Eight great location-based mobile campaigns from 2012 Location-based mobile services have been one of the major digital trends this year, as they provide a great opportunity for retailers and brands to create contextual experiences to engage their customers. One of the most obvious uses of location services is providing targeted offers and promotions to smartphone owners in-store. But we’ve also seen brands with little or no retail presence using mobile to add an additional layer of interaction to traditional outdoor advertising. There are a number of great examples of brands using location-based mobile services this year, but here is a run down of eight of my favourite campaigns. If you think I’ve missed any good ones, please point them out in the comments section... Douche Parking The Village, a Moscow-based online newspaper, created a free app called Parking Douche that aims to make bad parking socially unacceptable using digital media. Hiscox Hiscox ads were also shown on Wi-Fi login pages before users had begun browsing the web. McDonald’s
Tweet This: FDA Finally Proposes Social Media Guidelines | Advertising Health | Healthcare Advertising agency news, jobs and gossip After several years of anticipation, the FDA has finally proposed a pair of guidelines for how drug and device makers should cope with some of the challenges and pitfalls posed by social media. One of the so-called draft guidances offers instructions on how companies should attempt to correct product information on websites that are run by others, such as chat rooms. The otheraddresses how products – including risk and benefit information – can be discussed in venues such as Twitter, as well as paid search links on Google and Yahoo, all of which have limited space. This will involve using links to product web sites, for instances, that can be clicked. “These are intended to have a beneficial impact on public health,” Tom Abrams, who heads the FDA Office of Prescription Drug Promotion, tells us. “The information should not be promotional and should be factually correct. In the interim, the lack of guidance has vexed companies. The guidances, however, are unlikely to be the last word.
Drug companies may soon have to tweet dangerous side effects The FDA has proposed a new set of social media guidelines that will require drug companies to tweet their products’ side-effects to the world, reports The Wall Street Journal. Though still tentative, the proposal would make it so that all the benefits and the side-effects of a companie's products — even the most dangerous ones — will need to be condensed in single, 140 character tweet. if they can't fit all the informantion, "the firm should reconsider using Twitter." If a firm "concludes that adequate benefit and risk information, as well as other required information, cannot all be communicated within the same tweet, then the firm should reconsider using Twitter for the intended promotional message," the FDA wrote in the regulations. Already, there has been a ton of backlash from the drug companies, but also from people who believe that the regulations limit free speech. they can still remind the public that their product exists
Roche app measures Parkinson's disease fluctuations This is another fine example of how smartphones could be used to good effect in modern day medicine. Roche Pharma Research & Early Development (pRED) has developed a smartphone-based monitoring system for those with Parkinson’s disease (PD) that complements the traditional physician-led assessments with automated tests that continuously measure their symptom fluctuations. This could be the first time that such an app has been used to measure disease and symptom severity in a medicine development program in Parkinson’s disease. “The app is being used in a Phase I trial run by Prothena, in collaboration with Roche in PD. Patients will be asked to follow a daily routine with the app, using it every day for the duration of the trial. A series of activities “The data collected will be used to predict patient UPDRS scores and study symptom fluctuations throughout the duration of the trial. The active tests will ask patients to do a series of 30-second long activities. Key role of investigators
Beyond Games: Why VR Will Soon Be Vitally Important to Healthcare Virtual reality (VR) is the new [old] buzzword [again], capturing the imagination of a new generation of early adopters, technologists and gamers. With its early roots in the 1950s simulation community, there have been decades of research, dedicated journals and conferences that have built a substantial VR knowledge base. You can imagine how the current VR hype cycle must appear like a true déjà vu event for many VR veterans. But what’s different this time is that the technology is now within reach of the consumer…and almost out of reach of motion sickness. And, there is a new benefactor: the gaming and entertainment market. The majority of recently created VR content is, therefore, made solely for the user’s enjoyment. Consider the healthcare sector, which is a target rich environment for VR. Physical Therapy in Immersive Virtual Worlds Physical therapy can be challenging, uncomfortable and boring. Understanding Disease: A VR Experience Is Worth a Million Words