You — yes you! — are putting too much content on your slides
The people at Veeva have been telling pharma agencies and their clients this for many years now: we're all putting way too much content on our IVA (interactive visual aid) slides. The first time I heard this was from a speaker from Veeva at their annual conference in Philly around 2016, and I've heard reps from Veeva repeat this to our agencies and clients every couple of years.
We marketing agencies tend to design content-heavy slides that look more like flash cards or magazine ads, when we should be designing slides that look like the most bare-bones PowerPoint presentations. Three to five bullets of huge text will perform better than two dense paragraphs of smaller text. Big blocks of small text in an IVA will be unreadable to the viewer, and therefore worthless. Beautiful charts and graphs with small text in an IVA will be unreadable to the viewer, and therefore worthless.
When we include too much content, we're forced to use smaller font sizes that the HCP can't read from where they're standing. Why would an HCP stay focused on slides they can't read? Who is that content for if they can't read it?
It's a classic case of us making the mistake of just saying what we (and our client) want to say — and just pushing content at the user — rather than asking ourselves, "What's the best way to connect with this user; to really engage them? What are they most likely to want to hear about? What's most valuable to them?" Remember, this IVA is not a website or brochure; the HCP is not going to spend any significant time reading it. The content needs to be light and breezy; basically just prompts for the rep to cover some quick (persuasive, fascinating, incredible) points. The IVA should be one big hook, made up of several mini-hooks.
Veeva CLM was meant to be used the way PowerPoint should be used: minimal text on-screen, with the speaker (aka the rep) giving lots of additional context. It should not all be on-screen. The rep is putting on a show! Let the slides prop them up, rather than be the show.
Too often when we're designing (and writing!) IVAs we're just not thinking enough about how they'll actually be used; frequently we're just doing whatever the client told us to, which usually means including everything and the kitchen sink. I know I'm a broken record with this, but as the digital experts it's our job to guide our clients toward making good choices about digital that will enhance their own success. They'll thank us!
A thing I remind people about all the time is: Veeva has access to analytical data from thousands of IVAs across hundreds of brands. They're able to see the very clear patterns of what works and what doesn't. When they make a recommendation to us about IVA content, we should take it very seriously. For years, they've been telling us that we're handling content wrong in IVAs. It's in their interest to give us the keys to making succesful IVAs. They know the results are being measured. Our success is our client's success is Veeva's success. Let's heed their advice.
– Manning
Questions/comments? Feel free to contact me at manning@manningkrull.com. I update these articles pretty frequently — best practices evolve over time as the world of digital quickly changes, and I always welcome insights from others.