Gaming To Save Healthcare Marketing

Yes, that's right. Reread that headline. "Gaming to Save Healthcare Marketing." At least, it's one of my theories.

By Jonathan Richman on Feb 16, 2009

Yes, that's right. Reread that headline. "Gaming to Save Healthcare Marketing."

At least, it's one of my theories.

After spending many years in sales and marketing in healthcare (particularly pharma), I've noticed, as have all of you, that the effectiveness of our marketing continues to decrease. People are bombarded more than ever by our advertising and our advertising itself has actually gotten worse. By worse, I mean that not only has quality suffered, but also the meaning it brings to consumers is disappearing. Our company is a big believer (in fact, we invented the term) in Marketing with Meaning. I'll won't go into the details here, but the basic idea is that your marketing, your advertising, should, in of itself, be meaningful to customers. Does your marketing bring any value to consumers?

Gaming is a great example. Many online games, including classics like Bejeweled, fit the profile for Marketing with Meaning. Almost all of these games on sites like Pogo are free. They are completely ad supported. So, the agreement is that I, the sponsor, pay for your game and in return I display a banner advertisement. I market my product and in doing so you get something in return that is meaningful to you. Novartis has already seen the value of this and started to advertise on Pogo (PS: they also use Twitter). Follow this link to see one of their ads.

Okay, not stunning in it's beauty, but you get the idea.

I know what you're thinking. "We targeting older folks with our products. They're not gamers." In fact, they are. Here are some stats from two sources (Pew and ESA):

  • Average game player age: 35
  • 26% are 50+
  • 47% of online games played are "puzzle, board, game show, trivia, or card" games
  • 36% of gamers 65+ say they play EVERYDAY or almost everyday (the highest of any age group)
  • 50% of gamers are women

Anyone from your target audience in there? I'd bet so. Another myth dispelled.

So, sponsoring a game and plastering a banner all over it is one way to break into this market. The next step up is a sponsored game where you sponsor a newly launched or existing game that allows people to download it for free or play online for free. You're the exclusive sponsor and hopefully you can try to find a game that might appeal to your target group versus a more untargeted banner ad.

But there's a better way. Why not add a game (or two or three) to your brand site? You want folks visiting your site on a regular basis, right? You want them to stay for a long them when they come, right? But,your content has to be compelling in order to do that. Perhaps a game is the answer. You can start with a ready-made one that everyone will recognize. Hats off to Takeda and their Rozerem site for trying this out. They added a chess game for people who can't sleep since Rozerem is a sleep aid. Granted, I'm not sure why helping people stay awake is useful in this case, but the concept is good.

Click to see the Rozerem game.

Not the hardest chess game I've ever faced (I won in 14 moves), but I was playing a rodent. Takeda is updating their site and by the looks of the placeholder site, it'll be like every other pharma site. So long Mr. Beaver, we hardly knew thee.

The final and ultimate step in gaming is to develop a custom game for your brand. There are two reasons for this. First, you control exactly what goes into the game and you can actually make it relevant to the disease your drug is targeting. The greatest example of this in healthcare is Re-Mission. This game was created to help kids fighting various cancers. It's essentially a first-person shooter-type game, but you're battling the disease.

Re-Mission Screeshot.

That's wonderful. They created a game for kids fighting cancer to help them pass the time during treatment. Right? No. This game was designed to improve outcomes. In fact, the company behind this game, Hope Lab, conducted a randomized trial to test the game's effectiveness. Half played Re-Mission and half another video game. The results were published in the journal Pediatrics. Here are some high points I know all you pharma marketers will be interested in:

  • "Self-efficacy and knowledge were significantly improved in the intervention group compared with the control group."
  • "Adherence to at-home medication (trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole and 6 mercaptopuring) was significantly improved in the intervention group compared with the control group."

Did they say improved adherence? With a video game? Makes you think twice about your email refill reminders and how they are working, doesn't it? How much are you throwing against adherence doing the same types of programs that have been tried for 20 years with minimal effect? Maybe it's time to try something new.

This type of game fits into the "serious games" genre. A number of healthcare-related serious games have already been created. They even have a conference. The Games for Health group is a non-profit that's a big player in this area. Check out some screenshots from some of their games on Flickr.

You can have your own game as well. Figure out who your audience is and what would be a fun and engaging experience for them that they'd WANT to play. If there aren't any gamers on your team and you can't imagine how this might work, give me a call and I can help you out. I'll bring the Wii.

Jonathan is Director of Business Development for Bridge Worldwide, a leading digital and relationship marketing agency, and regularly writes about pharma marketing on his blog Dose of Digital.