Breaking the Code

Recently, a number of prestigious U.S. universities have talked about reinstating The Scholastic Aptitude Test, more infamously known as The SAT, for applicants to their undergraduate programs. The SAT was once mandatory for college applications, but has become optional and then not used at all in progressive stages over the past two decades. However, debate rages as to whether schools' test...

Do you know anyone who just watches the Superbowl for the love of the game anymore? As TV viewers decline across the board, the Big Game on the second Sunday of February remains a must watch event in sports, entertainment, and advertising, hooking the attention from everyone from die-hard sports fans to Swifties. In this special episode, the full team, Brad, Sonika, and Gabriel play 'Monday M...

 A rare disease diagnosis is the beginning of a journey of unknowns. From an HCPs ability to treat, to a caregivers' emotional burden, to a patient's sense of identity, there are a variety of factors that remain uncertain or unclear which makeup the unique challenge of having a rare disease.   Despite the challenge, people living with rare disease persevere and form communities - real co...

With January being Cervical Health Awareness month, we felt that this was a great time to breakdown the discussion around Gardasil, an HPV vaccine that can play a major role in curbing the incidence rates of cervical and a variety of other cancers. With that fact alone, Gardasil seems like a no-brainer, but as we explained in a previous episode, it's our irrational behaviors that make us huma...

Doctors are in distress, and pandemic is not the only cause. For decades, the role of the healer has been evolving (or devolving, depending on whom you ask), both in our imaginations and in the literal conditions of labor for doctors. For the first episode of the new year, Sonika and I sit down with Vernon Bainton MD, Chief Medical Officer of Havas Lynx in the UK and a keen observer of all things...

Use this link  to view the video form of this episode: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/havashealthandyou_onehavas-meaningfuldifference-breakingthecode-activity-7140365496129875968-ZpsM?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop Have you ever thought about how we describe young people as "finding their way" and older people as "stuck in their ways"? Gen Z, currently a cohort...

There isn't an official list of everything that's considered taboo, but somehow we all have an instinctual sense of words and topics that are off limits. We even try not to invoke the word of some taboos, like death, so we say things like "passing away", "biting the dust", "pushing up daisies", and more). However, healthcare environments are one of the few p...

Hair is defined as the "threadlike strands growing from the skin of humans and other mammals", but that does not begin to describe the social significance of your hair. Color, cut, and style are all part of a shared but often tacit set of rules and expectations, and the social evaluation of your hair (or your children's hair) is perceived as speaking volumes about your beliefs and p...

"Task overload", or the related concepts of "information overload" and "task saturation", is a term developed to describe what happens when there is simply too much for our brains to do--a common occurrence in airline emergencies, spacecraft emergencies, and, unfortunately, everyday work loads in our modern medical systems. The consequences of task saturation are well...

Wanting "more" of anything we like seems to be a default human setting, even to the point of problematic excess. A packed closet means we have clothes to wear, an overstuffed fridge means we can eat, and a full wallet means we can buy even more of whatever we please. When Mae West famously said "too much of a good thing is wonderful", she probably wasn't thinking of a worl...

Death is an inevitable part of the human experience--OUR experience. But speaking about death, specifically how we want to spend our last months and days on earth when illness makes the end both visible and inevitable, is challenging. We find ourselves struggling to overcome taboos and other cultural and personal barriers to communication, and that leads, many think, to a large number of "bad...

When designing interventions to improve the doctor-patient visit, we often forget that, in some sense, all doctor-patient conversations are cross-cultural. Doctors literally embody the clinic itself, as both its representatives and agents, whereas the patients simply represent themselves and their needs. When designing communication strategies for these interactions, we need to consider a patient&...

Trust in relationships, business, personal or otherwise, is built in large part on perceptions of honesty, which we gauge based on the perceived intent of the person in that relationship. It's more difficult for some to be seen as honest because of their perception as liars, someone who makes untrue claims, or worse, a palterer, someone who uses the truth dishonestly. Listen as Brad and Sonik...

Including your audience into the development process, with intentionality, is key in designing effective initiatives, campaigns, and products that do justice for them. Bringing the right people to the table is only the start - the hard part is incorporating their truths into an end result that properly represents them. The term inclusive design is becoming more popular, which is great, but it&apos...

A doctor's dismissal of symptoms can be devastating for a patient. We know it's a problem, but what do we call it? There's a variety issues that's could be at the root of this dismissal. The answer may be Medical gaslighting - or it may not. Listen as we discuss the rapidly increasing prevalence of the term "Medical gaslighting", and how use of the term, due to its co...

We've all been in situations where our actions don't perfectly align with who we purport to be - to ourselves or others. These inconsistencies are much easier to spot in other people, like a nurse who treats with one philosophy and teaches at-home treatment with another or a patient in pain who doesn't fill the prescription given to them for that pain. Listen as we discuss cognitive...

Everyone in advertising is aware that our job is to "create emotional connections" with our audiences. While emotion is unarguably a strong driver of behavior change, emotion based interventions only work when we are able to correctly identify true emotions --this is something that our industry struggles with when it comes to doctors.   Doctor's emotions are not simply a mirror of t...

You are not part of a community just because someone tells you so, but when understood correctly, insight into communities is a great way to connect with people. To accurately group people into communities, we need to understand, from them, where they see a connection between themselves and others. Community influence and one's sense of belonging is key to drive behavior change, but if we mis...

While the US surgeon general’s recent Advisory on the US “epidemic of loneliness and isolation” came, for many, out of the blue, the exact phrase “epidemic of loneliness” has been in use for a while now to describe the growing alienation felt by many during this period of technology-driven disruption. Modern industrial life is centered on a mobile individual and it is this focus that has lead many...

It is common practice at marketing agencies to use transcripts as a means of understanding research that has taken place. However, if you want to really understand what happened in an interview, don't rely on transcripts. They are excellent at giving you a sense of vocabulary, and not much else.  Join us as we discuss how we should, and shouldn't, be using transcripts. Follow us on Linke...

In this episode we sit down with Damien Escobar, Emmy Award winning violist and  Director of Music and Culture at Havas, to talk about the role of music in healthcare communications, his role in transforming the music we choose for our work, and the unique ways music can connect with people about difficult topics.  Follow us on LinkedIn  

Not every behavior change intervention goes to plan, and in this podcast we talk about what happens when poorly thought out social-science or behavior change interventions are launched into the wild. It's one thing to have no measurable effect, but it's entirely another to have the opposite of your intended effect on behavior at large. Join us as we talk D.A.R.E., incentivizing people to...

When behavior change is on the table, the concept of "nudges" has become a go-to discussion point for every planning session. What IS a nudge, and how is it different from other forms of behavioral change support? And... is it just plain old nagging? Follow us on LinkedIn  

Modern medical practice has focused on the identification and treatment of biological processes, to great success but at the cost of human engagement. We focus on "disease" as a biological process, but often fail to address the human suffering from that disease. In social sciences, we call this the difference between "disease", the biological process, and "illness", t...

Segmentation studies, those famously dense reports that outline the differences between 'target audiences', are part and parcel of daily life in advertising. In theory, they help us understand what drives our audiences and connect with them on a meaningful level. In practice, many of these studies create a picture of an alternate universe people by caricatures of our audiences, filled wi...