Junto ("june-toe") is sponsored by Franklin Street, a branding and full service advertising agency specializing in health and wellness. We call the blog Junto in homage to Benjamin Franklin, who created the first "Junto" brainstorming group, which established the first American public hospital.
According to a study from Deloitte, 80% of people will travel outside their community for perceived higher quality of health care.
Many community hospitals are challenged with the perception that they are good for the common illnesses and broken bones, but can’t handle the major stuff.
Satilla Regional faced a similar quandary when they asked for our help in marketing their cardiac services program. Despite outperforming 75% of all hospitals nationwide in the emergency treatment of heart attacks, many locals believed they needed to go out of town for heart needs.
Using research on how and why consumers choose and evaluate healthcare providers, we developed a solution that spoke openly and honestly to Satilla’s audience. When it comes to your heart, use your head, became the campaign theme.
We featured one of Satilla’s cardiologists as a spokesperson for the campaign. Based on research we’ve conducted in markets all over the country, we knew physicians can be excellent spokespeople for hospitals, creating a halo effect for providers. Consumers feel that physicians can choose to practice medicine at many hospitals, so if they are choosing this particular hospital to practice, it must be of high quality.
We also featured testimonials of former cardiac patients and the life-saving care they received at Satilla. Television and web videos wove the softer, more emotional factors that lead to trusting Satilla for cardiac services.
We’re still tracking results for the campaign, but early numbers suggest the campaign is reaching our audiences’ hearts and minds.
What’s your take on using physicians as spokespeople? Curious about our clients’ take on STARK laws? Drop us a line — we’d love to hear from you.
Your smart phone can do amazing things: video chat with friends, check the latest scores for your favorite Indian cricket team, or play Scrabble with your co-worker. But your smart phone more than fun and games. The latest additions to the smartphone app market may just end up saving your life.
According Fast Co., mobile health technology is currently a $2 billion of the $273 billion medical-device industry. And that number is skyrocketing. Experts believe the number will continue to grow as smart phones get smarter and patients take their health into their own hands.
Up next? The FDA plans to release a rigorous set of guidelines for mobile health applications later this year. A more formalized process will make entering the market easier and energize the mHealth market.
What does this mean for your healthcare organization? It’s time to pay attention to mHealth.
Keep an eye out for great new apps and products that may help cut costs–a new app and accessory for eye exams is literally .3% the cost of its predecessor.
Think ahead – mobile health portals may soon allow patients who track their health via apps to plug into your EMR. Imagine that data shared seamlessly with your medical staff.
Try them out yourself. After all, you deserve to be happy and healthy, too. Check out our favorite apps for staying fit and healthy.
Get your own app–from ER wait times to tips and calendars for pregnant moms. The possibilities are endless.
If it isn’t already, make your site mobile friendly. While this isn’t an app, it is mHealth. If your website isn’t compatible with prevalent mobile technology, you are missing a golden opportunity. 1 in 7 searches are now mobile and that number is even higher for local searches.
Have more ideas for mHealth? Know an mHealth guru? Need more inspiration? We love sharing our thoughts and talking with other experts in health and wellness. Give us a shout.
Your client is a talcum powder guaranteed to stop itching.
There’s a lot of itchy people. You want to reach as many them as possible.
The solution is simple. So simple, in fact, you have to extend your normal 3-martini lunch to 4 martinis just to make it look like you did something.
The approach? Advertise on “I Love Lucy.” At the height of its popularity, advertising on the home of Lucy, Ricky and the Club Babaloo reached 75% of all TV viewers.
That’s a lot of eyeballs who could use your client’s itching powder.
Fast forward to now.
You’re a big shot healthcare marketing exec.
Your brand is a nationally-ranked health system and you want everyone to know it.
But there’s no big screen for your brand, no Lucy-sized ratings vehicle to reach everybody and their brother all at once.
In its heyday, the American Idol finale reached 18% of all TV viewers.
75% of all viewers to 18%. That’s a big spread.
Broadcast TV viewership is down 10% across the board.
Tonight, 70% of people watching TV will also be doing something else. (Half of those people, by the way, will be on-line.)
We can’t count on one big screen to build our brands anymore. Our new model of media must live across multiple platforms, connecting with our audience in their busy days and lives.
Our phones are to blame (or thank) for the change from one big screen to many little screens.
Mobile usage is expected to double in 5 years as mobile overtakes the PC as the most popular way to get on the web.
Americans spend on average 2.7 hours per day “socializing” on a mobile device.
What does that mean for your branding?
1. Be a farmer, not a hunter. Marketers can’t expect to reach and persuade their audiences any more with two or three off the shelf tactics. Because of the media fragmentation, marketers can’t expect immediate brand engagement. Adopt a farmer’s patience, scattering brand seeds to discover which tools will become the strongest in time for message engagement.
2. Embrace digital. In the old days, people talked over fences about brands. Now, they IM and Facebook. Even if FourSquare isn’t the right social platform for your health system brand, every brand has an opportunity for online engagement. You just have to find the tools that work for you, whether its Twitter, a Tumblr blog, or search marketing.
3. Audit your workhorses. Resist the temptation to revert to the “tried and true” tactics for every campaign. Challenge yourself to think outside the quarter page ad box and find new ways to bring your brand to life across many little screens. (FYI: This is a great team-building exercise for your in-house staff.)
Exit question: Are you still paying the same rates for media placement that has fewer subscribers, viewers and listeners? Challenge your media reps or buying service to bring new ideas to your existing media channels. The media wants to retain you as a customer and the threat of lost revenue often inspires creative opportunities for your brand.
Great branding campaigns are, ultimately, campaigns of great story telling.
Stories are the best way to impart information. People forget facts. They remember stories.
Before the written word, oral storytellers shared history, which was passed to other generations.
Peter Guber writes about the art of storytelling as a persuasion tool in Tell to Win.
Nike, Disney, Coke, Chick-fil-A. Just Do It. Magic. Refreshment. Cows telling us to eat more chicken.
Storytelling.
Now we’re in the age of Story Building.
Your audience contributes to your branding.
She tells her friends about the great experience she had at your hospital.
How your nursing staff calmed her husband’s fears.
How the physicians saved her husband’s life.
She does this on the phone and on-line.
She’s so grateful for the miracle of her husband’s recovery that she takes to Facebook, a modern day Paul Revere, letting everyone know your brand is expertise, compassion, life-saving, life-giving.
Her friends write back: Thank Goodness for that hospital, those nurses, those physicians.
One Facebook post turns into 100 comments.
Friends of friends contribute to your hospital’s story, building onto it, line by line, as if surrounded by a digital campfire.
Now: How do you support this story building? What do you put in place at the launch of your next campaign to encourage story building?
The challenge: Storytelling is in your control. Story building isn’t.
That’s also the opportunity.
What brands do you think do a great job with story building?
We’ve spent months curating predictions and trends that are most likely to impact marketing and communicating healthcare brands. Below are five key trends brands should embrace in order to engage with today’s healthcare audiences.
Just 44% of Americans believe their home is worth more than their mortgage, and only 22% of likely U.S. voters believe the country is headed in the right direction. With so much uncertainty and feelings of disillusionment, today’s audiences have no time for organizations that talk down to them. They want frank, honest conversations more than ever from brands.
Implications for healthcare brands: Health systems can’t be skittish about engaging prospective patients and caregivers. This means more on-line communications where straight talk via blogs and open door conversations via social media. Traditional branding efforts should evoke honest dialogue: more real life instead of make-believe. Our audiences can handle adult conversations about their healthcare; in fact, they demand it. Meaningful calls-to-action are hallmarks of Maturialism in 2012: make an appointment, speak to a nurse, or attend a screening or event for early diagnosis and prevention.
DIY (Do It Yourself) Health
Health is the new wealth. Tech innovations will keep fueling our audiences’ desire to take charge of their health. (There are already more than 9,000 mobile health apps available and Ford is now testing in-car health monitoring technology in their cars.) This trend dovetails one of the tenets of the Affordable Care Act: keeping patients well and out of the hospital.
Implications for healthcare brands: Health systems have a huge opportunity to lead the charge for wellness, not just treatment. This means new approaches to traditional community health events and screenings. Healthcare had been a low interest conversation, a “pay attention only when I need it” philosophy. Today, our messages have a sticky factor as audiences clamor for how to live and feel better. Yet, healthcare providers account for only 2% of all social health buzz. It’s time for health systems to pony up and engage to the DIY Health crowd.
In the age of Siri, access to information isn’t a problem. It’s finding the right answers and solutions that’s the challenge. Our healthcare audiences are seeking trusted guides to deliver enlightenment. With our audiences’ time and attention at a premium, though, they are seeking out gurus on topics. These gurus take a patient approach to sift information and distill in meaningful ways to audiences.
Implications for healthcare brands:It’s not enough to purchase third party health information, plug it into a website and expect it to be perceived by healthcare audiences as valuable and useful. Healthcare brands must play the role of gurus: sifting and filtering information and sharing it in ways that don’t overwhelm audiences. Because healthcare audiences vary so widely in need, healthcare brands should use multiple platforms to connect with audiences. This means Facebook strategies geared to new moms, blogs and support discussion groups for people living with COPD, and monthly lectures on trends in heart care.
Attitudes towards aging are changing, with people of all ages taking a positive view of growing older. As the demographic and culture changes, along with medical advances, audiences will redefine what “old” means and when it occurs.
Implications for healthcare brands:Traditional healthcare services like orthopedics and cardiac services will benefit from appealing to the youthful spirit of audiences 50+. This means more emphasis in messaging on how healthcare brands get patients “back to a busy, full life.” Because older adults today don’t view their age as a barrier to youth or vitality as did generations prior, healthcare brands can benefit from their willingness to actively seek out medical treatments that keep them on the go.
The universal archetype of masculinity is over. The old rules that define a man’s role in the home and office do not apply in today’s world. More women are out-earning their husbands and men accept it. In fact, 77% of all men say they are comfortable with their wives earning more than them and 72% are okay staying home to take care of the children.
Implications for healthcare brands:Because men accounted for over 75% of the recessionary job losses, they are running more errands and homesteads while the spouse works and brings home the paycheck. For the coveted healthcare age cohort of 55-64, men use the Internet equally as women to search for healthcare information (74.7% to 75.4%, respectively). Women, once the default demographic for healthcare messages, should no longer be considered the sole target audience for all healthcare campaigns. More health systems are developing programs and services around men who are tuned in to healthcare messaging–and responding to it–like never before.
Communication Trends
Strictly speaking communications, we see the continued growth of mobile and web-based video as tools for healthcare brands in 2012. Consider these facts:
Smart phone web-based searches have quadrupled in the last year and now 1 in 3 mobile searches are for local brands (like hospitals!).
Smart phone usage is expected to double within 5 years as mobile overtakes the PC as the most popular way to get on the Web.
Americans spend on average 2.7 hours per day “socializing” on a mobile device.
eMarketer estimates that US online video ad spending will grow by a compound annual rate of 38% in a five-year span ending in 2015, making this by far the fastest-rising category of online spending.
By 2015, video ad spending will reach $7.1 billion, up from $2.6 billion in 2011. In the past year alone, growth was 52.1%.
What do you see as the trends that could positively or negatively impact your brand? What’s next?
One of our favorite things to do is to shed light on healthcare topics and share powerful information with our readers. This time we’d like share with you an article from Catherine Boyle, Chief Operating Officer at Northfield Ministries, to touch on a subject few know about in detail but 24 million suffer from: eating disorders.
“If one illness killed more young women than all other illnesses combined, there would be just cause for alarm. Outraged groups would form, fighting to save lives. Prominent leaders would organize creative fundraisers for research. Scientists would tirelessly study until test-tube miracles resulted.
There is such an illness, hidden in plain sight, striking down predominantly women on the cusp of adulthood. This illness is eating disorders.
Some recent statistics reveal the devastating impact of eating disorders on our society: 24 million people in the United States have an eating disorder. For 86% of these people, the eating disorder started before age 20. Up to 30% of college-aged women are eating disordered. Though eating disorders are typically thought of as young woman’s struggle, reality is that eating disorders know no age, gender or ethnic boundaries.
Once emotional, physical and spiritual condition, eating disorders typically take years to develop and years to recover from; If you recover. Eating disorders have the highest mortality rate for all other mental illnesses combined, and are the number one cause of death for women aged 15 – 24.
The cost of lives lost to the eating disorder beast is incalculable, but the cost of treatment is readily available, and unfortunately it isn’t cheap: one-week hospital stays average over $11,000 for an eating disorder patient, but each hospital stay also has significant costs for insurance companies, as well as the local, state and federal government (for Medicaid and indigent patients). More importantly, hospital stays do not resolve the eating disorder, but are merely a band-aid to keep women alive, only to return to the same behaviors and environment that resulted in hospitalization. A vicious cycle of frequent hospitalizations often results, which means unstable and poor health for the patient, and consequentially, difficulties with employment and growing financial burdens.
Specialized treatment options are available but given the significant death rate and medical complications associated with eating disorder, most options are prohibitively expensive, often in the range of $2000/day and up. Virtually all of the costs of specialized treatment are borne by individuals.
So, where is the outrage, the research, the funding? Almost non-existent. Eating disorders are significantly underfunded compared to other illnesses with similar rates of occurrence. Though eating disorders have been in our national vocabulary since the death of Karen Carpenter 30 years ago, the complexity and painful nature of the issues that make up eating disorders have resulted in a lack of significant financial and other tangible support.
Against formidable odds, one brave mom is on the forefront in the battle to rescue this generation from eating disorder. Motivated by the multitude of young women who came to her through her church and the community, all seeking help with their eating disorders, Gwen Seiler. She dreamed of a place where women could break free from their eating disorders without bankrupting their families. In 2006, Northfield Ministries was born.
Northfield Ministries is a Richmond-based Christian non-profit working with women struggling with eating disorders, depression and self-harm. Northfield currently provides mentoring services and helps women and their families find care providers appropriate to their specific needs. The benefits from Northfield’s work are obvious: women are connected to the right resources for healing; they are mentored with Christian principles; they learn their worth and purpose. Wonderful byproducts include reduced spiritual, emotional and financial burdens on families, and ultimately lower costs to insurance companies and to society.
In early 2012, Northfield is opening a 12-bed residential treatment facility 30 minutes west of Midlothian, VA for women who need to work through the issues underlying their eating disorders in a focused way. Located on 49 acres of Virginia farmland, Northfield’s Cumberland Home offers a beautiful, safe, serene location where women can separate from environmental triggers and begin to rebuild the identity and purpose God desires for their lives.
Northfield Ministries believes that healing from eating disorder is possible. We’ve seen it over and over. But we can’t help everyone who comes to us without support. If ever there was a cause that needed help, eating disorder is that cause.
Maybe this is why you are reading this article. Be the voice for those who have lost theirs. Support Northfield Ministries. The life you help may be the life of someone you love.”
Statistical source: Commonwealth of Virginia Joint Commission on Health Care, Healthy Living/Health Services Subcommittee ‘Study of Eating Disorders in the Commonwealth’, September 19, 2011.
The way hospitals deliver healthcare to consumers continues to be a hot topic.. From changes in insurance to new technology, healthcare organizations are re-evaluating the best channel for keeping patients healthy and costs down.
With a laundry list of desired (and required) changes needed for continued success, hospital administrators have big steps to take. (New Year’s resolution, anyone?)
With the fast (and continuing) growth of technology inside and outside of the point-of-care service, patients are more empowered than ever. The question is: how do hospitals take full advantage of the technology to make the care of chronic diseases require less resources?
The first step? Shifting from in-office to satellite visits. Using smaller, more easily maintained facilities reduces costs associated with expensive hospital facilities. The decreased cost of more (but smaller) facilities will help manage the expanding population of Americans with chronic diseases.
Next up? Arming hospitals with the ability to provide care responsibly even during extreme events, like hurricane Katrina. Most hospitals are aging buildings with insufficient infrastructure. Updating water systems, back up generators and underlying structural issues will make be paramount for healthcare organizations. New technology will not only make these behemoth buildings more cost efficient and resilient during crises, but also reduce the environmental impact.
It’s that time of year again. Wrapping paper, ribbons, bows and forced family fun.
And time for our annual “Best of” post. Here are a few staff and fan favorites from this year on Go Junto. Thanks for making 2011 so fantastic. Cheers to an even better 2012!
In addition to our regularly scheduled content, we seek out the best and brightest in healthcare from docs to gurus. Check out a few of our favorite guest posts from 2011.
As a guy writing this blog, I realize the headline above could be considered piggish.
But it’s not.
If you haven’t heard of Hot Mama, it’s a chain of clothing stores that has Disney-like brand loyalty.
Their secret? A highly focused customer experience tailored to moms who want to feel sexy and beautiful.
Hot Mama stores are designed so that kids playing with the in-store video games are always in view, no matter where mom is in the store. Their retail consultants are trained in matching customers’ body types with denim and other clothing for fit and feel and embrace what women are feeling at different stages of momhood.
Even their Facebook presence is stylish, fun and a great example of customer engagement.
What can we bring into healthcare marketing from Hot Mama?
1. Story building. Traditionally, branding was the art of story telling. With the rise of social media, our audiences want to participate. In turn, they build the stories with the brand. Story building is the new art of customer engagement, a chance for healthcare brands to enhance their brands by inviting participation. Check out how Hot Mama makes store openings and sales exciting on Facebook and consider how to bring more zest to your health system’s status updates.
2. Design an experience. True, many hospitals were designed around the doctor and not the patient, and you may not have the pull to invest millions in environmental design. But if you’re in marketing communications, you probably have the wherewithal to shape a great experience with your website, social media channels and other digital campaigns. On the web, you’re often limited only by your imagination. What can you do to design a great experience for your healthcare audiences?
3. Thin slice your audience. The death of a great campaign is trying to appeal to a wide audience. Be narrow with your focus, or “thin slice” your audience and micro target them with messages and promotions. Hot Mama chose not to sell to a lot of women in order to give full focus to a certain type of woman at a certain time in her life. The more you can focus your messages and campaigns, the more likely you are to say something that is “sticky” with your audience.
What other ways can we parlay Hot Mama’s success into healthcare? What other brands outside of healthcare should we be students of and learn from?
