Breaking Patterns to Create 'Word-of-Mouth XAM Wildfire'

When quarantine began, my challenge was “How do I keep myself entertained?” Talk about creative… But I saw it as my chance for me to immerse myself in my artistic passions: I was reading, knitting, painting, puzzling, cooking, baking, planting, creating scavenger hunts around the house, playing Sims City… the amount of time I spent on that alone is alarming.

As far as challenges go on a global scale, whether it be enduring quarantine for months on end or innovating quickly to vaccinate millions of citizens a day - the obstacles over the past year have seemed insurmountable. And yet, here we are…reopening the world again…one vaccine at a time. And that has not been without ITS own challenges: the rolling out of phases of vaccines, administering a record-high of 4 million vaccines in a single day, all while equipping government and healthcare employees with the tools, software, inventory, processes, and protocol to do so…its success has been (and continues to be) riddled with complexity and urgency on an epic scale.

So, as luck would have it, my livelihood – my passion – revolves around the marketing of solutions that help work flow (yes, that is intentionally two words…). I’m the Marketing Manager for a consulting firm – Accelare – who just so happens to be a Elite level ServiceNow Partner. How does this all come together? Well, ServiceNow developed a product called ‘Vaccine Administration Management’ (VAM) - an application that enables capabilities from automated appointment scheduling to close-loop communications, from inventory management to eligibility determination. And we’ve been at the forefront of proudly implementing this solution with heroes in Healthcare, State and Local Government and Higher Education.

In the effort to reach a specific audience, I thought to myself, “here I am marketing this solution in the context a single-purpose application, when it is so much more than that.” Well beyond vaccines, there are endless applications of VAM and the businesses that need it, are the same businesses that have been negatively affected by Covid-19.

Cue that creativity that fuels my passion: My responsibility is to get this in front of decision makers – those decision makers who are faced with how to administer a variety of critical services and commodities. Sure, there are thousands of others trying to do a similar thing in crowded space, but with this fresh and differentiated perspective of how we take ‘VAM’ and turn it into something more…something extendable and scalable I had a brand-new challenge: How do I not only reach those who must administer this vaccine in our current environment while also communicating the message of its valuable utility to other industries? It was time to tip VAM on its side…welcome XAM: (X) Administration Management!

What is the Inner Remarkability of Vaccine Administration Management?

I’ve been reading an outstanding marketing book called Contagious by Jonah Berger (I know the title is incredibly ironic right now, but it's not what you think!). Backed by research, it essentially explains why things catch on and spread through word-of-mouth (it is also a highly effective marketing tactic). There are six fundamental principles, or as he calls them, “STEPPS” to understand the reason behind content virality. The STEPPS are Social Currency, Triggers, Emotion, Public, Practical Value, and Stories.

With XAM top of mind, I started reading about Social Currency. Social Currency is the means of sharing information to each other. And quite honestly, sharing is even more abundant now more than ever because everyone feels the need to be connected to one another. Sharing key to sharing as a social currency is finding the ‘it’ factor: inner remarkability – something extraordinary, surprising, or unusual.

The inner remarkability of VAM is the breadth of application. The key to word-of-mouth wildfire is to break the pattern and a single-approach mindset.

In the context of ServiceNow’s Vaccine Administration Management application, you can break the pattern of conventional use and leverage its capabilities for any application. It unlocks a whole host of new industries and businesses that could use the solution to manage and transform administration management. Whether it be adoption and fostering or disaster relief, these capabilities are transmutable.

What are the Benefits of Vaccine Administration Management?

Not only is breaking the pattern remarkable in itself, as a marketer, but I am also taking into account what the capabilities enable and deliver, not how they deliver. When I look at this in the context of the benefits of these capabilities, they are no longer tied to a specific industry and the mindset switches to problem solving. I highlight and emphasize what is done and achieved as an outcome-based result-driven power statement, as opposed to the methods used to do it (or at least that conversation happens a few more steps down the road).

These application capability benefits solve problems. When thinking about the benefits that matter to government or adoption agencies, to clinics in the context of vaccine administration management or general patient engagement, I think about the fact that these capabilities can:

• Reduce risk of overselling by tracking inventory as assigned to appointments.
• Improve demand forecasting to fulfill customer needs.
• Capture high-quality data during each interaction to better serve the customer.
• Create scalable and transparent processes that require little intervention.

All these benefits speak to solutions of non-specific industry problems. So, in the coming weeks – we are going to ‘zoom out’ and take a holistic view of these benefits’ applications – not just the capabilities. For more context on this topic, read Andrea Pohlman, VP & General Manager’s blog ‘XAM is the New VAM: How to Unleash Your ServiceNow Solution’.

To set up a time with our platform design engineering experts about platform innovation and breakthrough and our team can provide these benefits through XAM, click here.

Stay tuned for our upcoming webinar 'What's Next: XAM is the New VAM' and be sure to subscribe for updates!