At HRW, we’ve been testing oncology advertising concepts and messages within healthcare professionals for over 20 years. Below are six tips to help guide you through your concepting test practices. Want to learn more about what our team of oncology experts, HRW OR:BIT, can do for your oncology concept and message testing? Read about our oncology market research expertise on our dedicated page, or reach out to the team directly at HRW-ORBIT@hrwhealthcare.com. 1.Know Your Audience Endpoints like OS and PFS are vital for specialists, however, busy generalists and Allied Health Professionals (NP/PAs, nurses, etc.) can be unfamiliar with more technical terms not used every day. In fact, we know from Cognitive Load Theory that when people are limited on time, face complex tasks and excessive change, their ability to cope with complicated information decreases, leading to a reliance on mental shortcuts and cognitive biases. So, we need to explain technical terms to reduce mental load, avoid messaging being dismissed and, ultimately, to help generalists and Allied Health Professionals understand relevance for themselves and their patients. 2.Show *New* Possibilities Chemo has been the standard of cancer care for decades, so understandably, Physicians can become desensitized to its drawbacks and even cautious about change. We know that people often resist change or new ideas, known as Status Quo bias, and often even make do with ‘good enough’ options when optimal choices are available (known as Satisficing). What is key here is to show what a new treatment offers for the first time (e.g. at-home, life-extending benefits) while also re-sensitizing physicians to chemotherapy’s shortcomings. One way to do this is through peer quotes which show how common these shared frustrations are. 3. Don’t Toe the Line Physicians are judicious with their treatment options and often cautious not to use the ‘big guns’ too soon (or too late). It’s common that people are more motivated to avoid ‘losses’ than to achieve ‘gains’ (known as ‘Loss Aversion’) and need really clear triggers (known as ‘cues’) to prompt us to act and to change our behaviour. What we see here is that clients need to ensure their product has the right placement and that this is clearly defined in their concept: when to use, the benefits of use at this line / stage, and drawbacks of delay. The strongest cues follow an if-then format and are repeated to help form a strong drive to act. 4.Liking ≠ Doing We see time-and-again that physicians may ‘like’ an oncology concept but not ‘do’ anything differently. To truly change behaviour, we find that messages must tap into both conscious and non-conscious factors. We have a set of ‘Sticky Ideas’ metrics to give you this solid framework to assess concept performance against criteria which are known to shift behaviour. 5.Less is More Physicians often ask for more data (e.g., long-term; subgroup analysis) but, in practice, will make decisions with less. This is unsurprising as people often believe that more information will help make easier or better decisions, when more information can actually overwhelm. This is known as Information Bias and is common across fields. To work around this, we use behaviourally-informed prioritization techniques to distinguish essential from supplementary trial data. This means identifying hygiene factors (things that are not motivating when included but do dissatisfy and/or demotivate when missing), helping you keep the most vital information for physician decisions. 6.“Interesting for Patients” We often hear physicians say that a new mechanism of action or a new side effect management practice will be “interesting for my patients”. Sometimes clients ask what this means – was the information new or helpful to physicians? From Social Identity Theory, we know that people’s self-image and self-esteem partly come from their belonging in social groups and the rules, lexicon, attitudes and beliefs associated with these groups. As experts, physicians may be reticent to admit that information is new or that information presented in a simple manner is helpful to them. As a result, they may respond through the lens of their role as educators with “this will be interesting for my patients”. We help you to keep respondents’ social identities in mind in your concept testing research and uncover the meaning behind responses. When you hear “this will be interesting for my patients”, your education may well be working. Your next oncology testing project Want to learn more about what our team of oncology experts, HRW OR:BIT, can do for your oncology concept and message testing? Read about our oncology market research expertise on our dedicated page, or reach out to the team directly at HRW-ORBIT@hrwhealthcare.com. References: Cognitive Load Theory – Sweller, J. (2010). Cognitive load theory: Recent theoretical advances. In J. L. Plass, R. Moreno, & R. Brünken (Eds.), Cognitive load theory (pp. 29-47). New York, NY, US: Cambridge University Press. Cues – Michie, S., Ashford, S., Sniehotta, F. F., Dombrowski, S.U., Bishop, A. and French, D.P. (2011). A refined taxonomy of behaviour change techniques to help people change their physical activity and healthy eating behaviours: The CALO-RE taxonomy. Psychology & Health, volume 26 (11): 1479-1498 Information Bias – Baron, J. (2000). “Information bias and the value of information” in Thinking and deciding. Cambridge University Press. Loss Aversion – Thaler, R. H., Tversky, A., Kahneman, D., & Schwartz, A. (1997). The effect of myopia and loss aversion on risk taking: An experimental test. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 112(2), 647-661. Satisficing – Brown, R. (2004), “Consideration of the origin of Herbert Simon’s theory of “satisficing” (1933‐1947)”, Management Decision, Vol. 42 No. 10, pp. 1240-1256. https://doi.org/10.1108/00251740410568944 Social Identity – Turner, J. C.; Reynolds, K. J. (2010). “The story of social identity”. In T. Postmes; N. Branscombe (eds.). Rediscovering Social Identity: Core Sources. Psychology Press Status Quo Bias – Samuelson, W., & Zeckhauser, R. J. (1988). Status quo bias in decision making. Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, 1, 7-59. Apply Now!