The healthcare and biopharmaceutical field is increasingly crowded in many areas, with mounting cost pressures and new entrants wanting to carve out a piece of this profitable and growing industry.

As new products are launched in competitive specialties, pharmaceuticals go off patent or new applications are found for existing moieties, the need to differentiate and brand products has never been greater.

This holds true for both OTC and prescription drugs, because physicians essentially respond to the same stimuli as consumers, though they may not be aware of it. Consumers and healthcare providers are similarly pressed for time and are overwhelmed by competing brands with conflicting claims and messages in the din of today’s marketplace.

That’s where a creative solution that stands out above the rest and truly captures the beholder’s attention can add considerable value. It’s not just about costs, benefits and side effects any more, but also about lifestyle and managing the patient’s quality of life.

From laboratory moety to market brand: Nobel-prize winning 1921 discovery from the University of Toronto becomes commercial pharmaceutical product by Eli Lilly sixty years later

In the meantime, the marketplace has dramatically changed with our current economically much more challenging times. Images of smiling patients no longer fully connect with today’s weary consumers. It takes considerably more to create market pull.

Consumers are demanding increasing transparency, governments are tightening regulations, while hospitals are managing costs and improving safety. This confluence of factors increases both the insecurity of patients and the pressure on healthcare providers. Consumers usually seek comfort in brands across all industries and pharmaceuticals are no exception.

Securing, managing, and investing in brands from OTC to prescription drugs and medical devices has become an increasingly strategic issue in the industry. Blockbuster drugs are much harder to develop and R&D expenditures have increased dramatically. On the other hand, the leverage brands can provide translates into goodwill and loyalty manufacturers can take to the bank.

Healthcare communications is a specialty area in which ckdt has a solid track record.

Talk with someone who knows healthcare marketing. Contact ckdt today.

By effectively connecting consumers with branded products and services online, affiliate marketing has powered large sectors of e-commerce through various forms of online advertising and SEO tools, as well as the extensive use of Web2.0 blogs, forums and social networks.

Affiliate marketing is growing rapidly across many sectors that now include financial services, healthcare, publishing, travel and entertainment. The affiliate industry is continuing to expand during these economically difficult times. Affiliates are expected to spend US$2.3 billion in the US alone this year according to Forrester Research.

Branding in the brick and mortar world builds trust, identification and loyalty with consumer groups. As these move online, the models pioneered by Amazon, eBay and other successful online merchants are being adopted by vendors in many mainstream sectors with the affiliate channel opening up new opportunities every day.

Being part of an online community from groups on Facebook or LinkedIn to Twitter feeds, and interacting with its other members, builds trust that can — with care and over time — be converted into sales.

The explosive growth of social networks has made them the hot, go-to place for online marketing. They do however need to be part of, and integrated into a broader marketing mix. The same holds true for affiliate marketing campaigns.

Driven by the recessionary need for value, the renewed focus on ROI has made both social network and affiliate marketing highly attractive lower-risk, lower cost propositions.

Nevertheless, due to the unregulated frontier mentality of these emerging media, the risks for companies can be considerable. That is a lesson certain large consumer brands had to learn the hard way through negative viral campaigns launched against them, which they were unable to contain.

Affiliate marketers and networks are making so much money, merchants of all flavours would be foolish not to pay attention.

Social Performance in the Non-Profit Sector:

Triple-bottom-line (3BL) accounting is gaining traction in the business sector as stakeholders demand a broader sense of accountability from our corporate citizens. With Non-Profit Organizations (NPOs) being held more accountable than ever, a similar trend can be observed in the non-profit sector.

Many non-profits have a mission to do good for society by serving a particular community, be it in the arts, social services, healthcare, education or recreation. Their basic mandate is to work for the good of the communities they serve.

Since the major reductions in funding the sector on the part of government in the 1990s, government, donors, the general public, and other stakeholder groups of NPOs have started to demand increasing transparency and evidence of effectiveness and efficiency in the way the nonprofits are run and their budgets are expended.

NPOs have applied a variety of measures for this purpose which range from improved governance to a more strategic orientation in management practices and various forms of reporting including public disclosure.

Reporting practices still focus on the financial aspects of nonprofit management, but increasingly the environmental and social dimensions are being scrutinized and even quantified for measurement and management purposes.  The old business axiom that “what gets measured gets managed” applies as much to the voluntary sector.

Using The Land Conservancy (TLC), Victoria, B.C., as an example this posting explores whether, and how, such measurement tools might be used to the benefit of the organization and its constituents.

The above is an introduction to a paper written by Stephan Burckhardt for “Leading and Managing in the Non-Profit Sector” at the University of Victoria. Download the full paper here.