Know-How Exchange : Advertising/PR

Improve Your Clinical Outcomes
The Integrated Pharmacy Solution

Holly

How does your message resonate with what the hospital pharmacist has always been doing?

Will it deliver an 'aha' moment?

Or will it just sound like an attempt to plug a system that doesn't stand out much from the competition?

Sounds to me like what you're saying is probably what the pharmacist already thinks she/he is doing. They're likely to get their guard up rather than embrace the message. I can't imagine any of them sleepless at night worrying about their lack of an integrated suite of pharmacy solutions, whatever that is... It sounds like sales claptrap, and it isn't going to work.

You need to explain the problem they have first. Underline their pain. Draw it out with examples of where that pain has been felt - is felt daily - in the pharmacist's world. You need to get them to the point where they stand up shouting "Yes, I have that problem and I need a solution, please someone help me!"

Then, and only then, do you have an audience receptive to hearing what your solution actually is.

Ever seen the movie 'Marathon Man' where Dustin Hoffman is captured and put into a dentists chair by Launce Olivier who drills into one of his fillings and asks "Is it safe"? You've got to drill down to find the seat of that pain you think the pharmacists have, and start poking the root to make their nerves jangle... Gory stuff, but the idea is to bring home to them the problem they have been ignoring, maybe they are even unaware of it. The pain has to become palpable to them, as it did in the movie, to the point where Dustin Hoffman's character would do absolutely anything for some relief.

You might call the talk "A Panacea for the Pharmacy".

Hope that helps.

ChrisB