The Way We Think

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A research study in the journal Neuron revealed the brains of infants as young as seven months old demonstrate sensitivity to emotions communicated through voice. While the study provides important insight into neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism, healthcare marketers also garner an important takeaway: Human beings begin to recognize the “feeling” of the voice before we can walk.

Today, healthcare leaders vying for the attention of bombarded consumers must cue into this most organic expression of identity: tone of voice. Tone of voice is an overlooked communication element that has the power to speak to the heart. It is how your integrated health system, clinic or hospital would express itself if it were a real, living, feeling person.

To communicate effectively in the social media space, we simply have to evolve some our traditional behaviors as marketers—and not that much, really—to account for these important changes in our consumers’ points of view. Whether your hospital or healthcare organization is new to social media or has been practicing it for a while, the following three insights will help you become a better online social communicator.

When you are marketing a service, such as health care or higher education, and you stake your claim in the marketplace, it is imperative that your strategy is based on sound facts. This is especially true if you are competing against one of the major healthcare brands.

You are probably saying, so this is news? Believe me, I see these claims all the time. “We’re the best” or “The region’s only” all sound good, until the giant down the street asks you to verify your claim.

If you find yourself in a market competing against one of the famous national healthcare brands, find what makes your organization unique, say it in a compelling (you could say risky) way and you can claim your position in the marketplace.

Remember the good old days--when a happy customer would tell a handful of friends about the experience and an unhappy customer would tell, maybe, twenty friends? So the saying used to go, anyway. Today, as Joseph Jaffe said in his “Customer Service Manifesto,” the unhappy customer tells “a million of his closest strangers.” The stakes are higher now, and they’re getting higher all the time.

We all know patient satisfaction is important. Look at the money spent in healthcare organizations every year on patient satisfaction surveys, research, analysis, new processes, consultants, etc. And industry-wide focus on patient satisfaction has begun to show results in many organizations across the country.

Our partners at Sacred Heart Hospital asked us to find a new way to promote their Smart OR. None of the traditional approaches seemed right for an all-new operating suite that combines cutting-edge technologies in all-new ways.

Patient stories? Humor? Some dry voiceover covering beauty shots of all their shiny new stuff?

No. Nope. And no thanks.

There was only one way to capture the feelings of wonder and excitement that the Smart OR inspired in people: With music. Our rock music video cast Sacred Heart’s neurosurgeons and their incredible team as superstars. And we asked our composer to push the boundaries in creating a score unlike anything you’d ever expect to hear at a hospital.

The resulting TV spots and cinema advertising got attention. From patients. From other hospitals. And from HealthLeaders Media. You can see for yourself here.

Facebook. Twitter. Foursquare. Trends in online ads. Search Engine Optimization.

The list could go on forever. How does one keep the current digital landscape straight? I don’t know about you, but I use a variety of great blogs to not only keep the newest thing out there in mind, but to ask questions about what the rest of the industry thinks about some of the tools at our disposal. Here are some of my favorites that I guarantee will become some of yours as well:

In October 2009 I wrote a primer of sorts on the Medical Home care model, The Medical Home Model: Is it real or an idea that only a policy geek can love? Well it’s been eight months and since then a health reform bill has been passed by congress and a Harvard study has been recently published that reports on 26 of the nearly 100 ongoing medical home demonstration projects. It seems like the right time for an update.

A game called HealthSeeker™ launched on Facebook eight days ago hoping to gain a social networking audience among Facebook’s 400 million active users.

Creativity can’t exist in a vacuum. We need the best information to build the best campaigns. To get there, your agency should be asking you the following questions:

Laurie O'Melia O'Neill (LOO) looks at three research "nuggets" and shows how they provide clues to reaching people who can be helped to improve their health.

Boing boing. Is it the sound of your latest brainstorm? Your commute to work via pogo stick? Or just a blog you can’t afford to miss?

What’s capturing the e-patient’s attention?

Going online for health and medical information has become a habit for many people. What's more, according to a Pew Internet Project, it's not just a convenience but rather the result of positive experiences that most people are having with online research.

We’re fortunate to work with many highly acclaimed health systems in the Midwest. And lately we’ve been doing a lot of healthcare quality award ads. Whenever we begin the creative process, we first ask: Who is the primary target audience for the advertising? Should employees be featured? Patients? Physicians? The ad must reflect the current climate of the organization. What would bring the most benefit to the organization? Is internal morale low? Is there an unfounded perception that your competitor is higher quality? Are you getting your fair share of referrals from physician groups? Think carefully before you just put out an announcement ad.  

Have you ever sat in front of an empty computer screen or stared at a white piece of paper waiting for inspiration? As a writer, this is a daily occurrence for me. The hardest part of any project is getting those first few sentences down on paper. What do I do when I’m stuck, when I’ve got nothing and a deadline is looming?

Laurie O'Melia O'Neill talks about healthcare from the patient side and what can be learned as a healthcare marketer.

Is your website ready to deliver on tomorrow’s healthcare possibilities? Consider healthcare’s technological innovations just around the corner, and whether or not your website, or other digital communications platforms, are ready to be on-point for these opportunities. Chances are you’ll start to develop an equal number of questions as answers.

A plea to stop referring to everything as "social media", more about newly appointed leader of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Donald Berwick, a bariatric procedure moves into the mainstream, and additions to Ed Bennett's healthcare organizations social media list.

Members of the HTK creative staff follow several blogs for inspiration. These blogs are dedicated to the craft of advertising, writing, art direction and television production. Others are devoted to furniture design and architecture. We’d like to share these with you in the hopes that it helps those ideas flow.

Good typography most often goes unnoticed because it is exactly that. Good. You may not realize why you liked it. You just know you did. Bad typography, on the other hand, sticks out like a sore thumb. For example, what if book pages were black and the copy was reversed out of it in white? Ouch. My eyes are tired just thinking about it.

Speak Your Peace, the groundbreaking civility project that HTK created with the Duluth Superior Community Foundation (DSCF), continues to get noticed and put to good use.

The same thing happens every time we edit a TV spot: Some of our favorite shots, moments and sound bites end up on the cutting room floor.

As leaders of creative people we all understand the need to be inspired and motivated in order to do great work week after week. We have to give our attention to feeding this creative spirit.

See what it takes to create a rock video for a group of rockstar neurosurgeons.

By now, just about every healthcare marketer and their assistant’s little brother has experimented with online advertising. Here’s the thing: it’s no longer experimental. Advertisers are planning online as another essential part of the mix, and looking for results.

This Roundup includes recommendations for an excellent LlnkedIn group AND a social media blog to follow, read about Facebook becoming the most popular Web site in the U.S., and how a for-profit healthcare systme moves into to rescue a non-profit Detroit health system.

Anyone on Facebook knows how easy it's become to know each other's business.  And by business, Imean personal life.  And by life, I mean health.

Duluth is one of many cities vying for Google Fiber, the ultra fast broadband networks Google plans to build and test in a few select communities around the U.S. We want it in Duluth.

Don Ness, Duluth’s very cool mayor, called this week and asked if HTK could produce a viral video to support the effort. He remembered a series of television commercials we produced many years ago featuring Al Franken—now Minnesota Senator Al Franken—as the Duluth Answer Man. The commercials were the main attraction of Duluth’s tourism campaign the summer of 1985. Mayor Ness had the idea of mixing excerpts from the old spots, with new footage of Senator Franken turning over the responsibility of knowing all of Duluth’s facts and figures to Google, the new “Duluth answer engine.”

So now, just a few days later, here is the video:



It’s already getting lots of attention:
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/03/al-franken-jokes-but-google-fiber-is-no-laughing-matter/

So, help us out. Go to googletwinports.com and nominate our great city for this incredible opportunity.

Healthcare marketing is addicted to the testimonial. It's easy to see why. People love hearing stories about other people.

This Roundup features links and information about social media metrics, Microsoft's unveiling of the Health Vault Community Connect, and how to follow the Dalai Lama on Twitter. 

There are definitely signs to look for in determining if your organization should invest in a new brand strategy. The term rebranding is accurate; your organization already has a brand.

Inevitably, our health care clients who plan to implement a social media strategy find themselves asking the same question:  Who is going to manage this?

There was a lot of good stuff floating around in the Cloud this week. When I was done choosing what to include in the Roundup, I realized, “They’re all lists!”  I don’t know what that says about me but here they are. Let me know which ones you found most valuable.

There was a lot of good stuff floating around in the Cloud this week.  When I was done choosing what to include the Roundup I realized, “They’re all lists!”  I don’t know what that says about me but here they are.  Let me know which ones you found most valuable.

I’ll begin with a book about lists. The Checklist Manifesto: How to get things right was a Best Book of December on Amazon. Written by Atul Gawande who happens to be a surgeon, the book promises to reveal what it takes to work successfully and with a personal sense of satisfaction. The book includes examples from the medical world but includes examples from all of life’s endeavors.

I meant to include this link last week, but it is a short and sweet newsletter story entitled Ten Questions to Ask Before You Start a New Web Project by our friends at Newfangled. Use this as an opportunity to sign up to receive their newsletter regularly.

You will learn a lot from this post from Social Media Today’s blog, The Top Ten Twitter Statistics and Analytic Tools. This was heavily circulated out in the Twitter-sphere this week.

My last list was written by Edward Boches at Creativity_Unbound, Five Questions Every CMO Should Ask A Prospective Ad Agency.

Just to break the pattern I thought I’d include something relating to Super Bowl advertising because every marketer likes to read about that. The Forrester Blog for Interactive Marketing Professionals posted, Social Media is the New Super Bowl.

Those of us who grew up in the 70s (or before) were very familiar with Leo Burnett’s campaign, “This is not your father’s Oldsmobile.”  Too bad Olds no longer exists. A strong brand that just couldn’t adapt to younger consumers.

What is Online Reputation Management?
Online Reputation Management (ORM) is an increasingly important communications strategy born out of the emergence of online social communities. In practice, effective ORM is much more involved than just doing a Google search for your brand, seeing what shakes out, and responding. True ORM requires at least two disciplines: engagement and monitoring.

Policy makers, forward thinking insurance providers and healthcare systems are all talking about the concept of medical homes as a cornerstone of the remodeling of the nation’s healthcare system. While some are already touting medical homes as THE solution to the nation’s healthcare woes, there are still plenty of unanswered questions.

The stakes
The anxiety has possibly never been higher for marketers wondering how and where to make the best media buy for their buck.

Remember when people actually packed a bag to go to the hospital? Though it sounds almost quaint today, we can all remember when the majority of patient care was delivered to patients who had been admitted to an overnight hospital bed.

The push for transparency in healthcare quality—and price.
Open any Sunday paper and you're hit with it. Glossy advertisements with big, bold numbers. "25% off X!" "Region's lowest prices on Y!" "Z is Consumer Report's Most Reliable!" For nearly every purchase they make, consumers can easily get information about price and quality.

Your Web site is arguably the most important marketing tool you've got, 'cause that's where people find information—and it's not just those twentysomethings who've never made a hotel reservation any other way. (Come to think about it, how did we used to do that?)