Service Insight: Emotion – at the heart of the creative process
pharmafile | June 17, 2011 | Feature | Medical Communications |Â Â Service Insight, advertising, creativityÂ
SERVICE INSIGHT
I once read an article about how advertising works which described an incident where a man was speared through the right eye with a metal rod.
Remarkably, he survived but the right side of his brain that controls his emotion was mostly destroyed. Thereafter, the man was completely unable to make a simple decision, such as buying a necktie in a shop, even if all the information he needed to make the choice was there right in front of his nose.
This accidental experiment was the first clue about the essential role of emotion in the decision-making process. Without it, we simply can’t make decisions.
Since then, much research has been undertaken into neural pathways and it has been possible to track the mental response to an advertising pitch or purchase decision.
It starts in rational mode, but quite soon the brain selects an emotional front runner.
This front runner is then carried through a decision-making process that is heavily influenced the by the mind’s subconscious and deep-rooted values, beliefs and experiences.
When the decision is made this emotional influence serves to confirm the decision – and has the reinforcing effect of making the decision-maker feel even more positive about their choice. In this way, emotions are your brain’s way of telling you if something is aligned with your goals or if it challenges your beliefs – instantly affirming or rejecting what’s presented to us.
That’s why it’s extremely difficult to say YES when your heart says NO.
This process forms the basic principle for brand building and explains why intangible brand values are often a more powerful currency than a list of features and benefits.
There are very few successful advertising campaigns that don’t work at an emotional level, it is at the very heart of the creative process.
So, if emotion is the most powerful creative tool at our disposal – can we use more of it in our communication with doctors?
The answer is YES and NO
Firstly, emotion doesn’t work for every type of decision. For instance, it is very effective where there is a trade-off to be made, for example, in the case of our man with the rod in his head and the decision about which tie to buy.
This process is probably underlying many of the day-to-day decisions where a doctor chooses one drug over another – sometimes paying little attention to differentiators such as efficacy.
Emotion also works well when you are inviting someone to consider new innovations, or growth opportunities. So for example, the introduction of a new drug treatment or new evidence about prescribing guidelines which is asking for a change in established and, possibly, deep-rooted behaviour.
In this case it may be more profitable in the longer term to understand the emotional drivers within the market, rather than simply presenting the doctors with a page of facts about what ‘best practice’ says they should be doing.
However, emotion doesn’t work in situations where the risk of the outcome outweighs the benefit or if the consequences are serious or even life-threatening.
So if a doctor is presented with a drug’s safety profile, they will immediately adopt a more analytical approach. Here your messages need to support a rational decision-making process and be more factually based.
How to put this into practice
The ABPI Code does push us down a rational mode of advertising with pharma – and while it’s right to be cautious and pragmatic – most doctors will instinctively reject anything that attempts to apply gloss to a serious message.
So overall, there’s a strong case for pushing the boundaries and adding more emotion into an HCP campaign.
There are different ways of introducing an emotional element but most effective is to try to identify the positive feelings experienced by patient and doctor when treatment is successful – these will often be closely aligned to the brand values.
Of course, you will need to test your messages before you start your campaign as only then will you uncover any emotional barriers to success. These are often around areas such as safety profile of a drug and in these cases, you will need to rely more heavily on rational argument, but also accept even that may not be enough to change the mindset of a serious doubter.
Remembering the need for emotional confirmation of our decisions – it will be very hard for a doctor to change prescribing habit if their emotional response just isn’t confirming their choice. In these instances you probably need to provide that reassurance from elsewhere, most likely KOLs, and keep single-mindedly plugging away at your positive messages to remind them they’ve done the right thing.
Creative communication is after all, about bringing about a change in behaviour in the long term.
Lyn Wallace is managing director at Wallace HCL Ltd. For more information visit: www.wallacehcl.com
For more information on Service Insight features contact InPharm’s sales team on +44 (0)1243 772 010 or email pharmafilesales@wiley.com
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