“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.

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?

What do we do about bad bloggers and caustic comments?
There was a lot of angst about real or potential negativity coming from bloggers, and from those posting negative comments about hospitals on local websites (such as newspaper sites). This issue has been around for as long as these “web 2.0” tools have been around, but that doesn’t make these scenarios easier to deal with. The two extreme responses – ignoring all comments or engaging in tit-for-tat replies – are rarely the answer. As with many issues, the appropriate solution is somewhere in the gray middle, depending on the situation. (How’s that for helpful?)

How do you break down silos within a hospital?
To improve the patient experience, consistently set and measure marketing goals, to improve operations – you name it, and silos are there, causing pain. There’s no easy answer to this one (or to any of these, I guess). But try starting your engagements with others in the organization by asking them what they want, how you can help them, even if you have your own agenda. Breaking down walls starts by showing a genuine interest in helping the others behind that wall.

How can we convince leadership to do better/different marketing?
Another doozy that touches many hospitals and health systems. The logic seems simple – why follow when we can lead? why do the same when we want to stand out? why spend valuable budget on politically driven marketing requests? But this issue is more about right-brain emotion than left-brain logic. Two quick tips: find success stories that support your approach, so your idea doesn’t seem so novel. And use marketing measurement to help demonstrate what works – and what doesn’t – to help move the discussion back to the left-brain, objective side of the discussion.

What role should pricing play in hospital advertising?
An imaging center in the Cincinnati market was running an outdoor campaign featuring “MRIs for $700.” Seeing price-based advertising move beyond the more established retail healthcare services (e.g. Lasik eye surgery) to more traditional healthcare services is a big deal. MRIs are easier to “price,” given the straightforward nature of the offering (compared to, say, the “price” of joint replacement surgery, which can entail many components and isn’t always the same experience or cost). I use quotes around “price” because the actual price of a service to a patient typically depends on her coverage, including the negotiated reimbursement rate between her insurer and the provider, her out-of-pocket exposure, etc. The $700 MRI billboard is most likely targeted at those with high deductible plans, who are much more likely to shop around (especially for a commodity level item like an MRI). Is this an anomaly, or the beginning of a trend? Either way, it’s cutting edge, and it would be fascinating to learn the impact of this effort.

What’s your take on these issues? Which of these are you dealing with, and if they are front and center, how much pain are they causing?

In general, this seems like a pretty fair assessment, though certainly expertise concerning social media varies greatly, falling along a scale from “luddite” to “multiple social media efforts led and measured.” And there are many odd twists to the question of expertise as well. For example, there are a class of folks who seem to believe that simply by using social media, they then have the the proper credentials to drive organizational strategy, or sell consulting services in this area. And while it would seem impossible for someone to lead a social media effort without actually using the tools themselves, being a user does not equate to strategic or even tactical expertise. Just because I watch a lot of TV doesn’t make me a great television producer or screenwriter, yes?

The latest issue of BusinessWeek has a great article on the growing backlash against social media consultants and “experts.” The title – “Beware social media snake oil” – pretty much speaks for itself. Perhaps the best insight comes from James Cooper, who serves as digital creative director at Saatchi & Saatchi, a global ad agency. Cooper states that anyone who unequivocally claims that using social media will work is either “lying or deranged.” His point is that the medium is still too young to guarantee results, and he likens the innovative nature of social media to that of venture capital, where 1 out of 10 bets might pay off, while the others fail completely. He also worries about how results are measured:

“If something’s got 20 million hits on YouTube, that’s a good thing. But what if half the comments are negative? I don’t think anyone’s got a long-term case study yet.”

Social media offers potential opportunities to hospitals and other providers in the areas of brand building, customer service, marketing, public/community relations and more. But the jury is still out on whether in the end all of the hoopla and effort will pay off in material ways from a long-term perspective.

Of course, that’s no reason to drop or minimize social media as a marketing/communications tool. It just means healthcare marketers need to go into the effort with eyes wide open. Social media should still be considered an innovative strategy, and with innovation goes the understanding that failure is sometimes an accepted part of the game.

Have you been pitched by a “social media expert”? How do you determine someone’s credentials with such a new medium? Are you OK with “failing” in order to learn what works and what doesn’t?

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.

Please RSVP by emailing info@ThinkInterval.com with your name and how many people you’ll be bringing so we can plan accordingly. Here are the details:

Welcome to HealthCampMN Reception
Friday, October 23, 2009
6 – 9 pm

Offices of Interval
Downtown Minneapolis
111 Washington Ave N.
Suite 250
Minneapolis, MN 55401
GoogleMaps

Can’t wait to see you there!

Chris wrote a post titled “Using social media to drive organ donor participation” for the blog on his Hospital Online Marketing Education social site. The post covers the goals and successes to date for the Half The Men campaign, created with our client LifeSource to help increase the number of men in Minnesota who register to become organ donors. For anyone who wants great info on online marketing strategies for hospitals and health systems, we strongly encourage you to check out Chris’ site.

Yes, Interval is the inspiration and authors behind the WeeklyProbe. For those of you not familiar, the WeeklyProbe is a satirical web site that pokes fun at healthcare marketing in the spirit of The Onion or The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. The MarketShare blog post does a good job of outlining why we created the WeeklyProbe, so if you care at all, check it out. Also, we’ve created a very special version of our weekly podcast to commemorate the occasion, featuring guest speakers from the WeeklyProbe itself:

Otherwise, continue to tune in weekly (or so) for faux news stories, “ad kudos of the week,” “logo talk” and more. As always, we’ll continue to publish the WeeklyProbe anonymously. We’d like others to see this as something owned by the healthcare marketing community (not a promotional vehicle for our firm). So after this blog post, we’ll drop it on this end. But we hope you continue to tune in, and keep sending us story ideas via the link provided on the site – the more stories we include from you all, the better.

I’ll be in Billings, Montana next week, Wed, 9/23 – Fri, 9/25 for the Montana Healthcare Association Annual Convention, then back in Minneapolis to moderate a panel discussion at HealthCampMN on Saturday, October 24 (check out the audio interview with event organizer Albert Maruggi). Then it’s on to Springfield, Illinois on November 13 for the Illinois Society for Healthcare Marketing and Public Relations (ISHMPR) 2009 Annual Fall Meeting.

Next year should be great as well. We have some new presentations in the offing, including “Yes we can! Measuring healthcare marketing performance” and “Integrating social media tools with your marketing campaign.” For more on these and other presentations (including a little surprise), download our 2010 speaker’s guide.

So if you’re in Billings, Springfield or coming in to the Twin Cities for HealthCampMN, shoot me an email so we can connect over a latte or lager. Drinks are on me!

This doesn’t come as a surprise to me. My wife and I are considering dropping our cable altogether in favor of online video. I flip on the news and the Tonight Show at 10:00 for background noise while I’m doing other activities, but the only shows I really look forward to (and actually watch) are delivered online — specifically a number of shows over on Revision3.com which I subscribe to through iTunes. I get my Comedy Central fix on Hulu along with the occasionally South Park episode over on southparkstudios.com. I have no real need for cable television.

Do you still find yourself planted in front of the television? Or do you find yourself abandoning traditional T.V. for online content? Are you integrating online video into marketing efforts? (And I don’t mean repurposing traditional television ads for a half-assed Youtube channel.)

See the full report on pewinternet.org:
http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2009/13–The-Audience-for-Online-VideoSharing-Sites-Shoots-Up.aspx

According to the Hubspot Inbound Internet Marketing blog, inbound marketing is defined as “marketing focused on getting found by customers.” This is the opposite of traditional, or “outbound marketing,” with its goal of finding customers. (Or what Godin calls “interruption marketing.”) Instead of pushing your message out to potential customers to compel them to try your product or service, you create content of one kind or another that pulls people to want to find out about you. Instead of TV commercials, it’s spreading videos virally on YouTube. Instead of a print ad, it’s a blog. (Check out the Hubspot blog post for a great overview of the concept.) In essence, it’s the difference between quantity and quality. With outbound marketing, the quantity of impact is usually measured, and more is always better. (Think of the millions of impressions you might get from a billboard campaign.) With inbound marketing, your goal is far fewer contacts, but those contacts are of much higher quality because they want to connect with you. So while the numbers may be lower, the effort is more effective, because you’ve spent far less money for more qualified contacts.

According to the blog post, there are three components of inbound marketing – content, Search Engine Optimization and Social Media. However, it would seem you could expand the concept beyond using only social media channels or assuming the end destination is a web site.

For years, we’ve been advocating that hospitals and health systems pursue inbound marketing, we just didn’t call it that. When we outline why “Joe Public Doesn’t Care About Your Hospital” and what do to about it, we’re invoking the concept. When we stress you need to remember consumers are driven by “what’s in it for me,” we’re invoking the concept. When we suggest hospitals connect with consumers about “health” (something everyone is interested in) instead of “healing” (something only the sick are interested in), we’re invoking the concept. (In one basic example, it’s the difference between a seminar on joint replacement surgery and one on joint pain.) One of the most successful campaigns we’ve ever created for a client, the St. Joseph’s Hospital movie campaign, had at its heart a strategy based on inbound marketing.

So fair warning: now that we’ve belatedly discovered an actual definition for this concept, expect us to bludgeon you with it for some time to come. What are other examples of this strategy in healthcare? Why is it effective? What are the drawbacks? What hurdles might you face in pursuing such a strategy? We’d love to hear from others on how they’re using inbound marketing successfully at their hospital or health system.