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.
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.
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.
Did you know that an overwhelming 86% of Facebook users think “it’s no ones business but my own” when asked about sharing personal health information on Facebook? Thanks to the group at the Path of Blue Eye Project for commissioning this infographic that lays out all of the juicy details on why the social media giant, Facebook, isn’t for sharing…yet.
It’s important to know where your clients and prospects are and what they’re willing to share. The numbers of people using the internet to research doctors, illness, and hospitals is rapidly increasing. How will you exchange information with them?
Have you had a different experience with users sharing personal information with you? We want to know!
This awesome infographic is from the cool people at Cool Infographics!
We’ve said it before: we are more than just health and wellness marketers. We are health and wellness nuts. And the newest Franklin Street fad? Jogging. From 5ks to half marathons to mud runs, our team has tried them all and we can tell you one thing: a good pair of shoes is your best jogging partner. Here’s one take on the growing shoe-less running trend.
Thanks again, Tony Shin, for another awesome infographic.
It’s that time of year: holiday cheer, family around the dinner table and heart-warming tales. Here’s one for this season– mixing social media with medicine to take tidings of good cheer across the ocean:
With the holiday season officially here and plans with your loved ones marked in your calendar, it is only natural to shed a tear (or two) watching this. It seems almost impossible to image not being able to witness the birth of your own child, right? For many active duty soldiers overseas, missing major family milestones is just part of the job. Now with the use a CheetahNet mesh network , soldiers have access to high speed internet in Afghanistan. Those that protect our freedom and country are now able to watch the special moment their child enters this world via Skype. Although nothing can beat the real thing, this growing program gives our soldiers a feeling of being home, even if just for the 24 hours their loved one is in labor.
Is your hospital ready to become part of this growing trend? Is your labor and delivery room high-speed and WiFi enabled? Has your hospital used Skype to share special moments? What other ways can you show your military families you care? If so, share your stories with us. We’d love to hear from you! Think big and give thanks this winter season.
At Franklin Street, we love making new friends. Smart, funny, creative friends. Our newest BFF? Rise, a digital media marketing agency based in Orlando, FL. These interactive Floridian mavericks are on the cutting edge of digital design and creative. With clients ranging from Grant Hill to an Orlando tattoo parlor, it’d be an understatement to call them edgy. Plus, they put out a really great blog. The article below caught our attention so we thought we’d share with you! Enjoy.
Like most other Americans, I grew up fascinated by stories and information piped through the television and have watched over the last couple of decades the development of different platforms designed for entertainment and knowledge-sharing.The exciting phase we are in now is all about integration, so I’d like to highlight some of the neatest ways I think TV and digital media are shaking hands and enriching the experiences of audiences and tech users!
Influencing the Show
One of the first successful shows where digital media was integrated with television on a mass scale was American Idol, where viewers could text their vote to producers who would then dismiss performers on the next episode if their fans didn’t give them enough votes.
One of the newest incarnations of this type of interaction is used in a show called New York Goes to Work. Show producers give the television audience three choices of what work Tiffany “New York” Pollard (she received the nickname from Flavor Flav!) will do in the next episode. Viewers text in their vote and the occupation with the most votes wins!
Co-Viewing
Do you remember MTV’s Pop Up Video? The idea was to present music videos with little bubbles that popped onscreen with additional information about the artist or song currently playing. That was just the beginning!
The newest rendition of that is done digitally, where show producers design digital augmentation apps that you can download and participate in from digital devices while simultaneously watching the broadcast on TV. A terrific recent example of this type of intersection I loved was this year’s Shark Week Live app from The Discovery Channel!
Sharing the Stage
The third major way that viewers are experiencing television through digital media is probably the most rich – when shows broadcast the digital interaction of cast members and viewers. A great example is when MTV interviews famous artists, they’ll invite television viewers to use Skype, a digital video and voice service, to speak to the artist and ask them questions, which other viewers get to witness on TV.
Another example of this type of interaction can be seen on news programs. News casts from outlets like CNN and FOX invite users to send comments through Twitter to be addressed by visiting political pundits, share their thoughts on topics through social media sites like Facebook, and even upload home videos of breaking news to broadcast to other viewers. It’s so exciting to be interactive with current events and see them from different peoples’ points of view!
Gaming
TV shows like Lost and The Walking Dead really took the concept of story interaction between television and digital media to a fun and exciting level for viewers. Alternate Reality Games (ARGs) transport players from their console into a story, in these cases inviting you to frolic in the fictional worlds created by television writers. This branch of interaction allows players to be immersed in the mystery, mythology, and puzzles introduced in the shows.
Interactive Characters
For viewers who get the most kicks out of character, How I Met Your Mother has a great strategy to enrich your viewing experience! Barney Stinson, the show’s womanizing goofball played by Neil Patrick Harris, often talks about what he says or is going to post on his blog – which viewers can actually find online! Many other characters from TV shows also have blogs online, including the audience favorite Hiro Nakamura fromHeroes.
Deeper Connections
There is a more interesting and deeper connection that happens when fans influence show writers through digital media. For example, viewers often create forums and fan fiction to talk about and expand upon the stories they love from TV. Writers are people, too, and often check out what their fans are buzzing about online. Sometimes they will give a nod to their fans by incorporating thoughts and ideas from the forums and fan-created content to enrich the show writing on next episodes or seasons!
Knowing Your Audience
Integration is still experimental at this point, so we’re all still learning how far we can push the envelope and still entertain a general audience. Bar Karma was an online TV show that went as far as to let viewers create the show by helping do tasks like writing a plot line and developing set designs. It was an amazing idea! But it also asked a lot of the audience if they wanted to fully experience every aspect of the show. Some players love that kind of power, but mainstream audiences, for right now at least, need an easier way to play. The question storytellers have to ask themselves is which audience they want to cater to. As an interactive storyteller myself, I have high hopes for extreme interaction in the future.
As technology advances, creative producers and writers are stepping up their game across the board to make use of them to give their television audiences new and more interesting ways to interact with their programming in the digital realm. You can fully expect more exciting developments from this sector of entertainment!
We’d love to hear from you. Do you tweet about your favorite show? Read reality TV blogs? Share your thoughts on Facebook?
Did you read ourfirstthree blogs in the Mary Poppins series?
“Supercalifraglisticexpealidocious”
(Go ahead. See if I spelled it right.)
Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!
Even though the sound of it is something quite atrocious!
If you say it loud enough, you’ll always sound precocious,
Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!
Um-diddle-diddle-um-diddleye
Um-diddle-diddle-um-diddleye
The lesson is simple but important. Audiences are segmented and splintered. It can be hard to be heard. Sometime you need to be loud.
We don’t mean that quite literally. In fact, attention-getting techniques like the Chrysler Town and Country commercial use the opposite to draw in viewers. Sometimes, being loud means hosting an event that gets free media. Sometimes, being loud is being in many different marketing channels with one unified voice, the way Skittles does well.
Often, being loud involves means being different. Being different can be scary for health care brands when the tendency is to play it safe. If your brand avoids risk, try being different in a medium like social media, where different is embraced.
“Spoonful of Sugar” of the Song by Song Breakdown
Our resident tech geek (AKA Director of Production) Dean Ruth loves this tune. Despite being catchy, Spoonful of Sugar is also the perfect social media strategy.
In ev’ry job that must be done
There is an element of fun
You find the fun and snap!
The job’s a game
Point number one:
To be on Twitter 24/7 and constantly checking Facebook, you have to love digital media. If you view it as a chore, it will show. The incredible amount of dedication social media takes means you need someone who actually enjoys it as part of his or her job.
Although Twitter and Facebook have huge educational value, social media is primarily an informal setting. To succeed at engaging people in the social space, there needs to be a light-hearted element.
Here are a few ideas to add a spoonful of sugar to your social media efforts:
Share fun facts (not just the scary ones).
Participate in and offer contests.
Find something tangentially linked to health care (think 10k or a healthy food cook-off) and support it with your own social media outlets.
Enjoyed our 4 part series? Have an idea for a song we missed? Tell us!
Health marketers: the gauntlet has been thrown. Think you can do it better? We challenge you. Pick a musical and show us up. The choices are endless: Funny Girl, Moulin Rouge, Chicago, Phantom of the Opera. See if you can find a better fit than the world’s favorite nanny. We’d love the competition.
This song comes early in the movie. Julie Andrews has yet to enter the picture. The two darling but bratty Banks children have scared off another nanny. Father is angry. Mother is upset. The housekeepers are laughing. The kids, in an attempt to find a little more fun from their incoming au pair, write their own advertisement.
If you want this choice position
Have a cheery disposition
Rosy cheeks, no warts!
Play games, all sort
This song makes a great case for how to be successful in health care marketing. Your brand’s recruitment efforts should go beyond the black and white of the job description and into the personality of the candidate and how the candidates attitudes and core values relate to your health system’s brand.
When was the last time your marketing team met with your health system’s HR team to talk recruitment, brand, culture and long-term strategic goals? If it’s been awhile (or never!), maybe it’s time for a pow-wow. Get the culture of the organization right and your marketing strategy will take off.
“Step In Time”
Who can forget this big dance number on the roofs of London’s homes? All the chimney sweeps throughout the city respond to Bert’s call and gather together for a call and response fast-paced frolic. The great thing about this song is the synergy of the dancers.
Working together on a coherent and complete message across a large system can be a challenge, but it’s worth it. Having a coherent brand message and consistent look and feel are the difference between a memorable brand and an invisible brand. Your message will be louder and clearer. Your messages will resonate where once they may have missed the mark.
Recently, we worked with a large health system to unify its family of hospitals, which had competed in the past for patients. We conducted interviews with staff from all the hospitals to identify what unified the hospitals – culture, strategy, goals. To start you off on unifying your large health system brand, try our “This or That” exercise. It’s simple and inspires conversation.
Working as a large system has its own set of rules. We know the red tape can be frustrating, but the results are worth the extra effort.
Enjoying our musical escapade through the land of Disney musicals? Let us know!
One of the latest trends in the tech field is employee perks. Google offers subsidized massages, a rock climbing wall and hair cuts. Work/Life balance is all the rage and for good reason. Happy employees are more than just labor – studies show psychologically well employees perform better. Even better, a happy employee who loves and lives the brand becomes the greatest advocate.
Now, we aren’t telling you to compete at Amazon’s level. And while we’d love to see a foosball table in the staff break room, there are more feasible options in the health care industry like:
Surprise Snack Attack – once a month, walk around with a basket of healthy goodies (think trail mix) to pass out to your employees, staff and physicians
Run Like The Wind – encourage employees to participate in a local charity walk or offer to sponsor a Relay for Life team
The Best Part of Waking Up – surprise your employees with free coffee on a Monday
Under My Umbrella – order branded umbrellas and on a surprise thunderstorm day, give them out to staff as they leave
Need a few more ideas? Check out the infographic below from ResumeBear for some of the top tech companies’ many perks.
Welcome back! (Missed earlier blog in the series? Click here.)
Jolly Holiday
In the middle of a Technicolor animated wonderland, Bert tries to (chimney) sweep Mary Poppins off her feet with a song about the wonders of quality time with the magical nanny. (It’s right before a group of penguins serve them tea. I know, it’s all coming back to you now.)
Ain’t it a glorious day?
Right as a mornin’ in May
I feel like I could fly
‘Ave you ever seen
The grass so green
Or a bluer sky?
Oh, it’s a jolly holiday with Mary
Mary makes your heart so light
When the day is grey and ordinary,
Mary makes the sun shine bright.
Now, what does a lovely date with Mary Poppins have to do with your health system? Unless it’s to see a newborn, people dread going to the hospital. Your goal should be to make each patient and visitor experience remarkable.
Here are some ideas:
Hospital design
Making things aesthetically pleasing and easily navigated. This is a no brainer, but we forget how much enjoying the scenery actually counts in the healing process. In Evolutionary Aesthetics, Eckart Volan and Karl Grammer write about the importance of environment in mood. Based on studies and research, Volan and Grammer posit that stimuli affects aspects of our mood which in turn affects behavioral outcomes and biological functioning. Serious scientists with long titles like “habitat preference researcher” have provided evidence that our environment and inevitable emotion reaction to that environment have a seriously strong impact on our physiological and psychological health. That being said, an environment that makes patients feel safe can positively affect their health outcomes, behavioral outcomes, and overall attitude about an experience. If that takes a fresh coat of paint and a rethinking of layout, it’s worth the effort.
Patient navigators
Cancer service lines have pioneered navigators to help patients at every access point of cancer care. Now, more and more emergency rooms are starting to cater to the aging population by renovating ERs to offer no-skid floors, larger print signage, extra geriatric training for staff, and navigators to help senior citizens.
Giving people what they want
Free wireless Internet access is cost-effective and popular among savvy, mobile-phone audiences looking to connect on-line. As a bonus, you can make your access page another marketing touch point.
While your patients won’t ever consider their hospital stay a vacation, it’s worthwhile to make their experience as jolly as possible.
Feed the Birds
One of the lesser-known songs from Mary Poppins, it’s nonetheless a great source of health care marketing knowledge. (You can find it sung by both Mary and an older bag lady sitting outside the Cathedral.)
Come feed the little birds, show them you care
And you’ll be glad if you do.
Their young ones are hungry,
Their nests are so bare;
All it takes is tuppence from you.
Sometimes in the world of marketing, budgets and paperwork, our mission can be forgotten. Compassion and caring is at the heart of health care. (Isn’t that why you got into the industry?) Show your patients and the world that you care.
You can achieve this with authentic, meaningful advertising that speaks to the emotional needs of the whole person and goes beyond “treating the disease.” When reviewing your ad campaigns and messages, ask yourself:
Will someone unfamiliar with health care understand the terms used in the campaign?
Does the campaign address the benefits to the patient, or focus solely on the features of the technology or treatment?
Have you given the viewer meaningful ways to learn more? (Putting the URL on the ad is one thing. Is there up to date information on the website? Can someone call and talk with a person for more information?)
Enjoying our Mary Poppins blog series? Disagree? Think health care marketing is a little more Pippin and a little less Julie Andrews? Tell us! We’d love to hear from you.
