“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.”

“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.”

1. Wellness is relevant to consumers. (You’ve heard us beat this drum before.) Whether it’s advocating for “inbound marketing” strategies or pleading that “Joe Public Doesn’t Care About Your Hospital” at healthcare marketing conferences around the country, our message is the same: Make your marketing communications relevant to your audiences.

   Remembering that consumers are constantly thinking “What’s in it for me?” provides the primary argument against daVinci Robot billboards and advertising that features physicians. Truth is, most people don’t need laser surgery or a new physician, so those ubiquitous brand-building approaches will not resonate as well. It’s not that you can’t build brand with these messages — you can. But because they’re not relevant to the vast majority of people in your community, it takes much more time and money for them to have an impact. Most people do have some level of interest in living healthier lives, whether it’s losing weight, cutting stress, exercising more, eating right, or whatever. A message focused on health and wellness is a message relevant to a lot more people, one that actually will build their awareness, along with their perception, utilization — and loyalty. And it’s a message that’s completely natural coming from a community health leader — You.

2. Wellness also helps deflect the negative focus on hospital advertising. As we noted in our last e-newsletter, there’s a small but growing “assault” on hospital marketing. Right or wrong, it wouldn’t be surprising if this sentiment spread as politicians, regulators, the media and others start to dig deeper into how our organizations spend their money. (A recent NPR story on the subject started with the on-air personality stating in a surprised manner that hospitals actually are out there competing for patients. Can you imagine?) It’s one thing to spend millions of dollars on advertising bragging about your awards or touting your new technology. It’s quite another to be focused on helping those in the community improve their health and pursue wellness. This isn’t a reason to focus on wellness as a brand position (see above and below), but it’s a nice side affect.

3. Wellness messaging will actually help improve the health of your community. Yes, anything we do as hospitals from a marketing communications perspective that brings the right patient to the right service helps improve the health of consumers (assuming, of course, the right service is your service). As opposed to marketing messages focused on promoting the benefits of your organization, however, wellness-based messaging focuses on what’s best for the audience, and is bound to help those in the community improve their health. So not only is it the right thing to do from a business perspective, it’s just the right thing to do period. (And for those in your organization who argue you don’t get “paid” for health and wellness, so why focus on it, see our blog post “Gettin’ Paid.”

The good news is that we’re seeing more hospitals and health systems attempt to build their brand on a position of health and wellness. The bad news is that if you’re not one of those organizations, you may be left behind. You see, that’s the Achilles heel of wellness as a brand position — anyone can claim it. Of course, like everything else (clinical quality, convenience, patient experience, advanced technology, etc.), how hospitals actually deliver on this promise varies greatly. But unlike some of the other potential positions a hospital could take, nearly every organization can pursue this position. And at some point, it could become ubiquitous as a position in a given market, like “we care,” or “high-tech, high-touch,” or “we’re award winning” have become.

So the key is to jump out there first and stick with it. Not for six months, not for two years, but for a long, long time. Be the first, be the most, and be the best — don’t just talk wellness, but build offerings and content that support the brand and that will consistently keep you ahead of the pack. Once you’re out there, if you don’t let up, it will be very difficult for others to catch you. Of course, if you let someone else get first dibs, the same can be said for you.

“Why should we invest in XYZ? We don’t get paid for that.”

This often comes from a CEO or CFO of a hospital, and what they mean is that whatever it is your asking them to invest in, the organization doesn’t get reimbursed for it. For example, we’ve heard this used in regards to investing in a better patient experience. One CFO we know said the following during planning for a major expansion:

“Why do we need to spend so much on patient rooms? We could just stick them in the hall and we’d get paid the same.”

Recently, this gauntlet has been laid down in front of marketers seeking to spend marketing dollars to promote health and wellness messaging from their organization. Why spend money there, the argument goes, when the hospital doesn’t get reimbursed for helping people stay healthy?

There are some exceptions – helping diabetics meet certain benchmarks, for example, can be tied to better reimbursement from payers. But from a short-term perspective, that’s mostly accurate – hospitals and physicians don’t get paid for keeping people healthy (though federal reform could eventually change that equation).

Here’s the disconnect: you will get paid from promoting health and wellness, just not today. Investing in health/wellness messaging, or a better patient experience, are examples of investments in building stronger brands, with the goal of increasing loyalty, word of mouth, and yes, over time, revenue.

So here’s the tip: next time this comes up, use our old branding friend Starbucks to make your point. Imagine the CEO of Starbucks had once said: “why should we invest in hiring friendlier baristas, or buying more comfortable furniture? We don’t get paid for that, we get paid when people buy our coffee.”

Seems kind of silly, right? People buy more coffee because of the investment in the Starbucks experience, and more people will engage your organization more times when you invest in the patient experience, or help them stay healthier with services, communications, education and more geared toward wellness. (Remember, the beauty of promoting health and wellness is that it’s relevant to your audience, making them more likely to notice, listen, and engage when they need you.) It’s not about getting paid today, it’s about getting paid tomorrow.

According to the article, market research firm Verilogue recorded 12,500 patient-physician conversations in 2008, and in only 23 instances did they find a patient making a specific request for a drug by name. That’s a .0018% success rate for those of you counting. What makes this study legit is that rather than asking consumers how the ads impacted them (and as we’ve discussed before, it’s hard to trust those answers), they used ethnography to study the actual behavior of consumers. Undoubtedly even more troubling for pharmaceutical marketers, the research showed that when drugs were mentioned specifically by name, it was often to inquire about those nasty side effects. For example, popular sleep aid Ambien (one of my favs!), was “often remembered for side effects like hallucinations, sleep eating and other problems.” Not surprising, given how much time/print-space must be given in drug ads to outline all possible side effects (nothing better than hearing about a new drug for helping to cure stomach discomfort that has a potential side effect of causing stomach aches). Perhaps the negative impressions generated by the side-effect content helps explain how Ambien sales declined 37% last year, despite a $151 million in direct-to-consumer advertising.

Putting aside the fact that selling drugs is a completely different business than selling hospital services, what can hospital marketers learn from this?

For one, it gives more ammo to the philosophy that the impact of “old” marketing, or “above the line” marketing (defined as paid mass media advertising) is waning (see great discussion on that topic from last week on our blog). Perhaps more importantly, it goes to show that marketing healthcare products and services is rarely as simple or direct as promoting other products where consumers can react immediately to a message. (Though it would be fair to say there are likely other studies showing how these drug ad strategies are having an impact, or at least did).

But maybe the best lesson is that this study reinforces one of our favorite mantras: just because other organizations are pursuing a marketing strategy doesn’t make it right for you, or, for that matter, doesn’t mean it’s effective at all. As we’ve stated before, healthcare providers are notorious for driving marketing strategies based on what they see others in their market doing, whether it’s featuring a physician on a billboard or running a print ad touting the latest award. But if much of what is being done in hospital marketing is based on outdated philosophies or ineffective strategies (which, in our humble opinion, much of hospital marketing is), then the last thing you’d want to do is copy what the other guy is doing. With this study showing the ineffectiveness of direct-to-consumer pharma ads, healthcare marketers have one more piece of evidence backing that contention.

The first award was from HealthGrades, who seems to add new awards and ratings every year. (This year, for example, they’ve added the Transplant Excellence Award). I tried to count the number of awards or ratings from this organization alone, and I couldn’t sort it out. But here’s a rough overview:

• Diagnosis/procedure ratings (39 categories)
• Specialty Excellence awards (15 categories)
• Distinguished Hospital Award for Clinical Excellence
• Patient Safety Excellence Award
• America’s 50 Best Hospital Award
• Outstanding Patient Experience Award
• Women’s Health Excellence Award (3 categories)
• Transplant Excellence Awards

I didn’t want to break out the abacus to calculate how many annual awards or ratings that actually amounts to among hospitals across the country, but here’s a guess – a freakin’ lot. And that’s just HealthGrades. The other award that was new to me was a quality award from Premier, one of the larger Group Purchasing Organizations in healthcare. Now we have GPO’s joining the cacophony (good luck getting consumers to recognize those brands).

I know some folks at HealthGrades, and I think their quality ratings have in one way been a good thing for healthcare, driving providers to improve their quality and experience. Of course, it’s sad to think that what’s often driving them is embarrassment (re: a one-star rating in “Back and Neck Surgery (except Spinal Fusion)”), rather than because it’s the right thing (and smart thing) to do.

It’s from a marketing and brand building perspective that I start to get the hives. Rather than repeat our thoughts on why, just check out this previous post, “The battle of the gold stars.” Better yet, print out a copy and accidentally leave it on the CEO’s desk. Because in the end, if the leaders of provider organizations weren’t driven to such a frenzy to promote every award that comes their way, perhaps this virus-like growth of awards might finally slow down.

As a healthcare marketer, how is your organization exploring the possibility of price-based positioning? If prices were transparent, how would you stack up against your competition? If you’re the lowest priced option in town, is that a good or a bad thing? And if you’re the highest, can you support higher prices with value in other areas, or is it all driven by reimbursement disparities? Wonder how – or if – these discussions are progressing at hospitals across the country.