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“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.”

As of September 21, the FitFor50 website had more than 26,000 unique visitors, and more than 6,000 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.”

“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. Casting those who’ve built amazing brands at such places as Nike, Starbucks, Apple, the Mayo Clinic or Zappos as zany seems a bit misplaced, but hey, what do I know, I don’t work for BusinessWeek.

As someone who believes in both disciplines as important to any organization’s success, I guess I’m doubly the fool. The whole story is a tad pretentious, written with a little bit of a “tut-tut” attitude regarding how organizations are scrambling to hire people to manage their social media strategies. (E.G. “Opportunities in corporate social media are popping up faster than cat videos on YouTube.”) But it also does a good job of painting a fair picture of why such a position is in fact important, and how the career path is growing.

And no matter what Gillette thinks, neither title is even close to the ridic combo of “HR/Marketing” veeps that seem to be sweeping the healthcare industry.

And to answer Steve’s question, “Dumb clients? Clueless agencies?…” I have to say, unfortunately, both.

So what do we make of the Old Spice Guy?

You for sure by now have heard of the amazing success of this advertising campaign, both in breaking through with a hilarious ad during this year’s Super Bowl and breaking new ground with a real-time social media event featuring the Old Spice Guy responding to tweets with equally hilarious video spots. (For a nice recap of this success story, see this article in the New York Daily News, or check out some of the videos on the Old Spice YouTube channel.)

Perhaps even more significantly, the Old Spice Guy has utterly repositioned the Old Spice brand. Perhaps you remember the old Old Spice guy – he was a close relative of the Mrs. Paul’s fisherman, or at least that’s how my brain remembers him. (Or maybe there were a lot of cable-knit turtleneck sweaters, I’m not sure). Old Spice was an aftershave in a little pale ceramic bottle, and it was my dad’s aftershave, or maybe even his dad’s. I admit I may have used some in high school, but that’s before I was exposed in college to the real world of fashion and fragrance, and my old-school Old Spice was quickly relegated to the back of my closet.

With this new campaign, Old Spice has become a hip brand, your son’s (or grandson’s) toiletry. So, doesn’t this go to prove that, yes, in fact, advertising can overhaul your brand? Well, yes and no.

Yes, in that the Old Spice Guy campaign, and others like it, do show that the right advertising approach can rework certain brands (and let’s not kid ourselves – the social media component is a brilliant extension of that advertising effort, but is still, all the same, a promotional tactic). One key here is that Old Spice is a consumer product, and so often with a consumer product, the brand is the product. Meaning Old Spice is simply a body wash with a certain chemical composition, a certain smell, and a certain feel. How that chemical mix is positioned in the consumer’s mind is very much up to how it’s packaged, what price it’s sold at, what advertising supports it, etc. In that way, Old Spice and many other consumer brands are dependent on their advertising/promotions to shape their brand.

However, it’s different with more complex product brands or service brands. In these cases, it is very much the experience or offering delivered that shapes the brands first and foremost. If one day Old Spice is positioned as a cheap cologne for old men, and the next it’s positioned as a savvy body wash for young studs, that radical transition is possible with the right supporting packaging. But that’s not as simple with a hospital. If one day a hospital has a brand as a run-down, low-quality facility with cranky staff and mediocre physicians, that brand can’t simply be repackaged and sold through advertising as a cutting-edge, sophisticated medical facility with first-class service. Unless all of those aspects actually change, the brand remains the same. Ergo, unless the underlying truth of the experience changes, you won’t be able to change the brand. For a complex offering such as a hospital or insurance company, it’s difficult to alter that brand truth, and it often takes significant time and money. With a simple consumer product such as Old Spice or vodka, the product is very simple, allowing for many other components to help shape the brand in whatever way is desired. But in the end it comes to down to a simple branding truth: your desired brand position must reflect your actual brand delivery.

With all that said, I’d love to see the Old Spice Guy replicated in healthcare. I can here it now:

“Hello ladies, I’m Dr. Awesomeness. Look at your doctor, now look at me. Now him, now me. If only your doctor was as awesome as me, you’d be happier. I’m on a horse.”

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. (Listen to our podcast on the NPR story a few weeks back on hospital marketing, as the moderator nearly gasps “hospitals compete?!?”).

There’s the obvious: live-tweeting and increased social media use by hospitals have been around for a couple of years now. “Emotional print campaigns” and “reputation ads” focusing on awards and rankings have been around for a lot longer. Which means these strategies can’t possibly stem from healthcare reform. And do we really think that the millions of new people who come onto the insurance doles will have the freedom to travel the country to choose care and still stay “in-network?” (Actually this raises a lot of interesting questions about whether there will be “networks” anymore, or what the true financial opportunity for domestic medical tourism is, but I’m on a roll here.)

There’s the hairpullers: Ned Russell, managing director of Saatchi & Saatchi Wellness states: “They (medical centers) need to attract talent and get funding. How do they do that? By increasing their patient base. How do they lure patients? (wait for it) Their advertising. Doesn’t seem to matter these days how far away a patient is.” Shocking that an ad agency exec would tout advertising to build brand and increase volumes. The Russell quote is immediately followed by this: “Indeed, 25% of the patients at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., come from 500 miles away or more.” I believe it’s pretty well established that the Mayo Clinic has attracted patients from around the country and the world for decades, and over that time THEY NEVER ADVERTISED. (I suppose I don’t need to repeat that great hospital brands are built by delivering great care and experiences, right? Right?)

And there’s the hilarious: this gem from Mike Guarini, president of Ryan TrueHealth: “I say ‘refreshing soda,’ you think Coca-Cola…I say ‘cancer treatment,’ you think Sloan-Kettering.” There are oh so many ways to go with this one. Suffice it to say I believe in branding, I believe in positioning, I believe in advertising, but healthcare is not a soft drink (or, see “Joe Public Doesn’t Care About Your Hospital.”)

OK, so I’m sure this all sounds catty. There is some good stuff in here. Ed Bennett once again provides some level-headed perspective about social media for hospitals: “I tell hospitals ‘Don’t get into social media because you think you’re going to get more patients. Do it because you’re helping be responsible to people reaching out looking for answers.”

Overall though, this piece will not help hospital marketers who struggle everyday with a lack of internal sophistication when it comes to their trade. I fear this will serve as fodder for chief surgeons, service line directors and other executives, who will point to a leading marketing and advertising pub and say, “See? We’re XYZ Medical Center, and WE need to advertise more to build a national reputation and compete with Mayo Clinic and Johns Hopkins.” Guess that’s good for ad agencies, and for the one or two dozen leading providers that might actually have a shot at a national reputation. But not good for the 97% of the other organizations who struggle enough with building brands and increasing volumes in their own markets.

Thus end’th the rant. What do you think? I’m I being too critical here? What did you think of the article?

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.

First, a hospital’s marketing expense is a tiny fraction of its overall expense. To be generous, let’s say it’s 1% of revenues, including all marketing salaries, external expenses, media, etc. Obviously it’s higher in some places and lower in others, but the point is that eliminating this expense won’t do much of anything to impact the cost of healthcare in the U.S. Of course, this is politics, so the actual impact of something is pretty much beside the point.

Second, there are serious free-speech issues involved, and it’s very rare for the courts to allow a restriction on an industry’s ability to communicate or promote itself. This will likely be the reason legislation of this nature won’t go anywhere, and if it does, why it won’t survive.

The third reason, and the one that is perhaps the most frustrating, is that hospitals and health systems in the U.S. – whether they’re for-profit or non-profit – must compete for patients to succeed. That’s the way the market is set up, and unless we went to a single-payor Canadian-style system, that’s the way it will likely stay. And with that type of market, organizations must be allowed to do whatever it takes to attract the customers (patients) they need to succeed. Many in the public would find this nonsensical or outrageous – “why do hospitals need to spend money to attract patients?” And politicians can prey on the public’s misunderstanding of the business of healthcare to drum up support for this type of legislation. But those who want hospitals banned from advertising their services miss the point that these are businesses that compete in an open market, and that’s a good thing.

If you believe in capitalism, you believe that competition drives innovation, efficiency, service and more. Competition should make healthcare better, not worse, though not everyone agrees with that. But the point is a bit moot – as long as we have the “system” we have of providing care, where providers must compete to find and keep patients, they should be allowed to use the tools other businesses use to pursue the same goals, and that includes marketing and advertising.

What do you think? Is this just an obvious/defensive position coming from a healthcare marketing firm? Will this legislation or others like it take hold? If they did, what would they mean for hospitals and all of us marketers?

The ad also features a number of people who have been directly impacted by organ and tissue donation. Their stories are featured on the campaign website, found at DonateLifeMidwest.org. Other components of the campaign include outdoor, print and online advertising. The campaign is slated to run throughout 2010 in both the Twin Cities and Sioux Falls, South Dakota markets. According to LifeSource, eighteen people die each day in the U.S. waiting for an organ or tissue transplant, and more than 105,000 are waiting for a life-saving transplant.