Tag : life science advertising

Google Ads Auto-Applied Recommendations Are Terrible

Carlton Hoyt 2:51 pm , June 13, 2023

Unfortunately, Google has attempted to make them ubiquitous.

Google Ads has been rapidly expanding their use of auto-applied recommendations recently, to the point where it briefly became my least favorite thing until I turned almost all auto-apply recommendations off for all the Google Ads accounts which we manage.

Google Ads has a long history of thinking it’s smarter than you and failing. Left unchecked, its “optimization” strategies have the potential to drain your advertising budgets and destroy your advertising ROI. Many users of Google Ads’ product ads should be familiar with this. Product ads don’t allow you to set targeting, and instead Google chooses the targeting based on the content on the product page. That, by itself, is fine. The problem is when Google tries to maximize its ROI and looks to expand the targeting contextually. To give a practical example of this, we were managing an account advertising rotary evaporators. Rotary evaporators are very commonly used in the cannabis industry, so sometimes people would search for rotary evaporator related terms along with cannabis terms. Google “learned” that cannabis-related terms were relevant to rotary evaporators: a downward spiral which eventually led to Google showing this account’s product ads for searches such as “expensive bongs.” Most people looking for expensive bongs probably saw a rotary evaporator, didn’t know what it was but did see it was expensive, and clicked on it out of curiosity. Google took that cue as rotary evaporators being relevant for searches for “expensive bongs” and then continued to expand outwards from there. The end result was us having to continuously play negative keyword whack-a-mole to try to exclude all the increasingly irrelevant terms that Google thought were relevant to rotary evaporators because the ads were still getting clicks. Over time, this devolved into Google expanding the rotary evaporator product ads to searches for – and this is not a joke – “crack pipes”.

The moral of that story, which is not about auto-applied recommendations, is that Google does not understand complex products and services such as those in the life sciences. It likewise does not understand the complexities and nuances of individual life science businesses. It paints in broad strokes, because broad strokes are easier to code, the managers don’t care because their changes make Google money, and considering Google has something of a monopoly it has very little incentive to improve its services because almost no one is going to pull their advertising dollars from the company which has about 90% of search volume excluding China. Having had some time to see the changes which Google’s auto-apply recommendations make, you can see the implicit assumptions which got built in. Google either thinks you are selling something like pizza or legal services and largely have no clue what you’re doing, or that you have a highly developed marketing program with holistic, integrated analytics.

As an example of the damage that Google’s auto-applied recommendations can do, take a CRO we are working with. Like many CROs, they offer services across a number of different indications. They have different ad groups for different indications. After Google had auto-applied some recommendations, some of which were bidding-related, we ended up with ad groups which had over 100x difference in cost per click. In an ad group with highly specific and targeted keywords, there is no reasonable argument for how Google could possibly optimize in a way which, in the process of optimizing for conversions, it decided one ad group should have a CPC more than 100x that of another. The optimizations did not lead to more conversions, either.

Google’s “AI” ad account optimizer further decided to optimize a display ad campaign for the same client by changing bidding from manual CPC to optimizing for conversions. The campaign went from getting about 1800 clicks / week at a cost of about $30, to getting 96 clicks per week at a cost of $46. CPC went from $0.02 to $0.48! No wonder they wanted to change the bidding; they showed the ads 70x less (CTR was not materially different before / after Google’s auto-applied recommendations) and charged 24x more. Note that the targeting did not change. What Google was optimizing for was their own revenue per impression! It’s the same thing they’re doing when they decide to show rotary evaporator product ads on searches for crack pipes.

*“Save time.” Is that what we’re doing?*

Furthermore, Google’s optimizations to the ads themselves amount to horribly generic guesswork. A common optimization is to simply include the name of the ad group or terms from pieces of the destination URL in ad copy. GPT-3 would be horrified at the illiteracy of Google Ads’ optimization “AI”.

A Select Few Auto-Apply Recommendations Are Worth Leaving On

Google has a total of 23 recommendation types. Of those, I always leave on:

Use optimized ad rotation. There is very little opportunity for this to cause harm, and it addresses a point difficult to determine on your own: what ads will work best at what time. Just let Google figure this out. There isn’t any potential for misaligned incentives here.
Expand your reach with Google search partners. I always have this on anyway. It’s just more traffic. Unless you’re particularly concerned about the quality of traffic from sites which aren’t google.com, there’s no reason to turn this off.
Upgrade your conversion tracking. This allows for more nuanced conversion attribution, and is generally a good idea.

A whole 3/24. Some others are situationally useful, however:

Add responsive search ads can be useful if you’re having problems with quality score and your ad relevance is stated as being “below average”. This will, generally, allow Google to generate new ad copy that it thinks is relevant. Be warned, Google is very bad at generating ad copy. It will frequently keyword spam without regard to context, but at least you’ll see what it wants to you to do to generate more “relevant” ads. Note that I suggest this over “improve your responsive search ads” such that Google doesn’t destroy the existing ad copy which you may have spent time and effort creating.
Remove redundant keywords / remove non-serving keywords. Google says that these options will make your account easier to manage, and that is generally true. I usually have these off because if I have a redundant keyword it is usually for a good reason and non-serving keywords may become serving keywords occasionally if volume improves for a period of time, but if your goal is simplicity over deeper data and capturing every possible impression, then leave these on.

That’s all. I would recommend leaving the other 18 off at all times. Unless you are truly desperate and at a complete loss for ways to grow your traffic, you should never allow Google to expand your targeting. That lesson has been repeatedly learned with Product Ads over the past decade plus. Furthermore, do not let Google change your bidding. Your bidding methodology is likely a very intentional decision based on the nature of your sales cycle and your marketing and analytics infrastructure. This is not a situation where best practices are broadly applicable, but best practices are exactly what Google will try to enforce.

If you really don’t want to be bothered at all, just turn them all off. You won’t be missing much, and you’re probably saving yourself some headaches down the line. From our experience thus far, it seems that the ability of Google Ads’ optimization AI to help optimize Google Ads campaigns for life sciences companies is far lesser than its ability to create mayhem.

"Even GPT-4 still gets the facts wrong a lot. Some things simply merit human expertise, and Google Ads is one of them. When advertising to scientists, you need someone who understands scientists and speaks their language. BioBM’s PhD-studded staff and deep experience in life science marketing mean we understand your customers better than any other agency – and understanding is the key to great marketing.

Why not leverage our understanding to your benefit? Contact Us."

Branding vs. Demand Gen

Carlton Hoyt 11:33 am , April 14, 2014

When considering where to advertise, marketers frequently – and rightfully – consider how targeted / relevant the audience is. However, marketers often fail to consider the commercial intent (or “intent to purchase“) of the target audience within that channel. Because of this, you end up with a lot of advertising campaigns that are ineffective, deliver a poor or negative ROI, and are often not tied to results.

A subjective, qualitative measure of commercial intent (which is usually all that is required) can be easily determined by considering the likelihood that a viewer will be considering a purchase at the time of viewing the ad. For instance, someone who has just searched for a product is far more likely to intend to make a purchase than is the average person reading an article on a news website, even if it is a highly relevant, sector-specific one.

We see this mis-targeting most frequently in demand generation campaigns, particularly “awareness” campaigns. Awareness campaigns seek to target as much of the target market as possible in order to, for all effective purposes, tell them your product or service exists. These campaigns are highly ineffective because they neglect the commercial intent of the target audience. (Side note: They also tend to be uncompelling, unoriginal, and unmemorable.) The implied message is: “We have this product / service. Please go buy it.” However, the channels used for awareness campaigns, which are typically print and / or digital display ads through relevant publishers, have a low commercial intent. People who are not in the market for your product / service will forget about your advertisement long before any future recognition of needs develops.

These described channels, which are highly targeted but have low commercial intent, are far better suited for brand-building campaigns. For audiences who may have a need in the future, you want to make a positive, lasting impression such that your brand will be viewed favorably when a need does arise for the customer, therefore making the customer more receptive to your messages and more likely to favor your solutions. (Focusing on creating experiences is one such way to do this.) In other words, with channels having low commercial intent, you need to play the “long game.”

Conversely, for channels with high commercial intent, you want to play the short game. If a customers are imminently considering a purchase, they are actively filtering information for relevance in search of information to guide them through their buying journey. Campaigns designed to build brand value are likely to be filtered out and, even if they are not, may not have time to make enough of a collective impression on the customers to influence their purchasing decisions (the latter point is more true for products with a short sales cycle than those with long ones). For those customers, you want to present a message about their need and / or your solution in order to demonstrate relevance to their buying journey.

The next time you’re developing an advertising campaign, in addition to the relevance of the audience consider commercial intent. Remember the following:
• Channels where the audience has a high intent to purchase are good for demand-generation campaigns.
• Channels where the audience has a low intent to purchase are good for brand-building campaigns.
You’ll end up with more effective campaigns.

"Is your life science company looking to get more from your advertising campaigns? Contact BioBM. Whether you need a solid campaign strategy, great creative, or the tools and experience to execute, BioBM consulting will make your marketing more effective."

Blog / Branding / Demand Generation / Marketing Communications 11:33 am , April 14, 2014

Experiences Over Awareness

Carlton Hoyt 10:56 am , March 26, 2014

Take a look around – at the marketing efforts of your company, your competitors, and others in similar life science markets. I’m sure you’ll still find a lot of marketing efforts centered on building awareness. Quite frankly, efforts to simply build awareness are a waste of your audience’s attention. Awareness only imparts one very basic form of knowledge: the knowledge that something exists. You can do so much more with your audience’s attention.

Awareness campaigns are almost inherently neutral. Sure, you may be offering a solution that someone needs, but aside from the facts contained within the communication there is nothing positive or negative about it. Instead of focusing on building awareness, focus on creating experiences. Experiences can be used not only to impart knowledge, but also to build confidence. They leave a positive feeling with your prospective customers that translates into positive brand value for your company.

Experiences can be simple. Focusing on experiences does not necessitate any additional complexity in your communications. To upgrade an awareness communication to an experience, give some thought to the emotion you want to invoke within your scientist-customers and craft your communications with that emotion in mind. Don’t simply focus on what you are doing, but why you are doing it.

Ideally, customer experience will be something which is defined and shaped across all your customer touch points. Any experience is more effective when it is in harmony with the other experiences that your company provides. Considering that your brand is, in effect, the sum of all the experiences that it provides to others, those experiences need to be planned and defined to ensure that they build on each other rather than conflict with each other. In the race to win customers’ hearts and minds, the brand which consistently provides the best experiences will win. The next time you need to create awareness for your company or its products and services, think about how you could instead create an experience for your potential customers. The result will be more effective communications.

"Let’s start crafting great experiences for your customers. Contact BioBM and we’ll help you generate more demand while building positive brand value at the same time."

Blog / Branding / Customer Experience 10:56 am , March 26, 2014

Why Remarketing Is Critical

Carlton Hoyt 11:26 am , March 13, 2014

It’s part of my job to be very familiar with the life science tools sector. The need for familiarity commonly drives me to the websites of a number of different manufacturers – this has been especially true recently. However, if you were to ask me how many of those manufacturers presented me with their brand again after leaving their website, there are only a handful. Within that handful, however, I could name 100% of the companies. The rest? Maybe 25% to 50%, off hand, and only that many because I make a note of knowing my market.

This illustrates two key things. 1) Your brand (and product line) is much more likely to be remembered if you present it to your audience repeatedly, and 2) there is a surprising underutilization of remarketing within life science tools. The former is an opportunity. The latter is a problem, but could be an opportunity.

Most buying journeys in the life sciences aren’t completed in a single instance. With the exception of commodity-like items and repeat purchases, most purchasing decisions involve multiple “sessions” of consideration. In other words, scientists by and large don’t just sit down and buy something. They take time to consider and evaluate their needs and their options. A purchasing decision is more likely to last days, weeks or even months than it is minutes or hours. However, most demand generation-focused marketing campaigns are geared towards a customer taking action in a single sitting.

For instance, say a customer finds your company through search. (If a scientist is proactively looking for a product, there’s about a 45% chance that they performed a search as their first action within their buying journey.) Unless that customer is then sufficiently satisfied with where they are in the buying journey to take the next step then and there, they will leave. Without remarketing, that customer is gone. You’re left to sit and hope that the customer remembers you. With remarketing, however, that’s not a problem. You can present your brand, product, and / or message to that potential customer multiple times, reinforcing your brand and message to that prospect. This isn’t only applicable to search, however. The same could be said for any type of marketing or advertising – email, social, print, etc. – where the potential is there for the customer to go to your website, view some information, then walk away never to be seen again. If you think about it, that potential exists for just about any type of campaign.

Does remarketing sound complicated? It’s not. Remarketing does not require any fancy software or tools. Anyone with a basic knowledge of Google Analytics, AdWords, and the ability to paste a few lines of code into their website can set up remarketing. Even video remarketing with YouTube is easy to set up.

As with most forms of advertising, remarketing should be as targeted as possible given the practical considerations of audience segmentation. For instance, ads targeted to specific product lines which a customer viewed will generally more effective than a single, broad message to anyone that’s visited your website.

Most companies are letting a lot of good prospects get away. These are prospects that have shown interest through the activity of going to your website and viewing particular content. These are prospects that can be targeted, but in most cases aren’t because companies don’t know who they are. By leveraging the power of remarketing, life science tools companies can stay in front of scientists who have shown interest in their brand and products, helping to ensure that they stay in consideration during the scientists’ buying journeys and, ultimately, increasing their conversion.

"Do you need BioBM to perform remarketing? I’ll be completely honest – you probably don’t. However, we make your remarketing better. We ensure your ads and messages are effective. We ensure your campaign is efficient. And we utilize all of our collective knowledge, skills, and passion to ensure that your remarketing efforts hit the ground running, to maximal effect. Let’s create value for your company together. Give us a call at +1 313-312-4626 or send us an email. We’re looking forward to sharing our knowledge with you."

Blog / Demand Generation 11:26 am , March 13, 2014

Free Life Science Marketing

Carlton Hoyt 10:46 am , March 29, 2012

Need to do a product launch on a shoestring budget? Is your ad budget almost expended but you wish you could do more? Don’t start worrying quite yet… There’s a few avenues to leverage FREE life science marketing that you can take advantage of at just about any time. All you need is some content.

Protocol Submissions.

While there are other sites that allow you to upload protocols, the one that carries the most weight is likely Nature Protocol Exchange. You get the gravitas of the Nature name, their signature online look and feel, and protocols are generally posted very quickly. While the benefits are a far cry from that of an actual peer-reviewed methods paper, posting protocols online is easy, relatively fast, and free. Similarly, Nature Methods has a section for suppliers to post application notes.

Press Releases

Have company news? There’s a whole host of sites out there that will either allow you to submit life science press releases directly or through an editor. LabGrab is a personal favorite, and of course there’s our own LifeSciPR, but that’s just a small sampling. More traditional “news” sites such as Lab Equipment Magazine or GEN will often accept news as well, as will many other laboratory and life science news sites. Getting a release published in a printed publication often costs money, however doing so isn’t important. There’s also a huge amount of free press release sites, but unless they’re targeted to the right audience their value is marginal at best.

Similarly, many relevant websites and publications will accept new product news as well. There are even some life science forums that allow companies to post information on new products and services.

When posting press releases or other news items, don’t forget to link back to your company or product website for a little SEO kick!

Blogging

Have content, will write? When done well, blogging is great for both branding and SEO. You have an opportunity to project your company’s expertise in relevant areas by writing and publishing great content, and there’s no limit to how much you do so! Does your life science company’s website not have a blog? Don’t know how to install one? Don’t worry about it! Start up a WordPress blog and you can port it over to your own site later. If you write really good content of a solid length, consider eschewing the blog post and submitting it to a relevant online & print publication instead (again, I’ll use Laboratory Equipment Magazine and GEN as examples.)

Social Media

Many social media channels are readily adaptable to life science marketing use. Our favorites are Twitter and LinkedIn. On both, users effectively tell you what their interests are. LinkedIn is particularly good because of groups. You can read more on using LinkedIn for life science marketing here.

The aforementioned methods are far from comprehensive. For instance, if you’re not lacking in time but are lacking in money, you could write white papers, which are a great way to generate leads. Depending on the price and nature of your product, and assuming you’re both a little more sales oriented and sell in the US, you could search the NIH RePORT database for prospects for highly targeted cold calling and cold e-mailing.

While we would never recommend trying to base your marketing around free methods alone, they can be used to stretch a budget or just get a little extra publicity. If you have more time than money, then the above methods can be a very productive way to boost your life science marketing efforts.

"Need to stretch a life science marketing budget? BioBM can help you identify the best ways for you to get the most out of a limited budget and start generating the demand necessary to get your business rolling. Contact us to discuss your situation and we’ll let you know if we can help."

Blog / Digital Marketing / Marketing Communications / Social Media 10:46 am , March 29, 2012

Market Where Others Aren’t

Carlton Hoyt 10:07 am , February 7, 2012

Consider this: the life science advertising market is similar in functionality to a stock market or the market for any good or service. People want to maximize the return on their investment. In a perfect market, the ROI of all channels would become equal because those that provided a higher ROI initially would become more expensive and / or more crowded until the ROI dropped, and those providing a lower ROI would lose advertisers and the demand would decrease, thereby lowering prices and competition through that channel and increasing its ROI. In reality that’s not the case. A lot of life science marketers have a tendency to turn to “traditional channels” for ad placement and marketing communications. Even those who consider a broader spectrum of possible channels than those considered “traditional” often limit themselves. This creates an imperfect market, and imperfect markets create opportunity.

How can you take advantage of this imperfect market? Consider marketing where others aren’t.

One approach: Look for the channels that may be underutilized. For example, Quertle, a semantic search engine for scientific journals, was offering a $1 CPC ad rate a while ago. If expected traffic quality was poor this wouldn’t be a big deal, but the opportunity for targeting on Quertle is fantastic. Imagine how many life science tools companies were likely throwing money into Google AdWords haphazardly when they could have received equally good traffic for $1 per click! The imbalance caused by underutilization is most almost entirely due to life science marketers’ lacking sufficient information on all the channels available to them.

Another approach: Look for the marketing methods that may be underutilized. We recently discussed the apparent underutilization of cause marketing. There are certainly other methods for marketing communications that may be useful but are underutilized – guerrilla marketing is likely another such example. There are certainly others, and they create a similar opportunity to increase your life science marketing ROI. In the case of underutilized marketing methods, the imbalance is most often caused by a lack of creativity or aversion to risk.

By marketing where others aren’t, you can decrease the cost of your life science advertising while increasing visibility, thereby greatly increasing your ROI. Look for the opportunities that underutilized channels and methods present, and consider whether they would be effective tools to reach your audience.

UPDATE: Between when this post was written and when it’s being posted, another great example of leveraging an under-utilized marketing medium appeared. Ion Torrent went and built a mobile lab on a bus and they’ll be driving it around to major research centers and conferences. You can see it on their YouTube channel.

"Is your life science tools company looking to get more bang for its marketing buck? BioBM can help. We manage marketing campaigns that reach customers less expensively than “traditional” methods, increasing marketing ROI and allowing you to reach more customers without increasing your budget. Curious what BioBM can do for you? Contact us ."

Blog / Marketing Communications 10:07 am , February 7, 2012

Why Are You Marketing?

Carlton Hoyt 6:05 pm , July 12, 2011

Make sure you've answered all the right questions before you launch an advertising / marketing campaign. One of the worst things that you can do in life science marketing is not fully understand why you’re marketing. In other words, each time you publish an advertisement, change content on your website, post an article on twitter, or do anything else related to marketing communications, it should have a purpose and you should know what that purpose is ahead of time. Your message and marketing content should then be designed to successfully fulfill that purpose.

The reason I’m bringing this up is because of the disjoint between intention and execution that I so often see in life science marketing. I’m certainly not one to say what other people are thinking, but it seems that a lot of marketers get caught up in trying to be creative and / or make the marketing materials look pretty, or simply don’t ask themselves the right questions when designing their marketing. Some of the disjoint may also be ascribed to a lack of understanding of scientist behavior (or consumer behavior in general). Marketers often simply fail to think about how the audience will think of something rather than how they want them to think or what they want them to do. They ask themselves “does this contain the message we want to convey?” and forget to ask if the message as its presented will actually be effective. Simply adding a call to action to a marketing message, while a good idea in most situations, neither gives it purpose nor ensures effectiveness.

You should be able to answer: why is this marketing going to be effective? If you don’t have a concrete answer for that question, then you either didn’t care enough (surprisingly common) or you didn’t ask yourself the right questions (more common). If that is the case, ask yourself some of the following questions then revisit any marketing communications in question:

What is the ultimate goal of this marketing communication? What do we want the customer to do or think?
What is the message that we are trying to convey? How do we know that is the right message given our target audience?
What will the customer be doing when they our marketing message? How will that affect their behavior and perception of the message? Given those things, are they likely to be receptive to this message?
Does this marketing material engage the customer? Will it be compelling to them?

This is a small sampling of potential questions that could be asked to help ensure the execution of your marketing communications are in line with your intentions and will actually be effective. If you find a problem area or have difficulty answering one of these questions, let that lead you deeper to more questions until you have a better understanding of how to match purpose with function and / or have a better understanding of your audience. Retaining the lessons learned from asking these questions will help both current and future marketing campaigns, and the improvement in effectiveness and ROI will be well worth it.

As a general rule we don’t do this, but given the breadth of this topic I wanted you to be able to access me personally with any questions you may have. If you want to ask a question and fill out the contact form below it will go to my inbox and you’ll get an answer straight from me.

"Are you looking for ways to improve your marketing ROI? Would you like to send more powerful, more effective marketing messages? Are you simply looking for better ways of targeting potential customers? Not to worry – BioBM is on your side. Our life science marketing and advertising experts can help you design, target, and execute marketing campaigns that improve your ROI, drive more customers into your sales channels, and help you grow your revenues and your business. For access to a full range of marketing services and expertise, contact BioBM. Our professional consultants will help you understand what needs to be done to improve your marketing and what you need to do to get there."

Blog / Marketing Communications 6:05 pm , July 12, 2011

Biocompare Survey Results

Carlton Hoyt 4:44 pm , June 28, 2011

A little under two weeks ago, we held a survey to gather life science manufacturer’s opinions of Biocompare as an advertising platform. We didn’t get a ton of feedback, but we certainly provoked some good discussion on LinkedIn. As promised, here are the results of the survey:

The sentiment expressed in comments was fairly split. The most common sentiments indicated a general appreciation of the exposure that Biocompare offers but dissatisfaction with the difficulty in determining the ROI of their advertising dollars spent on Biocompare. Sentiments such as “by advertising on Biocompare we have a lot of exposure [but] the direct relation to ROI is low or difficult to measure in the long term.” were common. Others spoke favorably of Biocompare, saying “I think they do a really good job overall for brand development (like advertising)” or “My company has advertised on Biocompare and I believe the MarCom group felt the exposure was good.” Others suggested other areas for improvement such as “the banners are dominated by couple of vendors which makes my eyes tired of looking at the same ad” and “more country-specific advertising options would be great such as country-specific promotions, languages, etc.” There were no highly negative comments.

To view all of the comments from the survey, as well as some anonymized comments from LinkedIn, click here.

Blog / Digital Marketing 4:44 pm , June 28, 2011

Opinions of Biocompare

Carlton Hoyt 12:38 pm , June 16, 2011

There was a bit of a heated discussion going on in one of the LinkedIn groups that I’m a part of where people, including a Biocompare founder, were debating the value of Biocompare as a life science marketing platform. For the moment, I’ll hold back the opinions that were expressed in those posts as well as my own and those I’ve heard from others. What I think is valuable to know is what the life science products community as a whole thinks about Biocompare. To that end, I’ve created this quick, 3-question survey. I encourage you to share your thoughts anonymously, and the results will be shared on BioBM.com.

I have also enabled comments below, so feel free to add your thoughts if you would like to air them out publicly!

Take the Biocompare survey

Blog / Digital Marketing 12:38 pm , June 16, 2011

Ion Torrent’s Apple Spoof

Carlton Hoyt 2:08 pm , April 7, 2011

So I ran across Ion Torrent’s / Life Technologies’ spoof of Apple’s “I’m a Mac” commercials, where Ion Torrent rips into the Illumina MiSeq a bit … okay, more than just a bit, the Ion Torrent attempts to pretty much tear apart the MiSeq in comparing it to the PGM. If you haven’t seen it, take a look…

UPDATE: As of 4/11, Ion Torrent has made the video private and it is no longer available for viewing. It seems they didn’t appreciate the mixed feedback they were getting. … UPDATE #2: And as of 4/12 it’s back! I guess Life Technologies decided a little bit of controversy might not be such a bad thing after all.

I commend Life Technologies’ marketing team for their guts to start an advertising war. It’s something rarely seen in the conservative world of life science marketing. If they believe they can out-market Illumina, then this tactic should benefit them long-term assuming they actually succeed in doing so.

That being said, there is a problem… Life Technologies just put a whole lot of cards on the table with that ad.

Part of the reason Apple’s strategy was so successful is, beyond the obvious requirement of getting the audience’s attention, it was a rapid-fire assault of consistent marketing messages highlighting various reasons why a Mac is better than a PC. People wanted to see Apple’s ads – most were very unique, some were funny – and Apple kept them coming. They used them in fantastically creative ways, such as on the New York Times homepage. They were about 30 seconds each and mostly focused on one small aspect, such as a positive review, hardware compatibility, bundled software, security, OS stability, etc. They showed their hand slowly which allowed them to sustain the campaign.

Life Technology / Ion Torrent did not do that. In their minute and twelve second ad, they talk about price, run speed and the 6 month delivery time of a MiSeq. There go your three big competitive advantages, all right there in one ad. Now perhaps this was calculated. Perhaps Life Technologies expects Illumina to pull a Microsoft and have a weak, if any, response, but counting on them to do so would seem premature at this point.

If Life Technologies spoofed the ad well and captivate their audience with this ad, which I think they’ll succeed in doing, then they could have drawn a lot more value from turning a single, highly effective ad into a highly effective ad campaign. They could have continued to engage the audience in the future, releasing a series of ads every month or two for a year. While I could see this video going semi-viral in the scientific community (albeit not nearly as successfully as Bio-Rad’s PCR music video), a sustained campaign could multiply that success. As it stands, especially if they continue to play their cards this quickly, I don’t think they’ll be able to turn this ad into such a sustained marketing campaign. If I’m right, they now need to hope that Illumina doesn’t have too many cards up it’s sleeve.

Illumina, in the meanwhile, needs to not pull a Microsoft. It certainly can. The brand image, while perhaps more polished than Ion Torrent’s, certainly isn’t of an old, dated, out-of-touch behemoth. It can strike back very well with a bit of creativity…

"If you’d like to discuss Ion Torrent’s “I’m a PGM” video, other video advertising in the life sciences, or viral marketing with Carlton, feel free to contact us and we’ll be sure to pass along the message to him. More info on BioBM."

Blog / Marketing Communications 2:08 pm , April 7, 2011