Interval client launches new online wellness campaign
On August 15, new Interval client Inova Health System (Fairfax, VA) launched “FitFor50,” a new online wellness campaign. The campaign features former Washington Redskins great Darrell Green as a passionate spokesperson, and provides a 50-day wellness program through the FitFor50.org website. The online experience includes videos, tips from Darrell and Inova physicians, wellness content, and an interactive Wellness Playbook, which allows registered users to log their own wellness goals and update their personal progress. Interval designed the FitFor50.org website and Wellness Playbook.
“The concept of creating an online community based on wellness is a natural extension of Inova Health System’s branding promise,” says Chris Boyer, Senior Manager of Digital Communications for Inova Health System. “The FitFor50 site also integrates a number of social media platforms, including blogs, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. We’ve made an effort to ensure users of the site can interact with the content in ways they are most comfortable.”
According to Boyer, the FitFor50 website had more than 6,000 unique visitors within the first 10 days of the campaign, and more than 2,000 people had registered for the Wellness Playbook
“This is a terrific example of a health system using health and wellness to engage consumers and build its brand,” said Interval president Chris Bevolo. “Rather than the typical approach of touting specialties or technologies that many consumers don’t need or can’t relate to, wellness is actually relevant to most people, and Inova has done an amazing job of leveraging wellness to connect with those in its market.”
Who should be more offended, branders or SM folk?
In a somewhat disparaging “this can’t really be happening, right?” BusinessWeek article called “Twitter, Twitter, Little Stars,” author Felix Gillette manages to slap two disciplines with one fell swoop. In trying to describe the somewhat chaotic rush by businesses to add social media professionals to their staff, Gillette makes this statement:
“The chief social media officer may be supplanting the chief branding officer as the zaniest human resources innovation in memory.”
Wow. Really? I’m not sure who should be more insulted, brand evangelists or social media zealots. Read More
Ahh, my favorite: a heated rant about billboards
Poor billboards – what did they ever do to hurt anyone? Except for suck it so often. So much money down the tubes. We beat up on “billboards” so often, I’m not sure there’s anything left to say. But here’s a great rant from Steve Davis, whose blog “Health Care Strategist” I follow.
And to answer Steve’s question, “Dumb clients? Clueless agencies?…” I have to say, unfortunately, both.
Can advertising alone change your brand?
For years, we’ve been lamenting the over-reliance on mass consumer advertising in hospital marketing, and with it, the exaggerated expectations many organizations have for such a tactic. At the same time, and in the same vein, we’re imploring hospitals to take brand building seriously, focusing on the idea that hospital brands are built and improved through the patient experience. “Advertising doesn’t build brands,” we’d admonish, “the experience you deliver does.” And we’d often trot out cases like the Mayo Clinic or Starbucks as examples of companies that have built world-renown brands without any advertising.
So what do we make of the Old Spice Guy? Read More
When I say refreshing drink, you think cancer treatment.
Where do I begin with the recent article in Ad Age titled “Health-Care Reform Stokes Spending by Top Hospitals, Clinics”? The story starts by using an example of a live-tweeted surgery to state: “Welcome to the new front in medical marketing: hospitals jockeying to position themselves for growth amid a perfect storm of aging baby boomers and a health-care-reform bill that will result in millions more insured patients down the road.”
There’s the frustrating: The “new front”? Hospitals have been jockeying to position themselves for about two decades now. It seems that whenever a mainstream media source “discovers” hospital marketing, then it must be a new phenomenon. It’s not. Read More
Banning hospital advertising – it was only a matter of time.
Over the past year we’ve pondered periodically in our podcast why we haven’t heard a call for a ban on hospital advertising, given the national debate on healthcare reform. Well we finally have our first salvo.
According to an article in the Burlington Free Press on Monday, Vermont state representative Steve Maier is proposing legislation to ban hospitals from spending money on advertising or marketing in the state. Here’s a quote from the article:
“It’s not producing health care,” Maier said of the money spent on advertising (quote from a previous online version of the article).
Given the focus on healthcare costs at a national level, it’s not surprising a politician has latched onto the relatively easy mark of hospital advertising. (It is surprising that it took this long). Let’s put aside the argument surrounding advertising that supports public health issues such as obesity, smoking or wellness for a moment. There are at least three reasons I can think of why such a proposal doesn’t make sense. Read More
New campaign for donor designation hits airwaves
A new television spot featuring a simple – but important – decision we all must make is now airing during the Olympics. The ad features one man’s decision to check “yes” to donor designation while renewing his driver’s license, while showing the positive impact that decision has on everyone around him. The television spot is part of a new campaign developed by Interval with LifeSource, the organ procurement organization for Minnesota, South Dakota, North Dakota and western Wisconsin.
Warning: not all direct-to-consumer advertisers will experience the same results.
Often, those in hospitals and health systems who are looking for a quick fix to a business challenge such as outmigration or dropping market share will call for increased consumer advertising, arguing in part by pointing toward how pharmaceutical companies have gained success over the past decade advertising direct to consumers. The prevailing wisdom has been that given the mass amounts of money spent on this strategy ($4.7 billion in 2008, according to TNS Media Intelligence) and the ongoing complaints of physicians dealing with this phenomenon, drug companies must have been wildly successful with this tactic. But a study cited in this week’s BusinessWeek article titled “Ask Your Doctor If This Ad Is Right for You” throws some cold water on the notion that direct-to-consumer advertising has been successful for drug companies. Read More
The demise of old marketing: “I’m not dead yet!”
It’s a classic scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail: A character played by John Cleese answers the call of “Bring out yer dead!” by trying to deposit his still-alive elderly ward (“I’m not dead yet – I feel happy!”) with the traveling undertaker. In some ways, I get the same feeling from many new media advocates who would prefer traditional mass advertising be dead and buried. Read More
St. Joe's hero movie campaign garners more national accolades
The 2008 hero movie campaign for St. Joseph’s Hospital continues to receive national recognition. First, the campaign is featured in the October issue of the American Marketing Association’s Marketing News “Best of Class” column, written by Piet Levy (download a PDF of the article). It’s always great to receive press on client work, but in hospital marketing, it’s especially gratifying to receive recognition from a source that critiques marketing across all industries, not just healthcare. Read More