Shauna Keough Shauna Keough
While the Oxford Dictionary “word” of the year in 2015 was the ‘Face with Tears of Joy’ emoji, we’re putting an early bet that 2016’s will be “content.” Everywhere you turn this year it’s all about content: long form, snackable, user-generated. Previously it was about the volume of content and flooding channels to see what sticks, but now more than ever, the focus is about creating thoughtful, carefully curated content that can make a huge impact. In the healthcare space we are also seeing a rise in content curated by patients, which is helping to spur an evolution in how we approach content development.

O'Dwyer's October '16 Healthcare & Medical PR MagazineThis article is featured in O'Dwyer's Oct. '16 Healthcare & Medical PR Magazine

Public relations is well poised to be at the helm of this shift in healthcare content development. Public relations has the expertise to create content throughout the patient lifecycle and can deliver meaningful, impactful content centered on patient need at critical points in their health management. Our discipline has always been about getting to know the specific audience well and engaging with them in the right way at the right time. If we want to continue to be successful here — which I know we do — we need to up our storytelling game significantly.

With the patient at the center of our universe, we need to be more thoughtful in how we approach the story we are trying to tell them. The first step is thinking about the ingredients needed to tell a good story.

These include:

Understanding your audience.

Creating a narrative arc.

Embracing the emotion.

We know that patient communications isn’t a one size fits all approach, so knowing your audience is critical. Investing in research early and often to unearth patient behavior and needs will drive decisions about what information is most important to include and influences the tone and structure. This may seem like a no brainer with all the current dialogue around patient centricity, but it’s also perhaps the most important point. We can’t foster a patient centric ethos without truly understanding the patients’ needs.

In thinking about a creative narrative arc, step back to high school English class for moment and think about what makes for a good story. You may remember learning about the classic story arc, derived from Aristotle’s writing, which is still relevant today. According to him, a story must have exposition (good background information), rising action, climax, falling action and resolution. We need to commit to less emphasis on communicating just the key messages and think about the entire story. Focusing on the fuller story will ensure the reader has a more enriching experience and a deeper appreciation for and engagement with the content.

The final piece of good story telling is embracing the emotion and human side of the story. This can at times be the most challenging for the pharmaceutical industry to bring to life. Providing an emotional context in marketing campaigns makes content more engaging, and more impactful. People relate to life stories, much more so than content that features or promotes a product.

One way to infuse emotion is to work with patients directly to co-create content and stories with them. The key to being successful here is infusing a high level of empathy, not sympathy. To sum up the differences between the most commonly used meanings of these two terms: sympathy is feeling compassion, sorrow, or pity for the hardships that another person encounters, while empathy is putting yourself in the shoes of another. When trying to engage patients, communicating empathy should be the gold standard.

With the right content in hand to tell your story in the most impactful way, the critical next step is to understand how and where patients are looking for information so that you can you can ensure they consume your content. With how quickly the media environment in evolving and the increased amount of content in the universe, it’s important to keep a few key points in mind:

Blurred lines. Given the changes in the media landscape, the lines between sources are blurring; in a surround sound, multi-channel world, people do not readily process the information source.

Quality trumps all. As long as there is value in the information presented, people care less about the source and more about the quality of the message

Follow the data. There’s copious amounts of information on how and where specific audiences consume information. Be sure to leverage that data to narrow in on the appropriate channels and platforms

At the end of the day, we have many more channels and opportunities to deliver our content than ever before. To engage people in a meaningful way, we — as public relations practitioners — need to think holistically about an integrated media approach to incorporate both earned and paid opportunities. Paid is no longer a dirty word, it is a reflection of our new reality. An integrated communications approach extends the reach of high-value content, provides the ability to target a specific audience based on combination of demographic and interests and can be less intrusive and more cost-efficient than traditional advertising.

The importance of the multi-channel media mix combined with the increasingly competitive earned media environment sets the stage for public relations to assume a broader view of communications planning. Taking a more thoughtful approach to tell a richer story through the content development is a great first step in the planning process. While strong content can sell itself, a strategic, integrated media approach will ensure maximum engagement with key content.

***

Shauna Keough is Managing Director of Biosector 2, a global healthcare communications agency that builds brands and grows markets for companies driving innovation across a variety of disease states.