A few years ago, I was struck by a moment of complete, utter professional embarrassment. We had finally gained alignment on a new global campaign for a launch product. It was a painful experience, filled with strategic twists, rounds of creative, costly do-overs, and frustrated team members. This broken process cost a million dollars! Granted, it was a complicated client situation: a collaboration between two successful healthcare companies with U.S. and global regions with distinct marketing challenges. All of this complexity pointed to significant challenges, especially related to creative alignment.

Nearly 1 in 4 American adults supports loved ones, friends, or others as caregivers. They help. They cope. They talk to doctors. They research diseases. And they need support even as they give it, because caregivers often put their own needs on the back burner while caring for someone else.

According to industry estimates, 500 million smartphone owners worldwide use at least one health or wellness app. Within the next three years, 50% of the more than 3 billion smartphone and tablet users will have downloaded mobile health apps.

I decided to start the year off with an offering that's a bit different from my usual fare, but still designed to help you become more a more knowledgeable, efficient and powerful health marketer.

Once again, the Consumer Electronics Show has gathered together another bumper crop of high-tech wizardry. With over 4,000 registered exhibitors, the competition to get noticed over the three days of the show was intense. One big standout was the Oculus Rift headset that raised the experience of reality in Virtual Reality by several notches. Also turning heads, literally, was Samsung's 105" bendable TV that stretched screen technology into new areas. For more physically active tech aficionados there was Cambridge Consultants' Xelfex fitness shirt with optical fibers woven into the fabric, making it possible to model the wearer's movements on a …

Physicians are the central stakeholders in U.S. medicine. Each doctor averages a couple thousand patients under care and controls a couple million in healthcare spend each year. But for marketers, doctors are often seen as one of the most challenging and expensive groups to reach. There are less than a million practicing physicians in the U.S. and each is highly specialized in their daily work. Many of the things marketers hold true for other consumer and business audiences are entirely false in medicine. Here are five unexpected facts about physicians you should consider for your next marketing campaign:

During the nine years I practiced emergency medicine, I saw patients who presented with a wide variety of ailments, disorders, and concerns. Of all the things I saw, my favorite discharge diagnosis during those years was a cockroach embedded in the ear canal. Why?

Healthcare marketers are adjusting their strategies to reach "recession care" consumers.

The popularity of digital tools in the wellness space has grown exponentially. Nearly 90% of people in the United States look to the Internet for healthcare information, while more than 46 million people use apps from the fitness and health category, according to eMarketer and Nielsen.