The Bang Blog

Bang Albino Attends Pre-Launch Party for Chef Corbin’s Melting Pot

That's good nosh! Account Manager Karen Slack (pictured left) and several of us at Bang Albino attended the 'family & friends' pre-launch party for celeb chef Corbin Tomaszeski’s new restaurant, The Melting Pot. Located at Hwy 7 & Leslie St., in Richmond Hill, the restaurant specializes in a modern take on fondue. If you love chocolate and cheese – and who doesn’t? – you will not be disappointed.

Bang Albino has had the good fortune to work with Chef Corbin (star of Dinner Party Wars and other Food Network programs) on pharma-related projects in the past and look forward to working with him in the future. The Melting Pot opens to the public this Wednesday, so if you’re in the neighbourhood, be sure to check it out. Ask for the 'Flaming Turtle'!

Bang Albino Enters Team for Becel Heart&Stroke Ride for Heart

On June 3rd, many of us at Bang Albino will be dusting off our Schwinn bikes with the cool banana seats to pedal up a storm in the Becel Heart&Stroke Ride for Heart. The annual ride raises funds in support of heart disease and stroke research, awareness and prevention programs   The number one killer of women, heart disease and stroke will also claim the lives of one in three Canadians before their time. The Bang team will be competing in the “Health, Law & Service” corporate team category, so there’s some bragging rights at stake. Our team goal is to raise $3500. But the more money we raise the better our chances of winning the Golden Wheel Award as a top fundraiser. If you’d like to sponsor Bang for the Heart&Stroke Ride for Heart, click here. Judging by the state of our wheels, we’ll need all of the help we can get!

Bang Albino Donates Funds to Toronto Community Org Ephraim’s Place

Bang Albino is pleased to announce that it has made a financial donation to Ephraim's Place, a non-profit community organization dedicated to providing programs and services that empower children and families living in Toronto's Jane-Finch and Jane-Sheppard neighborhoods with the skills they need to affect positive personal and community change.

Local residents founded Ephraim’s Place -- the organization and the community center -- in 2007 following the untimely death of 11 year-old area resident Ephraim Brown, an innocent victim of gang violence.  Bang Albino’s donation will help fund the organization’s new Employment Service Program, which works with marginalized youth and adults to provide the training they need to gain employment. 

“One of the main reasons crime rates are so high in priority neighbourhoods like Jane-Finch and Jane-Sheppard is because of high unemployment rates,” said John Toufankjian, Resource Development Coordinator at Ephraim's Place.

He continued, “With generous donations from companies like Bang Albino, this program will help individuals in overcoming the barriers and obstacles that currently stand in their way to finding successful part- and full-time employment.”

Interested in helping Ephraim’s Place? Click here to contribute.

What Bugs Doctors Most About Rep Visits?

Pharmaceutical sales reps know all too well how difficult it has become to make an appointment with a doctor. How tough? According to findings in a report conducted by market research firm SK&A, and cited in a recent Wall Street Journal article, nearly a quarter of 680,000 of doctors surveyed said they refused to even see drug reps. That health care professionals are being forced to treat more patients in their already busy schedules is doubtless one reason for the snub.

But the other factor that can’t be overlooked -- MD’s have simply had less than positive encounters with some pharma reps.  Ask doctors what drives them to distraction about rep visits and it won’t take them long to compile a list. But there are ways sales reps can ensure a successful visit, as the doctors interviewed in the clip below suggest:

The above video is excerpted from Bang Albino's new sales training series, "What Makes a Good Rep?"

Most Downloaded Medical Apps on iTunes Store

Based on iTunes Store data, February 10, 2012.

10 Ways Pharma Can Avoid Death by PowerPoint at their Next NSM

A National Sales Meeting (NSM) offers pharmaceutical companies the perfect opportunity to educate and engage their sales forces. But too often marketing departments and their outside firms miss the boat.  Perhaps in fear of overlooking something important, marketing covers everything by cramming in as much information as they can in the time available. Sound familiar? The consequences of this mass data dump -- audiences won’t make a connection with what you’re saying and won’t retain any key messages.  Remarkable presentations don’t happen by chance or without some prep work. But you can dramatically improve the effectiveness of your future presentations with a little bit of planning and a commitment to following some simple guidelines:

1. Focus – really focus -- your message. Ask yourself the one thing you want your audience to come away with from your meeting. Write it down and make sure all meeting content ties back to this goal.
2. Keep secondary messages to a minimum. Remember: if you’re saying many things, you’re saying nothing.
3. Failure to engage is not an option. Studies show students retain more information when they actively participate in their learning, rather than just sitting and listening. The same holds true in the workplace. Be sure to schedule elements that demand audience participation. And leverage Social Media. At your next meeting have attendees use their smartphones or tablets to answer survey questions or quizzes via a secure, dedicated Facebook or Twitter page. Better yet: get them up and walking with a Four Square-powered scavenger hunt designed to reinforce your meeting’s goals.
4. Go Beyond PowerPoint. Investigate other presentation software options and devices that offer different features. I’ve really enjoyed using Prezi for its lively zoom transitions and ability to expand and shrink images. Tablets elevate presentations even more so, allowing you to pull video, text and images with a simple hand swipe, as the TED video below demonstrates.
5. Do. Not. Read. Your. Slides. Slides should complement what you are saying, not serve as your teleprompter.
6. When designing your slides, remember: Less is more. Use Khosla's “Five-Second Rule”: Ask someone to view one of your slides for five seconds. Remove the slide and check their recall.  If they can’t remember what it said, it contains too much information.
7. View your draft slides from the cheap seats. If you can’t easily read your slides from where your audience will be sitting, change them up.
8. Check for pacing and variety. Does your presentation have the right flow? Enough video, photographs and interactivity? Seek feedback from a trusted source. We’re usually not the best editors of our own work.
9. Rehearse. Out loud. As many times as necessary until you’re comfortable.
10. Keep that stopwatch handy. Make sure your presentation fits the time slot. When you go long, your audience will become distracted or stop paying attention altogether.

Mark Ashdown is Managing Partner at Bang Albino Communications and has spent thousands of hours helping sales and marketing executives to improve their presentations.