swallowed.”

This piece is excerpted from an article originally titled “Calling Dr. Jonah” published in The Journal of Business Strategy, Vol. 37, Number 1, © Emerald Publishing Group Limited.

Mass consumerization of healthcare along with dramatic technological innovation, greater power for women, and the growing influence of millennials, will continue to create an environment that is ripe for change. Patients’ voices will continue to gain traction, and notions of patient centricity will finally start to translate into healthcare practices and cultures that are more open, more engaging, and more accountable. Healthcare will become even more of a customer service industry. Empowered patients will take further control of their own healthcare and disease education. Communication will continue to be of the utmost importance. And there will be new rules to play by.

RULE ONE // THERE IS A NEW HEALTH CUSTOMER:

The new health customer is defined by generation and gender. Millennials, in particular, will continue to drive change in the healthcare sector, and they have high expectations. They want to engage with healthcare professionals (HCPs) as equals, communicating with both practitioners and brands via apps and social media. They highly value brand engagement, with 62 percent saying that if a brand engages with them on social networks they are more likely to become a loyal customer.

Millennials also like to take health matters into their own hands. They believe in doctors on demand, retail medicine, and telemedicine. Currently, one in twenty Google searches relates to healthcare, and there are roughly 4 million health support groups on Facebook. In fact, many millennials see their doctors as merely secondary sources of information, the Internet being the primary source.

Women make most healthcare decisions for their families, friends, and communities, and will continue to do so. Today 59 percent of women make healthcare decisions for others, and they span all generations. They determine nutritional choices, lifestyle choices, vaccinations, adherence to taking medications, and arrangement/keeping of medical appointments. But this responsibility can take its toll. Decision making can be a time-consuming and difficult responsibility, and women often worry that they are not fully knowledgeable on how to keep themselves and their loved ones healthy. This means that they are not always confident in the healthcare decisions they make. The woman of 2020 will want to be better informed about all aspects of health and wellness, and she will need support.

RULE TWO // THE MILLENNIAL DEFINITION OF “HEALTH” IS DIFFERENT THAN WE THINK:

Different generations define “health” differently. Millennials view spiritual and emotional well-being as essential elements of health, along with nutrition, work life, and a sense of community. In fact, health-related activities like exercise and eating well are considered essential parts of this generation’s lives rather than just additions. For Generation X, health is about being well rested and free of illness. Baby boomers, too, consider the absence of illness to be an essential element of health. And access to quality healthcare and mental health define health for the Silent Generation. All the generations include being happy and physically fit in their definitions of health, while being free from stress is important to all but the Silent Generation.

RULE THREE // TECHNOLOGY MATTERS:

The digital revolution will continue to create better health outcomes. Not only will this come from greater access to information, but it will also derive from greater access to more people, more solutions, and the inherently female predisposition toward sharing and connectivity that is at the root of behavioral change. Already, 73 percent of millennials want doctors to use mobile devices during exams, and 71 percent want mobile apps to actively manage preventive care, records, and appointments. In 2016, revenue from sales of wearable medical devices is up to $28.7 billion, and one forecast anticipates that figure to grow to $59 billion by 2020.

RULE FOUR // TRUST MATTERS MORE:

Today’s healthcare decision maker suffers in four crucial areas: knowledge, time, trust, and confidence. Hopefully, all of these will grow stronger over the next three years, but engaging the consumer for healthy outcomes will continue to require building trusted, two-way relationships. It will require a left-brain and right-brain orientation that takes into account the emotional component of decision making, especially with matters of health. In order to earn and retain the trust of tomorrow’s healthcare consumers, pharmaceutical companies will need to engage with them directly and become more transparent. They will need to provide clear information along with their prescriptions to help people understand risks and side effects. They will need to provide gender- and ethnic-specific drug recommendations. They will need to provide comprehensive product information on their websites. They will need to be available by phone 24/7 to answer questions or concerns about their prescriptions. And 75 percent of millennials think it is also important that a company gives back to society rather than just making a profit.

They will need to be available by phone 24/7 to answer questions or concerns about their prescriptions. And 75 percent of millennials think it is also important that a company gives back to society rather than just making a profit.

RULE FIVE // TO WIN, CONNECT THE DOTS:

“Communication is the cure” means not being satisfied by merely arming consumers with knowledge and information, but partnering and engaging with them. At the end of the day, it’s not products or technology that will change outcomes. Communication will be the key to helping consumers make better decisions, adopt more positive behaviors, adhere to treatment, and live healthier lives.

In the United States, the number of retailers a shopper visits per month has fallen by 25 percent in less than a decade. As these shoppers have whittled down their selection of retailers, their expectations have risen. They expect to be engaged personally and contextually. As such, retailers will need to drive loyalty by increasing the precision of their marketing and expanding their offerings through collaboration efforts. More targeted shopper clusters, formats, and promotional opportunities will drive ROI.

By 2025, U.S. healthcare costs are projected to rise to 25 percent of the GDP, or $12 trillion. With the rising cost of healthcare, we at Kantar Retail predict that more general practice medicine will take place in a retail store than in a doctor’s office. Given this new hyperpersonalized environment, the health and wellness space presents a unique opportunity to garner shopper loyalty, since the ultimate “service” is helping shoppers stay alive. Consumers will demand that retailers and leading CPG brands create a seamless path to purchase where OTC solutions, insurance coverage, adherence goals, big data, and new technology platforms are all conveniently interconnected.

Consumers will demand that retailers and leading CPG brands create a seamless path to purchase where OTC solutions, insurance coverage, adherence goals, big data, and new technology platforms are all conveniently interconnected.

We at Kantar Retail also predict that between 2016 and 2020, 25 to 50 percent of innovations made by major suppliers and retailers will have a “FLONH” component to them. “FLONH” is defined as “fresh, local, organic, natural, and health.”

Most FLONH terms have a clear meaning to shoppers. They view “fresh” as something that is new, different, or not previously used. “Local” connotes belonging or relating to a particular area or neighborhood. The definition of “organic” comes with a regulatory certification that requires ingredients to meet an FDA definition that includes labeling standards. “Natural” assumes that nothing artificial or synthetic has been added. “Health” solutions help shoppers improve their mental and physical states.

In shoppers’ minds, these terms have clear value that is specifically related to health and wellness needs. The challenge for OTC brands as well as big pharma companies will be to clarify the value that their products provide related to both functional outcomes and emotional authenticity. Shoppers today are flooded with misinformation related to hyperpersonalized health conditions.

Therefore, outcome management must be prioritized. Messaging must be simple and solutions must be adaptable to all the consumer touchpoints they prioritize.

Although the definition of “winning” will vary from client to client, brands want to “win” just as much as political candidates do. One trend we see taking root is that the strategic research techniques undertaken to win political campaigns tend to be adopted by corporate and institutional clients shortly thereafter. This should come as no surprise, since many competitive brand battles have looked a lot like political battles.

Over the last several years, political clients engage in more “big data” modeling and micro-targeting than ever before in order to win their campaigns. We are beginning to see some of our corporate and institutional clients follow suit, and we anticipate that this trend will only continue and intensify. There are three reasons for this:

AFFORDABILITY: As big data becomes more and more common in the research world, and databases proliferate, the cost of using it has decreased considerably. What used to be extremely costly—whether for campaigns, corporations, or institutions—is now within the price range of a comprehensive research strategy.

ATTAINABILITY: At the same time that access to big data has decreased in cost, technology has advanced to put sophisticated and customized modeling within reach of any client. These models allow our clients to find the audience they need to speak to in order to win, and use the messaging that works best with that audience.

EFFICACY: Our clients use this technology because it works, and it works well. Big-data modeling and micro-targeting put your campaign, your message, or your product in front of the audience you need to see it. The technology is able to reach the target audience directly, and is able to push the right message to the right consumer if you have more than one target in mind. As a result, the ROI for campaigns using big-data modeling and micro-targeting is far greater than for traditional mass-media campaigns.

These three key reasons may be trumped by one simpler truth, which is that big-data modeling and micro-targeting help our clients win. In politics, we see a sort of “competitive learning” going on election cycle after election cycle. Campaigns become aware of what worked and what didn’t work for their competitors, and they adjust their strategies as needed.

This same sort of competitive learning takes place among our corporate and institutional clients as well. Given that big-data modeling and micro-targeting have already been fully adopted and utilized by political campaigns, and that corporations have begun to dip their toes in the water, too, we believe it is a matter of “when” and not “if” the modeling and micro-targeting future of research becomes a widespread reality.

Trust has played a huge role in healthcare decisions for years. With the surge of healthcare information that is now exchanged every day, a new space has emerged that healthcare companies are poised to win if they can accelerate their personalized marketing practices in time.

Every day, patients and HCPs (healthcare practitioners) alike receive a plethora of unfiltered healthcare information that does not meet their needs. HCPs frequently report being dissatisfied with the information they receive, and while most are digital natives, only a very small amount of pharma marketing is digital, according to EPG Health Media.

Consumers are flat-out confused and overwhelmed by the information that’s thrown at them. Disturbingly, only 13 percent of millennials—an empowered, independent group—report feeling comfortable managing their own healthcare, according to Vice Media.

This environment is driving a new trust paradigm. Our proprietary research reveals that while doctors continue to influence healthcare decisions, people increasingly turn to other resources for information such as online communities, including blogs and chat rooms. From 2013 to 2016 alone, people’s trust in these online communities increased by a staggering 11 percent—up from 8 to 19 percent—overtaking Internet news websites, which came in at 18 percent during 2016. Interestingly (and contrary to some industry press coverage), one quarter of people reported trusting pharmaceutical companies for health information in 2016, a significant increase from 11 percent in 2013.

This new environment redefines the traditional value exchange. The new currency is personalized content that’s custom-tailored for its audience—content that helps HCPs and patients understand their options, express their thoughts and feelings, and relate to others who are going through similar circumstances. This content is multichannel, spanning the platforms that the target audiences use. Ideally, the right content is delivered to users at the right time and on their platform of choice.

Essential to this new value exchange is shifting focus from what brands care about to what audiences care about. Success stems from aligning content to the consumer’s journey, creating a layered narrative over time and across touchpoints, and ultimately delivering tailored content at the right moment to inspire action.

The challenge for brands is to stop interrupting what people are interested in and become what people are interested in. In turn, consumers will reward brands with their business and their loyalty.

At Wunderman, we have developed a content currency framework that establishes a clear “value exchange” between brands and customers. We use a variety of data (transactional, behavioral, attitudinal) to holistically understand our audience’s experience, and then map out their decision-making journey and content insights to guide a strategy for personalization. This approach starts with audience- and data-driven insights, ensuring that content is relevant to different market needs and varying levels of digital maturity.

Today, healthcare companies sit on rich data mines, and as you read earlier, they already have some trust equity. However, every company I speak with is facing the same challenge: delivering marketing that harnesses data to create truly personalized experiences and further build trust with target audiences. To enable personalized marketing and put content to work within this new framework, marketing teams must remove the walls between technology, data, and sales—enabling multichannel marketing that is integrated across channels, not siloed.

This means continuing to reinvent brand teams and transforming them into customer-focused teams. Teams that approach marketing with a focus on creating purposeful experiences built around an understanding of their audience and providing greater support than any other brand. To enable this evolution, brand teams must utilize their current talent while also making the necessary hires to straddle practices and connect technology, data, marketing, and sales.

Marketing that unites technology, data, and creativity will not only help achieve greater personalization, it also will inspire relationships with patients and HCPs that are built around trust, and will set up capable marketing teams for the future.

The evolving healthcare space will continue to transform rapidly. In the near future, additional data streams will become available from new technologies and wearables. At the same time, I expect the lines between branded content and editorial content to continue to be blurred. Marketing teams that can evolve to integrate current and new data sources and use them to create strong, agile content strategies will set themselves up to win—both in the short- and the long-term future.

WHAT WE BELIEVE ABOUT MOTION:

One of our foundational beliefs is that freedom of mobility is fundamental to human progress. We believe that we are all better off—that the world is better off— when we can move about it freely.

HEALTH AND MOBILITY ARE INEXTRICABLY LINKED:

Mental and physical health are intrinsically linked to mobility. The more connected and free we are to move through experiences, relationships, and places, the stronger our mental capacity is, too. Our physiological health is of course also tied to our ability to move and be active.

One of the great fundamental tensions of our age: Increased freedom of mobility and increased connectivity.

In the future, getting from point A to B will not only be about distance and speed, but also about what the data signals that track our journeys reveal about us. Our tendencies, preferences, trends, anomalies will all be collected, correlated, and predicted. This amount of data, and its personal nature, undoubtedly represents a great shift in the traditional sense of mobility and health.

ME AND MY DATA CLOUD, TRAVELING TOGETHER:

Given how much humans travel on a daily basis, all vehicles—whether they be autonomous cars, buses, trains, or bikes—will become hubs for personal data collection. Vehicles will be able to understand weight fluctuations, pulse irregularities, or stress in one’s voice, and identify things such as job changes, social activities, or levels of consciousness and attention.

However, it is important to remember that the explosion of this type of data is more about listening to and prioritizing different signals than it is about reporting behavior. We are already inundated with meaningless and “unactionable” data. This is because “big data” is merely a recording of our activities, both as a collective and as individuals, at a scale we’ve never experienced before.

This mass recording is not a solution. It is the creative application and value we can extract from these recordings that gives the future so much promise (and creates such a huge challenge and opportunity for brands).

We could one day model and predict when someone is about to have a near fatal or catastrophic health incident and reroute him or her to the nearest healthcare facility, while notifying his/her family and starting prediagnosis procedures on the way. Imagine a mother with a very ill child getting priority to move through a congested, but “smart,” road. Imagine that she also has the ability to diagnose her child via live video chat with a doctor. Seat sensors can identify the child as her second oldest daughter, and automatically send the child’s insurance information and medical history to the facility.

DON’T THINK ABOUT AUTONOMOUS DRIVING, BUT ABOUT BEING LIBERATED FROM THE TASK OF DRIVING. HOW WILL WE USE THE TIME?

It’s easy to think of an autonomous vehicle as a robot-driven chariot, an electronic chauffeur for the masses. This is to think within the confines of the idea of “driving.” But what we are creating, potentially, is free time for people. Significant chunks of time. Significant chunks of time where people are hyperconnected, with zero task load, theoretically. It’s a temporal treasure trove.

THE FUTURE OF MOBILITY HOLDS THREE SHARED CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES FOR THE AUTOMOTIVE AND HEALTHCARE INDUSTRIES:

ONE // Providing useful and indispensable services based on the data exchange between mobility activities/data collection and personal healthcare records.

TWO // Delivering easy and even incentivized ways to spend the time in an autonomous vehicle focused on healthy initiatives (exercise, research, analysis, food preparation, etc.).

THREE // Moving from collection to correlation/investigation, and into predictive models.

The proliferation of healthcare-related websites, online patient advocacy groups, individual bloggers, and general social-media discussions has led people throughout the world to become more empowered to make their own healthcare decisions. Pharmaceutical companies are realizing that “patient centricity” will be the key to their future growth, from R&D through advertising. The widespread availability of real-world evidence is the beginning of pharma’s move toward understanding the patient’s true journey through the healthcare system.

But being patient-centric will move beyond understanding the patient’s healthcare activity. Instead of simply understanding the patient, pharma will need to see “the person who happens to be living with a disease.” This means looking beyond trips to the doctor, hospital, or pharmacy. It also means being able to understand the person behind the disease—their behaviors outside the healthcare system, what they consume, and key (potentially non-clinical) touchpoints where an intervention is possible to help change or modify these behaviors to avoid and/or mitigate the disease.

Understanding such details would require informed consent from the patient (and would be cost-prohibitive). But from a privacy perspective, the aggregated analysis of combined directly and tangentially healthcare-related attributes is safe. In terms of marketing, imagine if you could understand that people at risk for a certain disease ages 40-59 were three times more likely to read a certain magazine (or go to a certain website or eat a certain food) than their colleagues in the same age range? This could significantly increase the ability to reach these people with disease awareness advertising that could make a significant impact in mitigating the disease.

In terms of R&D, what if you could find unique new links between a person’s disease (or the severity of it) and his or her everyday lifestyle that would allow you to drive better treatments or support services to people who fit the same lifestyle profile? This would allow for targeting therapies not just on a patient’s phenotype and genotype, but on lifestyle as well.

In terms of outcomes research, what if you could better understand quality of life for patients depending on their treatment patterns, and even predict how intervening at certain stages of treatment could change their quality of life? What if you could examine patients’ social media usage to better understand the emotional burden of their illness, or that of their caregivers?

While answers to many of these questions are not yet clear, as more healthcare and lifestyle data becomes available, researchers will be able to address such questions in secure ways that protect patients’ privacy while providing the insights needed to help pharmaceutical companies better support disease sufferers. The end result is a better all-around life for people suffering from diseases.