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.
Huntington Hospital, established in 1916, is a well-respected 408-bed nonprofit community Hospital located in Huntington on Long Island. Huntington Hospital has been a member of the North Shore – Long Island Jewish Health System (NS-LIJ) since 1994. NS-LIJ is one of the nations integrated healthcare networks, and the largest in New York state.
This past autumn, Huntington expanded its advanced cardiac program. The hospital’s cardiology services include diagnostic cardiac catheterization, electrophysiology and radio ablation. They are in the process of building a second cath lab and will soon offer elective angioplasty, a huge development for any hospital.
Huntington Hospital will be able to provide most invasive cardiac procedures short of open heart surgery. Additionally, 2011 hailed a new designation as a teaching hospital for Hofstra.
In short, the cardiac program is comprehensive.
So what could be the problem? Consumers in this area have an abundance of choice. There are about ten hospitals within thirty miles of Huntington, and New York City is just about an hour train ride away.
Our job? Show residents in this area that they are lucky to have Huntington as their local hospital offering both state of the art services and a caring staff.
After extensive market research, we discovered that residents there wanted to be educated on how to stay healthy, so we focused our campaign on preventative care urging residents to develop a relationship with a local cardiologist. By creating a strong tie to both the Huntington Hospital and a specific doctor, we knew locals would stay in town for major and minor heart care alike.
To answer this call, our creative team developed work that promoted the urgency of heart care and the benefits of preventative care through direct mail, newspaper advertising and flash banners. With a strong call to action and a dramatic viewpoint from an emergency care patient, the ads offered a strong incentive to choose Huntington and choose early.
So what is the lesson? Creating ties through preventative care may result in long term relationships. And a big fish may still need to strike the right chords if the pond is big enough.
Take a moment to think about the following brands: Nike, Apple, Coca-Cola, Exxon, McDonald’s. What do they all have in common besides giant war chests, near-global ubiquity and a preference for questionable business practices?
Consistency. There’s a very good reason why every Apple retail store looks exactlythesame, or why every McDonald’s bag faithfully adheres to the red and yelow color scheme. True, consistency can be boring and predictable, but it also works. It preys on our collective need for familiarity, creating a simple set of symbols for complex associations.
By keeping your brand identity consistent, you are removing one of the most important barriers between you and your market. Repetitive exposure to the same symbols allows your consumers to quickly and easily recognize your core message. This is why all your communications—whether it’s an ad campaign, a website, or the waiting room—must be visually consistent with each other. Your brand changes from being an unknown entity to a familiar presence. Familiarity builds trust. When people trust you, they are more inclined to listen.
There are other consequences to ignoring brand consistency. Your customers should be able to follow a clear path between your collateral, your advertising and your physical spaces. Without those clear links, your organization risks credibility and appears disorganized. At worst, consumers might think you’re new to the market, causing them to avoid you altogether.
Take a look at a few non-healthcare examples of consistent brand identities:
You can clearly see the narrative thread that connects every aspect of Apple. Consistency has turned their brand identity into a brand experience, which is one of the reasons why they’re one of the most valuable companies in the world. Note how their advertising, website, products and retail spaces align harmoniously to present a unified image—an image that is unmistakably Apple.
Similarly, there’s a very good reason why Pepsi has been unable totopCoca-Cola ever since their ridiculous 2008 logo change—and it’s coincidentally the same reason why New Coke was such an utter disaster. For the most part, straying from your core brand identity will inevitably end in nothing but tears, lost revenue and confused consumers.
Healthcare marketing is no different. Brand consistency leads to trust and acceptance. So when Centra—a leading three-hospital system in Virginia—added a new hospital and expanded to serve 13 counties, we created a visual identity that unified the system but allowed flexibility for growing service lines.
After Centra’s new identity launch, research showed staff morale, name recognition and patient volume for key services increased. In fact, consistent brand extensions actually proved to strengthen the overall brand and helped increase recognition. Finally, consistent branding strategies helped Centra save money on brand development and overall marketing expenses. After all, tweaking a brand identity with every new service line or center of excellence may mean you have to work harder to help consumers make the connection with your hospitals. And why do that, especially in lean times?
Know a brand that’s growing effectively? Or an extension that’s stretched a little too far from the brand? Please share.
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.
When you think of Harley-Davidson®, do you think of a premium woman’s brand?
Maybe you should.
According to NBCU, which does an annual brand power index study, Harley tops the list of brands that are doing all the right things to connect with women.
Harley’s new “My Time to Ride” campaign documents women from across different lifestyles and life stages learning how to ride a motorcycle. The webisodes are instantly engaging and do what great branding does: marry the product with a higher emotional state. In Harley’s case, it’s freedom and confidence.
Most health systems cater their brands to women. (She’s the healthcare decision-maker in the house, after all.)
So what can we learn from Harley?
1. Be real. The 2012 Trendwatching study talks about “Maturialism.” Consumers have zero tolerance for brands that handle them with kid gloves. They want frank, honest conversations. The “My Time to Ride” campaign does this brilliantly.
2. Use multiple platforms. Harley connects with women in traditional ad campaigns, on-line via webisodes, and social media. Harley also offers directories for women to find mentors and group riding events. As you plan your next campaign, challenge yourself to go beyond print, radio and TV. How many different ways can you connect with your audience? (Often, these secondary level tactics produce surprising buzz.)
3. Engage your audience. Inspiring campaigns are one thing. But nothing can replace the sound and feel of a real Harley-Davidson®. So Harely hosts Garage Parties, opportunities for women to join other non-riders to learn the basics of motorcycling. (Men are off-limits at these events, by the way.) Health fairs, screening events and symposiums, once passé, now have new opportunities for healthcare marketers, and social media helps keep the conversation going. Give your audience an opportunity to connect with your physicians and healthcare providers.
Do you ride a Harley? What do you think of this new campaign?
Have a surprising brand that can inspire the healthcare marketing conversation? We’d love to hear from you.
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.
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.
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?
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?
I recently heard Earl Cox from The Martin Agency (Geico, Wal Mart) speak on trends in branding and advertising.
He offered us a way to write a better creative brief.
It’s simple, and changes the way we think about how our campaigns can engage audiences.
What is our audience really interested in?
What ideas can build a bridge from their interests to our brand?
Why might they talk about this idea?
How and where can they get involved?
What will keep the conversation going?
The goal for any campaign is for people to have a thought and take an action. I want to jog pain free…I’ll buy these Bondi B shoes.
In the old days, the action was our audience to buy the product, use the service, hope they say good things to friends and neighbors, grow word of mouth.
Now, it’s to do the above, then connect the brand with their layers of tribes – online, offline, at home, at church, on Foursquare, adding to the experience, the enjoyment and satisfaction. Ultimately, making the brand meaningful, relevant, and worth the time and money.
The act of branding is that much harder now. It’s also important to remember that brands themselves must be of higher value if we should expect anything to come from our work.
