A “Me”-covery?

Is there something of a “me”-covery in the air?

It turns out that Black Friday was a time for shopping … selfishly. While total dollar volume only edged up slightly from last year, purchases for “me” were coming out on top. Articles this weekend were full of stories about shoppers saying they deserved something for themselves – and at least for a few minutes, were putting themselves first

It’s not that we’re giving up on gifts… even charitable gifts are starting to rise again, after taking a nosedive in 2009. But there’s something encouraging about taking care of ourselves too, something that speaks to a desire to refresh and rebuild.

Lest you think this is a celebration of being selfish, I’m always reminded of that line spoken on every flight, every day, here in the U.S. – in the event of an emergency, put your own oxygen mask on first. Why? Because of course, if you aren’t taking care of yourself, it’s harder to take care of others.

It doesn’t have to be about gifts, of course, or even spending money – which for many of us is still tight. Part of your own “me”-covery might be scheduling an hour of me-time during the week, to take a walk, to start reading the new biography of Cleopatra (oh wait, that one’s for me!), or even “we”-time –-to catch up with someone whose company you always enjoy.

Because everybody deserves a little more Wellness this holiday season. Especially you!

Hope this finds you well,
Johanna

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Tribe? Or Community?

“Man is by nature a political animal.” – Aristotle

Cavemen wrote on cave walls, today we write on Facebook walls. At its core, social networking fulfills our human need to make a connection - it is the modern iteration of tribal behavior.

Tribes are active, mobile, made up of passionate influencers who drive behavior; these are the opinion leaders and the most important targets for a social media campaign. The problem is, many brands think they're creating online tribes when in fact they're simply collecting a community of passive admirers.

What does this mean for wellness brands?

According to Walgreens' president and CEO Greg Wasson, "as patients gain greater access to health care information…they are increasingly becoming shoppers of health care."

Translation: it’s more important than ever to have a clear strategy for engaging with tribal leaders in social media.

Here are 5 ways I've been thinking about to leverage the power of tribes:

1. Identify your influencers- they will lead you to your tribes!
2. Map the points where tribal influencers intersect—these are your best points of engagement (i.e. blog, groups, etc.)
3. Develop key messages that resonate with the tribe
4. Engage and listen. Tribes will often tell you how to market to them
5. Repeat

Hope this finds you well!

Sharon Mandler
Senior Digital Strategist

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Another big day for Saatchi Wellness -- and our friends at AZ

I am more pleased that I can put into words, but I'm going to try. . .

On Friday night Saatchi & Saatchi Wellness took home a Silver Clio for our work on AstraZeneca's Seroquel XR. This was a day after we took home the Gold honors at the Rx Club Awards, again for Seroquel XR.

A word about the Clios: this honor carries a lot of prestige given that the Clios are a global competition, so our work was up against 'the best of the best' from all over the world (to see for yourself, please go to http://www.cliohealthcare.com/winners/winners.cfm?medium_id=1 ). Now we received a Silver, but being the proud Managing Director I also have to point out that there were no Gold or Grand Clios awarded this year -- which means, for the second consecutive year, Saatchi Wellness has taken home the highest honor bestowed upon any agency at the Clios (last year we received the Grand Clio for Ambien CR). There is no other agency in the world that can make that claim.

Pretty nice. Congratulations go to Helayne Spivak and the Seroquel XR team -- led by Stu Fink, Jennifer Shirley, Jacob Braude, Paul Schmidt and Steve Pytko. You guys are truly on top of the world.

Please congratulate the entire Seroquel team when you see them for both the Silver Clio and the Gold Rx Awards -- their tenacity and vision for better product is an inspiration to us all. Thank you Seroquel team!

Ned

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Norma Kamali Says Wellness is .... In Fashion!

Did anybody know that Norma Kamali, the famous and iconic fashion designer, is also a wellness guru? She even has a Wellness Café located at 11 West 56th St -- where you can go every week for Wellness Wednesday.

My eyes were opened recently when a friend of mine invited me to a screening event she was organizing to promote the debut of a new documentary series called ‘Conversations- A Dialogue on Wellness Solutions by Norma Kamali’.

The screening was at a private theater at the MOMA, and began with a brief showcase of each of her interviews with people she believed who were instrumental in the area of making positive wellness choices across the areas of beauty, fitness, nutrition, spirituality and health.

The conversations included such personalities as noted choreographer Twyla Tharp, Horst Rechelbacher- the founder of Aveda, Founders of Physique 57, Joe Cross- director and producer of “Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead”, and a handful of others. Each had a distinct point of view, and that became even clearer at the panel discussion that was organized after the viewing.

To learn more, take a look at http://www.normakamalicollection.com/Shared/HTML/conversations.html to take a peek at some of the interviews and to listen to Norma’s perspective.

Hope this finds you well,
Melissa Gordon
VP, Channel Planning

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Good Ideas Need a Little Help From Their Friends

I recently came across this UPS-guy-on-steroids promotional video for a new book by Steven Johnson titled “Where Good Ideas Come From.” Aside from the super engaging way it tells the story, I think the basic premise is fascinating and familiar.

Mr. Johnson’s theory is that big ideas don’t leap from the minds of solitary geniuses. They actually start as hunches that evolve slowly, over time, as a result of colliding with the hunches of other people who are thinking about the same area. As examples, he talks about how the coffee houses during the Age of Enlightenment served as an environment for colliding ideas, which is why we had such a rich explosion of creativity during that period.

The natural leap to today – and the one he makes – is that the proliferation of social technologies is opening the door for another Enlightenment-type explosion of creativity. We are connected with more people more regularly than anyone thought possible, which should set the stage for some fast and furious colliding of hunches.

The great thing about collaboration is that any of us in any setting working on any problem can do it. We here at Wellness have been moving more and more towards collaborative systems for doing our work. Different functional groups, working together hand-in-hand with our customers, is the ideal environment for some great colliding to generate better ideas than any one of us could have thought up on our own.

One important caveat: this does not mean that good ideas come out of group sessions. We find that often these ideas can occur in solitary settings: in the shower, walking the dog, nodding off to sleep. Although these ideas often emerge when we’re alone, if you trace the genealogy of the idea, you will find the genetic material of many other peoples’ ideas built in.

Hope this finds you well,

Jacob Braude

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Learning How To Learn

We have a new junior planner here at SSW, and one of the perks of having young minds around is that their enthusiasm propels them to discover things we more mature folks might not.

Last week, one of the things he discovered was this article in the New York Times on what recent research has taught us about how people learn – one of our favorite topics here at Saatchi & Saatchi Wellness.

Wellness is quite often difficult. For most of us – and our audiences – it includes making some fairly ambitious long-term changes to their behavior. A lot goes into behavior change, but one key ingredient is learning and mastering new information.

Thus I was fascinated by some of the “learning myths” the Times article debunked. Here is my quick-and-dirty synopsis of their three rules for better learning:

1. Say good bye to your favorite study spot. Researchers have discovered that people retain new information better if they vary up the places where they consume this info. They theorize that we store new information by its relation to other data in our brains. When you are learning, your brain is also consuming the sensory data from the environment around you. So, if you change up where you are learning, your brain has more info associated with what you learn, and thus you retain it better.

2. One thing at a time – not so much. Related information gets remembered better than like information. Researchers have demonstrated that students who studied mixed sets of four types of equations retained the whole lesson much better than other students who studied one type of equation at a time.

3. Testing is good! In another experiment, researchers showed that being immediately tested on material you just learned helps you retain that information long term. The effort your brain exerts for the test helps cement the new information into your neurons.

Learning is equal parts important and difficult. It’s comforting that – through the magic of science and research – we can still get better at it.

Hope this finds you well.

Jacob Braude
VP, Planner

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Can you ever treat yourself too well?

Every self-respecting self-help book has a chapter on how to treat yourself better. Well, it seems we’ve taken that a little too much to heart. It turns out that one of the biggest barriers preventing Americans from eating healthfully is that ... we like our treats.

Nielsen's latest global survey on healthy eating shows that for most of the world, the US included, a perceived lack of time, money and availability of healthy choices remain key barriers to a more nutritious diet. But here at home, "the desire to treat myself" trumped such practical considerations.

I don't know if this number is higher than in past years, but I do know that the urge for treats increases with stress, our national disease. So how are marketers answering the call?

A new post on WARC offers some insight into how some of the world's leading food manufacturers are approaching the conundrum of helping us eat more healthfully.

Pepsi is betting on convenience. In a strategy they call the Power of One, favorite snacks will be made with healthier ingredients.

Heinz CEO Bill Johnson sensibly puts the discussion in business terms, and investing in areas that will show a good return.

But of all the smart and successful companies mentioned in the WARC article, it was Nestlé CEO Paul Bulcke who pinned his company's strategy to the one thing Americans seem to want most: pleasure. Nestlé, Bulcke said, is "offering … pleasure, balanced and healthy nutrition to people, to our consumers everywhere in the world."

Ah, healthy pleasures. Just make mine chocolate.

Hope this finds you well,
Johanna

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