When I first read about Moira Gunn, a host on Tech Nation and creator of the popular Biotech Nation segment, in Guy Kawasaki’s blog “How to Change the World” it was upon the publication of her book Welcome to Biotech Nation:My Unexpected Odyssey into the Land of Small Molecules, Lean Genes, and Big Ideas. Yowza, I thought, a self professed “Internet babe” who puts a picture of a Martini (albeit one in a glass with a double helix stem and a biotech altered olive) on the cover of her “serious science” book is a babe after my own heart. Gunn is a true infomediary – in the scientific sense – what we refer to in the recruiting world as a “geek who can speak” and how. She calls it “Minimalist Science” – the least you need to know to get the point.
The other thing she totally gets is that is that it’s not just relating scientific information in the simplest form possible – it’s telling a series of compelling stories and making it personal. She talks about the impact of celebrity involvement in publicizing biotech research with the examples of Reagan and Alzheimer’s, Michael J. Fox and Parkinson’s, and Brooke Shields and infertility. She knows the general public sees these celebrities as people they “know”, that because they become real to us their problems become real as well. She also makes the scientists working in the biotech arena people we can know and understand. We’re touched on a personal level by their unquenchable curiosity and ability to set their minds to a problem and find amazing solutions, and their motivation to do so to make a difference in individual’s lives, their communities, and the world.
I believe there are many lessons to be learned from Gunn’s approach and in particular I think it would behoove those who are presenting products and services in the biotech or health care arena to take notice. Are there ways to have celebrity involvement with your product or research? If you can’t identify an appropriate celebrity are you telling compelling end-user stories? Have you given your employees a human face (in pictures or words) that your customers can identify with? Is the mission, and the heart, of your business evident on your web site?
Christopher Locke (pre Cluetrain Manifesto: The End of Business as Usual) said the following and I think it still holds true today -
“Organizations that believe in what they’re doing – and are fearless enough to project that perspective online – could win unimagined loyalty. But corporations can’t credibly communicate what they don’t comprehend. Passion, commitment, engagement, humanity – qualities highly valued in this medium – are simply missing from most commercial Web sites. The audience is listening – for a heartbeat. Companies that haven’t got one are about to flatline in the Web marketplace.”
