Healthcare Stickiness
- Posted by Julia Shea on October 16th, 2007
filed in Healthcare Marketing |
If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
Dan Heath, coauthor of “Made to Stick”, and Director of Corporate Education at Duke University, was my favorite keynote speaker at the SHMSD conference. Aside from being annoyingly young (!!!), he was funny, full of his own stickiness, and had 4 strong key points (which will save you from having to read the whole book):
1. Break Decision Paralysis.
We all have too many decisions to make. Case in point: When physicians were given the option of trying new Medication X or doing hip surgery, 47% tried the new med. Give the docs a 3-way decision - either Medication X, Medication Y, or hip surgery and the percentage decreases to 27%.
Another example: He cited a hospital that touts its 11 Core Values. Yes, ELEVEN. ” A hospital with 11 Core Values is like a country with 11 prime ministers!” he cajoled. Much chuckling, then a downward shift of the eyes among the audience…many of us guilty of way too many core values…!
He had us close our eyes and imagine a picnic. Hotdogs, hamburgers, plaid tablecloth. Then we imagined a diet - celery, carrots, bland food, hunger pains. This is why the Adkins Diet was such a huge success - it “violated the schema” of a diet. A California hospital that is marketing its posh, dorm-like rooms is another example of an unexpected schema that is working.
3. Be Concrete.
Be specific and sensory in your description. He quoted hospital websites that use overused, nonwords that mean absolutely nothing to our consumers…”tertiary service areas…best practice guidelines…strategies to enhance the continuum of care.” Yikes.
Even funnier was his match.com example. With thousands competing for attention, how do you stand out? He contrasted two entries. One said, “I can make you laugh.” Another said, “The guy above me is married. The guy below me is a stalker.” Which one is more sticky?
4. Connect Emotionally.
Of course, this is my favorite. We in healthcare are guilty of droning on about the newest high tech, thingamajig cyberknife or 64 CT Slice. His point is that we must first get our audience to CARE, to NOTICE our communication. See how we handled promotion of the DaVinci Robot for our client, The Christ Hospital, below. Consumer benefit and umbrella hospital brand is first. We toyed with including a visual of the robot, but as you probably know, that thingamajig looks so scary and impersonal! Our client was wise enough to keep it out.
All in all, Dan Heath’s talk was worth getting up early for!