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Eli Lilly: a corporate reputation grounded in purpose

February 10, 2008 By 2 Comments

Indianapolis-based Eli Lilly is one of those quiet companies with a good reputation and steady double-digit growth. Last week at the BRITE 08 conference at Columbia University, Mark Kershisnik, the executive director of Eli Lilly and Co. market research and US marketing services, said that Lilly’s sustainable success is rooted in a shared, common purpose that everyone in the global company is passionate about:

Developing innovations to help patients succeed in the ways they want to lead their lives,

which goes far beyond developing scientific innovations.

?“We exist to solve tough problems that help to get people healthy and earn a decent return on our investments. This is a deep-rooted belief throughout the company. This is what motivates us – not being the biggest or making the most money,” explained Mark.

One of the company’s programs that’s good for patients and good for Lilly is Oncology on Canvas, a global art competition where people confronted with cancer share their journey through their art.? More than 2,000 pieces of art from 43 countries were submitted as part of the 2006 competition, now traveling around the world. The 2008 competition is underway.

[photopress:Embrace_Life_Lilly_Oncology_on_Canvas_1_2.jpg,full,centered]

The benefit of Oncology on Canvas for Lilly goes beyond corporate citizenship.? Mark said the art has been an incredibly powerful way for Eli Lilly scientists to emotionally understand the person for whom they are developing new drug treatment.? “The art makes the patient show up in our organization in a graphical, emotional way, and helps us think about the patient on their terms, not ours.”

Lilly is a great example of what happens when a company organizes around its customers, with a passion for providing value to those customers:? financial success, sustainable innovation, low employee turnover, and a stellar corporate reputation.

PS— The visual above is titled “Embrace Life” and was a winner of the Best of the United States(3rd) in the 2006 Oncology on Canvas competition

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Marketing lessons from stand-up comics

February 10, 2008 By Leave a Comment

As I study? what it takes to get customers’ attention, I’ve become a student of observing stand-up comics.? No one has a harder time getting and keeping an audience’s attention.?? Last Thursday I saw eight comics perform at the little hole in the wall club, Stand-Up New York.? Two were outstanding, four were so-so, and two were bombs.

The bombs were mean-spirited, perpetuating tired, old stereotypes. Worse, they didn’t seem passionate about what they talked about; their focus seemed more intent on setting up a punch line to get a laugh.? The very worst came across as condescending and egocentric? — me vs. all you stupid people. In fact, he picked on an elderly couple in a way that cam e across as nasty and hurtful, not fun-spirited heckling.

The stars, on the other hand, took issues, human behavior and stereotypes and riffed on them through fresh lenses.? Their material was hilarious because the comics’ points of view were so different, insightful – and of course warped.? They were edgy, often raw, yet always inclusive, helping us how we’re weirdly all the same. They seemed more self-less, genuinely wanting to connect with the audience vs. just tell jokes.

While I’m still learning, here are some possible marketing lessons from successful stand-up comics:

  • Challenge assumptions with counterintuitive and contrarian perspectives. Great stand-ups start with assumptions that get people’s heads nodding and then, pow, present a wildly counterintuitive view.
  • Share real personal stories. Genuine stories resonate, and audiences can quickly sniff out the stories that are set-ups vs. real.
  • Be intent on giving the audience a great experience; it’s about them, not us.
  • Be inclusive? without being intrusive.
  • Be likable.
  • Be fearless and experiment: some things will connect, others won’t the only way to know is to try.
  • Tap into passionate beliefs. “You must go on stage with a passionate desire and the intent to communicate your thoughts and feelings, not just make people laugh,” says Judy Carter in her book, Stand-Up Comedy.

PS – If you ever get a chance to see Kyle Grooms, don’t miss him. He’s likely to become the next big name in American comedians. Amazing talent and one of the stars last week.

[photopress:Kyle_Grooms_1.jpg,full,centered].

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Cool tools: Silobreaker and HubDub

February 6, 2008 By Leave a Comment

Two new services featured at Demo 08 are big hits at our office and at my house: Silobreaker? (office) and HubDub (home, my husband in particular).

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Silobreaker provides contextual and graphical search results, allowing you to “see” a map with the hot spots where news is happening, create trend graphs, and, my favorite, see a network map of the search items that visually shows contextual relationships among the items. This latter feature is particularly helpful in understanding what issues are most closely related, how close — or far apart — your company may be from an issue of industry significance, and what issues are rather irrelevant. Here’s a network map I created from searching on “social media” and “social networking.”? I see value for this service for competitive insights, corporate issues management, brand positioning and issues monitoring.

For more about Silobreaker, check out this post from Patti Anklam.

I fear my husband is addicted to HubDub, a week-old service that lets people forecast how news stories, sports events, financial markets and other happenings are likely to turn out. The addictive part is that you can compete in the leaderboard feature; the more and better your predictions, the higher your leaderboard ranking. I hope my husband;s business sales don’t show an inverse relationship to his leaderboard rankings.

The value of HubDub?? it certainly gets people more involved with news and issues., and has potential as an educational too. And it’s much safer than gambling.

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