Futurecasting: 3 Megatrends to Drive Your 2023 Plan
Following industry-agnostic global trends provides us as pharma professionals with key insights we can use to evaluate and evolve our HCP engagements. To better understand the top trends on the horizon for pharma marketers, Avant Healthcare and Trend Hunter have partnered to deliver an actionable overview of global “megatrends” and tips on how to consider these trends as you develop HCP engagement and marketing plans. In this webcast, we will explore three specific megatrends:
- Experience: Customers are hungry for a meaningful experience in everything they do, especially after having changed their daily routines and sacrificed important milestones due to the pandemic
- Authenticity: Customers are inundated with information and desire authenticity and reality from brands they can trust and support
- Hybridization: Customers have quickly adapted to a hybridized approach to business models, products, and services that merge to create unique concepts and experiences
Join us as we detail these megatrends, provide thought starters as inspiration, and discuss how to bridge these trends into the pharma arena to address your specific customer needs.
Webinar Transcript
Marc Iskowitz:
Hi, my name is Marc Iskowitz. I'm editor at large for MM&M, and welcome to today's webinar: Futurecasting: Three Megatrends to Drive Your 2023 Plan. We're sponsored by Avant Healthcare, and our speakers for this webinar are Audrey Schnelker, VP of innovation, strategy, and operations for Avant, Andrew Grosvenor, digital strategist and experience planner at Avant, and Ady Floyd, futurist and VP of client success at Trend Hunter. And before I hand things over to them, I'll just say a few words to let you know what to expect. In order for pharma marketers to better understand the top trends on the horizon, Avant and Trend Hunter have assembled an actionable overview of global megatrends. Specifically, they've taken a group of industry agnostic megatrends, and distilled the key insights that pharma marketers can use to evaluate and evolve their HCP programs and engagements.
Marc Iskowitz:
The three specific megatrends they'll explore in this webcast are experience and how customers have changed their daily routines and sacrificed important milestones due to the pandemic, authenticity and how customers who are inundated with information desire this from brands that they trust and support, and hybridization, specifically how customers have quickly adapted to hybridized approach to business models, products, and services that merge to create unique concepts and experiences. Our speakers will detail these megatrends, provide thought starters as inspiration, and discuss how to bridge these trends into the pharma arena to address your specific customer needs. And just a few housekeeping items before we start. This is a 60 minute webcast with approximately 45 minutes for the content, and there'll be ample time at the end for a Q and A, so be sure to submit your questions to the webcast dashboard and we'll queue it up for consideration. Okay. I'll now hand things over to Audrey to kick off the presentation, and I'll be back on to moderate the Q and A. Take it away, Audrey.
Audrey Schnelker:
Thanks, Marc, and welcome everyone. Before we get into the trends, I wanted to take a quick second to highlight who we are, both Avant and Trend Hunter. Avant is an independent agency, and we are focused on transforming patient care through the integration of peer to peer scientific communication, medical affairs, and HCP marketing. Our approach is grounded in science, and we've been doing this for close to 30 years across quite a few different therapeutic areas. In addition to this expertise across our firm of agencies, we also specialize in meeting planning, speaker bureau services, and accredited medical education. We are also proud to be a certified woman owned business.
Audrey Schnelker:
Now, let me tell you a little bit about Trend Hunter. So Trend Hunter is the number one trend platform, and our relationship with them has helped us to ensure we are consistently bringing the outside in, inspiring greater and more innovative solutions for our customers. Partnering with Trend Hunter, we have access to things like presentations and workshops, monthly custom reports that Ady helps us with on topics that are relevant to us and our customers, 24/7 access to a dashboard that includes a plethora of trends, attendance at Future Fest, which Ady I'm sure will tell you about, and I'm excited to attend next week in Toronto, and access to an innovation assessment, which has helped our organization have a better understanding of the innovation profile of our people. If you're curious, I'm a voracious adventurer.
Audrey Schnelker:
Now let's quickly walk through today's agenda. First, Ady's going to walk us through the megatrends. She's going to walk you through the framework that Trend Hunter uses, and then do a specific deep dive into those three megatrends that Marc mentioned. Andrew's going to partner with her, then, on that portion, and he's going to focus on bringing in the pharma and life sciences industry, how is this applicable? Some of these trends may seem a little out there, but hang with us because there are some great takeaways here that can be relevant. An important note here, though, is that, as I'm sure many of you understand, through our master services agreements with our customers, we are not able to share the actual examples of things we have worked on, but we'll do our best to paint a good picture for you that hopefully will create some engaging thought starters.
Audrey Schnelker:
And then, as Marc mentioned, we will wrap up with Q and A, however, prior to this, the chat feature is actually open on today's webinar, so not only can you submit questions through the Q and A, but there is open chat. So let us know what you're thinking as we go through the webinar. Does one of these trends resonate with you? Do you think one of them is wildly outlandish and it would never work within our industry? Just try and engage with the audience, and let's make this an interactive session as we go through. All right, with that, I will hand it over to Ady.
Ady Floyd:
Thank you so much, Audrey. Hi everyone. I'm so happy to be here and talk to you a little bit more about Trend Hunters' 18 megatrend matrix. So I do want to explain a little bit more behind the methodology of what this framework really is, and it really does start with our six patterns of opportunity. So at Trend Hunter over the past 15 years or so, we have identified six patterns of opportunity. Now, these are essentially the brainchild of our CEO, Jeremy Gutsche, and really every conversation that he has had with an innovative thinker from an entrepreneurial standpoint to fortune 500 companies. What he understood and learned from all of these interviews and conversations is that you can really view any sort of innovation problem through one of these six lenses.
Ady Floyd:
Now, if we further that, every single pattern is also associated with three megatrends. So every megatrend does come with its own very specific definition, but the great thing about our megatrends is that they are evergreen, they span every single industry, and they will never go out of style. So obviously 18 is quite a bit to wrap our heads around, so we will be looking at the megatrends at large. So this is where we're going to push your creativity in thinking about how these megatrends apply in the real world, but also trying to ground that back to what that can mean for you and your role, and specifically your industry. But of course, we will also be bringing that back to the pharmaceutical and healthcare space as well.
Ady Floyd:
So you're going to get a lot of information. Some of it won't resonate, but some of it hopefully will, and that is definitely the point of today. If you can walk away with one major takeaway, then I've done my job. So as I said, we won't be going through all 18, but we will be looking at authenticity, hybridization, and then, of course, diving into experience.
Ady Floyd:
So we will start first by looking at authenticity. Now, when it comes to authenticity, this specifically falls under the pattern of divergence. And what it really means, by definition of Trend Hunter, when we think about authenticity, we need to understand that social media and this resistance to traditional advertising has really created a desire for more authentic and realness to be seen within brands that consumers interact with every single day of their lives. So if we think about this more deeply with how this really is associated with social media, clearly we are really over inundated with information on a daily and even hourly basis, if you really think about it. And consumers are kind of sick of this guesswork when it comes to trusting and supporting any company, especially if that company is really there to help them mentally, physically, and emotionally, specifically with their health.
Ady Floyd:
So I want to showcase an example taking a look at a bit more of a broad perspective. Influencers have really been seen as the standard for authenticity, at least in the past, because they appear to be extremely relatable online. However, are they still relatable when they are just simply aspirational? This is what they look like when they're working out, or what they look like when they're eating cereal, or even showcasing to us what their closets look like. Now, I don't know about you, but I never look like this at the gym, this is certainly not how my day starts, and I don't know if I will ever have a closet that looks like that, but to really help this resonate with everyone, 15% of consumers trust influencers. So it's a little bit of a jarring stat, and in comparison, only 12% of individuals trust politicians. So you kind of get the sense of what kind of company influencers are keeping.
Ady Floyd:
But with this in mind, what it really comes down to is that aspiration and crisis really don't mix, but realism and crisis do. And if we take a look at what we've really all endured over the past couple of years, we are really focused on this idea of realism and how we can use social media to positively influence consumers, and, of course, ourselves. So I really want to start this section by taking a look at an insight from Trend Hunter. So this piece of content here is typically something that you would see in a Trend Hunter presentation or in any of our custom reports. Now, I've taken out a lot of the verbiage and text so we can just get a nice image here, but this is what we call one of our insights.
Ady Floyd:
And this one specifically is taking a look at adaptive sleepwear, or shape wear, sorry, and how this really aligns to the consumer desire in more ways than just one. So here we see that brands are not only designing intimates that are catered to consumers with disabilities, but they're also featuring them within their marketing materials in order to really promote inclusivity and diversity.
Ady Floyd:
So the bottom line here, the really big aha moment or main takeaway, is that the modern definitions of what is real is really ever evolving for our consumers. Now, because of this very specific sentiment, we also see that influencers are being replaced by activists, and even representatives of social change. So here we have our second insight, which is literally called brand activists. And this really does showcase how the pandemic has ushered in varying degrees of change, and this really does include things like the political reckoning, wherein the idea of activism became much more mainstream and social media friendly.
Ady Floyd:
So brands are really looking to participate in these conversations in a way that goes beyond just lip service, and they're doing this by literally replacing their influencers with known activists, or even sometimes unknown activists. So this has really proven to be beneficial, and it also allows brands to use resources to shine a light on some of the issues of relevance that are both relevant to the brand, but also to the brand's consumers and customers as well. It also truly helps to humanize the brand, and hypothetically, it brings a positive exposure to the cause in question.
Ady Floyd:
So that said, today's consumers are really looking for much more when it comes to these corporate social responsibilities. And so partnering with an activist is comparatively better, more believable I suppose is a word that we could use here, more humanizing. It's also really important that these brands are actually showcasing their tangible results, and they're able to showcase this through acts of social media to showcase that yes, they are represented by this activist, but they're also doing their part in the bigger picture as well.
Ady Floyd:
Now, our next insight here. And as we know, brands and consumers are even turning to scientists for a much more trustworthy wealth of information, especially within the social media space. So the trend that we see here is a new type of influencer. Now, one that might have a little bit of a smaller reach, but they have a more engaged audience as well. So these are beauty science influencers. They are essentially podcasters and people who are very specifically and technically trained in cosmetics chemists, and they have experience in the industry as well. So here they are really helping consumers essentially sort out the fact from fiction, and they're really helping to fight the idea of misinformation, specifically within the beauty industry.
Ady Floyd:
So the insight that we really gain here is that since the expansion of the internet, the ease at which information is shared and consumed is really questionable, and consumers are no longer just trusting vague claims. So this demographic is really doing their own research and they're looking to experts within the field to give them some reliable skincare recommendations. They're not only looking at these people as experts, but they are more credible due to their education, and of course they have been deemed a little bit more trustworthy since they aren't necessarily affiliated with any specific brand.
Ady Floyd:
So when it comes to social media, it's quite clear that this has truly put a premium on sincerity. So if we funnel this down, how does this really start to play out within the pharmaceutical industry? Well, here, I want to showcase our next insight, which is titled Inclusive Health. Now, this explores the authentic initiatives within the healthcare space that are focused on minority groups. So a trend that we've noticed on Trend Hunter, especially within the US, is that the healthcare system tends to be discriminatory, particularly towards black Americans, and more specifically towards black women. So some brands here are aiming to mitigate these issues with platforms and different tools, and even funding, to help promote inclusion within the healthcare industry.
Ady Floyd:
So in the US, the healthcare system, black women simply have a higher chance of mortality during childbirth. They're also less likely to be believed when they have symptoms of pain or illness, and generally they have less access to inclusive and comprehensive healthcare. So as this discrimination becomes a little bit more apparent, activists are really helping to push within this space for diversity and change. And some businesses are really trying to make healthcare much more accessible for this specific demographic. Now, to really bring this insight to life I did want to showcase one case study from the insight itself.
Ady Floyd:
Now, this is actually taking a look at a partnership between Knix, so that's the global intimate brand. They have partnered up with Black Women's Health Imperative, and together they have built a program to support the black birthing community. So this was dubbed the nourishing community doula training program, and the program is designed to provide scholarships for up to 20 doulas to receive training and assist 80 black birthing families across the US in receiving postpartum care. In addition to this, Knix is also donating $75,000 in scholarship to support the fight against maternal mortality rates within the black community, and they also plan to have ongoing proceeds from Knix's postpartum and Knix's nudes collections going towards this partnership. So I hope that helps to bring a little bit more of a case study example to how this is really playing out in the pharmaceutical industry. And I'd like to pass it over to Andrew to share a little bit more about his specific examples here.
Andrew Grosvenor:
Thanks, Ady. So with the ongoing emergence of inclusion and digital in our society, we're starting to see providers bring their whys to life through building their own brands on social media. And I know everyone on this is a consumer and uses social media likely, so you've probably seen this come to life as you thumbed through your feed. So here are three examples of well known and established DOLs that exhibit that inclusive why driven DOL worthy content. You can see as you look through some of these screenshots that some of them have tens or hundreds of thousands of followers that their content is getting in front of.
Andrew Grosvenor:
And the other, if you can see, it's a little small, but in Jennifer Gunter's profile summary up at the top there, one of the things she says specifically is, "I speak for no one but me," and that really drives back to one of the things that Ady pointed out in terms of, one, not necessarily being attached to a brand or a piece of marketing, but also really driving that authenticity and that why driven content that we've been talking about. So that's just a couple things we've seen come up in the industry as these trends start to play out in our society.
Andrew Grosvenor:
So this is another point that I'll call everyone to the chat. I would love to get some ideas and some questions going around how they're seeing authenticity play out, especially in the social media space and their worlds. But here are three ways that we've particularly seen it impact our work. So number one, traditionally the persona work that we've seen and done has been limited to the HCP as a provider, what they specialize in, where they went to school, what their network looks like, et cetera. But it's really important now that we're seeing this drive for authenticity to drive that persona work just one level deeper and think about these providers as actual people in the world with houses and families and cars. And it seems like just one little step can go so far, but you can start to see how some of the factors and insights that you drive from them being as people can start to drive into the content and effectiveness there.
Andrew Grosvenor:
Another thing we've seen is the balance, especially in the world of healthcare and life sciences, of there is an aspect of authenticity that really drives that vulnerability, or being willing to be vulnerable and get out there and state your message and fight for that why. But being able to do so that also maintains credibility, as we've mentioned, in a high science world. That's very important, but also it's a particular skill that takes some time to develop. And to that point, the last thing that we've really been focused on at Avant is knowing the difference between a KOL and a DOL. I think it might go without explaining, but traditionally KOLs have a very particular skill set. How do they use the digital space to bring that skill set to life as well? Which can, again, like I said, create that next iteration of talent that being an opinion leader takes. Again, some of the ways that we've seen this come up in our daily lives.
Andrew Grosvenor:
So one last thing on authenticity that I'll leave you with is just a question that you can take with you to keep the juices flowing, or perhaps bring it into a meeting, or impact some of your internal communications. And that is how is your brand prioritizing this inclusive, accessible, underserved customer in the space that you guys are focused in and play in? So, Audrey, unless we have any questions or comments or ideas, I will pass it back over to Ady so that we can get into hybridization.
Audrey Schnelker:
Yep. Take us away, Ady.
Ady Floyd:
Amazing. Okay. So back up to the broad megatrends here. Now we're going to be shifting gears a little bit. We're going to go into the megatrend of hybridization. So within this, it does fall under the pattern of convergence, and if you think about those words, they certainly seem relatable, so that should make sense. Hybridization is really all about how lines are blurring as business models, products, and services are essentially merging to create new unique concepts as well as experiences. And when we take this a little bit further, we've certainly seen our world adapt to hybridization immensely over the last couple of years with our shopping platforms, our employment, and even within our healthcare as well.
Ady Floyd:
So one example that I always love to show within this section, one that I think really resonates, or should, with everyone, comes to us from Amazon. Now, as we all know, Amazon is a quite broad example, so it certainly fits here quite well when we're trying to wrap our heads around what hybridization means and how it's actually played out. So Amazon began as a bookstore. It had the quite lofty goal of becoming the Earth's largest bookstore, but it really quickly pivoted into nearly every other sector. It became a tech store. It was a web host, a clothing retailer. It even became a grocery store actually emerging within the brick and mortar space. So it was no longer just an eCommerce platform. Now all of these have really come together to create this retail giant that we are all too familiar with today.
Ady Floyd:
But the importance of this is just to showcase how hybridization can truly impact any industry. If we take a look at maybe Kroger a couple years back, a couple decades maybe, they probably weren't thinking that Amazon would be their next competitor, but it turned out that that is a very real sentiment that they're now living with. So it's really important to think even further outside of your own day to day and understand what's happening in the world all around you, because if we understand how chaos calls for transformation, your industry will change and new companies will arise. We already know that Amazon is also encroaching into the healthcare space as well. Now again, if we came to you maybe 10 years ago and presented this idea, it might not seem super real or something that you wanted to start thinking about, but the threat definitely emerged, and I think they are probably here to stay, at least for a little while.
Ady Floyd:
But when we think about this in a different avenue, so aside from just industries merging, we can also have this playing out in phygital. So this is all about combining the physical space with the digital space, and also this plays out in very specific ways within our personal lives, and more specifically within our fitness as well. So this is one of my favorite examples to share here. This is, of course, looking at AI fitness, taking a look at how fitness apps and even systems within our own homes are using AI to help users exercise and assess their health. So, as we've seen, of course, once again with the pandemic, a lot of folks were getting used to working out at home, and this has really become a trend that is here to stay. Now, I know many people are enjoying getting back to the gym, but some people are quite satisfied with how technology has helped their at home workouts.
Ady Floyd:
So, more people are exercising at homes, and, of course, brands are really taking advantage of this. They have released tons of different apps and even fitness systems, including mirrors that you can use in your household, linked to smart technology. So these systems are able to assess really everything from an individual's health to their workouts, and they can even help guide them through personalized workouts, helping them adjust based on their very specific and personalized needs, their form, and, of course, even their ever changing goals. So fitness conscious consumers are often willing to invest in their health with, of course, a focus on customizing their routines to really align with their personal goals, and smart technology is particularly helpful within this realm, as it does help to make tracking their progress with various different forms and metrics much simpler for people. So obviously health and technology pretty well go hand in hand.
Ady Floyd:
And the bottom line when it comes to hybridization is simply layering ideas, whether they are new or existing. You can always create something new. But, again, how is this really playing out in the pharmaceutical space? Now I do think that fitness has a huge part of that, but if we take it just one step further, the insight that we see here called Health Hub is a really great example to essentially level up. So, much like the insight that we saw earlier, smart home hubs are now being designed as additional ways for consumers to keep track of their various health related metrics. So these hubs are offering everything from medication management to sleep pattern tracking, and consumers are increasingly relying on this type of technology to help them maintain their health and fitness routines. So this slight shift in consumer behavior has people really wanting products that can be seamlessly integrated into their routines, but it's also really helpful as a motivator to continuously be pushing consumers to pursue those goals at the same time.
Ady Floyd:
So I understand that this type of technology is not necessarily incredibly new. We all have heard of, and probably a lot of us actually use, things like our smart watches to help track things like our sleep, but we also see that consumers actually want this to be even more embedded into the technology that we're already using.
Ady Floyd:
So to really showcase how this is emerging within that sort of area, I wanted to highlight another case study here to really bring this to life. So this is LG, and they have announced their new collaboration with Independa to bring a variety of wellness focused features to the LG smart TV. So this is the Independa health hub, and it is really focused on seniors, more specifically, to be able to have applications that allow them to conveniently make appointments, everything from their doctors, including their dentists, and it also helps them communicate with their loved ones, this was very prominent over the pandemic. And of course it does also grant them access to more health focused pharmacy platforms to allow them to help, again, keep track of their medication and re-up with their subscriptions. So with that example in mind, I will pass things back to Andrew to discuss a little bit more about how this is playing out in his world.
Andrew Grosvenor:
Thanks Ady. Yeah, I think I've said the word phygital more in the past couple weeks than I ever have before and I love it, so very cool. So yeah, with the innovation that's happening within the purview of what we've discussed hybridization to be, it's really important as marketers and as drivers of this industry to stay current on the impacts of this particular innovation. So a couple of the things that we've been keeping our eye on internally here is to really be proactive and try to stay up to date on provider content preferences. What's the length? What's the duration? What medium? Is it still in person or is it virtual? Can we find a way to combine those? So staying curious is a big piece of staying in front of some of this innovation that we're starting to see from a societal level.
Andrew Grosvenor:
The other thing that we've been taking a look at that I think it's important to note is what does this innovation actually do? What is it driving out there? And one of the important pieces that we're finding is that there are different retention rates based off of the method of, let's say, a piece of education. So you may be more apt to retain if there is a phygital experience around some sort of educational method, so that could be one really big takeaway as we think about our industry and our efforts. Another piece is obviously science is innovating, and we see it as our jobs to continue to allow the strategy and the creative of some of these pieces to evolve with science. And as we learn more in science, how do we find creative ways and strategic ways to activate on the phygital component of our society?
Andrew Grosvenor:
And last but not least, as these experiences become more and more digital, or grounded in digital, it unlocks our ability to collect data on a micro scale, whereas previously, when things were physical, it may have been more around the macro scale. So what do we do with this data? How do we sift through it? How do we leverage it? Those are all really big questions that we find ourselves asking internally and having fun on the strategy side of things.
Audrey Schnelker:
Hey Andrew, before you jump to this one, Andrew, can I go back? We had a great question that came up around number one on this slide specifically about with HCPs average age skewing older, do we think that this will resonate across demographics or HCP personas, or is this hybridization trend maybe specific to a niche of the broader audience?
Andrew Grosvenor:
Yeah, that's a great question, and I think that's a question that everyone's really trying to hone in on. Where do these types of methods of communication resonate? So where we've landed is it's important to do a little bit and learn, again, as that societal factor starts to go into these things, and really try to understand where is it most effective, and to the questions point, are there particular personas in the HCP world that are going to leverage that and lean into it? And it's funny, because it almost goes a little bit back to the authenticity piece on the HCP side of being vulnerable enough to try it, walk up to a phygital experience and try to make a mess of it. We're seeing that willingness in our HCP communications as well, so great question, and I think we'll all kind of figure it out as we go. Thank you. Cool.
Andrew Grosvenor:
So yeah, one question around hybridization that you can take back with you and ponder. How is your brand seamlessly integrating into these existing routines? What's already there? What do we know to work, and how do we introduce just one level of digital to make it phygital and start to learn and figure out how we can drive these societal changes in our industry? So with that, I will toss it back over to Ady for our last megatrend experience.
Ady Floyd:
Yeah. Thank you so much, Andrew. Before we get there, I just wanted to jump back really, really quickly to the insight here. So I love that question. I love how you answered it, Andrew, but just to link a little bit more about how Trend Hunter tracks trends and insights, and how this has been really helpful for our partnership with Avant, if you take a look at the very bottom of our insight here, you can see that there is a score. So we do track all of our trends and our insights on a scale of one to 10. Anything above a five should be incredibly relevant. That's something we would want to showcase to audiences just like you today. But then, of course, right next to it you also have some demographic icons.
Ady Floyd:
So these are highlighted to really showcase who is being targeted with this insight, meaning who created these products and what consumer are the brands trying to really understand and gear these products towards. So with that in mind, you can see that there is a variety of demographics actually highlighted there. So I won't dive too much into that, but if anyone does have any questions afterwards about the tracking of insights and trends, definitely feel free to reach out to me, and I'm happy to dive into more of the details around that.
Ady Floyd:
But moving right along here into experience. This is definitely an incredibly popular megatrend. It has so many implications with truly every single industry across the world, and I think it's a really interesting way to just see how closely industries really can learn from one another and how closely they really can be linked. So for this one, it does fall under the pattern of redirection, as we can see here. And the definition that we have given it at Trend Hunter is that in a world abundant with stuff, experience has become important, as important as currency, and it is becoming much more of a life priority, especially for younger consumers. There is a really fun fact that we like to discuss when it comes to millennials. I think it's about 65% of them do not have any savings for retirement, but they do have savings for travel. So that shares a little bit of insight into my demographic there.
Ady Floyd:
But diving a little bit further into how this will really play out in today's webinar. When we really think about the last couple of years, once again, I love to relate things back to the pandemic because I can't let anyone forget that we went through that, we still are, but after sacrificing so many crucial life and milestone experiences because of the pandemic, consumers were really looking for experiences in everything that they did and everything that they do. So everything from mundane grocery shopping to sensory dining, this hunger for experience is really expanding even more than we thought possible in pre pandemic life. So with that in mind, I want to start with an example of how this is playing out, or has played out in the past, in the leisure and hospitality space.
John Wyllie:
This is a problem we're all familiar with. Stressful and unfair queuing system at the bar. The AI bar hopes to change all of that. We have built the world's first AI bar, solving real problems for bartenders and customers. We're trying solve this problem using AI, bringing new technologies and facial recognition to make bar queuing fair. The AI bar solves problems for customers and for bartenders. The customer solution uses complex facial recognition, but in a simple way. We track people coming into the space.
John Wyllie:
This is shown in a big screen behind the bar. They can see them in a live video feed with their number above their head telling exactly where in the queue they are and how long their estimated timing is to be served. The machine will know that the person in front of you is going to order a lager or a cocktail, and how long that will take, and therefore how long you might have to wait until you get served. If I got a shot, if I turn around to speak to a friend, tie my shoelace or go back to the table to confirm the order, your face is remembered for a short period of time. When you come back into the queue, my place in the queue is held.
Ady Floyd:
A little bit more of an out there example, but if we really think about this and we think about what else we wait for, I definitely tend to think about appointments and that certainly relates directly to doctor's offices and hospitals and things like that. So I think it's a really interesting connection, and we can really bridge the gap once, again, between the two industries that from the outside are seemingly unrelated, but could actually be more deeply connected than we really give credit. So when we think about this, and I do want to step away a little bit from the healthcare space once again, virtual events is another really, really interesting insight here. So when we think about the leisure industry, I think this really directly relates quite nicely to experience. And of course, during the pandemic, we saw that the rise of more technologies allowed consumers to essentially remain even more connected to one another and to brands, as we see within this very specific insight about virtual events.
Ady Floyd:
So during lockdowns, these events that were really crucial, they were really helpful because everyone, we were all going through this collective anxiety and it was at an all time high. So people were certainly looking for things to just fill their days with. They were looking for escapism and a distraction from the very unusual reality that we were all living through and facing. Consumers took up new hobbies, they honed different skills, and they certainly attended various types of virtual experiences as a means to keep their schedules full and their minds occupied. Now, when we shift this a little bit into a workplace setting, we know that the lockdowns are easing and restrictions are certainly lifting, and as people are adjusting to this post pandemic life, the technologies that we grew accustomed to aren't going anywhere. So we see VR workplace really playing a huge role in the future of the workplace, and, of course, in a couple different areas as well that are closely related.
Ady Floyd:
So virtual reality certainly has a massive potential for different applications, and they're currently being used, but they're not being perfected just yet, so this is really a new area that has just a massive amount of potential. So everything from employee training to virtual meetings are now taking place with the help of VR. So these programs enhance engagement, and they also enhance accessibility for people who want to continue working remotely. And now that remote work is much more commonplace, workers and business owners have new needs and new desires regarding how they stay connected with their colleagues and their employers, specifically, and, of course, how they continue to build and hone new skills in order to succeed within the workplace. So businesses do require much more flexibility and engagement within these programs, and it does allow them to communicate with one another on a much more unique level, even within their communications taking place in a virtual platform.
Ady Floyd:
So when we think about experience, the bottom line here is that consumers do expect every aspect of their lives to be somewhat of an experience. Now, this certainly does play out within the pharmaceutical industry as well. Now this next insight is a really great one talking about the metaverse. A really great buzzword as of late, but it's probably less scary than we all think. When we talk about the metaverse medicine insight, this is actually a huge opportunity within the healthcare and the pharma space. So this insight is really shining a new light on how the digital landscape is evolving at a quite steady pace. So as the digital world does continue to expand in accessibility and popularity, health clinics and pharmacies are essentially launching their services within the metaverse.
Ady Floyd:
Without limits of things like brick and mortar, the online presence of medicine does give consumers easier access to healthcare checkups, prescription renewals, and, of course, nutritional and fitness advice. So it does seem like they're tying into what we've already talked about with things like hybridization, and, of course, being able to connect with a physician does provide that aspect of authenticity as well. So these are really all playing out in a very unique way but together in that trifecta.
Ady Floyd:
Now, of course, as the pandemic continues to reshape our habits, patients are turning to these emerging online spaces for especially non-urgent personal and medical care. Patients now expect to have easy online access to healthcare assistance due to the increased desire for convenience, and ,of course, for safety as well. And companies are certainly willing to accommodate these new habits, and they are essentially establishing themselves within the online platform spaces. So I would love to showcase another case study, the last case study today. This is the first metaverse pharmacy. So this is a partnership between iMining Technologies, which is a leading publicly traded Web3 tech company. They've announced that its subsidiary metaverse advisory group, MAG for short, has entered into a partnership with the pharmacy group to help develop and launch a series of metaverse related endeavors. Of course the most notable one here for us is their plan to launch the world's first virtual pharmacy, which will be hosted on the popular metaverse platform Decentraland, which I'm sure also sounds like a buzzword, but it's actually a pretty cool place if you haven't been there yet.
Ady Floyd:
And, according to MAG, the new metaverse pharmacy does aim to improve medication adherence by offering patients a unique way to set up automatic refill reminders, schedule virtual one on one consultations, and take full advantage of pharmacy related services all while being completely 100% virtual. Now, I just wanted to quickly share a quote here that, of course, "As the digital world evolves, virtual and metaverse-based healthcare services will become increasingly more important to consumers." Now, I think this one is certainly much more related to the younger demographic, whereas something like the LG TV example might be able to resonate more with the older demographic. Hopefully everyone's keeping an open mind about the metaverse, but with that, I will pass things back to Andrew to ground us a little bit more.
Andrew Grosvenor:
Cool. Yeah. Thanks Ady. So I don't know if any of you guys have purchased an Oculus and tried it and are keeping an eye on the Apple Glasses that we all eagerly await, but it all just re-solidifies the importance of experience in human behavior. It starts to feel like just regular content that you read or even watch on a video just isn't enough. So what are we doing? What are we trying to do with this new technology like the metaverse and all this fun stuff is really just try to increase engagement, building that curiosity and getting people to put those Oculus goggles or try a learning environment in that. Trying to use that technology to increase engagement is something that we're trying to keep a window in.
Andrew Grosvenor:
The other piece is if you think back to the Magic School Bus, there was an episode where they shrunk the bus down and flew into a body and you could really get immersed into blood cells and things like that. That was an original immersive experience. And then, even better, there was also a ride at Universal Studios, if anybody remembers, called Body Wars, where you got into a little spaceship looking thing and sat down and it flew in and out of bodies and veins and blood cells. And I bring up those two funny examples hopefully to make you laugh, but also to think about how that experience around that type of content, even back then, was big, but also now as we move into something that hits every sense. So those are a couple other things that we're keeping an eye on.
Andrew Grosvenor:
And then the idea of fictional influencers. Most of what we think about the metaverse is a digital depiction of a human on the other side, but there is the concept of having a fictional doctor that can influence and be a DOL in and of itself, but not even really have a human on the other side. So, again, very big ideas, especially when we think about things like the metaverse that are very ethereal at this point, but also starting to see some of these trends and how they could impact our industry. So leaving you with a thought that you could start to think about or throw around internally would be how can you improve the customer experience with your brand to make a lasting impact, what is that experience, what are you trying to communicate, and then are there very creative ideas and immersive ideas to make that lasting impact is an important question.
Andrew Grosvenor:
All right, cool. So those are the three megatrends in pharma. So Ady, thank you for walking us through those. We did just want to just recap for everyone. Number one, obviously the emergence and the importance of DOLs and what that means for our space. We talked a little bit about that. The other thing we talked about are phygital meetings specifically, but all the different ways that digital can start to augment, not necessarily replace, but augment some of our experiences there, and then augmented reality in education specifically and the importance of keeping an eye on some of these experiential technologies that are coming out. So with that, I think we have some time for some Q and A.
Marc Iskowitz:
Yes. Thank you, Andrew. And really appreciate the overview of these top three megatrends and tips on how to consider them as pharma marketers develop their professional engagement and marketing plans. I have some questions for you all, starting with the following. What do you feel are the biggest barriers to pharma adopting the authenticity trend, if we can start with that one specifically?
Andrew Grosvenor:
Yeah, that's a good one. I think the easy answer there are legal regulations and things like that. And what can we say, and what can't we say, and when, and being able to keep that authentic would be one of the bigger barriers that I think we're all probably thinking about here as we move into the future.
Marc Iskowitz:
Okay, sure. And the other trend that you put up there is the KOL versus the DOL. Can you explain again the difference between those two stakeholders and how they can play a role in ensuring we capitalize on the authenticity trend?
Andrew Grosvenor:
Yeah. So I would say KOLs have their place and are very important in communicating with other healthcare providers, tends to be longer content, sometimes in broadcast or videos, sometimes in papers and things like that, whereas a DOL is a lot more digitally oriented, short pieces of content that are a little bit more authentic and a little bit more engaging. Obviously things like follower counts and engagement on these platforms are a big piece of what we look at to understand the difference between a traditional KOL and one that would qualify as a DOL. How these roles play into authenticity, I think they really need to work together. I don't think that it's something where, hey, KOLs are a thing of the past. Let's really focus on digital DOLs. It really takes that full ecosystem, and I think they both play an important role in obtaining our goals.
Marc Iskowitz:
Right, and I like the way you described it really as the DOL is taking that expertise and using digital to bring it to life. I thought that was a really nice encapsulation of DOL. And I just want to encourage everybody out there in the audience to keep your questions coming. You can easily submit a question through the Q and A function on your dashboard and we'll queue it up for our speakers. So we talked a little bit more about that authenticity trend. Let's talk a little bit about the hybridization trend here. We have a question. Do you believe that hybridization targets the younger demographic of HCPs, or is this a universal trend? What do you think?
Andrew Grosvenor:
Yeah. That's a little bit along the lines of the first question, and maybe I'm stubborn, but I like to think that it is universal. You think about the demographics and the age groups that are using things like Facebook, they're diving in and using it. I think intuition may tell us that there may be a barrier there, but in the real world people are using this on a daily basis. So how do we bring that into our industry with HCPs? Maybe in bite size ways that makes that adoption a little bit easier for the older demographic. And obviously the younger demographic, they grew up in it. That's how they do things. Obviously that's an easier stretch for them. But just small bite size pieces, I think, is really important in making it a universal trend.
Audrey Schnelker:
Yeah, and Andrew, I would just add you previously, when the question came in earlier, talked about the HCP personas. I think it's important that we just pay attention to what demographic we're trying to reach, and make sure that the platform that we use, we pay good attention to the audience and the platform, not only just the content and the way in which we deliver that content, because I think that's how we could make this trend relevant across multiple demographic groups.
Marc Iskowitz:
Mm-hmm. Right. And I think also the sentiment that looking across two other industries, seemingly unrelated ones, that actually, when you look at it, actually do have relevance to healthcare. It was another great point you talked about in the convergence area, and certainly is food for thought. And along those lines, would promotional or disease state messaging be best suited for hybridization?
Andrew Grosvenor:
That's another great question. I think there's creative ways to do all of it in a way that hits on that phygital concept. Where we're seeing a lot of it is in that disease state messaging, because it's high science, it's highly educational, and there's an innate driven desire for that curiosity in the audience of the provider. So I think that's where we've leaned in terms of a phygital or a hybrid experience, but that's not to say that there's not opportunities on the promotional side as well, for sure.
Marc Iskowitz:
Right. But keeping it snackable, keeping everything consumable seems to be the name of the game, especially in our culture, which really values short form video and those kinds of things. Would love to encourage people, once again, to keep the questions coming using the Q and A dashboard. Q and A function of your dashboard, excuse me. We do have a few minutes left for questions. The last topic that our speakers left us off with was the metaverse, which is certainly a tantalizing one when it comes to thinking about all the potential applications, and that metaverse pharmacy one was a good one. We've seen some pharma brands as well dabbling in the metaverse. How do our speakers think that's going to play out? I'd heard the term adherence mentioned, but is it going to be really something that people go into to choose what rheumatology drug they want to get, or is it going to be mainly actually once they get the drug and more of the fulfillment end of it, refilling prescriptions and talking to their pharmacist, that kind of thing?
Andrew Grosvenor:
That's a great question. I would say it kind of splinters and does both. I think, from a provider perspective, the ability to leverage a digital ecosystem to get in and really engage, I don't want to say will replace some of the trends that Ady talked about in terms of working virtually and things like that, but it decreases the barrier to entry and allows for that. And then on the other side, as I mentioned, when we think about the digital space and how that comes to life in metaverse, some of the things you mentioned in your question on the other side of it with impacts to patients, there's never been more data at our fingertips and what could we do with a metaverse-like experience that allows that connection to happen. So it'll be interesting to see. I think right now, at least from what I've seen, it's leaning more into that education space, if you will.
Ady Floyd:
Yeah, I would agree with you, Andrew. I think it's great to understand or even look back on things like VR and AR and how that emerged. No one really knew what exactly to do with it, and it was certainly used a lot of the time for things like gaming and certainly for experience. And then it pivoted into this role of being an educational tool. I know it was used for things like operations, to be a guide for folks going into that specific line of work. And if we think about how much of the metaverse is in its infancy right now, I think that the limits are quite endless, and as things continue to evolve it will certainly fall in line with almost all the other forms of technology that we currently use. It will just become second nature to us as consumers, and so we will certainly be expecting that from our healthcare physicians, from the companies that we go to on a weekly, monthly, bimonthly basis. So I think it will become a little bit more of a bigger desire once we're able to wrap our heads around it a little bit more.
Marc Iskowitz:
Sure. And then, yeah, Audrey, as you said earlier with the AR and VR, it's not like those technologies, which played a bigger role during the pandemic, are going anywhere. They're here. If anything, people got more experience with them, and so they're going to only become more and more useful to people, one would presume. There's a question that came in that has to do with Google's deprecation of the cookie, and when we think about it from a broader perspective, pharma's digital advertising and marketing reached peak investment in year one of the pandemic, but it's come down since then. It's still growing, but at a smaller rate. But people say that the industry really has its eye on the demise of third party data to reach HCPs. So the question is how much will first party audience data and contextual targeting play now and in the future? So somebody want to take that question on?
Andrew Grosvenor:
Yeah, the deprecation of the cookie, and honestly privacy as a societal shift in general, is impacting marketers' worlds on a daily basis. Things like open rates from Apple's shift in privacy, too, it's all over the place. And I think it almost hits on that experience trend as well. But how can we create experience within our brands that encourage our audience, being HCPs, to provide that zero and first party data? The layup I think everyone might fall into is, "Let's do a survey." But how can we leverage some of the things we've talked about today to add value in the HCPs perspective that allows them to then be willing to share some of that data with us so that we, on the brand side, have to earn it?
Andrew Grosvenor:
And then on the backside, and I mentioned a little bit on the data collection piece earlier, what do we do with all of this data? We used to lean on the black box of Google to leverage that data for us with algorithms. Now it's up to us. So it's impacting messaging, it's impacting tech stacks and martech stacks, and it's only going to get more... GDPR was just the first. So definitely something that it's good to have our eye on and start collecting that data now.
Marc Iskowitz:
Yes. And build building those first party audience data sets. One last question that we have time for here. And I thought the Future Festival was something that was mentioned a couple of times. I know it's been on the slides. Hashtag future festival. It's coming up in a week. Ady, you want to tell us about that?
Ady Floyd:
Yes, I would love to. So that does essentially wrap up the webinar that we've put together for everyone today, but if anyone here is interested in learning more about any of the megatrends that I discussed today, or even any of the megatrends that I did not discuss today, please feel free to reach out to me at any point. I would love to dive deeper. There is endless content about any of the megatrends that you have in mind, and maybe one could potentially relate a little bit more to a project that you're working on or a goal. But that definitely brings me to Future Festival, which is the conference that Trend Hunter hosts every single year. It is our trends and innovation conference. This year the theme is all about decoding the future. So I know the way that I best describe it is that oftentimes people look back at trends or a project they've done with hindsight 20/20. So at Trend Hunter Presents Future Festival, which is hopefully going to provide everyone with foresight 20/20.
Ady Floyd:
And what this really is, it's a massive three day event. We get you into a conference room and it's a lot of fun. We get a stage in the middle so you can feel like you're at a wrestling match, but don't worry. No one gets hurt. There's a variety of Ted style keynotes that are presented on everything from marketing to generational trends to food and beverage, and it really helps you get a sense of what is to come the year ahead. Now at our major event, the one that's taking place over the course of three days, it is happening next week. So understandable that many of you might not be able to attend, but under those three days, we also provide a workshop for everyone there, and we also get you out of the conference room and we take you on what we call Trend Safaris all over the city of Toronto to help you understand and get a firsthand experience on what is actually happening in the real world. You get to talk to entrepreneurs and business owners about how they leverage trends every single day.
Ady Floyd:
So, as I said, this is taking place next week. So if you can't make it there, we also host our one day events taking place across all over the US, and we are also headed to Berlin. So I think that many of you are dialing in from somewhere within the US, so if you are interested, definitely take a look at futurefestival.com or, again, you can reach out to me, it's just ady@trendhunter.com. And I think that is our time. So thank you everyone, and I do hope to hear from you all.
Marc Iskowitz:
Yeah. Great. That is our time. And you heard it there folks. You can continue the conversation, excuse me. Again, really appreciate the overview of megatrends here and their meaning for pharma marketers. Want to thank Audrey, Ady, and Andrew for an excellent presentation of these insights. This session's being recorded and will be available for streaming on demand in the webcast section of our site for one year post event. And the slide deck can be downloaded from the handout section of your webcast dashboard before you go. If you have any questions, feel free to contact us or Avant Healthcare or Trend Hunter. Okay, everybody. Thank you so much for joining us, and we hope you enjoy the rest of your day.
Ady Floyd:
Thanks everyone.