And the whole point I got from the video? BE the customer when you look at your marketing!

Thanks

Please stop by our booth #508 and “Learn Our Secret”

http://www.facebook.com/pages/MyHealthConnect/230440213669432?sk=app_190322544333196

I’m not sure I agree with tying non-profit status to the use of advertising, but I think I get where you’re going with it. Often people consider advertising simply an expense, a drain on the budget, and when used inappropriately or ineffectively, that’s exactly what it is. But effective advertising pays for itself in bringing more customers into the fold. In many cases, health systems could not sustain certain clinical offerings, physician expertise or technology without a minimum number of patients. A proper investment in advertising will help ensure they bring in the right patients, which helps ensure they can provide those offerings, which gives more choice in the market to folks like us who use care. Without the ability to market these programs, many would disappear, which would limit our choice and reduce competition.

But we’re in total agreement on the proper use of advertising and transparency. There are certainly many organizations that attempt to “manipulate their image” through advertising (yes, that’s partially it’s role), but as we say over and over again, the only true way to build a successful brand is by delivering a better experience. Advertising can give you a short bump in business, but in the end, the only way to sustain success is by providing a better product or service. And advertising that makes promises that organization can’t deliver upon will do more harm than good.

I also do not understand how advertising or marketing does anything to get accurate information out there. When you advertise, you are as biased a party as there can possibly be. The goal of advertisement is to present one’s own organization in as positive a light as possible.

Medicine is often a matter of life and death. It seems to make sense to leave these matters up to impartial parties and professionals. Any hospital can paint themselves in a positive light by picking and choosing favorable-sounding statistics and putting them up on a professionally-designed billboard that plays on people’s emotions. But this says nothing about the hospital’s actual effectiveness at delivering quality healthcare. This can only be assessed by truly impartial parties.

I have no objection to the free market. But your comments here about the free market and competition really cement that hospitals, including most of them that operate as “non-profit” entities, really behave more like for-profit corporations. If hospitals want to act like for-profit businesses, then let them pay tax. Hospitals are trying to have it both ways: they are acting like businesses but they want tax exemptions.

I have put forth a plan to ban hospital advertising for hospitals wishing to retain non-profit status, but allow advertising for ones that want to pay tax. But I would not object very strongly to a complete ban, for the simple reason that I object to the idea of a for-profit hospital.

I think there are many benefits to a ban, too, which I explain more on my site. The main benefits I think are that without advertising, there is more incentive for quality care because a hospital can’t just spend money to manipulate their image, they need to focus on delivering quality care.

Developers are flocking to iOS (Apple) development vs. other mobile platforms. It’s where the audience is, and that audience makes a 70/30 split in revenue profitable vs. any other sales channel or platform.

The quotes:

From Marco Arment (App: Instapaper)
http://www.marco.org/4295159845

“We’re talking about Android… which has terrible development economics hindered by severe fragmentation and poor payment integration, and is not generally used by most of the influential people needed to spread the word on new services.”

From 2D Boy (Game: World of Goo):
http://2dboy.com/2011/02/08/ipad-launch/

“In the first month of sales on the iPad App Store, World of Goo sold 125K copies (thanks to being prominently featured by Apple). In comparison, World of Goo’s best 31 day period on WiiWare was 68K copies (thanks to a mass mailing by Nintendo), and on Steam it was 97K copies (thanks to two promotions at discounted prices). So far, the iPad version is by far the fastest selling version of the game, both in terms of number of units sold and in revenue generated.

What makes this even more amazing is that this is a two year old game released on a platform that is less than a year old. The iPad doesn’t have the benefit of an install base built up over several years.”

I ran across these quotes via:
http://www.daringfireball.net