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Truth #3:
Great healthcare marketing requires great healthcare leaders

The Truths We Hold Self-Evident: Third in a Series

Many elements contribute to successful marketing and branding for hospitals and health systems: talented and dedicated marketing staff, smart strategies, clear communications, strong positioning, consistency, creativity and more.

But in our observations, there is one ingredient that is essential to sustained marketing success: great organizational leaders. CEO, president, administrator – the title doesn’t matter. Time and time again we have seen sophisticated, cutting edge and effective marketing strategies fail to get off the ground due to lack of support from the organizational leader.

The leadership marketing gap

It’s not surprising, really, that in the majority of situations, there is a lack of great organizational leadership when it comes to marketing and branding. Many hospital CEOs and administrators have little or no formal marketing education, and you can probably count on one hand the number who have risen up through the marketing ranks.

Providing healthcare services in today’s market is an extraordinarily difficult proposition, and leaders must firmly grasp clinical operations, financing, regulations, physician relations, labor relations, clinical quality and safety dynamics, and much more. Marketing and branding is – and probably should be – far down on the list of skill sets for organizational leaders. However, in today’s market, with rising consumerism, increased competition, transparency and more, successful marketing and brand building is vital to long-term sustainability.

Defining a great leader

Given these limitations, how would we define a great leader in terms of supporting effective marketing and branding? Here are a few of the qualities:

• A great leader understands the value of brands, and more importantly, understands strong brands are built primarily through the experience offered, not through advertising or communications. With that understanding, they support the investment in and often long-term incubation of service innovation and enhanced patient experiences. On the flip side, they don’t ask marketing leaders to use advertising campaigns to “build our brand” or “fix our reputation.”
• A great leader is able to look beyond what their peers are doing and take risks, or try new approaches. The healthcare industry is notorious for looking across the street to see what others are doing, then following. When it comes to marketing, however, this leads to a vicious cycle of outdated or ineffective practices replicated over and over. A great leader is open to ideas new to healthcare – often from other more advanced industries – even when it seems peers aren’t pursuing the strategy.
• A great leader is able to stand up to physicians or others who play power politics and push for bad marketing. The first two assets are meaningless unless the organizational leader has the wherewithal to stand up to others in the organization – often powerful physicians – to advocate for the right marketing strategy. Too often, leaders are worn down by various physician relation issues – authority, process, compensation, etc. – so they give on marketing or branding issues. A great example of this is the clinic led by a powerful specialist that is allowed to have its own brand name, rather than one that fits within the organizational brand nomenclature. Or physicians who insist they are the focus of an advertising campaign, regardless of whether or not this approach is effective or differentiating. The political power play is perhaps the number one reason effective marketing dies on the vine.
• A great leader understands marketing and branding, but if not, then trusts her marketing leader. We can’t expect all healthcare leaders to have a total grasp of all the functions they oversee – that’s why they have experienced leaders in each area. But if the leader doesn’t trust her lieutenant when an understanding gap exists, what’s the point? When the marketing leader is advocating in any of the situations noted above, the organizational leader must have his back as often as possible.

Shining examples

It’s our belief that the healthcare industry has a long way to go before the type of leader described above is the rule, rather than the exception. But there are role models out there who in many ways exemplify the attributes we’ve described. Here are a few that we’ve run across:

Wayne Sensor – CEO, Alegent Health, Omaha, NE
Alegent has been a leader in embracing pricing transparency, helping address a critical aspect in the growing reliance on consumerism in healthcare. Wayne helped lead this initiative and has been an outspoken advocate for the need for and application of healthcare transparency.

Bruce Crowther – CEO, Northwest Community Hospital, Schaumburg, IL
To truly leverage branding, organizations must have a guiding plan, what we call a brand strategy. Our estimation is that, at best, 10-20% of hospitals in the U.S. have a true brand strategy. Bruce helped lead the effort at his organization to build a brand strategy, and the result is a model that can be held up throughout the healthcare industry.

Phil Newbold – CEO, Memorial Hospital and Health System, South Bend, IN
Innovation in technology and pharmaceuticals has always been a cornerstone of the U.S. healthcare system. Phil took the idea of innovation and expanded it to all other aspects of a healthcare provider, from processes to the patient experience, and enabled everyone in his organization to embrace and pursue innovation.

Sara Criger – CEO, St. Joseph’s Hospital, St. Paul, MN
A client of Interval’s, Sara was presented with a different kind of marketing campaign, one that included social media and guerrilla elements, a teaser phase that included no hospital logo on any advertisement, and a cutting-edge creative theme that pushed the comfort-level of a typical conservative organization to the limit. She embraced the idea of pursuing something new and different, and helped sell the campaign internally to physician and system leaders.

In the end, it often doesn’t matter how sophisticated the strategy, how smart the marketing leader or how clever the campaign. Without support and nurturing from the organizational leader, the best marketing practices and the positive results they could generate will continue to remain elusive.

Potentially-related posts:

1. Truth #2: Healthcare marketing needs a serious shake-up
2. Potential marketing disconnect topic of interview with Chris Bevolo

This article was posted by Chris Bevolo on Wednesday, May 13th, 2009 at 8:06 am, and was filed under Branding, Competition, Marketing, Planning, Strategy.

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