I had the great fortune of attending and speaking at NESHCo’s 2013 Spring Conference. Great topics, great people. This was my third time at the conference and each time I come away feeling renewed about healthcare and hospital marketing and branding. My presentation topic was on making physicians key to the marketing team.

As I shared with the group, I’ve never worked in a hospital, but I’ve spent 15 years working with hospitals. I empathize with my colleagues in the trenches. One of the big dissatisfiers for healthcare communications professionals is the lack of respect they often receive from physician stakeholders.

My talk centered around opportunities for stronger physician outreach and sales activities, along with best practices in featuring physicians in marketing campaigns on behalf of the hospital or health system.

But the centerpiece of the presentation focused on changing the relationship dynamic between physicians and marketing communications professionals.

I offered a two-part premise why I believe physicians and marketers have not shared equals levels of respect.

1. Physicians, for the most part, do not understand what marketing is, how it works, and the role it plays in new patient acquisition. 
2. Marketers, for the most part, have had to expend too much energy defending and justifying their roles in the healthcare organization, thereby sacrificing precious time in advancing their causes and careers.

As a consequence, when physicians and marketers meet, it is often on uneven terms.

Then it gets worse when the marketer opens his mouth to speak.

We’ve been conditioned (and rightly so) to respect a physician’s time. We want to cut to the chase and make our points quickly to our physicians. But, as Kriss Barlow, RN, MBA points out, physicians are process thinkers. When we cut to the chase to make our points, we often cut out the process steps that lead to our informed recommendations. As a consequence, the physician is often left doubting our expertise and perspective because we haven’t led the physician through the proper process steps to draw the correct conclusions. We think we share insights; the physician hears untested opinions.

My recommendation for engaging physicians in marketing efforts is to apply everything you do against the perspective of Evidence-Based Marketing.

Evidence-Based Marketing allows the healthcare marketer to take the weight off her shoulders. No longer does she defend or justify a proposed strategy by using her “gut instinct.” No longer is she having to manage a dozen physicians telling her what they think the ad should say and look like. Instead, she calmly and clearly walks physicians and other stakeholders through a decision-making process that includes research, trends, best practices and case studies that yield firm, unwavering conclusions.

It’s understood that marketers and physicians can create dynamic campaigns when they work together with mutual respect. But one of the reasons for this truth is often overlooked, and it has to do with how physicians and marketers can work together to put together a complete picture of the intended audience for the ad campaign.

Doctors know patients. They know the conditions the patients present with, and the prescribed treatment path to heal the patient and relieve her pain. But doctors only know half of the equation when it comes to developing effective healthcare campaigns. Marketers own the second half of the equation because marketers know people.  

Marketers know how people are using media to learn more about healthcare providers, and they know that people are turning to the newspaper less and less and going online more and more for health information. Marketers know that people often “tune out” when they perceive a health message is scary. (Like the majority of cancer messages.) Marketers know most people would rather stay out of a hospital than go into one, and most people don’t know or care about quality ratings services.

We’ve seen firsthand the powerful things that are created when doctors and healthcare marketers work as a team of experts. Campaigns become more strategic, more focused, more patient-centric.

So consider this blog post a love letter from marketers to physicians. We can’t do it without our physicians. And who knows? If we work to change the relationship dynamic, maybe our physicians might come to see that they can expect to get more engaged and informed patients because of us.

Interested in reading more about physicians and healthcare marketing?

• Marketing ACOs and Medical Homes (with interesting insights on the shift of physicians looking to marketers for guidance in the future of healthcare reform)
• Online physician directories: overlooked opportunities for driving volume
• When making physicians happy conflicts with developing effective campaigns

Now we’re talking.

I took the picture below at Starbucks recently. It’s the cover of their loyalty card program. Starbucks has a simple proposition: register your info with them, use your smart phone app to pay for purchases, and you’ll get free stuff.

I’m still thinking about better ways to integrate loyalty programs into healthcare, but what I wanted to share with you today is the amazing headline for the Starbucks Loyalty Card Application:

We love you too.

Do you think anyone at Starbucks debated whether or not to go with this headline? Do you think there were mass gatherings in boardrooms with endless debates on the pros and cons of using such a bold, cheeky headline?

Probably not.

Do you think we could get away with this kind of headline easily in healthcare?

Probably not.

And that’s the shame of our industry.

We’re in the business of life and death. Yet talking emotionally about what we do – and the emotions people have for our brands – is often considered taboo.

Starbucks is my Third Place, and I love the brand. (There’s that Love word.) And even though it may have felt like it once or twice in an early, caffeine-deprived morning, Starbucks never saved my life or helped my family members beat cancer. Not like a hospital. Not like your healthcare brand.

And yet we resist using the L word in our communications.

More than that, we’re often told we can’t be this direct, this bold, this moving with our communications.

But at the end of the day, we want our audiences to love our brands. That’s the goal of branding and communications.

It’s not as difficult to achieve in healthcare branding as we sometimes think.

Love is often a side effect someone feels after their life is saved. Love is often the feeling that emerges for others who go above and beyond for us in times of need.

I suspect many of your audiences already love your brand.

Maybe, someday, we’ll be allowed to tell our patients we love them back.

Other posts you may love:

• 3 reasons your next branding campaign should start internally
• Why your brand needs a strong brand right now
• Trust: the next great brand attribute in healthcare

People are talking about your brand. They could be telling each other glowing stories about their experiences, or complaining about the substandard service that they received. Your audience is building a brand narrative, with or without you—so if you want to help shape the story arc, you must participate in the dialogue.

Do you know where they’re chatting about you? What they’re saying? Are you involved in the conversation? Don’t feel bad if you can’t answer the questions; many of your peers in the healthcare industry are in the same place. Consider this sobering number: Only 26 percent of hospitals have an active social media program, although 41 percent of consumers say social media affects their choice of healthcare provider.

Don’t be left behind. A brand that builds strong online connections is a resilient brand—one that is able to shrug off the occasional bad word and capitalize on the good ones. Here are five very good reasons to build a robust multichannel online engagement program as soon as possible.

1. 77 percent of patients use search engines to research hospitals.
   Online search has become indispensable to the consumer research process. Do you know what pops up when someone searches for your hospital name? Search engines hold no bias; good reviews and bad reviews will be served from multiple sources, including blog postings, message boards, sites like Yelp, and public Twitter conversations. Actively managing your online presence can positively influence the conversation.
2. 59 percent of adults have looked online for health information in the past year.
   This is a golden opportunity to get in at the ground floor with potential prospects. By building multiple healthcare conversations with your audience, you have a much better chance of being relevant to their online searches—thus making your brand top of mind when they make a final decision about a provider.
3. 83 percent of patients rely on hospital sites to make a decision.
   Have you looked at your site recently? Does it look like a throwback to 1999 or is it sleek, modern and easy to use? For a lot of people, your hospital’s website is the first time they’ll interact with your brand—and as the old adage goes, you only have one chance to make a first impression. Make it count by ensuring that your site is up to date with modern web standards, technologies and design philosophies.
4. 57 percent said that a hospital’s social media connections would strongly affect their choice of providers.
   More than 50 percent of the nation has a social media account of some kind, with Facebook leading the charge. If you aren’t out there engaging with your audience, you’re already losing market and mindshare to your competitors. Talking to your audience online can help cement a solid, long-lasting relationship—and they’ll share these experiences with their friends on their networks, exponentially increasing your brand’s online reach.
5. 24 percent of patients post about their health experiences.
   We live in an increasingly connected world. Many of your patients are posting about your hospital before they step in, and immediately giving feedback after they step out. By involving yourself in this conversation, you can make sure that your brand has a solid online footing, mitigating bad experiences and reinforcing good ones.

People want to hear from you. They want to talk to you. Most importantly, they want to feel like they have some measure of control over their brand experiences. But you can’t just put up a Facebook page and call it a day. A strong brand actively tries to cultivate conversations. For example, when consumers raise issues on Twitter or Facebook, over 80 percent report “liking or loving” hearing from the organization —but far too many hospitals use these platforms as nothing but a PR feed, updated two or three times a month.

You have to enthusiastically and consistently engage people wherever they are in order to build a real rapport with them. It’s hard and time-consuming work, but the returns are worth it. Leverage your online presence—including mobile opportunities—to become the first name that comes to mind whenever anyone thinks of a pressing health issue.

Most hospital branding campaigns involve associates in the research or execution phase: interviewing or featuring the individuals who represent the hospital’s brand. But hospital branding efforts rarely deliver those brand messages back to the associates, and we think that is a mistake.

A great example of bringing the brand back to associates is Memorial Health Care in Chattanooga, TN, a member of Catholic Health Initiatives, and the go-to provider for advanced specialties like cardiac services and cancer care.

When Memorial decided to refine its brand positioning, it conducted consumer focus groups and employee feedback groups as part of the research and development process. Lisa McCluskey, MBA, VP of Marketing Communications of Memorial, recognized in the research findings the correlation between how the associates believed in the system’s faith-based mission and what consumers recognized were the hallmarks of the Memorial brand: compassion, faith-based values, teamwork, which culminated in the best patient care.

Memorial didn’t end its associate engagement with the research. Instead, the health system launched its brand positioning within the organization. The first phase of the campaign included posters and banners strategically placed in high traffic areas, along with elevator graphics. The audience strategy was two-fold: reach patients and visitors during a critical time of their brand engagement, and connect with employees while they were engaged in “living the brand.”

The first phase of the branding campaign features real quotes from Memorial employees on their approach to patient care, serving the system’s faith-based mission, and how they bring to life the campaign’s theme, “Memorial Starts with Me.”

The campaign also makes use of a video featuring clinical and non-clinical employees, which is shared at town halls, during employee on-boarding, and the system’s Intranet site.

There are three key reasons why hospitals and health systems can benefit from launching their next branding campaign with employees:

 1. Most hospitals are among the larger employers in their towns. Engaged associates mean contagious positive word of mouth.

 2. Healthcare is undergoing massive change, which can be a dissatisfier for employees who have to learn or add new steps and processes to their daily work. Branding campaigns help unify, align and reconnect employes with the hospital’s mission, vision and values.

3. Branding efforts require financial investment and a long-term approach to yield results. Creating two-phased brand campaigns (internal and external) allow hospitals to budget over two or more fiscal years, with the first phase (internal) requiring no significant paid media spend.

Regardless of the positioning state of your hospital branding efforts, turning your brand strategies inward can yield many great returns — not the least of which is a unified commitment to delivering on all the promises your external campaign makes.

You might also be interested in reading:

• Why Your Hospital Needs a Strong Brand Right Now
• Trust Love: The Next Big Brand Attribute in Healthcare
• Branding Large Health Systems

Photo Credit

My colleague, Kenya Gibson, hosted a panel discussion today at the Healthcare Marketing Strategies Summit on marketing Accountable Care Organizations and Medical Homes. With Population Health on the horizon, and an increasing number of providers developing ACOs and Clinically Integrated Networks, the discussion was part best practices and part therapy session. Jeff Cowart, Senior Vice President, Growth and Sales, Baptist Health System (San Antonio, TX) and Paul A. Szablowksi, Vice President, Marketing, Communications & Public Relations, Dignity Health Arizona (Chandler, AZ) shared lessons learned.

Here’s a sampling of Kenya, Jeff and Paul’s discussion on marketing ACOs and Medical Homes:

• Be prepared for “fully formed” ACOs to be dumped on your plate with the request to “go market this.” Once again, marketing is brought in after the product is developed and not given a seat at the table in the planning and development process. 
• ACOs aren’t service lines, or even new products — they’re new companies, and should be given the resources to be marketed as such.
• Bringing an ACO to market will take longer — much longer — than anyone expects.
• Along those same lines, CMS hasn’t given providers enough clarity and lead time to prepare the proper communications materials. (And CMS requires approval of all public-facing sales and marketing materials.)
• Communicating ACOs should be thought of as a sustained campaign — unlike service line campaigns, which have predefined beginning and end dates. It’s a 12-month saturation effort with multiple channels and multiple messages.
• Focus on your storyline, and build from there. A common storyline in communicating ACOs is, “Coordinated care that helps keep you well and out of the hospital.”
• ACOs are complex stories to tell your audiences, from physicians to patients. Plan for a cascading communications model: start at the highest level with the simplest information to convey, then build from there. You go deeper with the messaging as the campaign evolves.
• Hospitals have the opportunity to be the trusted advisor of education for physicians on ACOs and the Affordable Care Act. One of the upsides to ACOs is that it gives hospitals an opportunity to build better relationships with its physicians. In fact, one of the case studies referenced a hospital that hired two salespeople whose sole job for one year was to educate physicians about ACOs.
• The number one concern patients have about ACOs is that they’ll lose their relationships with their physicians. It’s important to address this concern early on.

Paul Szablowski illustrated the core reason why ACOs are complex stories to tell for hospitals. Hospitals are living in two worlds simultaneously. On one hand, hospitals are marketing their ER services and building new patient towers, yet communicating an ACO model that is meant to keep patients well and out of the hospital.

Hospital and system marketers have traditionally been left out of the planning and development process for products and services. But marketing communications professionals have a great opportunity now to take the lead with ACOs. With so much confusion at hand, communicators can help bring signal to noise. In turn, we can shape cultural and operational changes at our health systems.

More Tools for you:

• ACO Marketing Resources
• ACO Directory

A common meme in healthcare today is disruption. And there’s a lot to be said for disrupting healthcare. A lot of healthcare is broken. Same goes for healthcare marketing, which lags behind other categories in engaging audiences. But looking for solutions often means starting with inspiration. Dr. Atul Gawande writes beautifully about finding inspiration for fixing healthcare while dining at The Cheesecake Factory.

I found inspiration for fixing healthcare marketing while eating at Chipotle.

I’ve written about Chipotle before. After copious Barbacoa salads (with guacamole, of course), I’ve determined there are six things healthcare marketers can learn from Chipotle.

1. Emphasize consistent high quality

Healthcare isn’t always good at consistently positive experiences. Even brands that perform well at customer service often fail in the Emergency Room. Granted, rolling a burrito isn’t the same as performing a TAVR procedure, but every hospital sees its share of daily broken bones. When possible, aim to provide a level of consistent quality to every patient experience. Gawande talks about using checklists to manage quality. One of our clients hired a former air traffic control operator to smooth out issues in the operating room. We say, Aim high, but also aim to be consistent.

2. Innovate the little things

Chipotle Founder and CEO Tim Ells talks about innovating how Chipotle sources its ingredients: to be fresher, locally-sourced, raised humanely and provide for better sustainability. Healthcare may have big problems, but when we focus on the small things, we can achieve amazing results. Just consider what grateful patients point to in their thank you letters to healthcare providers: the hug, the flower, the smile.

3. Take a bold position

Chipotle’s advertising is full of attitude, but the restaurant is boldest in its market position. Chipotle does Mexican fast food, but no one considers Taco Bell to be a competitor. Chipotle has frank conversations with customers about the health risks of antibiotics in meat, and the importance of raising animals humanely – and does so in ways that further its brand position as a leader in high quality fast food. (In doing so, Chipotle has practically invented a new retail food category.) Healthcare brands can learn from Chipotle’s cajones and encourage spirited conversations with health audiences about the state of healthcare and how they intend to fix it.

4. Appeal to a higher purpose

Chipotle’s brand position is “Food with Integrity.” For Chipotle, this means a commitment to “finding the best ingredients raised with respect for the animals, the environment and farmers.” Yes, at the end of the day Chipotle sells burritos. But in appealing to a higher purpose, Chipotle attracts motivated, engaged associates who want to work in a mission-driven culture, and attracts customers who are willing to pay more for perceived premium value. Who in healthcare doesn’t want to attract motivated, engaged associates and customers who are willing to pay a premium?

5. Increase relevancy as the market changes

Remember the bagel craze in the ’90′s? Today, Starbucks is one of the few chain coffeehouses that survived the caffeine fad of the 2000′s. Chipotle has served only about 5 different things since the early 1990′s, and yet the brand continues to open new stores every month. Why? You could argue Chipotle has remained relevant because of its disciplined approach to the core, quality ingredients and the few food items it sells. You could also argue that good Mexican food never goes out of style.

But I think Chipotle’s secret ingredient for sustained relevancy goes back to the last point — appealing to a higher purpose. By striving to go beyond increasing profits, Chipotle continues to evolve its brand and relationship with customers. (Ironically, when brands focus on the higher purpose, profits almost always follow. Whole Foods is another great example of this approach.)

Healthcare is changing. How people receive it, where they go for it, how money changes hands. Your brand must evolve to stay relevant and engage audiences, which may mean offering new services, delivering those services in new ways, and sustaining a brand voice that resonates with changing demographics. Not doing so may make your brand might go the way of Blockbuster Video.

6. Maintain a friendly, inviting voice

Chipotle’s advertising and brand communications have evolved, but the friendly, inviting tone of the brand hasn’t changed. It’s still a place to go for burrito happiness, great music, and extra guac. When you consider all the communications your healthcare brand produces in a given year – advertising, patient materials, social media – always take the opportunity to review your brand tone and voice. Is it consistent? Are you offering hope and compassion to your health audiences? Does your lobby feel welcoming? Will your nurses stop what they are doing and escort family members to the area they are looking for?

You may not have Chipotle’s power to server up delicious chicken tacos, but your brand can offer something more — life, of course.

What’s your favorite thing at Chipotle? Answers in the Comments window. Thanks!

We have the good fortune to be part of many exciting healthcare marketing, advertising, planning and public relations conferences and events this year.

Here’s a partial list of our upcoming engagements. If you’re planning to attend, make sure to say hello, and if you are interested in having Franklin Street speak at your conference or event, drop us a line. We’d love to hear from you.

The National Council for Community Behavioral Healthcare (April 8-10, 2013 Las Vegas, NV)

Stephen Moegling, Partner, Account Planning, will be conducting a workshop on Creating Healthcare Marketing Plans that align an organization’s higher purpose with strategies to reach and engage prospective patients and referral sources.

The Kentucky Society for Healthcare Public Relations & Marketing Spring Conference (April 16, 2013 Bowling Green, KY)

2013 Healthcare Marketing Strategies Summit (May 5-7, 2013 Scottsdale, Az)

Marketing ACOs and Medical Homes: Let’s Talk

Kenya Gibson, our Director of Client Services, will be facilitating a discussion on Marketing ACOs and Medical Homes. As more hospitals form ACOs and Medical Homes, marketers face new responsibilities. How do you build necessary physician partnerships? How do you facilitate the implementation of technology, systems, and processes? And how do you communicate the benefits to consumers and drive choice to your network? Hear lessons from early movers. Joining Kenya will be Jeff Cowart, Senior Vice President, Growth and Sales Baptist Health System (San Antonio, TX) and Paul A. Szablowski, Vice President, Marketing, Communications & Public Relations, Dignity Health Arizona (Chandler, AZ).

For some, it’s the lack of long term funding. For others, it’s internal pressure to promote only service lines. Still others lack the marketing culture required to really implement such large-scale change. Regardless of the reason, it has resulted in many great hospitals not being known as great hospitals.

Today there’s a perfect storm of forces reshaping the healthcare landscape. Is your brand ready?

Mergers & Acquisitions

Mergers & Acquisitions are now a way of life in healthcare. In Q4 2012 alone, 358 deals worth $22 billion were completed. Whether you’re buying, being bought or suddenly facing a newly branded competitor, M&As are elevating the importance (and value) of brand management.

Accountable Care

As relationships with patients shift from short term/limited engagements to long term/ongoing relationships, it’s more important than ever to build a brand that patients actually care about and want to be a part of. Likewise, as ACO and Clinically Integrated Network deals are made, having a strong brand makes you a more desirable partner.

Increased Competition

Competition is coming at you from all sides – and it’s not just other hospitals. Urgent care centers, freestanding ERs and clinics (many inside America’s most popular retailers) are attracting consumers in increasing numbers. Only strong brands will remain top of mind in this highly competitive environment.

Consumer Engagement

Consumers are playing a larger role in shaping your brand perception than ever before. And your ability to engage with them has never been greater. Social media provides you opportunities to connect with patients in all three stages of the typical engagement: before (shape perception), during (improve experience) and after (build advocacy).

3 More Reasons Branding Can’t Wait:

• According to the Conference Board, companies (not just hospitals) with successful branding strategies reported 11% higher total revenues than other companies. So waiting leaves potential money on the table.
• Emotion is the most powerful motivator in marketing—and every day you delay is another day that prospective patients can use to make an emotional connection to you competitors.
• A strong brand gives everyone in your organization a single ideal to aspire to and the path to achieve it. Right now.

1. Viagra could have gone the way of punchlines. Instead, the brand’s newest campaign taps deeply into an audience of Boomer men who don’t run from adversity, and have enough life lessons – and confidence – to weather any storm.

2.  Snowballs: Male infertility accounts for 40% of all infertility. Through his own struggles, creator Joshua Shoemake invented Snowballs, organic cotton underwear designed to maximize fertility by cooling men’s nether regions. The patent-pending underpants address elevated scrotal temperature, which can be a major cause of infertility. Simplicity and practicality, both in function and packaging, offer a cool approach to this taboo topic.

3. Orchid Cancer Charity: This ballsy approach to male cancer awareness is actually quite simple. The ornamental Bauballs hang around during Christmas time, but serve as a lifetime reminder to self-check (if testicular cancer is spotted at an early stage there’s about a 98% chance of cure). All money raised from the sale of Bauballs goes to the charity.

What’s your take on these brands’ no holds barred approach to marketing these taboo topics? Have any to add? As always, we’d love to hear from you.

For good reason. Cardiac services is often one of the hospital’s most profitable service lines. (Even if you’re a non-profit, remember the maxim, No margin, no mission.)

Consumers “get” the need for advanced heart care. There’s no need to “sell” the average person on why expertise in treating heart attacks and other cardiac conditions should be pursued when electing a provider.

Many hospitals report a high number of  ER visits in which the patient self-selects the provider and drives himself (or via a caregiver) to be treated by a specific hospital provider.

Unlike cancer, heart disease isn’t as “scary” for the average health audience. Cancer is still (unfortunately) a taboo topic for many people. Cancer is scary.  But heart disease is a “beatable” disease in the eyes of most consumers. In turn, people are less likely to “tune out” to a cardiac message.

Following are several examples of recent cardiac campaigns we’ve done.

We apply several proven principles for success when marketing cardiac care for healthcare providers. Three in particular are:

1. Talk up to the consumer but use common terms. Our audiences are interested in cardiac care solutions, but most don’t have advanced healthcare degrees. It’s important to be plain-spoken in communications without being “simple.”
2. Emphasize functional and emotional benefits of high quality cardiac care. Functional benefits may mean smaller incisions, less time on the operating table, or quicker recovery times. Emotional benefits may mean getting back to the life and people you love.
3. Remind audiences they have a choice. In the competitive healthcare environment, more and more consumers are making active decisions about where they will go for treatment. (Even in an emergency situation.) It’s important to remind your health audience that they have the power to go where they feel they will get the best care.

St. Vincent’s Medical Center

TAVR Cardiac Campaign

Print Ad + T-shirt for staff to celebrate first procedure

St. Mary’s Medical Center

Print Advertising + TV Spots Promoting Comprehensive Program

Good Samaritan Health System

Television Cardiac Advertising Promoting Advanced Technology