Corrections or additions?
This article by Bart Jackson was prepared for the January 23, 2002
edition of U.S. 1 Newspaper. All rights reserved.
Website Review: WelChol.com
U.S. 1 Newspaper does not often do articles on
companies
or products or people that win awards — we know from our own
industry
that simply entering a contest is often the most important
prerequisite
to winning.
So when a press release arrived from Newton Interactive of 2425
Pennington
Road, heralding an award-winning website it had designed for an
anti-cholesterol
drug, we expected the news to be no news. But our boss took an
inexplicable
interest in it. “What’s the matter,” we asked,
“cholesterol
problems?”
“Not exactly,” he replied. “My last blood test showed
156.”
But we knew that cholesterol has two components, the good one (HDL)
and the bad one (LDL), and that together they shouldn’t be over 200
or 230 at the most. “So which one was 156?” we asked.
“Neither,” was the reply. “That was the total.” Still
the boss insisted on having this website reviewed. So we asked a U.S.
1 correspondent, Bart Jackson, to take the cyber-tour of
www.WelChol.com Jackson filed this report:
In an era when advertising often is disguised as editorial,consumers have a right to be skeptical. We are all indeed leery ofhaving our objective editorial streams of information tainted by thehidden persuadings of marketers. We feel manipulated. On the otherhand, Debra Newton, founder of Newton Interactive, feels thatwhen specific products provide valuable information and possiblesolutionsto serious problems, this is information worth having.In September, 2000, Sankyo Pharmaceuticals and its commercial partner,Gel Tex, released WelChol, a new cholesterol-lowering drug. It had,the producers believed, a definite effectiveness edge over competitivestatin drugs, such as Zocor, because it does its work in the stomachand intestines, and does not carry side effects to the liver. With50 percent of Americans showing high HDL cholesterol levels and 28percent of those eligible for medication, the challenge was to impartthis complex product information to a broad base of both consumersand health care professionals.Sankyo chose Newton Interactive to solve this problem. Founded in1991, Newton has designed sites for Bayer, Bristol-Meyers-Squibb,Pfizer, and a host of other pharmaceuticals. Originally from Ohio,Newton has knowledge of both marketing and the pharmaceuticalindustry.She attended St. Mary’s College in San Francisco, “about a decadebehind my fellows,” she says, and earned a bachelor’s in businessadministration. Afterwards, she became marketing manager for WallaceLabs, where she saw the possibilities in web marketing.Her 50-person firm specializes in work for medical and pharmaceuticalclients.Newton Interactive produced www.WelChol.com under Sankyo’sdirection.It is a product website — an infomercial, if you will — butit is also a valuable resource tool for the 100 million Americansconcerned about high cholesterol levels. Like other successful sitespromoting prescription drugs, WelChol capitalizes on people’s desireto learn about the entire disease, not just the drug.In a colorful, interesting site, WelChol does just that.Any major search engine brings you to its home page, affording youtwo options. The “Professional Site,” reserved for medicaldoctors and other health workers, requires a password, which thecompanywill provide upon application. Clicking on the “Consumer Site”takes you instantly to a wealth of sharply categorized, readableinformation.No flashing ads, thank heaven.The site reads like a newspaper. Centering around some rather benigngraphics, small topic headlines invite you into specific categories.You may go straight to the Welchol product information, learn whatthis drug — colesevelam HCI — actually does, or you may reviewa broad and neatly packaged body of information about cholesterol,heart disease, and prevention. The tone is straight forward, yet notdidactic. You are enticed into a virtual fireside for a virtual chat.At the end of 2001, Newton Interactive received a HealthcareLeadershipGold Award for presenting the best overall website in a pharmaceuticalcategory. The site scored high marks for content, interactivity andmedical care support. But probably what this computer Ludditeappreciatedmost was WelChol’s amazingly easy navigation. Every one of thecategoriesis broken down into swiftly accessed features. Each can be quicklyescaped, with a host of options, not just to go back, but to linkonto to any other part of the site. Almost no segment of the siteis more than two clicks away, as opposed to the frustratingcyber-labyrinthsthat snarl many websites.Following down the major listings you are led smoothly into theproductand its use, making you well informed and capable of judging WelCholby the time you get there. Under the broad headline of CholesterolControl, one is offered a full definition of HDL, LDL, their benefits,proper levels, problems, and risk factors. Thus armed, you can clickdown to the logical next steps: What is WelChol? How does WelCholWork? and Is it Right for Me?Among these, the reader is given the closest thing to a real ad. Acomparative difference between the typical statin cholesterol-loweringmedication is explained. Unlike the statins, which enter the bloodstream and thus may entail certain side effects, WelChol (colesevelamHCI) stays in the intestinal tract, binding itself to HDL-laden bile,and passes both self and bile through the system. The benefits aredeemed obvious and no space is spent on laborious testimonies fromhigh ranking doctors. Here are the facts, you can choose for yourself,is the attitude.Those not interested in the product may skip on to the conciselywritten”Managing Your Cholesterol” segment, which discusses exerciseand nutrition needs, actual recommended levels, sample menus, foods,and even comparative gender risks. (One in three women versus onein two men will suffer heart disease.)Simple charts discuss and elaborate on various food groups. Even amoderately health conscious individual might learn something. Giventhe recent headlines about the deleterious effects of milk, some mightassume that dairy products should just be avoided in the fight againstcholesterol. But this website reports that three servings a day arenecessary, and that for those over 50 four servings a day are ideal.The trick, of course, is that the servings should be low fat and lowcholesterol versions of what most Americans consume.A few snippets of information begged questions thatwere never answered. The website notes that people should limitthemselvesto foods with two grams or less of saturated fats. Then it notes thatolives and avocados are counted as mono-unsaturated fats. So are thesefoods good, bad, or somewhere in between?On the whole, however, the writing is unambiguous and easy to read.Most items are held to a single page of about 250 words each.Multi-pagepieces are broken into easy spacings, with options to “learnmore”or not.While the gloom-and-doom business of cholesterol does not lend itselfto a fun Web page, Newton Interactive’s authors keep the readerintrigued.Such sidebars as “Apple Tips” recommend shoppers seek outcheeses with three grams of fat and never more than five. It suggeststhat, when ordering a pizza, you restrain yourself to a tomato pie.(Cheeseless pizza may seem like the transformation of Bordeaux intowater, but ours is a cautious age.)Interaction is also encouraged. A voting poll allows you to help witha survey of, for example, how many times weekly you eat processedmeats. Three different daily menus are presented, to help acholesterol-watchingdieter envision the range of food possibilities. The “Questionsto Ask Your Doctor” list flashes on your screen and takes onlya button to print out. Clever.It was a little distressing to find that clicking on “ProductInformation” leads to the necessary downloading of Adobe AcrobatReader (something which my computer refused to do.) However, I’m sureI did not miss anything. Much of the information is deliberatelyredundanton this site, to make sure that essentials are encountered no matterwhat pattern of browsing the individual searcher uses.Compared with the American Heart Association’s website,www.AmericanHeart.org,WelChol provides less total information, but more easily accessiblelinks. The AHA site provides an excellent glossary, many comparativedetails of drugs, foods, and blood levels, but you are frequentlysent to another site to dig them out. On both sites, the Internet’sspecter of unedited unreliability is no problem. The information isaccurate because the FDA oversees all pharmaceutical advertising,and the WelChol site is held to the same strict guidelines as drugads in any other media.There may never come a time when the hard fist of the advertiser isaccepted into the fine glove of editorial content. And perhaps weare right to keep our suspicions. But by whatever category you careto label it, Newton Interactive’s WelChol site imparts some vitaland honest information, and it is refreshing to find a little of that.— Bart JacksonSo why then Richard K. Rein’s sudden interest inheart-relatedsubjects? The answer lies in that three-day stretch the other weekwhen he was suddenly absent from the office. An early morning tripto the medical center for a test that was part of his annual physicalturned into a three-day stay, with an angioplasty and a stent insertedto clear up a 90 percent blockage of the left anterior descendingartery — the “widow-maker.”So, while a 156 cholesterol total may be “good” for mostpeople,it wasn’t good enough for Rein. In addition, and a postscript thatought to be added to any discussion of cholesterol and your health,cholesterol is merely one factor contributing to heart disease. Othersare smoking (not Rein), being overweight (not too bad there, either),lack of exercise (hmmm), and stressful lifestyle (17 years of longhours, incessant deadlines, and few vacations!)But that’s another story. We’ll give the boss a deadline and wordlimit and see if he can deliver.Previous StoryNext StoryCorrections or additions?This page is published by PrincetonInfo.com— the web site for U.S. 1 Newspaper in Princeton, New Jersey.
