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Blackmore’s New Flagship Store – Now There’s a Model for Pharmacy!
Blackmores have designed and opened an innovative flagship store that offers the complete wellbeing experience, with rooms for private consultations with qualified naturopaths, a modern ‘Mindful Ocean’ system to assess mindfulness, the Wellbeing Bar for food and drink tasting as well as offering the comprehensive Blackmores’ product range. Located on Level 5 of Westfield, Bondi Junction, the…
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Seth Godin Clarity – as applied to pharmacy
I have long been admired the mental agility of Seth Godin, the US marketing guru who was the author of an Internet transforming book titled “The Ideavirus”. Basically, he identified and predicted what has now come to pass, in that “word of mouth” would be displaced by “word of mouse”. His words reported further along…
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Pineapple Express – A Retail Store Concept for the Sale of Marijuana
Editor’s Note: The Pineapple Express has engaged design firm, The McBride Company, to envision the future of cannabis culture (and consumerism). While the laws in the US are completely different to Australia (some states in the US allow recreational use of marijuana) it is not beyond expectation that a similar culture will emerge in Australia.…
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Marketing Focus – Essays in Management & Marketing
1. “We are family”. Three small words. But not a three-word slogan. Collectively, they represent a force of nature in society and business. The importance and power of the phrase were brought home to me at a nephew’s 50thbirthday party. He shared with his guests that he and I had had a counselling session when…
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A New “Social Enterprise” Wholesaler
A new generic wholesaler has formed up as a philanthropic venture designed to apply its total net profit evenly between two organisations – the Breast Cancer Network Australia and Breast Cancer Institute of Australia. This ‘social enterprise’ company is called For Benefit Medicines (FBM) and it will negotiate generic drugs under a generic label with an FBM suffix.…
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The PBS $1 Discount – Strategies for Coping
The next 12 months will be a real time of testing as the discount PBS co-payment of $1 begins to bite. You must prepare to combat this process immediately to ensure that your pharmacy will survive. This cynical process adopted by government, has the potential to generate many bankruptcies after the first year of introduction. And…
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Increase Your Employability – Build a Personal Brand Through IT & Social Media
Increasingly, it is becoming more difficult for pharmacies to employ a range of pharmacists. It is simply because of the diminishing money supply in the system. This comes about because of the commoditisation of the PBS and the lack of courage by all pharmacy leaders to develop systems and services that are not government funded…
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Marketing Focus – Essays on Management & Marketing
1. SCENARIO PLANNING ANALYSIS Mining resources are finite, ideas and innovation and infinite. In that one sentence is an overview of the reality and the opportunities of, and for, Australia. Critical analysis of scenario planning details reveal some substantive and important elements. Many of the aspects also relate, and are pertinent to individuals, sectors and…
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Create Infinite Growth Through Appropriate Brand Building
Recently, I came across a paper published on the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) website and it was titled “Eight Lessons to Secure Infinite Growth”. It was a paper that involved simple processes to create strong brand images. As I read into the detail I found that if I changed some of the nomenclature it was…
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Back to Basics – What is your marketing strategy?
I have heard many comments floating around in pharmacy discussions, that community pharmacy has become exceptionally vulnerable since the “Big Yellow Box” has demonstrated that it can outspend all the rest of pharmacy in advertising. In other words, only two camps exist – them and us! To me, that is a lot of nonsense, since…