October 2009
The ContextMedia team exhibited again at this year's DTC Perspectives' Regional Conference in Livingston, NJ, on October 14th-15th. This year's conference focused on "Reform and Refocus: The Impact of Healthcare Reform on DTC Communications".
The Diabetes Health Network was also showcased at the Clinical Endocrinology Update (CEU) conference in Atlanta on October 10th.
Company CEO Rishi Shah was in attendance at Strategy Institute's event on Digital Signage in New York City, NY, on October 6th-7th.
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May-August 2009
ContextMedia exhibited at the 2009 American Association of Diabetes Educators (AADE) Conference in Atlanta August 5th-8th.
ContextMedia also showcased the Diabetes Health Network with a booth at the American Diabetes Association (ADA) Scientific Sessions in New Orleans, LA on June 6-8th, 2009.
The ContextMedia team was in attendance at the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists (AACE) conference in Houston, TX on May 13-17th, 2009, and its CAP (Corporate AACE Partnership) meeting as well.
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April 2009
ContextMedia recently participated at two conferences that are at the intersection of Point-of-Care Media: the DTC National Conference in Washington, D.C. and the MediaPost's Digital Out-Of-Home Conference in New York City.
Here is ContextMedia CEO Rishi Shah's take on the 5 biggest ideas from both conferences:
1) Size for size's sake is a dead concept: Sophisticated marketers will seek qualified scale, realizing that targeted channels such as interactive and specialty point-of-care require far less total reach to produce the same bottom-line impact as traditional media. At the DOOH conference, Jack Sullivan of Starcom popularized the concept of DOOH as a "lean" or "low-fat" CPM channel since it cuts out the ineffective reach and therefore reduces total cost while increasing return for brands.
2) Consumer state of mind is critical: Peter Bowen, founder/CEO of SeeSaw Networks, made the point that even if gas stations have a large quantity of female consumers, gas station networks may not be an ideal fit for beauty brands because women are not in a "beauty state of mind" while refueling their vehicles. Similarly, healthcare marketers must select platforms that provide useful information to their target consumers in a relevant context. The "screens everywhere" deployment philosophy that characterized digital media in its nascent stages has passed.
3) Regulatory fears dominate DTC Conference: While there was a wide range of sentiments on this issue, the consensus was that a total ban of DTC advertising was very unlikely in the coming years. Far more likely options include extended launch moratoriums and more frequent warnings from the FDA. The most important take-away for our industry is that we must step-up and self-regulate before government agencies are forced to micro-regulate our consumer marketing process. Stepping up means aligning our marketing activity with the larger objective of providing educational resources to patients in partnership with their HCPs.
4) Openness to new models is at an all time high: More than at any other time, healthcare marketers as well as their agency and media partners seem genuinely ready to make fundamental changes to their consumer marketing approach. Whether these changes are shifts toward longer-format content that's more educational, movement towards targeted and contextually relevant media platforms or investment in compliance programs that help patients adhere to their therapy - I know that our industry will be fundamentally different a few years from now.
5) Lack of "standard measurement" plagues DOOH: The lack of measurement standards is still a key constraint to increases in ad-spend for DOOH according to many at the conference including out-of-home agencies and network owners. Point-of-Care was recognized as an exception to this problem as a venue that has been able to reliably offer measurable and robust results to their advertisers while the majority of DOOH networks have struggled to define standard parameters regarding the measurement of viewership. The OVAB (Out-of-home Video Advertising Bureau) along with a number of research companies have put forth good solutions to these questions and major networks are moving towards consensus.
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February 2009
ContextMedia CEO, Rishi Shah, spoke to aspiring entrepreneurs at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign campus on entrepreneurship, its challenges and his own journey in founding ContextMedia.
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January 2009
Recent conferences where ContextMedia had a presence through exhibits and attendance include:
- The American Thyroid Association conference in Miami on January 23rd-24th to inform endocrinologists of our educational media platform, Diabetes Health Network, for their patients in the waiting room
- ContextMedia announced a pilot for their second national network, Heart Health Network, at the American Heart Association's scientific sessions in New Orleans held November 8-11th.
- The ContextMedia team exhibited and participated in the DTC Perspectives' annual conference, DTC in the Era of Consumer Choice, in Livingston, NJ, which was held on October 29-30th.
- Our team exhibited at MedAdNews' first annual conference, PharmaMed Marketing & Media, in New Brunswick, NJ, on September 15-16th as well as attended the CHPA (Consumer Healthcare Products Association) Market Exchange on September 17-18th, also held in New Brunswick, NJ.
For more information or to set-up a meeting, please contact Shradha Agarwal at Shradha@ContextMediaInc.com