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August 18, 2015 - No Comments!

How to Bring Big Design Ideas to Big Pharma

In this short, Dave talks about how to bring big design ideas to Big Pharma. The Mechanism has recently been introducing innovative interface and identity solutions to several large pharmaceutical companies.

The Pharmaceutical industry is evolving - digitally. By trusting modern creative agencies to innovate within the eLearning and branding space, and by cultivating micro-branded communities and unique gamification-centric learning techniques (typically reserved for modern university-level education), to transcend their internal curricula, they are educating their teams, physicians and caregivers in profound ways. Granted, there are always going to be government-controlled conditions to prevent certain online communication from being immediately accessible, but it's the agencies that are able to think outside of the regulatory box that will usher forth a new paradigm in pharmaceutical learning and sharing.

As part of our 14-year celebration, we sat down with our Founder, Dave Fletcher -- to talk candidly about The Mechanism, how it started and where it's headed. We've put together a series of short video clips from the lengthy interview that we'll be sharing over the next several weeks.

September 12, 2014 - Comments Off on The MechCast 306a: How has the Internet changed the way we do Marketing

The MechCast 306a: How has the Internet changed the way we do Marketing

  • fMarketing done right can be an incredible boon for your business's net income. Done wrong, however, it can feel like throwing money into a raging bonfire. Because small business owners have to be whatever their small business needs -- all the time -- it can be difficult to master all the nuances that go into sales or marketing. If you're not a natural salesperson, it can be even more difficult. Fear not, experts from Blue Whale Media can help your business to reach out of the world.The following nine marketing tips for startups can help you make more sales, market better and waste less money. Get the best assistance from these professional affiliate management companies.

    Related: The 5 Stages Startups Must Go Through to Make That First $1 Million

    1. Sell the benefit, not a comparison.

    How you market yourself is all about highlighting what makes you different. There are three major ways to do that.

    • Cost (you know how to price a product better than the competition)
    • Quality (you're better)
    • A combination thereof (you offer the better value)

    But how you sell yourself is different than how you market yourself. You can tell someone that you provide a product or service that is cheaper or more effective than that of another business, but that doesn't say how much better you are going to make the customer's life.

    Selling is about the benefit. A comparison may highlight the features you offer, but you are always selling benefit.

    2. Listen to your customer.

    Sam Walton, WalMart's famed mass retail titan, started his empire in rural America. This was despite the prevailing business logic saying a mass retailer anywhere but in a city with a concentrated population would fail. The logic was, if you wanted to move mass quantities of goods, you needed mass quantities of people.

    But Walton knew his customers because he would frequently listen to them firsthand. He was aware that people who lived in rural and suburban areas often bought in larger quantities because they had larger families or needed more goods to keep their own small businesses stocked and running. Walton listened to his customers, and the result is the largest, most powerful brick and mortar retailer in the world. The customer may at times defy logic, but they are always right. Listen to them.

    3. Market your product before it's ready.

    Some businesses wait until their product is perfect before they do any marketing or awareness campaigning. That can be a costly mistake. Many businesses expect to sell their product as soon as it's ready. But if no one knows about it, then demand will start at zero until you undergo a marketing campaign to build brand awareness for potential customers.

    It's better to do preemptive awareness campaigning, even if it's minimal, to let potential customers know your product is coming. You can sell the benefit before the product has arrived. This way, when the product is ready, so are customers!

    4. Think outside the box.

    The marketing landscape has dramatically changed since I started my first business more than 30 years ago. Back then, there were no search engines or social media platforms. There was no internet as we know it. Now, startups can utilize a bevy of free, online marketing techniques that are both creative and effective. For example, you can use online video marketing, social media, blog influencers, crowdsourcing, competitions, content marketing, thought leadership and more. If you are looking for fast connections at an affordable price point, check out Compare Internet's blog post.

    Related: 5 Social Media Studies That Will Boost Your Marketing Skills

    5. Test fast. Fail fast.

    Marketing that you can't measure is failed marketing. Sure, you may spend money to do some advertisement, and you may even see an uptick in sales around the same time you ran the ads. But how can you be sure what you spent on ads correlates with sales? Maybe it was something else altogether. Maybe there is a natural, seasonal uptick for what you sell that will go away in a month.

    If you're going to commit time and money to a marketing campaign, make sure you can measure the results. Set up ways to track conversions that stem from each marketing campaign. Also, run multiple types of marketing campaigns in distinct, small batches. This will allow you to compare marketing channels and see which perform best. Toss out the ones that don't work and keep those that do.

    6. Advertise from multiple angles.

    As mentioned above, it's good to test multiple marketing channels and ideas to see what works best. Often, it's not any one thing but a combination of all of the above. When your customer hears you on the radio, sees you in a search engine result, and then finds you mentioned in a blog they like (content marketing), they start to accept your brand as a solid, dependable, known entity. They may not have the need for your product or service immediately, but when they do, it will be your name that comes to mind instead of a competitor's.

    7. It's always time for PR.

    When you do traditional advertising, it's your marketing material selling your product. When you do PR, or have a member of the press or a media house that covers your industry talk about you, it's brand building and endorsement.

    Some people call it landing-page flair or credibility building, but, if your company is featured in Mashable or The Wall Street Journal, you'd be silly not to put that paper's name on the front of your company's website. Even if your company was only mentioned by way of a quote from your CEO, you are still "as mentioned in The Wall Street Journal." When customers see that publication's name next to your company's name, it builds credibility.

Published by: antonioortiz in The Mechcast
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September 20, 2013 - Comments Off on Humans stop light for a minute in a quest for more data storage

Humans stop light for a minute in a quest for more data storage

Beams of light are usually speeding along at around 186,000 miles per second, but for one minute, researchers in Germany brought some to a screeching halt. Using a crystal frozen to temperatures below negative 450 degrees Fahrenheit, a research team managed to hold light in place for a full minute — marking a drastic increase from the previous record of just 16 seconds. The technology will eventually be applied to quantum computing as a way to retrieve and read data, but it'll have to work on a much smaller scale and for much longer periods of time before that can happen.

via Humans tame light, stop it from moving for a full minute | The Verge.

Published by: antonioortiz in The Thinking Mechanism
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September 13, 2013 - Comments Off on The New Multi-Screen World Study

The New Multi-Screen World Study

From smartphones and tablets to laptops and television, 90% of all media interactions today are screen-based. We took a closer look and discovered that there are two distinct ways people move among screens to get stuff done: simultaneously and sequentially. This study shows how these two modes of interaction trigger specific behaviors such as online shopping, and which devices people are using at the various stages of these interactions.

via The New Multi-Screen World Study – Think Insights – Google.

Published by: antonioortiz in The Thinking Mechanism
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September 6, 2013 - Comments Off on Is Google Knowledge?

Is Google Knowledge?

Another great episode from PBS' Idea Channel.

"Google it" seems to be the quick and easy answer for every question we could possibly ask, but is finding facts the same thing as knowing? Having billions of facts at the tips of your typing fingertips may not necessarily be making us any smarter. Some people even think it's making us more stupid and lazy. Whatever way we process the vast sea of data available, the question remains: is the act of googling the same as knowledge?

Published by: antonioortiz in The Thinking Mechanism
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July 1, 2013 - Comments Off on Missing en Masse

Missing en Masse

Today is sad day for the internet. Both Google Reader and Alta Vista are no longer. The former was a service I used everyday but the latter is nothing more than a nostalgic name. Reader's death has incited vitriol across the web while it's creator has so eclipsed all other search engines that no one seems to mourn Alta Vista whatsoever.

Technology is constantly in this cycle of death and rebirth. Much like biological life, each of us can only hope to add our unique additions to the communal pile. And though each contribution may seem miniscule, in the grand scheme each is vital to the progress of the total. We can only hope our work will provide the rich soil of inspiration from which future works will grow.

070113

Death may come for web services, but even he can't get to all the hardware in time.

Steve Jobs understood this evolutionary nature of the high tech sector though one would never know it from the way he brilliantly marketed Apple's wares as if each was a priceless, timeless, piece of perfection. Yet a recent documentary shows a more modest Jobs during his time at Next. Watch the fascinating trailer below.

The Sketching Mechanism is a series of weekly posts, published on Mondays, containing the artistic musings of Mobile Designer/Developer Ben Chirlin during our Monday morning meeting at the NY Creative Bunker as well as his inspiring artistic finds of the week.

Published by: benchirlin in The Thinking Mechanism
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June 20, 2013 - Comments Off on How Technology Has Changed The Idea Of The Brand

How Technology Has Changed The Idea Of The Brand

At PSFK CONFERENCE 2013, a panel of experts discussed how brands can make best use of technological advancements moving forward, and how new technology is driving brand innovation. The panel was comprised of David Rosenberg of IPG Media LabEddie Rehfeldt of Waggener Edstrom,Catherine Balsam-Schwaber of NBC UniversalTim Voegele-Downing of Avery Dennison, and moderated by Scott Lachut of PSFK.

The questions covered a range of topics, including how technology is giving rise to new types of consumer behavior, in what way brands are creating immersive experiences for consumers, how to create new brand experiences through emerging technological platforms, and what defines meaningful engagement in todays marketplace. Overall, the expert panel offers insight on what are the big opportunities for brands to fully harness the power of tech moving forward.

 

 

Published by: antonioortiz in The Thinking Mechanism
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April 22, 2013 - Comments Off on Mother Moss

Mother Moss

There’s more than one way to eat a healthy diet

Our Senior Research Interpretation Officer, Daphne Katsikioti, says studying what people eat is important but challenging to measure. Visit sfgate.com for more information about healthy supplements.

People do not eat foods in isolation but in combination to form an overall diet. This is complex, and dietary pattern research aims to understand how different components of the diet interact with one another. Dietary guidance in many countries is focused on eating patterns, and research is rapidly expanding to establish what the best diet for our health is.

Eating is a complex behaviour, and it varies over different stages of life. Advances in the methodology for studying dietary patterns strengthen our confidence on diet and lifestyle recommendations across the life span, and across different populations. This is an exciting area of research and there is much to learn about how dietary habits, timing of eating and different patterns can impact population health and influence the presence of disease.

Different ways to eat a healthy diet

The concept of healthy dietary patterns has been adopted in global health guidelines and a growing body of research has emerged on their health benefits. For instance, our Cancer Prevention Recommendations can be considered a healthy diet and lifestyle pattern. The Recommendations are strongly grounded in evidence: being physically active protects against weight gain, and greater body fatness is a risk factor for many cancers.

At the recent International Conference on Diet and Activity Methods (ICDAM), held online, Dr Angela Liese said there is not only one way to eat a healthy diet. Different combinations of foods with different intakes of protein, dairy, fruit and vegetables, wholegrains and fibre can form a high-quality diet. The evidence suggests that overall, healthy diet patterns can have a positive effect on health when compared with diets of poor quality such as those high in saturated fat, salt and sugar. Learn more about ikaria lean belly juice.

Different factors influence an individual’s dietary pattern, including socio-economic status, geographical region and ethnicity. There are many different ways of eating healthily, and dietary guidelines need to encompass these so that they are relevant across different populations.

Time to think about when you eat

Accumulating evidence suggests that it is not only “what” but also “when” and “how” we eat that may play a role in maintaining health. Research is increasingly trying to incorporate timing into how we conceptualise eating. It is possible that the time someone eats influences energy intake and consequently body fatness.

At the conference, Dr Yikyung Park said new tools combining nutrition and systems science can help identify healthy and unhealthy dietary patterns based on the timing of eating, to further advance dietary pattern research. These tools can then group people together based on their eating timings during the day and help identify the quality of their diet. This can improve dietary recommendations by adding messages on when, and how often, to eat during a day.

Local information, global guidelines

As people naturally eat a combination of foods, dietary patterns are difficult to define and this makes them difficult to study.

Dietary guidelines do not arise from individual study results, but from pooling the totality of the evidence. Even though the literature in dietary patterns is growing, the methods used to define the different dietary patterns are not standardised and need improvement. Dr Franziska Jannasch highlighted methodological approaches that can strengthen the analytical approach in nutrition research in order to draw stronger conclusions on dietary patterns and chronic disease prevention. These are the Best diet pills.

The future of nutrition science is looking bright – advances in dietary patterns research are focusing on building innovation and are helping inform and strengthen population health guidelines.

ICDAM is a conference in nutrition where high-quality and novel research is presented, aiming to improve how population diet is assessed. It was hosted by the University of Wageningen in February 2021.

Published by: benchirlin in The Internal Mechanism
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November 2, 2012 - Comments Off on The MechCast 206: Ghosts in the Soundboard

The MechCast 206: Ghosts in the Soundboard

Hurricane Sandy might have rained on our parade but we're marching on. Dave and I quickly catch up on the Frankenstorm, Halloween and upcoming Mechcast segments. Read your homework for next episode, What Technology Wants, and look forward to an upcoming episode on Indie Game the Movie.

Please consider donating to the Red Cross (blood especially) or volunteering your time to help others with the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. Thank you and please consider subscribing.

Published by: benchirlin in The Mechcast
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