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.
Our president, Will Flynn, was recently featured in a documentary on graphic design in Richmond, which directed by a VCU student, Jamie Bourne, along with Bekky Rage and Rachel Kim. Will is a VCU graphic design alum (Go Rams!), has taught at VCU, and regularly speaks to students about the communications, healthcare, and design industries.
In the documentary, Will talks about the importance of specialization: that by becoming an expert, it allows more freedom of exploration – both in design and the strategy that informs the design. Will is an advocate for specialization of your craft, whether it is design, law, or accounting. Franklin Street is a strategic marketing firm with deep expertise in the health and wellness industries. We help hospital systems, biotech firms and other health organizations overcome complex brand challenges and identify new revenue opportunities.
One of the great ironies about creativity is the freedom that comes from the discipline of focus and specialization. This is true in two different ways. First, by choosing to narrow your palette and work within a medium like oils or a form like a print advertisement, you free your creativity to expand to fill your vessel. In other words, your brain won’t toy with a sonnet when you’ve committed to a haiku.
Second, by choosing to specialize, you accrue knowledge that builds upon itself and drives inspiration, insightful strategy, and produces work that has few equals. That knowledge base you cultivate positions you as a sought-out expert – and those who seek to work with you are most likely to listen to you and abide by your expertise, which provides you even more fruitful knowledge.
We are honored to be a part of this project along with our Richmond design and advertising colleagues. A special shout out to the other firms featured in the documentary: J H I, riggs ward, and 1717 Design Group.
In our Richmond metro market, two local healthcare brands advertised during the 2011 Super Bowl.
One of the hospitals told the press in the days before the Big Game that the cost for producing the spot was very affordable – perhaps to avoid complaints from board members that the hospital was throwing its money away.
It’s exciting to have your brand be on the Super Bowl. All those eyeballs. All the potential.
But what about after those 30 seconds? (Or, in the case of Chrysler, two minutes?)
That’s when the real magic happens.
Or doesn’t, as the case may be.
Advertising is a form of branding. And branding is a form of culture, a way of illustrating the intangibles that define your organization/product/service.
Some brands are meant for the Super Bowl. (Think beer, junk food.) Instant gratification and products simple enough that the humor and outrageousness can trump the need to extol the product’s virtues.
Other brands (like healthcare) require more from the audience than a quick laugh for there to be a chain reaction of awareness, preference, usage and loyalty.
Hospitals launch ad campaigns all the time. It doesn’t matter if they launch on the Super Bowl, American Idol finale, or in the local Penny Saver. Running an ad is one thing. Building a brand and having audiences build onto the brand story is another thing altogether.
The next campaign you develop, ask yourself: after we launch the campaign, what happens next?
What’s your plan for engaging nurses, physicians and volunteers? What’s the plan for getting them to be advocates of your brand? What about your patients? These audiences make up your organization’s brand, after all.
Cobbling together money to run a TV spot is one thing.
Building, shaping and cultivating a brand of significance is something altogether different.
Here’s a smattering of commercials from the Super Bowl XLVI that our team thought hit the mark.
Clint Eastwood is an American icon. This two-minute commercial is a passionate tome that tugs heartstrings and appeals to virtues bigger than just selling cars. The response after the Super Bowl has been dramatic. Some people felt the spot was politically-motivated. Who cares. It’s brilliant.
Dogs have replaced babies as the go-to for suckering eyeballs. VW strikes back after last year’s pint-sized Darth Vader spot with an overweight pooch on a comeback. Beautiful tie-in with last year’s Star Wars’ theme.
Audi’s “Vampire Party” spot is simple, smart, and uber trendy, right down to the hashtag #SOLONGVAMPIRES.
GE has consistently held the distinction of great advertising for years. This spot features GE technicians who meet with cancer survivors who benefited from the equipment the GE technicians made. Below is the extended version.
You can’t get more ubiqiutious than the Toyota Camry. The brand turns a negative brand attribute into this smart, touching spot emphasizing the Camry connections we have.
Unfortunately, Toyota ruined all that new brand love with this spot, which feels like it was done by a different agency for a different car company for a different Super Bowl:
Acura and Honda went the nostalgia route by featuring Jerry Seinfeld and Matthew Broderick in a pair of spots that complemented one another, even if most people don’t know that Honda owns Acura (or even cares):
Everybody seems to love this Doritos’ spot, even if the premise is murder. (Hey, we’re animal lovers at Franklin Street. Just sayin’.)
Now, for the lowbrow crowd. First, Beckham:
Next, FIAT:
A team favorite was the music video by the band OK Go that featured Chevy. Snippets of this video were featured in one of Chevy’s Super Bowl commercials, so technically it was featured in the Big Game. (This video was released just after the Big Game and already has millions of views.) OK Go is getting a lot of press for its innovative music videos. With this video, you can see why the press is well-deserved.
4 Super Bowl Takeaways for Healthcare Brands:
1. Don’t be afraid of the reveal. Some of the strongest commercials played at this Super Bowl teased the product until the very end. If advertising doesn’t ask any of the viewer, then the commercial is easy to ignore/dismiss. For your healthcare advertising, talk up to your audience; she can handle complexity and intrigue.
2. Be real time. The Client Eastwood spot for Detroit auto and even Audi’s “Vampires” spot hit the American consciousness for the Twilight and True Blood phenom. In healthcare, it’s easy to get caught up in support points, technology shots and word choices that won’t upset the doctors. Put your audience first, though, and lean on what informs their world, interests and passions. If it’s vampires, so be it. You can bet your healthcare TV spot will be noticed.
3. Consensus can kill great work. Our 20+ team got together a few days after the Super Bowl to review the commercials and eat barbecue. (Yes, it’s tough work being a Franklin Streeter.) There was little consensus from the group about which spots were the best. The Clint Eastwood/Detroit spot, for example, had a polarizing effect on our group: some thought it was among the best advertising of all time, and others thought it was boring and lagged. Many healthcare organizations are consensus-driven, and advertising can bear the brunt of the consensus culture. When possible, develop a small, core team of decision-makers and run to the finish line.
4. It’s what happens after your spot airs that matters most. Most healthcare brands can’t advertise on the Super Bowl, but every ad campaign has a “launch.” What happens after your campaign first airs is largely dependent on the brand culture of your organization, and, to a lesser degree, your role as a marketer in helping to harness that culture to add to the brand conversation. Read this to learn more about the power that culture and building on the brand story can have in healthcare.
A pint-sized Darth Vader can teach us about better healthcare marketing.
VW’s Big Game commercial from last year had everyone I know laughing and talking about the spot for weeks and months afterwards.
The brand is following up with a new Star Wars-themed spot for the Big Game – the teaser already has millions of views.
It’s easy in healthcare advertising and branding to go back to the same well of storytelling, especially with the pressure from people in white coats who want to show the technology, blood and guts, or demand we promote quality scores.
What VW and its agency did so brilliantly was understand a VW owner’s life in relationship to their vehicles.
The kind of advertising that people ignore (and the advertising healthcare marketers are often forced to create) is the kind that makes the product the STAR. The advertising practically screams, PAY ATTENTION! LOOK AT ME!
This is advertising that navel gazes, advertising that is self-absorbed, boorish, tone-deaf.
What the pint-sized Vader spot did spot-on was to create a commercial around its audience and what they cared about, and inserted VW into the conversation.
As a former owner of several VWs, I can tell you I don’t know how to change the car’s oil, and still have trouble figuring out when to rotate the tires. I am sure some VW executives were appalled when they first read the TV script and realized the only feature highlighted in the entire spot was the car’s remote starting feature — a device that has been in commercial use for years by many car brands. For a prospective VW owner, though, it was just enough for the hook, to take a second look, to begin the process of saying, Maybe I should look at VW for my next car.
The fun appeal of the TV spot gave the brand the viral edge it needed. (An aside: never try to make a “viral video.” Videos go viral when people decide the content is worth sharing. That’s the story building aspect of branding.)
Here are a few pointers for helping your next healthcare advertising campaign be a success like VW’s Vader:
1. It’s all about the audience. Create ads that appeal to your prospective patients, not physicians or the C-suite. Unless it’s OB, prospective patients don’t like thinking about healthcare. (Admit it, heart surgery is a scary topic if you don’t do it every day.) Profile your audience – going beyond age, gender and income. What do they care about? What’s their day like? What are their hopes and fears? What makes them laugh? Create from that place.
2. Keep it simple. Resist the temptation to add just one more copy point in the ad. What’s the one thing you want people to remember about your healthcare brand? Develop your ad around that one thing.
3. Stay out the of hospital (if you can). The VW commercial showed the Passat only at the very end, and we never saw the interior of the car, or looked under the hood. Look for advertising solutions that avoid the standard white lab coat/spotlight on technology/nurses rushing down a crowded hall montage of healthcare advertising that’s been done a million times before. (We’ve certainly done that spot before, and it can work. But still.) Use the Force. Try a new way of connecting with your audience.
Do you have a favorite commercial that inspires you? A tale of woe from a pushy physician who knew better than you what his patients needed to know? We’d love to hear from you.
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.
Franklin Street has provided Northfield Ministries, a Virginia not-for-profit, with office space and furniture totaling near $30,000 annually.
Northfield Ministries is a 501c3 not-for-profit organization providing hope and care for girls between the ages of 13 and 21 who are struggling with life challenges such as eating disorders, depression, and self-harm.
“Our mission is to meet young women and their families where they are, go with them on their journey to restoration and healing, and to give them the tools to break free,” says Gwen Seiler, Northfield Ministries Founder and Executive Director.
In addition to office space in Richmond donated by Franklin Street, Northfield Ministries plans to open a residential facility in Cumberland, VA for young women who need a transitional home to focus full-time on healing and deliverance from self-destructive thinking and behaviors.
Partners Will Flynn, Stephen Moegling, and Tim Roberts are happy to be able to help the Richmond community and greater Virginia area.
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.
Are you a social media savant? Do you live for tweets, posts and badges? Do your words cut through the clutter and engage followers, friends and fans? We’d love to hear from you!
Franklin Street is looking for a Digital Media Intern for the Spring 2012 semester.
The perfect intern will be enrolled in a bachelor’s program in a communications-related field. The role of the Digital Media Intern is to help manage the agency’s online presence and provide support for the agency’s internal communication needs. We are looking for someone with strong writing skills for content creation, preplanning and implementation of pro-active editorial calendars, disciplined multitasking abilities, and the research and application of the newest technology and resources available.
If you have a way with words and a digital know-how, send us your résumé and a pithy cover letter.
Earlier this year, BridgeHealth, partnered with Franklin Street to develop a campaign for their unique role: “the premier provider of access to Centers of Excellence in the US and beyond for planned major surgeries.”
From direct mail to brochures to email campaigns, Franklin Street developed a complete advertising campaign.
