While compliance is always a factor that looms over the planning and execution of life-science events involving healthcare professionals, there’s more room for creative event design than many planners might realize.
So says Vanessa E. Bass, CMP, MMP, HMCC, event-data strategist for Foresight Management Group. A longtime medical-event planner, she often works with various pharma firms on making their speaker programs more effective for the hosts and for HCP attendees.
First, “I think a lot of planners don’t realize that speaker programs don’t have to be stand-alone,” notes Bass (in photo). “They can be connected to product launches, product-theater sessions, even symposia and patient-focused programs. And because many of the speakers for those meetings are also secured through the company’s speakers bureau, it makes things fairly easy” when a pharma or medical-device firm wants to co-locate speaker programs with such events.
In addition, she notes that speaker programs can employ a variety of formats to get the attention of potential HCP attendees. “They are not just dinner meetings anymore—the ‘lunch and learn’ real-time hybrid concept has gotten a lot of traction, for instance. And they can be conducted as moderated panel discussions, patient-perspective sessions, one-on-one HCP consultations, and in other ways.”
In fact, Bass has been busy lately with “train-the-trainer” sessions designed to make speakers more effective across different session formats, getting them to deliver key data and information for a given product in engaging ways.
Especially for hybrid events with HCPs in attendance, “we have trainers come in to teach speakers things like how to make the right amount of eye contact in the room but also balance their attention between in-person and virtual attendees,” says Bass. And “we train online moderators to engage their audience with chat forums and other tools, while also teaching them how to troubleshoot when a tech problem occurs. Overall, we make sure online HCP attendees are getting the attention they deserve.”
3 Engagement Ideas
• For some recent speaker programs, Bass has used a product called StoryFile, which is an A.I. chatbot enhanced by video. During or after a speaker-program session, in-person and online attendees can ask the chatbot any question about the product, and the response will come in the form of a short, pre-recorded video. The video respondent might be an HCP, patient, company rep, or another source—even a custom avatar.
“The goal is to create more memorable takeaways,” Bass says. “This concept works great during sessions but also at exhibit booths.” One critically important feature of the product: “It can be trained to not provide any answers that might be off-label for that product or otherwise noncompliant,” she notes.
• Another idea Bass is keen about: having a professional illustrator in the room to create sketches that highlight the theme, key points, and flow of a session. “The artist is bringing the words to life in a different way, which spurs conversations in the moment and creates a deeper impression—and it’s something attendees can refer back to when they go home,” she says. “It adds a bit of a ‘wow’ factor to the meeting.”
• Lastly, Keen has worked with the creative team for a few clients to create superhero avatars, each one representing a small group of attendees sitting together. “It can be done with a proprietary program but also with a number of A.I. tools on the market,” she says.
The avatar can be used throughout the day to display each HCP group’s questions and commentary on different topics, while also allowing for friendly competitive opportunities such as quizzes, brainstorming competitions, and more.
“I’ve had a few clients say, ‘This is a very serious topic we’re covering and we don't want to make a game of it.’ But it’s simply allowing for engagement as people learn critical content,” Bass says. “We all want active participation in our events. If you're making things more tangible for them and easier to digest, you’ll get better retention. People remember experiences.”
Partly from using these ideas, Bass has seen engagement scores among HCPs rise by about 30 percent at the speaker programs she’s managed over the past 18 months.
