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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.”

“If you’re like most people, you’re way too smart for advertising. You flip right past newspaper ads, never click on ads online and leave the room during TV commercials. That, at least, is what we tell ourselves. But what we tell ourselves is hooey. Advertising works, which is why, even in hard economic times, Madison Avenue is a $34 billion–a–year business.”

We’ve covered this ground before in this blog (see posts, “The demise of old marketing: ‘I’m not dead yet!’” and “Truth #4: If you want to know what will work in healthcare marketing, don’t ask your customers.”) But we’re encouraged that this type of thinking has found its way to mainstream media. And we’ll keep beating this drum until we see more hospitals and healthcare systems trying different approaches (such as metaphor-based interviews and ethnography) to better learn how consumers really think and act.

As we’ve stated many times over the past year in our blog posts, podcasts, and paper, we feel passionately that marketers should strive to measure the success of their efforts whenever possible. Measurement allows you to demonstrate marketing’s value to leadership, and, more importantly, to better understand what works and what doesn’t. That kind of measurement discipline can help marketers answer that dreaded question by allowing them to pull from past experiences and demonstrate that yes, this can work, and this is how it has in the past.

Except in one case: when the idea is brand new and hasn’t been done before, either by you and your organization, or, even worse, by anybody else. Of course, launching a new idea before anyone else can lead to great success (iPod, TiVo, Starbuck’s “third place” experience, etc.) But in a conservative culture, the lack of a proven track record is often what kills an innovative idea. An article in this week’s BusinessWeek titled “Innovation’s Accidental Enemies” does a great job of reminding us why the lack of a proven track record should be considered an opportunity, not a deficit.

It starts with a story of a bank CEO presented with a new approach to finding and landing high-end customers. The CEO asks “Have any other big banks done this?” and the consultant answers, excitedly, “No, you’ll be the first!” Of course, that leads the CEO to kill the idea on the spot. (insert rimshot here) The authors then go on to provide a different type of thinking that can help organizations keep an open mind to opportunity called abductive thinking. Instead of using inductive or deductive thinking – both of which rely on existing information to make conclusions – abductive thinking is the “logic of what could be.” Quoting the authors of the article:

“Asking what could be true – and jumping into the unknown – is critical to innovation.”

So as you work on your marketing plan for 2010, have you left room for innovative ideas? Are you considering trying something that you’ve never tried before, or better yet, what no one has ever tried before? Learning how to use abductive reasoning might help you respond to the inevitable challenge of “prove it.”

CNN covered this story today. In it are a number of valuable nuggets for all marketers – healthcare and otherwise.

1. Create something worth talking about and your customers will take care of the rest
Paranormal Activity was a movie was worth talking about. And talk about it, people did. Social media outlets were set ablaze, as were other social networking outlets — you know, like actually talking to someone in person or on the phone? With minimal marketing this movie blew the socks off other high-budget films. Largely thanks to word of mouth.

Like high school students longing for acceptance, hospitals and health systems are jumping all over Twitter and Facebook. The sad part is that most don’t seem to understand what it really means to be there. Having 10,000 fans or followers is nothing compared to having 10,000 people talking about you. There’s a huge difference. The latter is where the real power of social media lies. And guess what? You don’t even need to be present for it to happen.

Are people talking about you? Or are you just filling feeds and walls with news, photos and have-a-nice-days?

2. Sell the experience not the product
With a tiny budget for marketing, the trailer for this film wasn’t a high-end montage of movie scenes set to intense music. Instead, it was raw footage from a screening of the film showing film-goers experiencing the movie. You can take a peek at the trailer below. Warning: the trailer left me freaked out! I don’t know that I’d do well with this film.

In the article, Megan Colligan, Paramount’s co-president of marketing, states, “It was very important that we sold this as an experience rather than just a movie. People loved it so much and there is such a slow build of terror that you have to sit through it to experience the full effect. The fans have really made this their film and they are doing the bulk of the work.”

Healthcare can be more scary than anything that’s come out of Hollywood. Yet the experience you provide to help people through their health issues can be truly inspirational. Sell that experience. No more doctor portraits or coiled up stethoscopes in those ads. Deal?

3. It doesn’t have to be beautiful to be remarkable
There was talk of reshooting this movie with well-known actors. They didn’t think it would sell if it wasn’t “beautiful.” They were wrong, obviously.

Remodeling your ED will do nothing if the service still sucks. Fix that first. And for Pete’s sake don’t promote it until you do. Word of mouth works both for you and against you. Increasing volumes to an area with shoddy service means you’re also increasing volumes on the social networking scene — of people complaining.

If you happen to catch Paranormal Activity let us know what you thought.

This week, Walgreen announced that it is offering free visits to its in-store clinics to customers who no longer have jobs or health insurance. According to a story on the Reuters web site, there are some restrictions. For example, the offer only applies to those who have already used their Take Care clinics at least once in the past.

So what are traditional hospitals and health systems doing to help consumers continue to utilize their services? We all know most hospitals and health systems already provide a significant level of charity care and community benefits. But what about those customers who aren’t eligible for charity care, or who traditionally wouldn’t need help if the economy weren’t so deep in the crapper?

We mentioned in an earlier blog post how many in the Twin Cities are becoming more proactive in working with patients to offer options for paying for care, which is a start. But what other options are out there, especially in an industry where every penny is precious?

How about offering free quarterly diabetes check-ups, in small group settings, for those with financial troubles? Or one free orthopedic assessment? Or a discount on screenings, labs or tests?

Who knows if the ideas above are even feasible, but imagine the awareness and loyalty providers could build by offering help to those who typically don’t need it.

The comments from Powell can be seen at roughly the 13:40 mark of this C-SPAN video from the event.

Carol.com is exactly the kind of consumer-focused innovation we need more of in healthcare. Let’s hope the interest grows.

But the most intriguing presentation came from the keynote speaker, Clayton Christensen. The professor of business at Harvard and author of the groundbreaking book, “The Innovator’s Dilemma,” has turned his sights on healthcare with a new book, “The Innovator’s Prescription.” Christensen’s primary premise in his first book is that what leads organizations to grow and become industry leaders – a focus on efficiency, the pursuit of higher profits, and a repeatable business model – are the same elements that eventually spell their doom. I can’t wait to dive into his new book to get the full story on how that applies in healthcare, but here are some of my key takeaways from the day:

• Christensen’s 20-plus years of research demonstrates that disruptive business models cannot emerge from within current industry leaders. They either come from new entrepreneurial businesses, or when a industry leading organization creates a separate business unit (separate in goals, leadership and location) to drive the innovation. So when I hear Dr. Denis Cortese, the current CEO of Mayo Clinic and a brilliant leader when it comes to healthcare reform, pitch his ideas for change, and how they reflect what the Mayo Clinic is doing, I wonder: will this be the first time ever disruption comes from within? Christensen claims it’s never happened before. Not sure I believe it can happen here.
• “The traditional general hospital is not a viable business model,” was perhaps the most clearly spoken wake-up call for me. Christensen says the hospital value proposition is “whatever is wrong, we can fix it for anyone.” What other business could get away with saying that, he says. A reflection of this model, according to Christensen, is that the typical hospital has more than 100 patient pathways, and he likens it to a manufacturing plant that’s trying to produce multiple products, many of which are customized for different customers. It’s no wonder hospitals can’t survive without philanthropy, regulatory benefits and restriction of trade. Trying to serve, on average, 100 different types of customer interaction within one facility is bound to be inefficient and unprofitable. He points to specialized hospitals, like Shouldice Hospital in Canada, which only does hernia repair, as examples of models that can deliver much better quality of care, a better experience, and a lower price, because of economies of scale, efficiencies, a focused body of knowledge, and more. (MinuteClinic is another obvious example of this specialization, around common, low-end family ailments.)
• Another great insight: the concept of a hospital emerged in an era decades ago when transportation and communication was expensive, and doctors and technology were cheap, thus creating demand for centralized medicine. Now, Christensen argues, the reverse is true, and he believes a drive to decentralization is key to healthcare reform. In simple terms, we need what happens in a hospital to become available in speciality centers, and what happens in specialty centers to become available in clinics, and what happens in clinics to become available in a doctor’s office, and what happens in a doctor’s office to become available at home. Here’s a quick question: there’s no reason the care and service received at a MinuteClinic can’t be delivered over the internet with the addition of simple home monitoring equipment and the right communications technology. Are there businesses out there right now readying that for the market?

All around, today’s conference was a terrific gathering of minds, giving attendees lots of ideas and challenges. I’ll let you know more as I dig into the book.

Recently, we worked on an initiative with a small clinical group, and we were discussing the need to be very clear about our target audience. The group was building a specialized program aimed at a tiny subsegment of cardiac patients, and to emphasize the point, I joked: “At least we don’t have to worry about billboards this time.” Laughs all around. Until the next meeting, when one of the cardiologists spoke up: “I know we were joking about billboards last time, but maybe there’s an intersection in town where the traffic patterns might make a billboard a smart option.” Sigh.

The “billboards will solve everything” suggestion would be funnier if it didn’t happen so universally, so often. Not that we have anything against billboards – we’ve created dozens, believe me. They obviously have a place in the universe of potential marketing tactics. But the clarion call of “let’s put up a billboard” is one of the more obvious signs that hospital and health system marketing needs to shed its rudimentary, tired approaches and join other industries in embracing sophisticated and innovative marketing strategies.

Old School Thinking

Hospitals and health systems are burdened by old-school thinking that permeates their approach to marketing and branding. How so?

• The use of traditional media channels for communication – such as television, print, and yes, outdoor – still dominates the typical marketing plan, despite the erosion of viewers, readers and effectiveness.
• The same tired approaches are used over and over and over again, from straightforward patient testimonials – “Snowflake Hospital really cared for me” – to the use of supplier photography to promote new technology investments – “Popeye Clinics now offers the BS4000 triple-scan microfritter.”
• Broad-based consumer advertising is used when business is so often driven through referring physician channels. How many of you have been pushed to promote general surgery services with an advertising campaign? I can see the billboard now: “The next time you need your gall bladder removed, come to Periwinkle Health System.”
• Many marketing messages forget the marketing 101 mantra of showing the audience “what’s in it for me,” instead delivering communications that are self-promotional or feature-oriented. A great example of this is the staid tradition of running an ad in the local paper announcing the hiring of a new primary care physician. That’s great for you (clinic or hospital), but unless I’m one of the very few who happens to be looking for a new doc at that time, it’s meaningless. (A recent study from the Center for Studying Health System Change reported that in 2007, only 11 percent of American adults looked for a new primary care physician.)

Why is healthcare marketing stuck in a rut?

Hospitals and health systems have only recently had to leverage marketing and branding. Up until the 1980’s, the need for competitive strategies – and thus marketing – wasn’t often required. That means the industry as a whole is still low on the learning curve when it comes to these disciplines.

The result is a class of leadership that is, in general, behind when it comes to marketing.

In so many cases, marketing and branding are simply not understood – or worse, not valued – by those who lead our organizations. No matter how smart or creative the marketing department is, how sophisticated the strategy, how clever the campaign, if the CEO or the head surgeon doesn’t get it, it won’t fly. In their defense, many of these leaders don’t have formal marketing education or experience. But in its absence, instead of trusting their marketing leaders, they fall back on what they’ve seen before or what they see out in the healthcare market. Because both of these sources typically reflect bad or “old school” marketing, the cycle repeats itself. There’s also political pressure internally to “make the physicians happy,” which ostensibly means giving in to the demand for wrong-headed marketing tactics like promoting a lung cancer program using billboards and newspaper advertising. So often we hear from our clients, “Yes, we know it’s not effective, but do it anyway. It will make them happy.”

How can we move the ball forward?

Despite the challenges built into the system, we must all work harder to advance healthcare marketing and branding. For one, there are an increasing number of new entrants into the provider market that understand these disciplines, which gives them an advantage over traditional healthcare providers. Second, the world of media is changing all around us, from the rapid growth of social networking to the death of newspapers. Like all industries, we need to learn to adapt. But perhaps most importantly, our customers are changing. The rise of more clinical alternatives, the breadth of the Internet as a resource, the growing number of outside influencers on care decisions, and the rise in consumers spending more of their own money on healthcare – all of these lead to a more empowered healthcare consumer. And that demands more sophisticated and innovative marketing strategies.

So what can you do as a healthcare marketing leader?

• Embrace innovation – don’t rely on the tired-old strategies of the past. Question the same-old same-old and constantly look for new and better approaches.
• Always find ways to measure the results of your efforts, to help demonstrate the value of marketing to your organization.
• Explore and embrace more sophisticated tools and techniques, from CRM to call center implementation to brand building.
• Forget looking at what everyone else in your market is doing, and do something different or better. As stated by a professor of business administration at Harvard Business School in a recent BusinessWeek article, “A leader is someone who doesn’t do what everyone else does.”
• Try creative new approaches to reaching your customers – don’t be afraid to dance on the edge.

And perhaps most importantly of all, never give up the fight. At times you may feel like Sisyphus, pushing that rock up the hill and watching it roll back down yet again. Look for any victory you can and build on that success. The industry will never move forward unless those of us who understand the true value of marketing and branding push it there, even if it’s kicking and screaming every step of the way.

While the offering leverages already-existing business models, Walgreen’s extensive national presence ratchets the threat to traditional primary care providers up to a new level. It also integrates the disparate elements in a more convenient way for both employers who will house the clinics, and the consumers who use them.

How big of a threat is the Walgreen’s initiative? According to the article, Walgreen bought two large corporate health management firms last spring, and already serves more than 350 corporations, including Toyota and Walt Disney. Combine this with the company’s more than 6,600 drugstores, and the potential for expansion is obvious. The article states that the clinics will also appeal to companies through a clear pricing structure (the bain of the traditional provider world).

Does this move healthcare in the right direction? Depends on who you talk to. For consumers who will have access to Take Care through their place of work, the clinic will provide an enhanced level of access and convenience. But many tie healthcare reform to greater integration, not more divergence of care. For health systems and traditional providers of primary care, the impact is obvious: one more threat to their patient channel.