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.
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.
I know, I know. You’re wondering what a Julie Andrews musical has to do with health care marketing. We’re going to get to that.
But first, for those of you who live under rocks, a quick synopsis of the Disney classic: A family of four (workaholic father, society mother and two bratty children), live in London in 1910. The two rugrats, Jane and Michael, desperate for their father’s attention, scare off nanny after nanny with nasty tricks and bad behavior. Cue the magical au pair flying in on an umbrella who transforms the family dynamic through a love of life and catchy show tunes.
It’s in those songs where we can tap into greater knowledge of health care marketing. So let’s break it down. Song by song.
“Chim Chim Cheree”
The first song is a slow paced ballad by chimney sweep Bert (Dick Van Dyke). Main lyrics include:
Chim chim-in-ey, chim chim-in-ey
Chim chim cher-ee!
A sweep is as lucky, as lucky can be
Chim chim-in-ey, chim chim-in-ey
Chim chim cher-oo!
Good luck will rub off when I shakes ‘ands with you
Lessons to be learned? Quite a few.
Bert’s song embodies what a good tagline should be: simple, memorable, emotional, capturing the essence of a brand. Does your health system’s tagline deliver all that?
Developing a brand platform is the first step. But the real test is sticking to it. Dick Van Dyke‘s character had the cockney accent, dust covered clothes, and gritty fingernails. Your brand should own a persona. Follow your branding strategy down to a tee and stay consistent.
Reach potential patients where they are and be sticky. Bert interacts with every person he passes. Are you meeting your consumers where they spend time? Mobile, search, social and traditional media all give options to connect with your consumers.
Already in Phoenix for SHSMD 2011? Us, too! Make sure to look for the Franklin Street team rocking the green Converse Chuck Taylors. We’d love to say hi.
Need a preview? Here is an interview of our own Senior VP Stephen Moegling from last year’s SHSMD in Chicago. Bow tie and all!
Looking for the healthy activities at SHSMD 2011? We found the Phoenix’s best for you! Make sure to stop by our concierge booth at SHSMD to see the rest of our annual EAT SEE SHOP DO list, make reservations, get directions, and win tickets to Phoenix’s best attractions. Just follow the green Converse Chuck Taylor shoes. See you soon!
Pita Jungle – This local eatery focuses on better-for-you food and fresh ingredients. Pop in for a quick healthful meal to-go. They even have a resident dietician and vegan meals. Try a salad or one of their healthier burger options. No matter what you pick, it promises to be delicious.
Hiking at Pinnacle Peak Park – Make sure you make it outside in beautiful Phoenix. Our best bet is hiking a 3.5-mile trail at Pinnacle Peak. The trail, a meandering walk through Arizona’s Sonoran Desert, is strewn with boulders, wildlife and towering saguaro cactus. Make time for this perfect outdoor workout.
True Food Kitchen – Looking for the perfect well-balanced, organic dinner? We found it. Check out True Food in Scottsdale for a sit-down dinner or a delicious brunch. We can’t wait to try the vegetarian Corn and Ricotta Ravioli and the Edamame Dumplings.
Horseback Riding at MacDonald’s Ranch – MacDonald’s, located just outside Phoenix in Scottsdale, offers a variety of outdoor cowboy activities. We recommend finding a ten-gallon hat and ride off into the sunset.
Fountain Park – One of the world’s highest fountains, the town centerpiece in Fountain Hills, shoots 560 feet into the air every day on the hour for 15 minutes from 9 am to 9 pm. Enjoy a stroll around and catch a glimpse of this man-made wonder.
We know you have been bombarded with predictions and tactics for Google+. Everyone has an opinion and it has been posted, tweeted, shared and linked to death. So we will keep this one short and sweet.
First things first, we here at Franklin Street love Google+. It is fun. It has wonderful capabilities. It has a beautifully clean lay out. It can even import your Facebook feed. All in all for personal use, we are drinking the Google+ koolaid.
And yet… Google+ has yet to allow branded pages and it looks as though we will be waiting until February for this feature. In fact, Google is systematically shutting down pages that have been started for hospitals and health systems alike. And no one profits from making Google mad.
Moreover, Google+ is still limited to early adapters and tech-savvy blerds (blog nerds). More often than not, these are trés hip Gen Xers and digitally inclined Gen Yers. The population is still so limited that an actual marketing campaign is yet to be worthwhile.
Our advice: learn to love it first. By the time you understand all its capabilities, branded pages will be fast approaching.
So get your toes wet. Test it out as for personal use. Make some circles. Follow some friends. Share some favorite articles and personal photos. You can even find colleagues and health marketing cohorts to share some ideas and test your skills. Attend a health care marketing hang out. Become comfortable in the Google+ realm.
We think it will be big. But right now, we all still need to figure out how to use it as a tool for our personal lives. Before it becomes a marketing channel, it needs to be a relevant channel.
Welcome to Richmond, Irene! We celebrated with Dark and Stormy’s at Kristin’s new desk and listened to classic 80s rock.
Dark and Stormy Recipe
Ice
2 ounces dark rum
10 ounces of ginger beer
Lime wedge
Hurricane conditions
Fill a 12-ounce glass with ice. Squeeze the lime wedge over the ice in the glass. Drop the wedge into the glass. Pour the rum into the glass. Add the ginger beer. Stir. Enjoy.
Don’t think you need to spend the money to make your website mobile friendly? Brushing off the onslaught of apps? Forging ahead without a mobile marketing plan? We humbly ask you to reconsider. Mobile isn’t the future anymore. It’s the present.
About 60% of the world’s population are now using mobile phones. Of the world’s 4 billion mobile phones currently in use, 1.08 billion are smartphones. That’s 27% and the number is on the rise. According to a recent survey by CNNMoney, just iPhones make up 29% of the current American market.
Of that same 4 billion cell phones in use, 77% are SMS enabled. Every 6 months since June 2003, SMS traffic volumes have increased at least 37% in the U.S.
Mobile searches have quadrupled in the last year and 1 in 3 mobile searches are local. After looking up a local business on their smartphone, 61% of users called the business and 59% visited. Usage is expected to double within 5 years as mobile overtakes the PC as the most popular way to get on the Web.
Time is no object. Americans spend on average 2.7 hours per day “socializing” on a mobile device. “That’s 2 times the amount of time they spend eating, and over 1/3 of the time they spend sleeping.”
Advertisers have figured all this mobile growth out. Search and location ads currently are the highest generator of revenue, while video ads are expected to see the fastest growth through 2015. Google’s gross revenue from mobile advertising is over $1 billion per year.
According to Google thinkinsights, 82% of survey respondents notice ads on smartphones. 82% of U.S. shoppers use smartphones while in the store for purchase decisions; however, 79% of large online advertisers do not have a mobile optimized website.
These are staggering statistics. Not to sound like a 1970s life insurance sales man, but you cannot afford NOT to invest in this opportunity. Mobile search, web browsing and purchasing are increasing at exponential rates. If you haven’t looked into optimizing your healthcare site for mobile browsing, you are missing a piece of the local search pie.
Here are a few easy steps to take to optimize your site for the mobile user:
Talk to your web guru about building a simple CSS for mobile. Having a seperate CSS for mobile users easily sends them to sites designed for mobile viewing.
Add “viewport” to your meta tags to allow your user to scale a website.
Include an easy-access link to the full website from your mobile site just in case.
Hide all Flash elements or replace its function with HTML if it is vital.
Use clean, semantic markup to make it a little bit easier to load on mobile devices and SEO-friendly.
Have more tips? Want to know more? Having your iPhone surgically attached to you left hand? Tell us about it!
We have to admit – we love our iPads. In addition to Angry Birds and Spotify, the iPad is a powerful tool in the advertising world. It allows access to sound clips, photos, presentations and our iCalendars.
But we have always been Mac-kind of people. Ad men (and women) usually are. The real question for Mac is how will it translate to the PC-using crowd. We knew something big was happening when a medical professional was seen toting an iPad and touchscreen-ing away. With a little research, turns out he is not the only one. According to a Chilmark Research report, 22% of medical professionals have adopted Apple’s tablet computer.
University of Chicago’s Internal Medicine residency program implemented an iPad iniative for its residents last year and they are sharing the lessons they learned with the health care community. Chicago’s Bhakti Patel, MD, wrote a fantastic manual showing major features of the iPad, from the basic functions to doc-specific apps. From security concerns to privacy, U of Chicago is facing technology head on and the docs seem to be winning.
The rest of the healthcare community is catching on. Just yesterday, St. Luke’s Hospital and Health Network (a multi-hospital system in Pennsylvania) announced its selection of Allscripts Electronic Health Records iPad App for over 1600 employed and affiliated physicians. The system provided all 400 employed physicians with iPads and is underwriting the cost for its affiliated doctors.
More than just electronic records organizer, the iPad is now easing surgery stress for children at Shriners Hospital for Childrenin Chicago. Resident child life specialist at the Children’s Hospital Kia Ferrer developed an interactive app that take patients through the procedure step by step. Ferrer tells Chicago Parent, “The iPad has revolutionized the way I teach because it’s more of an interactive tool. Most children love technology so they’re very attracted to this new and neat little computer that shows them the steps of their hospital experience.”
With the techno-boom in healthcare playing a larger and larger part in patient care, iPads are on the up and up. We suggest not getting left behind.
Have a favorite that we missed? We’d love to hear about it.
Articulating a brand platform and positioning can be challenging work, but the benefits to a well-defined brand outweigh any short-term pain and suffering. After all, brands like Apple, Ford and Target succeed by knowing who they are as brands and replicate that brand through product, price, service and design experience.
There are many paths in discovering your health system’s brand essence, but one of the tools we find very helpful (and fun, too), is the This or That? exercise.
For example: Is your hospital a Walmart or Target brand?
There’s no right answer, of course, but the feedback you get from internal stakeholders will be enlightening and encourage debate.
Other examples:
Thought-starters:
Are you cosmopolitan or tried and true?
Do you focus more on packaging than the product?
Thought-starters:
Is your organization conservative, moderate or liberal-minded?
Are you recognized for technology or spokespeople (like physicians)?
Thought-starters:
Are you known for heritage or reliability (or both)?
Do you appeal to the “everyman?”
In healthcare marketing, it’s easy for us to get caught up in the high tech/high touch debate. The fact is, men and women want both from their healthcare providers.
As you hone in on your brand’s position, investigate the emotional and intangible qualities of your organization. It’s in the emotional landscape that we make connections with our audiences. Great brands know and harness this truth. Good luck discovering yours!
Mom-centric social media focuses on sharing knowledge, product reviews and experiences. From “Powersuit Mom” to “Stay-at-Home CEO,” the many roles of women today do not comply to the formerly rigid disconnect of working mother or homemaker. Most women somehow find time to do it all – working full-time jobs, cheering at soccer matches, baking cupcakes for the classroom, and vacuuming the living room. As a 20-something career-focused girl, I feel exhausted just watching my Gen Y gal pals juggle friendships, marriages, kids and jobs.
So how on earth do they do it all and do it so well? They turn to each other for tips, tricks and advice. And in today’s tech-obsessed world, that advice is usually found online. Blogs, Facebook, and Twitter are over flowing with personal stories, lessons from experience and comradery.
This social-media-mom push puts the healthcare industry in a particularly sweet spot. In addition to about a million other responsibilities, moms tend to take the lead on family healthcare. Babycenter.com reported that:
93% of the women surveyed “manage the health and well being of their entire household” from themselves and husbands to children and elderly parents.
A recent MediaPost article zeroes in on a mom-centric survey. According to the study, moms who use technology to share health information:
Frequently use e-mail and Facebook. E-mail is reported as the most used method at 84% with Facebook not far behind at 69%.
Use the Web to find out about new things from teething rings to teen discipline. 83% find out about news things through email from friends or email lists. (Only 65% chose television.)
98% check email, 84% visit Facebook, 60% visit a news Web site, and 60% talk on the phone with a friend on a daily basis.
The ever-expanding community of Web-savvy, social-media-loving, smartphone-toting moms is on the rise. Moms are sharing their healthcare experiences with each other at unprecedented levels. A positive patient experience is bound to be applauded in blogs, tweets and posts. On the other hand, one negative interaction can be a reputation killer in certain circles.
A few tips for keeping your maternal patients happy:
Maintain an active social media presence to respond to praise and criticism
Create and share new and fun content for young moms
Want to keep reading? We have tons of info on marketing healthcare to women and men! Interested in the world of mom bloggers? Check out this top 25 list or visit a few office favorites: Ill-Advised by The Bloggess,Mommy Shorts, and Three Kid Circus.
Share your thoughts! Have a favorite mom blogger? Best bets for email lists? Thoughts on healthcare marketing to women? Tell us about it!
