By now, we’ve all seen a lot of H1N1 ads. But are they working? Our client, Michigan Department of Community Health, decided to go straight to the target audience - minority populations of African Americans, Arab Americans and Hispanics who have NOT received the vaccine - with focus groups to understand WHY NOT.
The problem? They simply don’t trust it. Respondents said it was “rushed into circulation”, “pushed by the government”, and is “unsafe”, “untested and experimental,” and “unproven.” Of course, all misperceptions and untruths, as the vaccine is the safest, most effective way to prevent the flu.
We know that trust is a critical component of the healthcare marketing equation — and that we had to overcome this basic feeling of mistrust. Since the majority of respondents said their doctor would be the single person they would trust the most about whether or not to get the H1N1 vaccine, we encouraged action through this open door. Even though we know 61% if adults search online for health information and 81% of Internet users search online for health information (Pew Research Center), we bravely persevered with what research told us is the most effective call to action: TALK TO YOUR DOCTOR.
The print ad is straightforward. Designed to help people make a list of questions to ask their doctor about seasonal flu and H1N1. I think its simplicity and utilize are unexpected — and will break through the clutter.
Kudos to MDCH for their research-savvy approach. We’ll keep you posted as this just started running. Let us know what you think!
Forget the sandwich, in the words of our illustrious COO, Maria Marcotte, I am a full-fledged member of the “four course meal generation.” I won’t mention my three children whose ages span 21 years, my full time career, or volunteering (although after 6 years of Lost, my schedule has now cleared for an hour a week), I’ll just focus on an ever-so-gracefully aging mother who is halfway through a rehab stint at a very good convalescent home in North Carolina.
I’ve spent the last three weeks dashing around between home, work, hospital, and convalescent care, since my mother had knee replacement surgery. And would you like to guess how many elder-care marketing messages I’ve encountered? None.
What a missed opportunity. Do I want the best ongoing care for my mother? Yes. Do I have time to figure out what that really means? No. In the hours I have spent with her at the hospital and in the nursing home (sorry Mom, I know you like to call it re-hab), have I been a captive audience with a Blackberry and a penchant for searching health tips for older folks? You betcha. But not one relevant ad has crossed my path. In fact, kudos go to Johns Hopkins for being the ONLY organization to remotely recognize my situation, but that is only through opt-in health alerts.
So where are the marketers? I’m not that hard to find. Why not serve me up something on Facebook (since my life story is now ever-so-public)? As I dig around online why am I not targeted contextually? Why aren’t those ads hitting me on my phone during those endless bedside hours?
Long-term care insurers? Long-term care providers? Home health organizations? Home medical equipment retailers? Hello? Anybody out there? Help me and the millions of people like me figure this elder care mystery out - we certainly don’t have the luxury of time to do it ourselves.
It’s been awhile since I posted my last blog on branding a community hospital and the campaign we were developing for Otsego Memorial Hospital (OMH). And since they just launched the campaign on their end (a convergent branding approach complete with a refreshed website, facebook fan page, direct mail, newspaper, radio and outdoor), it seems like now is the perfect time.
After working with OMH on an extensive discovery process, we determined that the hospital was known throughout the region as “the community hospital.” Well, there isn’t too much unique about that claim. But we also discovered the fact that OMH was so much more than just a community hospital – they are the predominant volume leader, top-of-mind awareness leader, and the most preferred and referred hospital. Ok, now we have something to shout from the rooftops, something that the community will truly care about.
With that said, we then were faced with the challenge of developing a brand campaign that would position OMH as the place that you can rely on for your kids broken arm, but also the place to start your entire healthcare journey. OMH will put you on the best path for a quality continuum of care. It’s so much more than most would expect from a community hospital.
Below is the print we developed for them. You will notice this isn’t just a campaign that talks solely about OMH, it includes a shout-out to their close-knit and beautiful region highlighting their passion for a natural and active lifestyle (bringing it all back to the emotional connection).
Since it just launched, we don’t have any results quite yet, but I will give an update as soon as the campaign begins to age a bit. Stay tuned.
We’ve been blogging and blogging about our fascination with coupons and now research from Borrell Associates reports that redemption rates for mobile coupons are 10x that of mail or newspaper. If you are putting it off because mobile marketing sounds expensive, you can put that thought behind you. In fact, tuck it away in your desk drawer under that bottle of Wite Out you haven’t touched since the late 90s. Simply texting an offer worth something valuable to your customer is sufficient. Waiting for others to test it and then you will be on board? Already done. Mobile marketing is moving fast and case studies show that if done strategically and following the rules of the game (i.e., opt-in, frequency caps), the ROI is exceptional. This is one party where showing up late isn’t fashionable. To put it into aquatic terms, catch the mobile wave or you’ll miss the boat.
Ever wrote a tweet so funny that you wanted to put it on a billboard for all drivers to see? Ok maybe not, but Conan O’Brien did just that.
As his microsite puts it, “Conan has lost his home and his rightful place on millions of screens across the nation. His audience is also lost. Some are picking up the pieces of their lives, but many can’t. Some are too young to know this isn’t their fault: that they’ve done nothing wrong. So, until this talented, brilliant, voluptuously coiffed man has his show back, we shall offer him our screens.”
This is just the latest example of how non-traditional advertising and social media can join forces for an impressively successful result. The possibilities are endless! Still skeptical?
The Sunday New York Times Style magazine had an article this past week titled “Google’s Doodles”. It seemed the writer did like what they do with their logo although there were a lot of words like “gauche”, “childlike”, “corny” describing various expressions of it.
Well, I just love it. Having spent lots of time listening to logo police for many large corporations, I admire the friskiness of the Google people. There’s a lesson in the looking. March 14th was pi day. Heh heh. A little piece of fun for the numerically literate, the Google logo was executed with nicely done geometry. And guess what, logo police? You could find the corporate identity in there. Also during the Olympics with the lovely illustrations showing us all those graceful winter games in the logo. Apparently, we’re able to fill in some blanks and get the nods to current events and holidays and all of that when we sign on the Google home page. It’s refreshing and fun and a treat to see it when it comes up. And the logo fun comes up with some predictability and some randomness. That’s part of the fun too. It makes you pause for a moment and think in a blink while you’re on your way to something else. I liked the plain Google logo and name from the beginning. But what they’ve been doing is so smart. They’ve let me in on the secret behind this big, big corporate entity. It’s headed by humans with wit and intelligence who are current and enthused about all sorts of things. I like them.
Would it be the breakdown of civilization, as the logo police would have it, if other corporations decided to let designers ‘fiddle’ with their corporate dress? Probably. What do you think?
Healthcare marketers who are hesitating over beefing up their interactive and social media plans just got a wake-up call thanks to Millward Brown’slatest research. We all know that trust is what makes us return to a brand time and time again. It makes us tell our friends. And when it comes to our health, it’s how we prescribe healthcare services for one another. But who whould have thought that recent research would show that WebMD is the eighth most “trusted” and “recommended” brand in the U.S.?
The internet is, more than ever, the place we turn to when we need immediate feedback about our health or the health of our loved ones. Face it, it’s a lot faster than getting that appointment with your GP. It’s always there. Combine that efficiency with the power of communication that the internet provides (think social media) suddenly, WebMD at number eight just isn’t such a shocker. What do you think - ever used WebMD? Write back and let us know your favorite healthcare destinations online.
We’re currently developing a hospital branding campaign for one of our newest clients, Otsego Memorial Hospital (OMH). It’s a community hospital located in Gaylord, MI, a beautiful city famous for it’s skiing and amazing landscapes. Which brings me to the question, how do you brand a community hospital?
As healthcare marketing and branding experts, we’ve seen one of the most common and greatest obstacles many community hospitals are faced with is how to re-position themselves in the community. Most already know the hospital name, they know the location, but they are stuck in the mentality that the only thing the hospital can handle is a broken arm. When in reality, community hospitals are more than just that now. They are stepping up to their game; hiring leading specialists and providing more comprehensive services.
Below is a community hospital brand campaign example from Danbury Hospital in Connecticut:
Their campaign goal was similar to many community hospital goals: convince consumers to look past their old-time preconceptions and see the hospital as a high-care provider. The imagery is a nice blend of humanity and high-tech and so far, the brand campaign results deem it pretty successful.
As a team, we’re having a lot of fun working on the concepts for OMH and I look forward to sharing them with you in a few weeks. I will also share some insight on how and why we recommended the strategy used to develop the campaign and continue to update on its success.
In the meantime, have you seen or created any powerful community hospital brand campaigns? I would love to see them.
Healthcare marketers are often challenged with to how to participate and ultimately lead health conversations through social media channels. In this highly regulated market, even marketers armed with great social strategies can find that they face seemingly insurmountable barriers thrown up by administration and information technology departments.
So how can you become part of the conversation when the thoughts you express could create a liability or privacy concern for your organization? Here’s one idea: borrow third party expertise. Turn the conversation away from your organization, your doctors, your services, and tap into some of the rich public health resources available online.
Why not get familiar with the major public health research publications such as Environmental Health Perspectives (fd: Brogan & Partners publishes and markets EHP on behalf of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences). Stay ahead of the competition when it comes to understanding the major health concerns of today and tomorrow by commenting on the research or news provided by these publications and the esteemed researchers that contribute to them. You can then draw connections back to your service lines as a way of providing additional information.
You’ll appear smarter and better informed while fostering a feeling of goodwill among consumers because your organization is taking the time to help them understand how to live healthier lives. Got other ideas on how to insert your organization into the social sphere while limiting exposure? We’d love to hear them!
While doing social media training here at the agency, I finally figured out why so many people do not respond or follow on Twitter…
They don’t know how!
Although Twitter seems pretty self explanatory, especially to those of us that were in college when Facebook and MySpace first hit the social media scene, that doesn’t mean everyone can follow along and quickly grasp the concept. For those who need the extra help, it means there will be some research involved… yes, you have to google how to twitter. Sounds like a simple enough request, right? Wrong. Most people look to social media because it should be fun, easy and exciting… not one of those words implies having to LEARN first.
I can now say from experience, that little effort to learn something new goes a long way to gaining a positive new tool to promote your business and yourself. Do you disagree? I’d love to see your thoughts.
P.S. If you can’t get somebody’s attention through social media like this poor man, maybe you should try a new tactic!
I didn’t suggest this first. One of my bosses at DDB said it to me many years ago. I don’t know if it was original to him. (John Noble. A funny, smart, irreverent man who said lots of good stuff. May he rest in peace.) It may have come from Bill Bernbach (May he rest in peace.) who was infinitely quotable and said many things worthy of stitching on a pillow or tattooing on your arm.
Sometimes creative not only breaks through the clutter but breaks new ground in what is possible. It’s pretty mind-blowing to imagine a poster campaign that talks. This is truly interactive at it’s best. The UN Voices Project combines cutting edge mobile phone and image recognition technologies. The campaign is used to put out the message of those who would otherwise go unheard. People around Sydney were encouraged to take a mobile phone photo of the persons mouth and sent it as a picture text to the number on the poster. The sender then receives a return phone call with a pre-recorded message from the person they have photographed. The call to action is embedded in the phone message where people are then encouraged to leave their own comments through the UN website. I applaud the creatives that came up with this idea and the technologists that made it happen. It is inspires the rest of us to push ourselves to create new ways of communicating our messages. Have you seen any other groundbreaking examples of creative that re-invent the way we engage? Please share if you do!
