When I say refreshing drink, you think cancer treatment.
Where do I begin with the recent article in Ad Age titled “Health-Care Reform Stokes Spending by Top Hospitals, Clinics”? The story starts by using an example of a live-tweeted surgery to state: “Welcome to the new front in medical marketing: hospitals jockeying to position themselves for growth amid a perfect storm of aging baby boomers and a health-care-reform bill that will result in millions more insured patients down the road.”
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. Read More
Gettin’ paid
Here’s the “How to Deal With a Leadership Challenge Tip of the Week.” We’ve heard this one a number of times over the years, but it’s become more frequent recently, and it goes a little something like this:
“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.”
Read More
Apple and Healthcare
Great blog post from Steve Davis, author of the Health Care Strategist, a blog I follow regularly. He’s opining on a Wall Street Journal article from business guru Gary Hamel on Apple, where Hamel lists Apple’s company values and compares them to the typical corporation (e.g. Apple = Lead, don’t follow. Others = Be cautious.) Davis then asks the question: how many healthcare organizations follow Apple’s values, and how many fall into the “Other” category? If you had to put a ratio on it, would you say 1 in 10 follow Apple’s direction? No, maybe 1 in 100, or even 1 in 1,000. Imagine the opportunities that await those healthcare organizations that pursue Apple’s path.
Banning hospital advertising – it was only a matter of time.
Over the past year we’ve pondered periodically in our podcast why we haven’t heard a call for a ban on hospital advertising, given the national debate on healthcare reform. Well we finally have our first salvo.
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. Read More
Marketing hospitals is stupid
That comment came from a discussion with an operations director at a health system, who was told by the senior vice president for strategy that “anyone spending time or money on marketing a hospital is stupid.” (The names in this story have been changed to protect the innocent and short-sighted.) Read More
Two words that often kill great ideas: “prove it”
When it comes to healthcare marketing, one of the most feared comments from executives, physicians and operational leaders is this: “If you can’t prove this will work, then we’re not doing it.”
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. Read More
Social media snake oil
There’s a standing mantra among healthcare marketing consultants and those who follow social media closely: “If someone refers to themselves as a social media expert, run to the hills.” This is driven by the idea that social media is so new, and so little is actually known about its long-term impact, that very few if any social media marketers could have obtained enough experience to claim the title “expert.” Read More
Opening a second front in your marketing war
I had one of those nightmare moments as a speaker last week when I was prepping for my talk at the ISHMPR conference in Chicago. I was slated to deliver the ever-popular “Joe Public Doesn’t Care About Your Hospital,” and was packing my bags for the trip Thursday when I happened to glance at the agenda for the Friday conference. It was only then, less than 24 hours before the gig, did I notice that my time slot was two hours, not the one I had assumed. Other than talking reeeaaallly slow, how could I stretch a one hour presentation into two? My solution was to offer to lead a group therapy session with attendees, so we could talk in the open about all the things that drive us off a cliff as healthcare marketers. (I knew I could fill hours of time with that topic, right?) Read More
Warning: not all direct-to-consumer advertisers will experience the same results.
Often, those in hospitals and health systems who are looking for a quick fix to a business challenge such as outmigration or dropping market share will call for increased consumer advertising, arguing in part by pointing toward how pharmaceutical companies have gained success over the past decade advertising direct to consumers. The prevailing wisdom has been that given the mass amounts of money spent on this strategy ($4.7 billion in 2008, according to TNS Media Intelligence) and the ongoing complaints of physicians dealing with this phenomenon, drug companies must have been wildly successful with this tactic. But a study cited in this week’s BusinessWeek article titled “Ask Your Doctor If This Ad Is Right for You” throws some cold water on the notion that direct-to-consumer advertising has been successful for drug companies. Read More
"Left side of the menu" marketing
We’ve spent a lot of time over the past couple of months talking about some of the many ways we as marketers define our discipline. “Inbound” vs. “Outbound” marketing, or “Above the line” marketing vs. “Below the line” marketing (which of course is transcended by “Through the line” marketing). So we thought we’d make up our own marketing terminology – “Left side of the menu” marketing vs. “Right side of the menu” marketing. (For the genesis of this concept, listen to this week’s podcast.) Read More