GUEST COMMENTARY

IN THE HEAT OF THE MOMENT
By Anne Devereux

The world is morphing at an exceptional pace. Our economy is falling and rising (and hopefully not falling dramatically again). Gas prices have fluctuated from $2 a gallon to $4 and back to $2. Unemployment has skyrocketed, while there continues to be a shortage of labor in key areas including healthcare services, education, and emerging media. Companies are combining with or “divorcing” each other at a rate none of us could have predicted.

The Fast Pace of Change
In our industry, the changes have been monumental. Who would have believed that:

• Pfizer/Wyeth, Roche/Genentech, and Merck/Schering would all have happened in a single year?
• Historically cautious marketers like Novartis, AstraZeneca, and Boehringer Ingelheim would use Twitter to instantly communicate to their employees and followers on current topics of interest?
• Marketing vehicles in the healthcare arena would shift away from complete reliance on a “human” detail force to new media like closed-loop marketing, Web casts, online CME, and market research via Sermo?
• Nearly $2 billion in annual spending on DTC advertising would begin to migrate into educational programs and online conversations?
• Procurement departments, not marketers, would take the lead in agency relations and staffing plans?

With these changes come increased burdens and many, many unanswered questions. Leaner staffing means that each of us needs to do more every day. Instant media necessitates that we create new rules and systems for managing our messages on a much faster path. The shift from promotion to education creates demand for a different type of strategist and marketer. It also leads us to rethink our media mix, our communications tools, and the services we provide.
As the head of an organization, I find myself wondering how I can work fast enough to develop tools that enable us to lead and succeed in such chaos—and I’m constantly on the lookout for guidance.

Making the Most of Each Minute
Recently, I was given a book related to this topic: The Experts’ Guide to Doing Things Faster: 100 Ways to Make Life More Efficient, a 340-page guide on how to pack more accomplishments into each minute, day, and year. While highly relevant, the book sat on my desk for days. Each time I thought I had two seconds to look and see whether it held “the answer” or even a helpful hint to thriving amid chaos, the phone would ring, I’d have a meeting to go to, or someone would come to my door with a question.

Giving up, I threw it into my briefcase. At home, I pulled it out and noticed that a piece of paper I carry with me had adhered to the back cover. It was a quote from Rainer Maria Rilke, one of my favorite poet-philosophers:
“I would like you to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And, the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, even without noticing it, live your way into the answer.”

There it was. My “answer” to the chaos is that there is no answer and no “quick fix.” The “secret” to coming out whole is learning to thrive in the turmoil and to love the questions themselves. Perhaps while loving the questions, pondering the questions, and living among the questions, we will come up with solutions that create new and enhanced relevance for what we do and the positive impact we can have on our clients’ businesses…and on people’s lives. I look forward to being part of that process.

Anne Devereux is chairman and CEO of both LyonHeart and TBWA\WorldHealth, two Omnicom agencies that create advertising, promotion, and nontraditional communication programs for companies in the healthcare arena. She can be reached at adevereux@lyon-heart.com.

DISCLAIMER: The Guest Commentary page allows contributors to voice their opinions on important issues that affect the industry. The views of the authors are their own, and are not necessarily those of PM360 and its staff.

Have a question or a comment, send it to us here: Comments