Social Media Reinvigorates Grey Healthcare Marketing

Maureen Maldari – President / Grey Healthy People

In September 2011, Grey Advertising created a specialized unit to serve companies competing in the health, wellness and lifestyle industries. Grey Healthy People, led by Maureen Maldari as president and Rob Baiocco as creative director, is a full-service, integrated agency that provides focused marketing solutions while at the same time helping clients better understand the roles their brands play in enabling people to lead longer, healthier lives. Maldari spoke with eMarketer’s Lauren McKay and Victoria Petrock about the agency’s goals and how she believes digital and mobile can help reinvent the way consumers interact with health-related brands.

eMarketer: How does Grey Healthy People help healthcare clients achieve their communication and marketing goals?

Maureen Maldari: Once brands establish awareness and begin to develop partnerships with consumers, they are then challenged with how to feed those relationships. That’s the role we are aiming to fill with Healthy People—taking those relationships to the next level of engagement. Because our roots are in the traditional media space, we have a very good sense of our consumer and what they look for in the relationship.

We have created teams of channel strategists and digital strategists who are building out our programming and content capabilities. In this way, we’re able to establish the brand and go deeper into the relationship through social connections.

eMarketer: What signs have you seen indicating the healthcare advertising landscape is in need of a change?

Maldari: The concept around Grey Healthy People is to change the conversations in healthcare today. For many decades, it’s very much been about launching that next blockbuster drug. A lot of money and time and effort are put behind those drugs, but as soon as patent expiration is around the corner, these brands disappear.

Revenue loss from patent expirations is forcing both healthcare companies and the agencies supporting them to rethink their communications mix and think about how to start to make the transition from mass-market media to more targeted conversations. The digital space is especially impactful for changing the conversation from the mass-market media approach to a more targeted one.

Social media has opened up that opportunity and healthcare marketers are starting to think differently today about their investments in relationship-building. They’re asking, “How do we keep those relationships alive?” That’s an important piece of what Healthy People will be tackling in the Rx environment.

eMarketer: Are you seeing clients shift resources from traditional media to digital?
“A fallacy exists in that people think spending is moving from traditional to digital. It’s not that at all. Instead, it’s a movement from business being very siloed to being fully integrated.”

Maldari: A fallacy exists in that people think spending is moving from traditional to digital. It’s not that at all. Instead, it’s a movement from business being very siloed to being fully integrated. Is there a redistribution of dollars? Perhaps, but that’s really not the point. The point is that communication is paramount, and it exists in many channels depending on the life stage of your brand and the kinds of relationships that you need to be building. There is no question that the digital space is a critical part of that communication.

In some cases, brands are, in fact, investing more money around digital, mobile and gaming. In the GI [gastrointestinal] category for example, for the TUMS brand, we have a whole gaming site. That’s a significant part of our engagement within Facebook. You can also go to YouTube and look at some of our TUMS videos about GI.

There’s a whole aspect about people—mainly baby boomers—enjoying and getting the most out of life. How do you do that without sacrificing your health? You have a safe product that allows you to get on with it and enjoy the food you love and be engaged in the world you love. And where does all that communication take place? It doesn’t take place in a 30-second television commercial. It takes place in an online world that people participate in, whether it’s through NASCAR relationships, or Facebook, or viral videos on YouTube.

eMarketer: So communication channels are becoming more integrated?

Maldari: No question about it. These siloed organizations are history. Having the three budgets that do X, Y or Z is a thing of the past. It’s all about how you get the most out of the money that you have that drives toward a relationship that allows both the brand and the consumer to benefit.

eMarketer: In what ways do you advocate pharma brands using social media?

Maldari: It’s really about a meaningful and trusting relationship—that’s the core of the idea. In any voice we speak, whether it’s through social, digital or any web-related content, the biggest opportunity is being able to understand with a laser-like focus what the consumer needs from the brand. Obviously, every consumer is different, so the digital or social space gives us an opportunity to customize in ways that we just can’t do with traditional communications.
“The digital or social space gives us an opportunity to customize in ways that we just can’t do with traditional communications.”

eMarketer: How do you see mobile playing a bigger role in healthcare marketing programs?

Maldari: Everybody is aware of the need to lead healthier lifestyles. It’s really a question of the time pressures that we face and our ability to fill that time in meaningful ways. Now we have a device literally in our hands that can provide us with tools to do it in very easy ways and fit it into our daily lives. The mobile device is a conduit to our health and well-being.

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