“Our organization’s mission states ‘We lead our community to better health and well-being at every stage of life,’ and this campaign is a powerful reflection of that,” said Suzy Turpel, director of marketing at Allegiance Health. “Interval was instrumental in helping bring this campaign to life in a compelling and effective way.”

The campaign was originally developed by Interval as a brand building campaign for Allegiance Health itself, but realizing the synergy with the goals of the HIO (founded by Allegiance Health in 2000 to improve the health status of the community) and its plans for a community-wide wellness program, the campaign was launched under the HIO brand.

“Here’s another great example of a healthcare organization leveraging health and wellness content to build bridges to its community,” said Interval president Chris Bevolo. “We continue to passionately encourage other organizations to pursue campaigns such as Step by Step, or the FitFor50 campaign from Inova Health System.” (For more on wellness marketing, see Chris’ recent blog post, “Mayo Clinic goes big on wellness.”)

For more information, or to submit your resume, please email us at info@thinkinterval.com.

See more campaign images in the portfolio.

“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.”

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.”

Marty replied: “I have no clue where to begin. Every time I start to think about it, it overwhelms me. What are our goals? What objectives should we target? Whose approval do I need for those? What are we going to measure? How are we going to measure it? What metrics should we use? Where do we get the data? How will we know if we succeed? I believe in measurement, but I don’t really know how to do it, or where to begin. Maybe next quarter.”

The following quarter, Marty was asked: “Marty, why aren’t you measuring your marketing results?”

Marty replied: “Actually, I can’t seem to find the time. There’s not enough time to take care of all the meetings, marketing requests, politics, planning, PR responses – my plate is just too full. And my staff is the same way – who would I assign to take on measurement? We can barely find time to meet and properly plan a campaign, let alone build in upfront time to consider goals and objectives. Then tracking all the various metrics, reporting, trying to meet to review and analyze the results. Shoot, usually we’re half way through an effort before someone mentions measurement. Maybe we’ll start next month.”

The next month, Marty was asked: “Marty, why aren’t you measuring your marketing results?”

Marty replied: “I could probably figure this out, and find the time and resources to measure effectively, but honestly, no one is really pressing me for it. Sure, we get the occasional question about our strategy, or the “How do you know this will work?” inquiry from a physician. My CEO wants effective marketing, but so far he hasn’t pushed me to validate my approaches, so it’s just not a priority. Plus, it’s marketing, so people understand when I say this isn’t a science. Maybe we don’t have to worry about measuring after all.”

The next day, there was a knock on Marty’s door:

“Hi Marty, I’m Mary, and I’m going to be taking over as the new CEO. Tell me how you determine your marketing budget, why your staff is so large, and how effective your marketing efforts have been over the past couple of years.”

And Marty said: “Gulp.”

Don’t be the next Marty the Marketer. Despite the obvious benefits of measuring marketing efforts, many hospital marketers don’t make measurement a priority. But there may be no higher priority for healthcare marketers today than dedicating ourselves to measuring our marketing results.

For more conversation on measuring marketing efforts, be sure to visit our communities on LinkedIn or Facebook. Or check out our book, A Marketer’s Guide to Measuring Results.

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.

• Kentucky Society for Healthcare Public Relations and Marketing Fall Conference in Louisville, KY in October
• Wisconsin Healthcare Public Relations & Marketing Society (WHPRMS) Annual Conference in Green Bay, WI in October
• Carolinas Healthcare Public Relations & Marketing Society Fall Conference in Charleston, SC in December

The popular “Joe Public Doesn’t Care…” presentation counters the commonly held belief within healthcare organizations that if a hospital just promoted itself more, beds would fill and coffers would overflow. You may have heard it as “We’re a hidden gem!” or “We’re the best story no one’s ever heard.” But if your audience doesn’t want to hear from you, how can you expect them to listen, let alone change their perception or behavior? While there are many audiences who do have a great stake in a hospital, this presentation shows why most people in the market – “Joe Public” – don’t really care about your clinic, hospital or health system. Attendees learn the premise behind this assertion, and how acknowledging it can have a dramatic impact on marketing and communications strategies.