Party conference season – can medical communicators learn from the speech makers?

It’s that time of year again in the UK – the season for the political parties’ conferences, which are now coming to a close. The Labour party have held theirs, ending with rallying calls from Peter Mandelson and Gordon Brown. With an election due sometime in the next few months, the stakes are high. Can Mandelson and Brown achieve what appeared impossible a few months ago and win another term in office, or will Cameron’s Conservative party pip them at the post, or will there be a dramatic landslide?

What has this got to do with scientific and medical communications you may ask? Well directly, not a lot, but with the “prize” being so great I have been struck by just how far our politicians can push their messaging at conference season, and was left wondering how medical communications would fare if we were to consistently “push the edge of the envelope”. The guidelines and ethics of our profession provide a solid framework for not making unsubstantiated claims, not making forward looking statements that may just be fanciful thinking, and above all not using ghost writing in order to expedite messaging in faster timelines. I couldn’t help wondering how those at work within the political machinery would manage under these conditions.

The acceptance then of what we read and hear depends upon circumstances, it is quite acceptable for the Prime Minister or the leader of the opposition to talk about possible policies with no hard evidence that they will actually deliver, but it is never acceptable to project an unsubstantiated conclusion on inconclusive data from a clinical study.

What though can we learn from the political speech meisters? Well first and foremost, we can learn that a compelling, lively, and dynamic speech or presentation is worth much more than just a written publication of a parties manifesto. And that’s because personality, visuals and audio are more engaging. My son has a poster on his wall that reads:

We remember:
20% of what we read
50% of what we hear
40% of what we see
50% of what we say
60% of what we do
But 90% of what we see, hear, say and do.

This I think is where the politicians (at least at conference season!) have got it right and possibly where medical communications still has a way to go. Politicians approach to delivering a compelling argument uses all of the above methods - materials are available to be read pre and post speech, by and large speeches are lively, dynamically delivered and compelling listening (although there are exceptions!) they use visuals – be this through the speakers own stage presence or produced backdrops and presentations, and they engage audiences in debate and interact with them during conference.

In medical communications programmes that we develop, could we honestly say that we use all of these means every time to develop the most compelling way to deliver the message and story with our clients’ brands? Even if we do, could we do it better, could we use more engaging tactics? Can we engage in longer term strategies using social media? I follow some politicians on twitter, and see some lively debate through that, but of the few medical communications ‘follows’ that I have there seems to be little debate and just the use of social media as another repository for information (and job advertisements!) – but not a forum for open discussion. Of course we have to be conscious of some of the regulatory issues that control – for very good reasons – how early clinical data is brought into the public domain, but this should not necessarily be a barrier to free discussion of the clinical challenges faced in any specific disease, drug class or approach in terms of mode of action of a drug. I do feel that there is much more opportunity to open up discussion and debate without contravening regulatory guidelines – it just needs a few forward thinking pharmaceutical companies and their medical communications agencies to embrace this and begin to properly engage with their audiences.

Communicating Science - Challenging old Perceptions

The title of this - my very first blog - is intended to suggest that for those of us communicating science (largely clinically focused in these pages) we should not forget that communications itself can also be something of a science. Clearly when working on any pharmaceutical product in Phase 2 or 3 a priority has to be getting the data published. But too often that is the only focus, and we are driven by impact factors of journals, readership levels and general all round kudos of being published in a high profile title. Not wrong, but not very creative either. As communications channels change, merge and diverge, we can be left wondering where else to focus our efforts, can we have closed blogs, websites, twitter feeds, facebook pages etc... where can we get meaningful discussion of new data withour jeopardising a publication? How will the regulators consider this, how will journals consider this, are we prepared to do something different to be more engaging with our clinical audiences? I don't propose any simple answers, because each pharmaceutical brand, medical device or diagnostic has its own unique challenges and unique audience sets. What I do propose though is that we don't ignore the fact that there is a whole host of new - and potentially more engaging - ways to bring the data to life. I hope that subsequent blogs and your comments will begin to explore where some of these opportunities lie.