Here is a message from MRY and Eddard Stark to businesses and brands everywhere:

Zuckerberg and Co. recently revamped Facebook’s mobile brand pages with all of the shiftiness of a seasoned ninja, changing their look from one reminiscent of its classic webpages to a new format that allows users to more easily access relevant information, communicate with the company, and consume its content.

Why the change?

There are two primary reasons that we see as the catalysts for this change:

• First, the rapid growth of people accessing Facebook via mobile device. According to this article from Marketing Land, Facebook reported having over 750 million mobile active users in their Q1 2013 report, or 68% of their total user base.
• Second, the coming launch of Graph Search. Facebook sees Graph Search as something that will shift the way users discover and interact with pages via both desktop and mobile. As more people find themselves directed to brand pages that they may or may not be familiar with, the importance of creating a strong first impression increases tenfold.

What’s new here?

• The Timeline is no longer prominent. In its place is a prominent button bar that provides information and means of engagement, a location map, the brand’s most recent post, and a swipe-able photo album that displays all of the brand’s images.
• The page’s ‘About’ section is now expandable, but only the first few lines of the copy will be immediately viewable until it is opened up.
• There are two types of pages: general “Parent” brand pages, and hyperlocal “Child” pages.
• The page’s profile image is now embedded into the cover photo, possibly putting them at conflict with one another.
• Pinned posts are now much more strategically important than ever before.

The age-old conflict: Parent vs. Child

Here, “Parent vs. Child” refers not to the conflict that takes place between adolescents and their stressed out mothers and fathers. Rather, this section concerns the two types of brand pages that users will see on the mobile platform: a general “Parent” page, and hyperlocal/location-specific “Child” pages.

The Parent

People who visit the Parent page will be given the options of liking, direct messaging, or sharing the brand’s page on their own Timelines, as well as finding nearby store locations on a map.

The Child

Visitors to a Child page, however, will get the Check-In and Call options, along with the location’s address, hours, user ratings, and a summary of how many Facebook likes it has.

Pinning: No longer important to just Pro Wrestlers

So far, we know that the only Facebook post that a visitor will see on a brand’s mobile page will be their most recent one. However, there is a very low-tech hack that managers can use to make another piece of content appear:

Just pin it.

Pinned posts are given a prominent location near the top of mobile brand pages, making it so that they will be one of the first things a visitor sees when they land. For anyone who is pushing a particular contest or promotion, it will now be easier to inform and encourage participation from mobile users as you can avoid having to direct them to the Timeline.

What does this mean for brands?

Having accurate information

Page managers will have to ensure that all of the information on their pages is up to date, especially if they want to effectively communicate with Facebook’s 750+ million mobile users, and lead them to their doorsteps.

Pinning posts

Brands will have to show a bit of savvy when it comes to pinning posts, especially those that are related to important campaigns or promotions that they want to get visitors’ eyes on. They should also be aware that these pinned posts are now more representative of the brand than ever before.

Optimize design

This shift in mobile brand page design will require brands to at least consider tinkering with their mobile pages to figure out the most efficient way to get visitors to see the important bits of information and content within seconds of hitting the page. Pro tip: optimize your cover photo so that any text is not obstructed by the new incorporation of the profile picture and select a post to pin that features content representative of your business or current branded campaign.  

Conclusion

Now that Facebook has unveiled the next phase for mobile, brands and businesses alike must pay close attention to their mobile presence. For brick-and-mortar businesses, the new format goes up against other location information giants such as Yelp and allows consumers to go straight from checking out their friend’s latest instagram-photo status to getting the hours for a store and checking in. For brands that want to believe it’s all about the newsfeed, this update throws them a small curveball. Users that find themselves checking out a brand’s page after seeing a sponsored story or like ad, will go to this new mobile experience, so brands should be ready to greet them with optimized cover photos and a strategic pinned post. While this is a new phase for Facebook on mobile, we’re sure there’s another one around the corner. Graph Search on mobile, anyone?

-Written by Francis Ramos, Community Management Assistant at MRY

A consumer’s relation to a brand is and always will be dynamic – so long as there is the need to evolve.

But one can surmise that how brands undertake consumer relations will only continue to get better, because the user-experience (UX) of a consumer’s journey ties heavily into brand advocacy and return purchases; happy customers = more money.

How customer relations has evolved over the past several decades

There was once a time when you would walk into a store with your complaint to a store manager about a faulty product. It was then the store manager’s responsibility to decide whether or not the accountability to fix the product rested with the store or was your own.

This process evolved as businesses got larger; brands began to rely less on stores and more on scalable solutions, such as Automated Telephone Call Centers, to handle product support.

While the consumer was granted the convenience of not leaving his or her home to voice their complaint, telephone calls were not able to express empathy the way a store manager could, thus cheapening the experience of the consumer in the process.  This was further amplified by businesses who endorsed speaking to inexpensive, outsourced “experts” abroad.

By the mid 1990’s, it became clear that the internet was destined to replace Customer Service Contact Managers. Brands began to incorporate E-mail and Live-Chat Support options into their website.  The emergence of e-commerce gave you - the consumer - the practical option of never leaving your home when making a purchase or to receive support. 

However, for all of its innovations and conveniences, E-mail & Live-Chat Support fell short of perfection and formed disconnect where there shouldn’t be. It missed a vital component of customer service – empathy.

There is so much that is lost in text that is necessary to build a strong consumer relationship, especially one that’s on the ropes.  When conveying through text, tone of voice or facial expression is incommunicable (smileys don’t count), and the process lacked affinity or compassion for the concern of the customer. 

It seems that the internet would need to wait for technology to improve before brands would truly achieve a connection to their consumers via the web. Yet, a beacon of hope came with the emergence of social media.

Dawning the Facebook age, customer relations transcended to the social media.  Being a social business meant placing yourself where your consumers “hang out.”

Social media gave brands the opportunity to lead the conversation by not only being a member, but a leader in their industries ecosystem.  Community managers were able to answer queries or concerns via text in “real-time” on their owned media channels like Facebook and Twitter. But because this process still relied on text to convey empathy, it lacks a major component needed to bridge a connection with the agitated consumer.

The Future of Consumer Relations in the Digital Age

There’s a clear evolutionary path to the world of social consumer relationships that we live in today, yet the disconnect remains when trying to establish genuine empathy between a brand and consumer via text. Where does the solution lie? My guess would be in WebRTC.

WebRTC is an emerging technology that enables users to make voice and video calls directly from their browser without the need to download a plugin. Google Hangouts are an example.

What stirs me is the impact that WebRTC could have on social media. Imagine you could talk 1:1 to a customer service representative on Facebook or Twitter with a single click from your desktop computer or mobile device. Being able to speak face-to-face with a brand representative in real time could:

• Speed up the conversation around a customer’s query
• Convey genuine empathetic concern for your customers via body language/tone of voice (Brand)
• Provide a more intimate experience that will impact and increase brand loyalty

This type of video communications has the potential to revolutionize the way that business is done. Here are just a few examples of how it could be utilized:

• If a consumer’s product breaks, they should have the opportunity to come face to face with an expert who can help them repair it or give them a refund. 
• If a credit card gets stolen, a consumer should be reassured by a video call letting them know that their money is secure.
• If a consumer wants to make a purchase on a new item your brand provides online, they should be greeted by a brand representative that can offer them support to assist with that sale.

The empathy element must be present to administer the greatest impact on customer relations, and while WebRTC’s integration as a Facebook/Twitter API is still a work-in-progress, I believe that it will and should be incorporated in all future forms of customer relations as a solution to the text-based limitations that have evolved from expediency over the past several decades. 

-Written by Jeff Gencarelli, Associate Media Manager 

Late last night, the Twitterverse and trade press exploded when CEO Marissa Mayer confirmed that Yahoo! had acquired microblogging platform Tumblr for $1.1 billion.

A Tumblr acquisition has been speculated for an age, and it’s no wonder why with 300 million users and 900 posts per second, as well as brands like Topman, J Crew, Mashable, College Humour, EMI, Rolling Stone and Comedy Central taking to the platform in order to increase their engagement with target communities.

Back on Track

In the 90’s Yahoo! was, to many, synonymous with ‘the internet’. Once accessed, there was no reason to leave the web portal. You would chat, mail and consume all content under the Yahoo! umbrella.

Since then, there’s no arguing that Yahoo! has had its fair share of stumbling blocks, including several high-profile acquisitions. Remember the sad, slow demise of GeoCities? The growing irrelevance of Flickr? There’s also the question of Yahoo! failing to lead the charge when it comes to promoting creativity in online advertising. All of these setbacks have resulted in industry pundits questioning the company’s ability to keep up with competitors like Google and Bing.

Now, however, over a decade later, Yahoo! appears to be back on its original course for web supremacy, this time with solid leadership at the helm and a roadmap focused on content and social engagement.

5 C’s of Engagement

Yahoo’s acquisition of Tumblr is exciting on many levels, primarily in that it signifies a commitment and movement into the engagement space. With engagement comes stability; once again users have a reason to stay on Yahoo!, and with that comes revenue. Tumblr’s social nature (microblogging) will only serve to enhance engagement on Yahoo! and as a result drive an increase in revenue.

Using the ‘5 C’s of Engagement’, we can see where Tumblr and other recent acquisitions complement and enhance engagement on Yahoo!’s web portal:

Creating – users create their own content.

Critiquing – writing a review leaving a comment.

Chatting – sharing and discussion.

Collecting – archiving and sharing content.

Clicking – a page view, a click to read a blog post.

Tumblr’s strength in engagement is via users creating, collecting and clicking. Popular microblogs like Kim Jong-Il Looking at Things are not only humorous, but also prime examples of this competitive advantage: snipping and collecting images from across the web so that users can browse and visually consume the content.

Creating, collecting and clicking are great for advertisers. The more we engage with the user-generated content (UGC), the more revenue Yahoo! makes. Hopefully recent acquisition Snip.it makes that experience more personal – ads included.

Buying Power

More revenue from ads will bring stability to Yahoo!’s books, making them more powerful by way of blending search, social and content, as well as opening up the possibility of further acquisitions. In my opinion, a company like Yahoo! is too old to ‘make’ anything–it takes them too long, won’t be proven, and they might not even have the skillset or passion to follow through– making acquisitions an easier route to innovation.

Natives

If I were to read the tea leaves, I’d say Yahoo! will monetize Tumblr through ads via their popular app first, but how will they look and where will they live? Native, that’s where.

Native ads (advertorials really), are discrete, relevant (read local) and are proven to work well for, I don’t know, Facebook. We all moaned about our newsfeeds, but got over it when we realized the product was still excellent.

Tumblr will stay excellent, but with ads. Some will flock to Wordpress, but they’ll remember why they chose Tumblr in the first place and return.

What does the Tumblr acquisition mean?

Yahoo!’s latest venture isn’t to compete with Google, Facebook, etc. but to continue carving its own market in the advertising world.

It feels as if Yahoo! almost wants to organize the web to make it easier to browse, but not like a search engine, more like a guide. Tumblr adds a more personable, social layer to that, much like Flickr but much more modern.

As a brand, I would be excited to see what Yahoo! does with Tumblr, not only to benefit from its community, but to see how it integrates with the rest of its services. For example, consider a personalized Yahoo! homepage with news and Tumblr posts from your favourite brands.

With the expansion of mobile and tablet, a future-Yahoo! doesn’t sound that bad.  

-Written by Michael Thomson, Media Supervisor, Search

As we rush to mine ‘big data’ for novel audience insights, we often overlook enduring social behaviors as time-tested as any research. 

It should come as no surprise to any sentient human that we are creatures of habit. The everyday routine, the daily grind, the quotidian—our language is suffused with references to the dull repetitions of life. Urban planners discuss the “reproduction of daily life” in hushed tones. Politicians stage theatrical battles over whether to dispense with time-honored entitlements. And brand planners strategize ways to “repurpose” content on new platforms. Even the stories we tell draw on archetypal myths that we tirelessly rehearse.

Yet the ways in which we appeal to audiences often overlook our most customary habits.

Coca-Cola’s Retailing Research Council claimed there were only four social networking personas. Yahoo! Insights soon emerged with seven “mobile modes”. Not to be outdone, IBM unveiled four “digital personalities” that combined our online social and mobile behaviors into four comprehensive behavioral types. Even a savvy marketer could be forgiven for confusing her Creators with her Maestros.

But there is a deeper behavioral baseline that these newly invented grids sit atop. Five years ago, BBDO conducted a global ethnographic study on the prevalence of ritual in the lives of populations around the world. The agency found common ground, noting five core rituals observed by citizens of the world. You might quibble with the chosen names, but the rituals will all be familiar.

• Preparing for battle—Essentially, preparing to face the day, with greater or lesser degrees of success.
• Feasting—The cornerstone of community, eating together.
• Sexing up—Self-transformation in anticipation of social activity, to phrase it modestly.
• Returning to camp—The transition from the stresses of public life to the comforts of home, unwinding from the day.
• Protecting yourself for the future—Bedtime rituals that prepare us for restful sleep and prepare us for coming day.

These rituals are distinct from the segmentations mentioned earlier in two critical ways. First, none of them are new. They are inscribed in the social history of all cultures, practiced as often in Neolithic times as today. Second, they are community behaviors and not individuated at a personal level. Yet they are all deeply personal rituals.

Healthy Essentials, an MRY account in the Johnson & Johnson portfolio, recently launched its new digital site, www.healthyessentials.com. In a new section of tips and tools designed to broaden brand engagement with content beyond digital couponing, our user experience and creative teams worked with the J&J brand team to parse the product portfolio based on a similar recognition of daily rituals. We found that the rituals aligned almost seamlessly with J&J’s health and beauty product lines. Our breakdown included:

• Be Ready for Romance, headlined by a new K-Y® app that encourages couples to discover their “unique chemistry” inside and outside the bedroom.
• The Morning Routine, highlighting skincare and allergy products.
• Ready to Go, emphasis on portable products, best for tossing in the gym bag.
• Smiles Around the Table, with a focus on oral care and dietary products.
• Prepping and Pampering, skincare products designed for beautification.
• Winding Down, sleep apps, oral care, and sleep aids. 

With its focus on families and children, Healthy Essentials skews slightly towards the kid-focused aspects of these routines. In any case, the section unfolds in a series of routines that are instantly and universally recognizable to consumers in any market, across any demographic, and on any platform. There’s nothing radical about this use of ritual; it’s just good strategy—a big picture narrative broad enough to encompass a range of social strata, and to contextualize brands in the natural rhythms of a day. The concept has also been extended to a CRM initiative in which registered users recently received an email invitation shaped around the popular ritual of spring-cleaning.

In television, it’s common knowledge that product placements work best when threaded into the story of a show. Likewise, in the digital space, contexts can be uncovered for brands to align with the life narratives of consumers. Not a novel idea in its construction, but constructed to capture mindshare in a novel context.

-Jason Hirthler is a content strategist and writer with 17 years of experience in the marketing and communications industry. He cut his content strategy teeth working on Olympic bid campaigns, and is currently Content Strategy Director at MRY.-

Facebook emoticons saw a wide rollout this month, but why should brands care? New approaches to EdgeRank may be why.

Because there’s always better, more comprehensive ways to “like” something, Facebook this month rolled out what’s being called “visual sharing” - and emoticons - directly into status updates.

The shortlist for what Zuckerberg’s crew thinks users may be doing includes drinking and eating; reading, listening or watching; and feeling. This, naturally, could lead to increased shares of brand Facebook pages. And, to most online/social marketers, that should be good enough bait to herald this new development. 

HOWEVER, there’s an added layer of complexity that should be considered when looking at Facebook’s new, expressive statuses.

How emotions & actions may effect EdgeRank

EdgeRank, the algorithm that dictates when and if stories appear in newsfeeds, remains unrevealed in its entirety. Facebook offered a glimpse into EdgeRank in 2010, though, so we know time, relationships and engagement all factor in.

In regards to the latter, it’s been suggested a comment might outweigh a like, and a share could outweigh a comment. (These are all referred to as Edges.) For Facebook statuses, it stands to reason - in an amended EdgeRank taking into account emotion - they could take precedent over all three.

To put that in context, let’s look at my post again:

EdgeRank knows I took the time of selecting the “listening to” option, searching the band and writing the status. Given the effort, an amended version of the algorithm may place an Edge like mine ahead of a simple status like “AC/DC rulz” or an empty status tagged “listening to music”.

So, let’s take a look at just who EdgeRank would be prone to show this to:

People who stalk me on Facebook

Friends who ‘like’ AC/DC

People who like things similar to AC/DC based on Facebook’s informed opinion:

However, the new activity types bake in another ingredient to the pie, where - very likely - it might display to:

Friends who frequently post listening activity

In a more broad way, this could extend to target particular stories to:

People who interact when you more when you’re [sad] [happy] [lazy] 

Graph Search

Although Facebook’s recommendation engine is definitely still in its infancy, these new actions and emotions will likely play into it, especially as the Graph Search becomes more robust.

For example, if we take my post about feeling amazing, Graph Search would probably rank me highly in “Friends who like AC/DC”. In fact, I’d probably rank higher than people who merely ‘like’ the page, making me a brand champion.

Graph Search could eventually pick up on sentiment through wording as well, making this a valuable endorsement, even if I don’t ‘like’ the page:

Further implications of Facebook emotions

Finally, we can also see emoticons/activities integrated into check-ins (only available on desktop at publication time). For example, someone could be “happy” they checked into a restaurant with their friends. Facebook could then leverage that information to develop its own quality rankings of the location. (It could also be more prone to show that to close mutual friends you didn’t invite - so watch out.)

Additionally, Facebook could begin to associate things in new ways. For example, if I posted something like this:

Facebook could start suggesting The Trash Bar to friends of mine who like AC/DC - OR, perhaps more importantly, people who like AC/DC who live in Brooklyn.

So, despite it seeming like a cosmetic move or extraneous Facebook ‘improvement’, these new emotions and actions could become significant for business rankings, plus for how EdgeRank and Graph Search determine placement, and which local businesses get promoted.

-Jason Morton works for MRY’s owned media department in New York City and provides strategy for search and community management. He hopes if AC/DC shared this post, they’d put a ‘Happy’ emoticon next to it.

I’m passionate about two things in my life: the future and fish. To start with the future, I think we’re heading into the most exciting 50 years in human history. Things like 3D printing (buildings, CPG, body parts), recreational space travel and driverless cars are among the short list of innovations that will become ubiquitous in my lifetime and are so insanely science fiction that the effects will be nothing short of life-changing for all of us. I’ve been incredibly excited about the future for a long time, so much so that as a fifth grader I gave my Jr. Toastmaster speech on how the computer was going to change the world. These are not the kinds of speeches that attract female fifth graders… but I persisted.

Now for the fish. Since I was a toddler I’ve been fascinated with animals. Frogs, snakes, lizards, turtles - anything I could catch I would keep by building elaborate habitat recreations in cardboard boxes with cut-out holes covered in saran wrap for viewing areas. Fast forward a bit and as an adult I have developed a rather serious fishkeeping hobby. I currently have close to 400 gallons of tanks that replicate the natural conditions of the Amazon River, complete with over 70 species of fish and ten species of plants native to various channels and tributaries of the largest river system in the world. This is not the kind of hobby, by the way, that attracts female twenty somethings. But hey… I persist.

My blog is about the 3 lessons I’ve learned that are my basis for the future of fishkeeping and why they will help you change the world.

1.  Challenge the status quo. If you go to any pet store you’ll see a wall full of betta fish living in cups. By all conventional logic this must mean that this is a humane way to treat this animal if the practice is so widespread…right? Wrong. This topic will get its own blog post next week but suffice to say the biggest pet store chain in the world is hopelessly caught up in misconceptions and old habits that are both inhumane and, frankly, do not allow them to properly capitalize on a beautiful fish with tons of popularity. Every company has their betta fish… it’s up to us to never stop digging until we help them change because in the end it will be better for all of us.

2.  Know the underlying principles. Did you know that I can build you a fish tank that needs almost zero maintenance except for the addition of extra water? This fish tank will also grow everything you need for a salad, or make your houseplants grow on overdrive. While trying to create the most efficient filtration system for my tanks I learned some very enlightening facts about nature. Fish eat and produce waste that makes conventional fish tanks dirty, but that “dirty” fish water is actually nutrient rich super-food for plants that, when given the proper lighting, will suck up every ounce of the bad stuff and return the water cleaner than any conventional aquarium filter on the market. When learning something new it’s important to never be satisfied with knowing “how” because you’ll likely only be told the conventional way of doing things… Learning the “why” will help you dig deeper and build something truly innovative.

3.  It’s all in the details. Imagine if some alien species collected a large bare room full of humans for fun and they took an American woman, a Brazilian grandmother, two men from China and a Kenyan boy. While it would be possible to cohabitate, it would be quite likely that there would be a bit of culture clashing, and communication would no doubt be limited. Now I don’t have proof that animals speak different languages but I don’t see why they wouldn’t. My fish may be as different as a New Yorker and a Texan but at least they all speak Portuguese. This quest for perfection is what separates the good from the great… especially in the digital era where the size and placement of a button can mean vast differences in actual revenue or impressions. Don’t be afraid to deal with the seemingly unimportant details because to my fish - and your customers - the details make all the difference.

Seems an unlikely pairing… an obsession with the potential of technology and simultaneously life lessons rooted in the natural world. But this isn’t so unlikely… just like my natural filter trumps any existing technology, scientists are discovering new and exciting ways where the natural world creates systems that are more efficient and effective than anything modeled purely on human thought. To cure cancer scientists feel the solution lies in replicating the cell by cell target system of viruses; to climb walls like Spiderman mechanical engineers realized the grooves on gecko feet trump any existing suction cup method, and the bumps on humpback whale fins may be the future of aeronautics. So my last lesson is this: learn all you can from nature because our future depends on it. 

Call me- I’m still single.

-Written by Zac Waldman, Youth Strategist, Mr Youth

I was brushing my teeth the other night before bed and all of a sudden I heard loud unexpected explosions from the Westside Highway near Hell’s Kitchen; some sort of attack raced through my mind.

Reassuring myself that was unlikely, I brushed away, but the explosions kept coming, and coming, and coming.

Not native to these shores, my imagination got the better of me so I dropped my toothbrush and ran through to my living room (which is also my kitchen, hall and dining room, etc. – its NYC!) and looked out the windows – nothing.

With no identification of the source, I took to search to find answers.

Specializing in owned media, especially search, what was interesting to me about this event was when I turned to Google for answers my [nyc fireworks] query answered nothing; Macy’s 4^th of July, an April 10^th fireworks show in CP, Boston Bombers news, and old images were what Google returned for me.

However, my second search choice Twitter accurately answered my thirst for information, and in real-time.

Turns out, I wasn’t the only one with an imagination. Luckily (and prettily for some), the explosions were coming from some unexpected fireworks over the Hudson River.

Inquisitive tweets soon turned to streams of pictures and Vines of fireworks, and rants about unexpected noise pollution.

Twitter search provided me with an experience where I could read, see and watch exactly what was going on. It provided me with faces and avatars I could look at as peer-verifications; Google did not. This is a problem for Google.

Noticeably though, Twitter users soon started sharing the source of the fireworks on NYC.gov. By the morning, as I search for more information on the fireworks at work, guess who’s ranking first for [nyc fireworks]? NYC.gov. And sure enough, my re-search quest reveals the fireworks were sponsored by North Shore L.I.J. on Pier 84 (Intrepid museum).

This is a fine example of social search in action.

Yes it could be coincidence, yes it could be personalized search, yes it could be Google monitoring click-through rates (CTR) or searches, but what makes me believe this is Google crawling, indexing and using social signals from Twitter is that the NYC.gov webpage that ranks has a WebTrends tracking code (WT.mc_id=311_twtr) common for Twitter, which we can attributed back to the 311 Twitter profile. Internal links from within NYC.gov don’t host this tag.

Although Google’s deal to access Twitter’s data expired a while ago now, let’s remember:

 “…information on Twitter that’s publicly available to our crawlers will still be searchable and discoverable on Google.”

This isn’t the first nor will it be the last example of social search, but it’s more important than ever to be aware how omnichannel impacts your field of digital and traditional media.

-Written by Michael Thomson, Media Supervisor, Search

A shot from last night’s all-agency meeting - you could say #TheNewMRY team has grown a little bit over the past few months! (And to that end, we’re hiring!) 

Looking to impact your healthcare professional audience more effectively?  Or maybe you’re simply trying to get their attention and differentiate yourself from the sea of emails, healthcare apps, detail aids, and other educational materials and tools that already exist.  In either case, there are a few basic tenants to follow when it comes to digital marketing to HCPs.

Get To the Point.  It’s no secret that HCPs are short on time.  Increasing bureaucratic and administrative demands and decreasing reimbursements have reduced the time of a typical office visit with a primary care provider to less than 15 minutes.  Physicians are loathe to spend valuable time out of their day having lengthy chats with sales reps and pouring through complicated detail aids and other materials.  Many of those carefully crafted lengthy e-newsletters (often times with valuable content) get deleted before they ever get opened.  In a time-crunched environment of information overload, it’s best to quickly get to the point.  Think of the 2-3 bullet points that you want your customer to remember, and get to those points as quickly as possible.   

Keep It Simple.  Marketers often times lose sight of the fact that they live and breathe one product or category for months or years, while physicians, especially primary care providers can see dozens of different disease states and prescribe hundreds of different drugs in any given day.  I was once in a market research session for a novel Alzheimer’s drug and one of the marketers remarked he was surprised all the participating physicians couldn’t name the 4 major competitor drugs in the Alzheimer’s space and the differences between them.  From his perspective, this is something he had learned in week one of his job.  But from a physician’s perspective, he or she sees and treats dozens of patients with different ailments, which means they utilize hundreds of drugs, treatments, and tests weekly- so the details of your particular drug may or may not be top of mind.  So if you want to reach these docs in a meaningful way that won’t annoy, keep your message simple and focused – it’s the easiest way to cut through the noise. 

Don’t Force A Message.  There are certain messages that just don’t resonate or that physicians just aren’t buying, regardless of the amazing technology or cool new channel it’s delivered in.  For example, if most of your customers perceive your product to be at parity in terms of efficacy, then bombarding them how well your drug works may not make a dent (unless you have some new, compelling data).  If it’s a perception, this can sometimes be corrected, but often times, you may be better off reinforcing a completely different aspect of the drug, one that they may be more open to.

Tell Me Something I Don’t Know.  It’s really important to monitor message fatigue.  Repetition has its value (and it’s important to promote in multiple channels), but after a while, it’s easy to become numb to the same message/data/information.  Unless it’s adding real value, and it’s something they haven’t heard before, think twice about bombarding already busy professionals with more materials.  The goal is quality and relevance, not quantity. 

Using these points as a guidepost will help you deliver on what busy healthcare professionals are really looking for - tools and materials that will help simplify their lives, make learning fun but efficient, and improve the quality of care they can deliver to their patients.

-Written by Himani Kulkarni, MD, Medical Content Director, MRY Health 

Happy #EarthDay from #TheNewMRY team! We kicked off the holiday early this year by joining over 4,000 fellow volunteers in cleaning up our city’s open green spaces for New York Cares Day Spring! 

Our hearts are with Boston during this difficult time. 

Twitter finally launched their standalone music app yesterday morning, dubbed Twitter #music.  As you probably heard, the folks at Twitter skipped the early adopter approach and took to Good Morning America for a very mainstream launch of their latest product. The app is now available on your desktop and, perhaps more importantly for the large majority of us that like our music to be as on-the-go as we are, on iOS.

So what does the app actually do? As expected, Twitter #music leans heavily on its recently acquired predecessor, We Are Hunted, to serve as a music discovery service.  Twitter #music helps you find new songs and artists via Twitter activity, “detecting and surfacing” both music that’s trending on the social network and music related to the artists that you and your friends already listen to and follow. Twitter collates this activity and aggregates it into a beautiful checkerboard interface, each square containing the album cover, handle, and Twitter profile pic of the corresponding artist.  The music is played directly from the app itself via the listener’s iTunes, Spotify, or Rdio account. Subscriptions to Spotify and Rdio are essential to listening to songs in their entirety, reinforcing the app’s focus on music discovery rather than lengthy listening sessions.

The app is centered around four tabs – Popular, which shows you what’s trending on Twitter; Emerging, aimed at helping you find new artists; Suggested, showing music that is targeted according to the artists you follow on Twitter and who those artists follow in return; and #NowPlaying, which displays the music your friends are listing to and engaging with on Twitter. You can also search for specific artists, follow new artists, and tweet songs directly from the app while listening, all of which unsurprisingly fuels Twitter #music itself with more engagements for more accurate collation.

The app itself is slick and easy to use, but the actual functionality beyond music discovery remains to be seen, especially if its aim is to become as heavily used as Pandora, Rdio, and other popular music discovery platforms of the world. For example, there’s currently no way to tag songs for future listening sessions other than aggregating them through your own Twitter handle. You also can’t “follow” an artist on Twitter #music without following the artist on Twitter itself, objecting you to all of their inane tweets rather than just those related to their music. As anyone who follows musicians on Twitter knows, music is only a small percentage of what they are actually tweeting about on a daily basis. And finally, in perhaps our biggest critic of the app in the words of UX Lead Thomas Strickland, “An artist with a presence on iTunes can’t be all that unknown, and this short-changes a number of incredibly talented indie artists slinging songs from SoundCloud and BandCamp.”

So, in conclusion, after day one of Twitter #music, we’re in love with the pure discovery aspect of Twitter #music, but also skeptical of how the limiting the app seems to be, at least as it exists at launch. In this writer’s opinion, it’s got a way to go before it makes me forget my love affair with Spotify and Rdio. However, I have no doubt that, as Twitter #music and its capabilities evolve, I’ll be listening along with everyone else.

-Written by Kate Bryan, Associate Manager, Marketing