CanaleComm Hired to Keep Life Sciences’ Best Kept Secret

SAN DIEGO — April 1, 2012 – Canale Communications Inc said today that an undisclosed group of venture capitalists, entrepreneurs and institutional investors (“The Consortium”) has hired the life sciences public relations and investor relations agency to keep the industry’s best kept secret a secret. Despite the negative PR the industry has faced about investors not making money in life sciences, the Nasdaq Biotech Index has returned 18% YTD compared to 12% for the S&P 500 (35% vs 19% respectively over the past 2 years) and 2011 saw the 4^th largest influx of venture capital into the industry in history. The Consortium , which has successfully secured hundreds of millions of dollars for new venture capital funds and pocketed hundreds more from investments in Illumina, Amylin and Idenix to name a few, prefers this dirty little secret be kept a secret, and that new would-be investors do not flock to the industry. The Consortium has no connection to the group that purchased the Los Angeles Dodgers.

To ensure that investors and members of the media don’t see this release, CanaleComm made the announcement over the internet including its website, Primary Endpoint Blog and Twitter rather than issuing the announcement over the newswire.

“We don’t want new investors jumping back into life sciences based on the multiples we’ve been able to pull in over the past few years,” said the president of The Consortium. “They don’t need to know about our success. We like having our pick of the best and brightest entrepreneurs and science in the industry.”

However, The Consortium wants rock star entrepreneurs and business executives to know about the secret.

“There is a shortage of investable management teams in biotech right now, partly because the brightest are going to the fast money in the tech and gaming industries,” added the Consortium leader. “Tell them to leave the dark side, come to the life sciences side, and the best of the best will make money and solve the healthcare crisis for their children’s generation at the same time.”

Under the terms of the agreement, CanaleComm will receive an upfront payment of $4 million, success milestones up to $45 million, and single digit royalties on future successful exits. The Consortium will receive non-competitive access to investments in the top prospects in the industry.

The agreement will terminate when the secret is leaked, which is presumably after someone on the Consortium reads this notice.

Contact:

Jason Spark

Senior Vice President

Canale Communication Inc

jason@canalecomm.com

@SPARKbury

One thing public relations professionals have to respect is that as representatives of a business, organization, or group, we have an inherent conflict of interest whether we have the best and most ethical intentions or not.  According to Wikipedia policy, we should not make edits to Wiki pages where that conflict exists. I, for one, am comfortable with this. The value of Wikipedia is lost if pages for corporations are edited by communications departments and pages in turn end up reading like corporate websites.

Wikipedia has created built in Talk pages where discussions between editors and readers can discuss factual inaccuracies, biases, and weakly supported or unverified content. With knowledge of the organization and access to information, a PR professional can add considerable value to Wikipedia pages through the Talk pages. Wiki editors can then listen and decide for themselves the importance and credibility of information provided by corporations and PR pros. This is what it’s all about if corporations are to become more social: Engage in meaningful discussion online.

The trick is that Wiki editors have to be willing to listen to organizations and their communications reps. From my experience, most editors seem willing to listen and they appreciate being directed to valuable information. They respect transparency and openness in communication. However, I have run into editors that have conflicts of their own – one was a founder of a non-profit that had a beef with a certain class of prescription drugs. So even third party editors have biases and conflicts, and I trust that balance will come from the majority of Wiki editors that are truly outsiders.

Wikipedia has become a powerful source of information (with insanely remarkable search engine rankings) and with its own set of rules. For it to remain relevant, it must evaluate and value information from all sources, including from corporations. There is a role for public relations on Wikipedia. We just have to play by Wikipedia rules.

Have you run into a Wiki editor that seemed to have their own agenda?

Jason Spark is a senior vice president at Canale Communications and can be reached at jason@canalecomm.com.

• Identify other thought leaders. Hopefully you already know who these people are, but if you don’t, do some homework. Find people who have their finger on the pulse of the industry, are speaking at conferences, are being quoted in articles and (if they are participating in social media) have a Twitter following. Once you know who they are, follow what they are saying. What trends are they discussing and what are their opinions?
• Rub elbows with other thought leaders if you want to be one. Take advantage of social media platforms like Linked In to introduce yourself, or begin following and interacting with thought leaders on Twitter. Go to conferences that the “in crowd” is attending. There is significant value in attendance, particularly at high-impact, specialty conferences that focus on the future of the industry, such as Health 2.0, even if you aren’t presenting.
• Develop a platform such as a “fireside chat” conference session where you lead a discussion about a relevant and juicy topic with additional thought leaders on stage. The combined reputation equity of several thought leaders can be a big draw, bringing people to listen to you share your ideas.
• Have an intelligent, well-formed opinion, and be provocative. Don’t jump on the bandwagon and opine about only trendy topics or simply agree with others. Say something different or controversial. Pull out your crystal ball and predict what trends are coming and the impact those trends may have on the space.
• True thought leaders—those who are the drivers of change—have a large sphere of influence that is only gained through good networking. That doesn’t mean just knowing a lot of people. That means having meaningful relationships with a lot of people through ongoing interactions. You will find that as you continue to interact in intelligent and thoughtful ways, people will take notice of what you are saying and will begin seeing you as a thought leader too.
• Most importantly, BE GENUINE! People can spot a phony from a mile away, and if you are just going through the motions, you won’t be seen as a thought leader because people won’t trust what you have to say.

Heidi Chokeir is an account director at Canale Communications and can be reached at heidi@canalecomm.com.

Many communications veterans want to assign big numbers around impressions, circulation, and, less so, the always dangerous ad value equivalency. These tools have been on the outs in traditional PR for some time and they should really be outlawed for social media platforms such as Twitter. Why? As PR measurement guru @kdpaine told the Top Rank online marketing blog, “Even if you have 10,000 followers on Twitter, you have no idea how many people saw your tweet because of the continuous updates and the volume of tweets. The only thing you can accurately count is what readers do as a result of seeing the information.”

In other words, how much influence do you have over your followers and what level of engagement are you able to generate? Quality over quantity. Social media is about engagement. Here are a few unofficial ways I’ve tracked and been advised in tracking engagement on Twitter.

Retweets (and replies) trump followers: I keep an eye on the growth in the number of followers – that’s a good indication of being seen. However, what’s more important to me is frequency in which you are retweeted. This shows that people are seeing what you have to say, that they found you credible and relevant, and that what you said is interesting enough for them to share it with their followers. Retweets and replies reflect engagement.

Influence of Retweet: I also keep an eye on the quality of followers. A retweet by someone that is only followed by a few people isn’t that valuable. However, a retweet by someone with hundreds or thousands of followers is something I can boast to my client about. So the retweet volume alone isn’t perfect and isn’t the end-all.

Quality of the Audience: Now, I want to know the type of audience I’m reaching. I’m in the business of healthcare and life sciences, so a retweet by @ladygaga to her 11.8M followers might be pretty cool. But a retweet by @sanjayguptaCNN to his measly 1.3 million followers would be more meaningful for targeting an audience that cares specifically about health and medicine.

So how do you measure retweets and influencers? There are some free tools out there such as Klout.com, RetweetRank.com, Twitter Counter (extra fee for retweet tracking), or tweet.grader.com as well as paid services such as Radian6. They have their strengths and weaknesses, and everyone seems to have their own favorite.

The key for me is to first establish overarching communications objectives, followed by defining a benchmark (for example, baseline retweets and influence), and then sketch out specific goals using benchmarks as a starting point. With goals and a benchmark in place at the beginning, a customizable approach to measuring how Twitter can impact reputation is just a double click away.

What tools do you use to measure the communications value of your Twitter campaign?

Jason Spark is a senior vice president at Canale Communications and can be reached at jason@canalecomm.com.

After just a few weeks, I am happy to find that my higher education wasn’t a total waste. I find I have a knack for translating technical jargon to layman’s terms. I can think creatively about how to get my clients out in the social media world. Aside from the work content itself, I find that my experiences interacting with people or developing research in a lab setting actually have direct applications to communications. I find it easy to work with my team to achieve a specific goal. I am able to apply my organizational skills which were so critical in college to stay on top of the ever-changing PR-sphere. I finally understand those “critical thinking skills” that were so deeply ingrained into my education. And honestly, after having written nothing but technical research papers for four years, I find working on press releases and news articles a refreshing change. I’m looking forward to learning the details: I’m already getting used to AP style of writing and learning proper etiquette when speaking to clients.

Maybe I didn’t spend years learning all the ins and outs of the economy and how to properly title a press release, but I am already surprised to find how my educational experiences do apply to PR, and I look forward to seeing what else I can do and learn.

Maya Ziv is an account associate at Canale Communications.

In the spirit of full disclosure, through my board position on the SDVG, I was part of the group that put together the panel. But, the credit goes to the participants – VCs, Wende Hutton/Canaan Partners, Camille (Cami) Samuels/Versant, Bob More/Frazier Ventures and Kevin Kinsella/Avalon Ventures and referee (aka moderator), Faheem Hasnain and the unique structure of the panel. The panel was posed as a debate with Wende and Cami on the “pro” side, meaning there is a future for innovation, and Bob and Kevin taking the pessimistic view – what we called the “cons”. And like any real debate, score was kept and the points were tallied. Let’s see how things played out.

The debate started with Faheem referencing an interview given by Kevin to Xconomy, in which Kevin calls out ‘big pharma’s short-sighted, brass knuckle behavior is pushing biotech venture almost to the point of extinction.’ Kevin recapped his thesis and the sparks started to fly. Cami was quickest to respond, calling Kevin’s gloomy perspective factually incorrect. The fact is, she said, “potential acquirers go way beyond traditional big pharma. We are seeing greater than 20 deals a year and now you see other groups such as Forest, Valeant, Daiichi and a host of others playing the game and they are good deals with 80% of the anticipated funds being paid up front.” Wende concurred. “It’s a $450 billion industry, I’ll take it! We certainly see it work for Canaan,” she said.  Point for the pro side.

Bob had a fast rebuttal, “This is an exceptions business with a lottery ticket mentality. It’s like a math exercise for people who have never taken math. How can we continue to sell this to our LPs?” Bob certainly won the award for the most audience laughs, but the pro side didn’t let the laughs keep them back. Wende agreed with his exceptions point but added, “it’s a hits business and we are glad to participate in the dream of the hits. We think we know how to make fairly good picks and therefore good returns.” Well said.

The panel was so entertaining, I’m tempted to completely recap it here, but that would just make for too long of a post. Instead, let’s fast forward to the close. The last question of the day from Faheem was the most critical: “Are you going to continue to invest in this industry?” Thankfully, a unanimous YES. Score a point for the pro side. Here’s how they all responded:

Our chief pessimist, Kevin noted Avalon will continue to invest because they believe they have the right strategies to make money. “And, I’m not going to share with anybody,” he quipped! Interestingly, earlier this year, Avalon announced they raised over $200M in a ninth fund – at least ½ of this is targeted to go to biotech! In one of our panel prep discussions, I actually asked Kevin if he would have given the interview and participated in this panel if they were fundraising. “Hmmm, good question. Probably not!” he said.

Bob also responded with a yes but repeated a comment he had said earlier which is that he invests in people and is concerned at where the next talent pool is coming from. He’s concerned because when he looks at the numbers, he sees that very few execs are actually making money. He compared this to the teaching profession in that we’re not getting the best teachers anymore because we don’t pay them well. Hmmm. I like comparisons Bob, but this one doesn’t add up. In a 2009 salary survey (one of the gloomiest years for biotech), private company life science CEOs made an average salary of $275,000. Now, I know this doesn’t compare to the multi-millions they could make if they had a fantastic exit, but it is a decent living and certainly far better than the paltry $42,000 average of a teacher. Personally, I don’t think we need to worry too much about talent if it’s only a financial equation.

Our optimists, Cami and Wende are certainly continuing to invest. Wende noted that for Canaan’s two previous funds, they actually invested more as a percentage of their funds in life science companies. Obviously, they are doing this because they have been successful. Wende credits this success to continuously evaluating new models for investing, being disciplined and capital efficient. Today, Canaan is focusing on the most critical programs like infectious disease which they believe is a “screaming need.” Further they actively look for non-dilutive financing options for their portfolios companies. Just in the last month, their companies have closed on more than $300 million in non-dilutive grants. Ok, wow!

Cami, agreed with Wende’s comments and noted that Versant makes good money for their LPs and will continue to do so! One of their solutions to the changing landscape is that they invest in market pull, not technology. Whereas they use to bring in just scientists to conduct due diligence, now they look at the entire market including reimbursement, how things fit in to health reform, etc. “We are smarter than we use to be. You do have to be clever to find good investments.”

Once the panelists concluded their remarks, the pros were in the lead. Given that Faheem is a biotech CEO trying to raise $$$ and might not therefore be considered impartial, he opened the voting up to audience applause. While the cons had a louder round of applause than I anticipated (probably because they were the funnier side), the pros were crowned the victor!

It was a very “edu-taining” program and glad to see our life science industry does indeed have a future. By the way, at a private dinner I attended the night before the event, Bob disclosed his partners at Frazier actually said that they sure hoped he lost the debate! You know you’re one of my favorites, Bob, but I’m glad you did, too!

I hope you join the SDVG at future events. Become a member here! We’ll certainly try to keep the good ones coming.

Carin Canale-Theakston is the president and founder of Canale Communications and can be reached at carin@canalecomm.com.

I have experience in both investor relations and public relations, largely the consequence of 11 years in corporate communications for emerging biotechnology and life sciences companies.  So I find myself torn at times between the IRO’s sensitivities to SEC compliance, and the carpe diem mentality of the PR strategist on the crest of this disruptive change in how we communicate with stakeholders.

So what were the takeaways? (This might have to be done in installments)

Controlling the message vs. influencing the conversation — There was a lot of talk about how we can use Twitter to regain control of the message. By engaging on Twitter, can we really expect to control what people do with our message once we release it to the twitosphere? The social media movement is shifting communications away from controlling the message and towards influencing the conversation.  These conversations are happening on Twitter whether we choose to engage them or not. The smarter question becomes how can we engage and influence the conversation while maintaining compliance and fair disclosure.

Managing risk to access the reward — There was quite a bit of resistance to the notion of training a small group of employees to tweet on behalf of a company or brand. The fear is that employees are sharing information with conspiring investors looking for an edge. We should be concerned about this, just as we should be concerned about hedge fund managers approaching employed researchers at scientific meetings and short investors calling product managers for tidbits of information about the supply chain.

However, the problem hasn’t changed. The medium has. It’s still the onus of the corporate communications group to ensure employees know when to engage, what to engage with and when to hand off to the investor relations department whether the source is met over the phone, in person or online. What’s scarier than trained employees on Twitter? A corporate communications team with a blind eye to Twitter and oblivious to conversations that untrained employees are having on Twitter.

Quantifying the value of social media — In other words, why should IROs tweet? That’s the polarizing question that carried much of the discussion, and it’s the cliffhanger I’ll save for another post.

What’s your take on all this?

Jason Spark is a senior vice president at Canale Communications and can be reached at jason@canalecomm.com.

Many of us at Canale Comm have a special place in our hearts for lupus. We worked with La Jolla Pharmaceutical Company for several years supporting communications around that company’s efforts to develop a drug to treat lupus, and we shared disappointment with our client and patients with every setback that was dealt.

Today’s victory for those patients is a reminder why we are so passionate about the life sciences industry. We work very closely with companies, very often entrepreneurial start-ups, that enter into a dizzying world where only 5% of compounds that start clinical development ever make it onto the market. When a drug or diagnostic that dramatically changes the lives of patients in need makes it through this improbable path, we celebrate along with our clients, the industry and patients.

Congratulations to the patient community, Human Genome Sciences and GlaxoSmithKline on a great victory!

Carolyn Hawley is an account manager at Canale Communications and can be reached at carolyn@canalecomm.com.

Carolyn Hawley of CanaleComm helps her son sew a pillow for seniors at the Annual Carlsbad Day of Giving Back event.

Last week provided an excellent example of a mosaic approach to corporate positioning.  Our client Life Technologies’ story is multifaceted: the company is the leading provider of tools and services for life sciences research, and their products are used for a variety of applications, ranging from molecular medicine, forensics, and food and water testing to name just a few. Their products and healthy stock price drive the primary conversations that contribute to their positioning, but there are other sides to the company that are equally important in shaping its reputation.

Last week, Chairman and CEO Greg Lucier and several Life Technologies executives participated in a conference hosted by the J. Craig Venter Institute and Nature held on the anniversary of the publications of the human genome sequence in 2001.  Greg joined a panel discussion with Dr. Venter, Desmond Tutu and Nobel laureates to look forward to the promises of human genomics for the next ten years. Engaged in scientific discussions, the Life Technologies staff was in their element as visionaries for the path of where their company’s technologies can impact the human condition.

The next day, we saw a completely different side of the company. Their community affairs team spearheaded the first Annual Carlsbad Day of Giving Back. Employees, volunteers from local business and kids enjoying a school holiday converged in a giant vacant manufacturing space on the company’s campus. We planted mobile vegetable gardens, sewed pillows for home-bound seniors, created festive bags used to deliver food to the hungry, and talked with children about the values of volunteerism. Greg Lucier shared the stage with Carlsbad Mayor Matt Hall and families had their pictures taken with Life’s colorful new mascot, the Giving Gene. It was a terrific event for Life to bring the community together, demonstrate its leadership as a good corporate citizen and show everyone how much fun it is to work there.

In a matter of days, we saw two very different sides of Life Technologies. When you combine them with all the other facets of its identity, we come away with a very rich picture of the company.

Pam Lord is a senior vice president at Canale Communications and can be reached at pam@canalecomm.com.

Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute's Paul Laikind, Ph.D. (left) spoke at the Xconomy event. He is joined by SBMRI's Josh Baxt.

Developing solutions to the epidemics of obesity and diabetes are Big Hairy Audacious Goals, to borrow the very descriptive term Paul Laikind of Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute used at the Xconomy event “San Diego’s Fight Against Diabesity.” The life sciences entrepreneurs, researchers, investors and physicians who participated in the lively and thought-provoking discussion are passionate about tackling these diseases and have their sights set on the BHAG.

We heard about some medicines making their way through tumultuous regulatory review processes (Amylin’s Bydureon for T2 diabetes, and for obesity, Arena’s lorcaserin and Orexigen’s Contrave that received a complete response from FDA — ugh) as well as companies coming at diabetes with novel drug targets. I thought one VC was going to hand Chip Scarlett of Vega Therapeutics a term sheet right then and there! That certainly would have off-set the investor panel’s lack of enthusiasm for high-risk diabetes ventures. The “diabesity” area offers tremendous opportunities for innovation, so it was great to hear about new approaches intended to improve the alarmingly poor compliance rates of patients with diabetes: Amylin’s once-weekly formulation of exenatide; Calibra Medical’s Finesse insulin patch; and Intarcia’s use of the tiny subcutaneous pump originated at ALZA.

The issue of compliance reveals a factor that is critical to successfully addressing these disease epidemics: human behavior. When only 30% of T2 diabetes patients are compliant with their drug regimens, we have to understand what motivates patients to improve their health. We can develop long-acting drug formulations and matchstick-size drug pumps that only need to be changed once per year – these cleverly work around the patients’ psyche. But I think we also need to apply our ingenuity to develop innovative software, healthcare information technologies, wireless devices and educational technologies or programs that affect positive behavioral change and ultimately motivate us to take action to improve our personal and collective well-being.

At the Xconomy event, Bob More of Frazier Healthcare opined that diabetes and obesity will require multifactorial solutions. A lot of money and energy is hard at work developing pharmacological approaches to these diseases. I’m eager to hear about innovations that positively influence our behaviors, including changing society’s attitudes about exercise with initiatives like HHS’ Let’s Move! Campaign as well as at the individual level. (Don’t get me started about the powerful communications I’d love to sink my teeth into!) The latter – changing ingrained beliefs held by the masses – is TRULY a BHAG, but all hands must be on deck for us to turn the tide on “diabesity.”

Pam Lord is a senior vice president at Canale Communications and can be reached at pam@canalecomm.com.