“Ripped from Today’s Headlines!” Can Fat Be a Strategy for Healthcare Marketing?

I always wanted to use that famously trite RfTH screamer. Now’s my chance, because if you read Sunday’s Houston Chronicle you may have noted the sub-head in the Charles B Parks Business-section article:

Area hospitals are expanding their services to meet the needs of an older and increasingly obese population.

This article’s whip-round of some Texas Medical Center talking heads reveals how some hospitals are focusing their marketing on their targets – which would be us.

Thankfully the American Marketing Association is on the job! Come to the Houston chapter’s Healthcare SIG event this coming Friday and you could learn if diet is your marketing destiny. Maybe it’s genetics or economics. Or policies coming out of Washington and Austin.

The event panel’s brief: to discuss and present actionable insights into marketing strategy-setting and execution. The panelists come from hospitals, medical technologies companies and healthcare informatics, to help attendees explore “which audiences to target” and what “business segments are ripe for marketing.”

As attendees of previous Healthcare SIG events know, bariatrics (the study and treatment of obesity) can be one very effective marketing strategy. Managing diabetes is another. It does seem as though more flexibility is required today.

Be driven by opportunity – the chance to hear from Jackie Dryden, Jean van Soelen, Bruce Blausen and Kristeen Jones. The chance to participate with other healthcare marketing colleagues. Even the chance to ask why Signalwriter can’t take a decent photo with his first-ever iPhone, since I will be moderating the morning’s panel.

I’ll have a copy of the Parks article with me at Houston Baptist University on Friday. I’m big enough to say thanks to the Chron for providing me with this timely crib. I hope you will join us (because otherwise it’ll be lonely in the Dillon Room…with just five of us). Sign up right here, right now.

I Wrote This – Fortunately, Great Clients and Designers Were Involved.

In 2010, I participated in the BP wellness calendar and it came out very well – you can read about that excellent project here.

Now the 2011 Calendar is in play, titled “I Can.” It is described in the most recent post on the Prism Design blog.

Whole different year now. But same great team of people, same fine clients. Thank you very much, everyone, for the chance to be involved again.

Strachan on Surveys Offers “Tool” and “Fuel” for Thought Leadership.

How many of you think a good survey lets your company uncover stakeholders’ issues or answer key questions like how does a physician select one wireless medical device and provider over another. Hold up your left hand. C’mon, raise them up there…left hand only.

Now. Whoever thinks that a good survey can provide you and your marketing team with data that can itself be subjects for marketing, raise your right hand.

On the left hand, research (and particularly, a good survey) is a tool your operations or marketing teams use. On the right hand, survey answers can provide the fuel for building marketing programs. The correct answer of course is both hands raised.

Using surveys in thought leadership applications was what Thomas Strachan, vice president at eCardio, talked about last week at the American Marketing Association-Houston’s B2B SIG about “Thought Leadership Marketing.”

In Strachan’s view, the idea that surveys provide both tool and fuel in this kind of marketing starts as soon as you envision the survey, by creating criteria for analyzing, and then using, survey results.

Is data or aspects of the data interesting to our target markets? Can we build a marketing program or event around the overall results or any aspect of the data? Are there PR opportunities – will aspects of the data be attractive to key media outlets?

Purposing surveys for Thought Leadership means answering Strachan’s questions in the affirmative and then executing on those answers. First, gain an understanding of the concerns that your company (and only your company) can address. Second, create an external and internal Thought Leadership Marketing program around your key results. Strachan continued:

For your external stakeholders, consider all options to communicate value-add results: white papers, “survey” pages on your website, email links to download the survey. Invent and deploy web-based and live events. Advertise the report results and use them in sales collateral; build a PR initiative around them.

For internal groups – employees are critical and very often overlooked – Thought Leadership Marketing can raise the company’s profile inside, plus generate internal interest and support.

I take this last point to mean that the more you involve employees with expert knowledge in the creation and maintenance of Thought Leadership materials, the more you will get inside buy-in.

One expects eCardio is practicing the Thought Leadership Marketing that Strachan is preaching. The Houston-based company aims to be a leader in “remote cardiac monitoring products and services,” an intensely competitive market.

Frost and Sullivan reports:

Technological advancements such as wireless technologies and algorithm advancement also provide growth opportunities for those who utilize them...This coupled with the high degree of competition restraining potential market growth is causing market participants to look for other methods of gaining a competitive advantage.

And in fact, Mike Damon of Damon Medical Communications, who works in the cardiac pacing field, feels that there are a lot of at least regional and maybe even smaller providers in this ECG and Cardiac Monitoring Products market. So eCardio needs every tool at its disposal – and all the fuel available – to gain and retain its competitive edge.

Here’s where Thought Leadership Marketing ought to pay dividends. To build such a program and run it successfully, Strachan on Surveys has one revelatory piece of advice:

Start at the place you want to be at the conclusion of your survey program and work backwards.

Leadership calls for foresight. Planning ahead is its secret ingredient.

Five Reasons to Measure Your 2011 Wellness Program’s Marketing.

This is not about bottom-line results. Not about the contribution of wellness efforts to company health benefits cost-cutting. It’s about quantifying how your internal wellness marketing is doing – the top five reasons to be measuring.

Reason #1: So management can tell stakeholders the good ROI news about wellness.  Even though you’re thinking, “This one’s a no-brainer,” setting up metrics to deliver hard evidence that your firm’s growing investment in wellness programs is paying off is Marketing 101. Whether you’re a marketer or not.*

Writing in Managed Healthcare Executive last March, Kimberly Bonvissutto reported a survey that found 27% of companies do NOT measure the outcomes of their wellness programs. And 65% have no measurable goals for their wellness initiatives.

Without measuring, how are you going to know how you and your program are doing? Proof of performance is seriously important whether you call what you’re doing wellness promotions, or marketing, or just plain “my job.” Fine. Maybe it is a no-brainer – but you still have to work at it.

Reason #2: So you can learn which incentives worked – and which failed miserably. Incentivizing participation does work wellness wonders. It’s been noted that, across a variety of large and small company programs, incentives run the gamut:

…from lower deductibles and copays, which can move a population toward healthier behaviors in the long run, to cash or gift cards, which might drive short-term, immediate behavior, such as participating in a seminar or challenge.

Prove to management that some incentives performed better than others and you’ll have the opportunity (in theory) to keep fine-tuning…and build better participation.

Reason #3: So you can tell people you told ‘em. Several clients have told me that employees occasionally complained, “…the company didn’t tell me” about this or that element or requirement of a wellness program. These clients keep track of the frequency of employee communications about wellness in great detail. So they were able to quote exactly when the complaining employee got communications. And in what formats, too: online communications, print, audio-visual, seminars, and so on.

Do not underrate the self-satisfaction value of told-you-so!

Reason #4: So you can convince people that change is possible. This is the dream goal. The biggest roadblock to employees’ adopting wellness activities is their unwillingness to change their behavior. Of course, this is connected to a lack of commitment by employers – employees will know this. There’s more to measurement here than numbers. Prism Design principal Susan Reeves says:

It's a long process to effect change of people’s behaviors. We need examples, stories to help us marketers, and employees understand realistic results.

Without quantified results, though, you can’t demonstrate change…and changed behaviors is how you prove [3] to everyone that this marvelous wellness thing can in fact be done. Here the stakeholders are both employees and company managers or owners.

Reason #5: So you’ll have something to show for your own efforts. Certainly, as one of the people responsible for promoting your firm’s wellness programs to employees, it’s your goal.

*It’s possible marketing is not actually in your job description – you could be a Human Resources professional or a Corporate Benefits administrator. But demand for program measurement is growing. Maybe my five reasons will give you grounds to add marketing metrics to your wellness roadmap...and pat yourself on the back.

Graphic: Wiki Commons, with thanks.

Think Marketing to Physicians Was Complicated Before..?

Friends – and you are all friends – you need to be at “Marketing to Physicians: Winning Game Plans for an Industry in Flux” on September 24. [Just click right here for details.]

Because you’re trying to market to medical and dental practices, or the physicians and dentists themselves. Because your CFO or CEO or Practice Director demands that you show measurable, dollar-delivering results from the marketing/communications budget.

Because – as the handy visual above demonstrates – our healthcare markets have become more puzzling, confusing and baffling than ever.

AMAHouston’s Healthcare SIG has announced the seminar at HBU this way:

More rigorous government regulations, practice changes, financial concerns and shifting demographic dynamics have all dramatically changed the health care game.

You think? Almost every element of a medical or dental practice is no-more-business-as-usual. So things are pretty tough at the “marketing rock face” these days. One active Healthcare SIG member, Winnie Hart of The H Agency, just returned from the Society for Healthcare Strategy and Market Development Conference in Chicago. This conference, too, focused on the “tactics, and solutions you need to successfully navigate today’s complex and complicated environment.” Hart listened closely to Conference presenters and told me:

The question was what brings in more money – marketing to the consumer or marketing to the physician? Several hospitals presented and shared percentage changes in consumer-vs-physician marketing, from 90 (consumer)/10 (physician) to 60/40, and from 70/30 to 50/50. All reported higher marketing dollar percentages dedicated to physician marketing. So many hospitals are reorganizing departments and reallocating resources to focus more on physician marketing.

On 9/24 you get your own panel of experts in practice marketing and business development, all ready to share information and ideas – their organizations’ hands-on experience.

Your choice. Come to the seminar and help yourself develop best practices for the hard(er) marketing and communications work ahead. Or stare at the chart until your Medicare coverage kicks in. Really, signing up for the seminar is better. Ta…

NOTE: Today’s visual is “the first chart illustrating the 2,801 page health care law President  Barack Obama signed into law in March.” Although it “displays a bewildering array of new government agencies, regulations and mandates,” it in no way reflects Signalwriter’s opinion – at this time. Check back with me in a couple of years to see how everything has worked out. Special thanks to the H Agency. Ta…

Copywriting for Wellness: Turning Whimsical Makes a Winner for BP.

Few marketing copywriters ever get to write a line like “Listen to your inner asparagus.” Even fewer see the line in print. But I’m the lucky one thanks to an outstanding wellness marketing program at BP.

Among other projects, I was tasked to write the 2010 BP Wellness Calendar, in support of this year’s “Becoming a healthier you” employee benefits campaign.

The campaign itself is spearheaded by Janelle Ewing, who is Manager of Benefits Communication at BP America; and seconded by Bonnie Hargett, BP Benefits Communication Consultant. It’s been supported on the graphic design side by Prism Design – the Prismatics created the look for the internal campaign that includes this terrific 13-month calendar.

I created a “voice” for the calendar that went outside the lines a little – taking the month-after-month appeals from the pretty ordinary self-health advice column to the somewhat provocative, maybe-even-laugh-out-loud category. So, March, for example, starts off with “Get around to eating smarter” and continues:

Come on, you’re smarter than that pizza. Start cutting the intake of “stupid” foods while you build up your intake of smart foods like fruits and vegetables. Fact: Most women who eat five or more servings of fruits and vegetables a day can cut their risk of developing cancer by up to 50% compared to those who only eat two or three servings a day. Fact: Men can use at least nine servings to reduce their risk of cancer, heart disease and other illnesses.

We backed up month-fulls of wellness tricks and tips with our sources for that data. We included appeals to participate in health advisory programs and earn reward points every month from the beginning of 2010 through the first month of next year. The calendar became a thorough compendium of wellness support, from the health benefits of working out to stress relief to back-to-school immunizations (“Invaders from inner space,” another great line.)

Look, wellness is a product: A proactive and preventive approach designed to provide optimum levels of health, emotional and social functioning. But selling wellness has been overlooked by common marketers. The “approved” definition of marketing itself leaves out a major group of stakeholders that’s hugely influential on each major corporation – the company’s employees.

In terms of their effect on revenue, profitability and long-term customer relationships, it has been proven that the improved physical and mental health of employees has substantial positive impact on both the cost of healthcare provided by the employer and the cost of doing business generally.

The BP benefits team fulfilled this marketing-inside function, along with the insight that a successful Employee Wellness Program has to be broad enough to meet the needs of all employees, regardless of their current level of health.

Ewing’s and Hargett’s more-than-ordinary communication effort has been crucial to getting employees to participate in greater numbers in the BP wellness program. The calendar is one component of a tight mixture of communications pieces and appeals – an internal marketing program which has been successful in generating high numbers of sign-ups.

Pretty cool that I got to participate in this, along with Prism designers Terry Teutsch and Stacy Allen. Thank you, BP, for the opportunity to deliver great work – with whimsy added.

McKee Comes Back for AMAHouston SIG and Dirkes Reviews His Book.

Laying pipe. It’s what this post does. Laying pipe for our February 26 Healthcare SIG seminar. Attendees will get plenty of advice and examples about “outside the box” marketing and ad campaigns – some from Steve McKee. Who has a book that’s more about management than marketing. Let’s start with this. (A later post will highlight the seminar itself.)

Aubrey Dirkes, who recommended McKee for this event, provided this review for Signalwriter.

Typically when the president of an advertising agency writes a book, the pages are filled with tales of glory about their special pixie dust. Hire their agency and you too will have memorable television ads. When Growth Stalls by Steve McKee, the president of McKee Wallwork Cleveland, isn’t that book. In fact he doesn’t mention a single ad by his agency, and the promotion “P” isn’t mentioned until the last 15 pages of the book. Luckily, he’ll be sharing his agency’s work at the Houston AMA Healthcare SIG meeting on February 26.

When Growth Stalls is really more like a series of executive coaching sessions for your management team. It is part “Good to Great,” part “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People,” and part personal diary all intertwined with recent editions of The Wall Street Journal. The result is a well-researched book that is timely and not only gives us the solace of knowing that every company stalls, but the hope that accompanies a step-by-step method to get growing again. Reading it reminded me of one of my favorite scenes from “The West Wing,” about the support a friend can provide.

The book acknowledges the reasons we blame for our company’s stall – the economic downturn, disasters, and other market forces that, in truth, our competitors face too. It then dives in to the real reasons that organizations of all sizes stall. This is a fitting discussion for the Healthcare SIG because of its direct correlation to the treatment of symptoms v. curing the patient’s problem. Both business and healthcare practice evidence-based approaches, and just as patient #1’s cancer is different from patient #2’s, the growth challenges of GE are different from those of Home Depot or Chrysler, and their treatment must take into account the individual or the result is disastrous.

The book identifies four reasons for stalling: A lack of consensus from leadership; a lack of focus; a loss of nerve; and inconsistent marketing. When the ground shakes, any one of these can cause an organization to stall. Worse, the failure of one can lead to the slippery slope that results in the failure of all four.

In the book there are great, real-world examples from different industries on how each can lead to stall. In your very real-world environment, where every aspect of the healthcare world is up for debate, I encourage you to give careful consideration to these factors before it is too late. (In my own experience I have had clients suffering from one or all with expensive repercussions.)

The subtitle of the book is How it happens, Why you’re stuck, and What to do about it. About half the book is dedicated to the last of these. It goes beyond the Mission/Vision/Values you all hang in your lobbies to define what success looks like, providing a measurable objective and a timetable that leadership can agree on, get behind and operationalize. After all, business, and healthcare, is about the acquisition and retention of customers. This will lead you to discussions about the importance of your people as the delivery devices for your brand and the compounding impact of your customers’ opinions and experiences. Then you are off to the races.

In reading this, you may say “obvious.”

I say “revolutionarily obvious” because the book will reaffirm the impact you can, and may need to, make within arms’ reach that will make all the difference.

Aubrey is a Philadelphia-based marketing consultant who creates successful customer acquisition and retention programs, brand experiences and award winning creative for hospitals and retailers nationwide. He plays 3x3 basketball in a barn built in the 1700s and refurbished in the 1870s. He interrupted shoveling 2,300 cubic feet of snow and helping four cars stuck in the snow on his street to send this book review to me. Steve, I hope you appreciate his sacrifice.

Christmas Promotion: How Zytrel XP® Becomes the World’s Official Santa-tizer.

Of all the health-risky hands-on occupations during this H1N1 flu season, the top job’s got to be America’s professional Santa Clauses…the Christmas holiday laps for thousands if not millions of kids. That must turn the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention utterly white.

As of today, though, there’s a fun and public-spirited holiday promo, sent as a “special to Signalwriter” from Jack Goldenberg at Biodefense Solutions:

For as long as anybody can remember, Santa Claus has been the world’s greatest gift giver. We think it's about time that Santa got a gift. This holiday season, if you’re a working Santa Claus in the NY tri-state area (NY, NJ, or CT), we’d like to give you a gift, a free bottle of Zytrel XP®, the world’s first extended protection hand sanitizer.

The Zytrel Santa-tizer opportunity came along (like a lot of promo concepts) at the intersection of several events. This is where you envision me holding up my fingers in sequence, right?

One. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have been vigorously advising clean hands as one of the best ways to prevent infection in the face of regular flu and H1N1 viruses this year. CDC even says, “Remember: If soap and water are not available, use alcohol-based gel to clean hands.”

Two. No less a group than AORBS called out the dangers of Swine Flu at a early-November conference in Philadelphia. The AORBS – Amalgamated Order of Real Bearded Santas™ – is a genuine organization, founded in 1994. In Philly, the professional Santa group lobbied for priority in getting H1N1 vaccinations plus urged its members to use hand sanitizer. Read all about that right here.

Three. Biodefense Solutions thinks those Santas need extra protection and according to everything that Goldenberg has sent me, Zytrel XP delivers exactly that. Traditional alcohol-based sanitizers, like J&J’s Purell product, don’t seem to offer Santas (or other users) long-lasting protection because they only kill germs until they dry, about 15 seconds. The alcohol is part of the problem: Once these older-formulation sanitizers evaporate, they’re done.

Zytrel XP has what its makers calls an “Active Defense Period” of up to four hours – it not only kills 99.99% of germs on contact, it keeps on killing germs for the entire four-hour period.

I’m no Santa. Biodefense Solutions has sent me a bottle of Zytrel XP to try anyway. I’ll report back on my observations, even though there’s a certain amount of faith involved: I’m not going to be lab-testing my hands every day. More important though, the company extended the offer of a free bottle to the pro Santas of the AORBS. The two outfits have shaken hands and Goldenberg emailed me:

I am proud to announce that as of midnight tonight, December 10, 2009, Zytrel XP is the Official Santa-tizer of the Amalgamated Order of Real Bearded Santas.

That’s a neat seasonal promotion. If Zytrel XP helps keep America’s Santas germ-free and healthy, it’s a gift that’ll keep on giving.

Top photo: “Department Store Santa circa 1956.” A Christensen in Santa's Lap – when nobody had even thought of marketing a hand sanitizer. From Wikimedia.

Asked and Answered: Blausen Medical Closes the Loop.

Is a couple of billboard executions all it takes? Apparently so. Three weeks or so back, Signalwriter asked:

Coming to the AMA Healthcare SIG event, [Bruce] Blausen and [Mike] Hensgen have a slightly different challenge. Can they envision (and communicate to SIG attendees) how an institution might combine its use of the Human Atlas with its hospital-wide iPhone platform – and then market the combination to its stakeholders?

The SIG event went off yesterday (at the Houston Zoo, thank you very much) with more than a hundred healthcare marketing professionals in the audience. During this extensive, five-speaker seminar, Bruce Blausen answered the question I posed above. The key to his presentation, “Driving Business with Mobile Apps,” was identifying what today’s most effective patient education tool is, in his view: narrated animation on a mobile phone platform.

Then, for the close of his talk, he created and displayed a quartet of speculative billboards (two shown here) that tie “Human Atlas” mobile app and iPhone into single, brand-oriented messages on behalf of prospective hospital users.

That famous “picture worth a thousand words” thing can hardly be demonstrated more clearly than these boards: the answers to my questions, at least. Well done, Blausen.

Concepts courtesy of Blausen Medical. Some elements may be properties of stock photo houses – all rights reserved to element owners.

Blausen Human Atlas – Next Step in Intimate Medical Marketing?

Today we consider a dramatic iPhone app from Balusen. But can it be marketed?There’s probably no conscious connection between the next American Marketing Association-Houston Healthcare SIG event and its venue…the Houston Zoo. Still, synch up your calendars now for Friday, September 25 – the SIG presents “Healthcare Marketing via Emerging Technologies.” Read all about three-hour event (including networking and a bite of breakfast) right here.

To be clear, this seminar’s not about those technologies themselves, which I am sure are quite excellent. This group of people will talk about how you might use some of the technologies to market to broad groups of customers – patient groups, physicians, nurses and so on.

The presenters will cover the marketing capabilities inherent in data analysis software (which should be challenging), and how hospitals are using e-marketing. Since I’ve helped create the program, I hope to hear some fresh ideas.

I have the biggest expectations of all for the Blausen Human Atlas and its iPhone application, especially after talking it over with Blausen Media CEO Bruce Blausen and Account Director Mike Hensgen. Blausen will be doing the presenting.

Why the high hopes? Well, who do you know who doesn’t have an iPhone yet? (Besides me, I mean.) According to blogger Greg Kaiser at the end of April, Apple had sold 21 million of them and that was before new models caught on. Big deal stuff, especially when you consider the iPhone can be a pretty amazing marketing implement.

But it’s not about the smartphone, it’s about the Blausen app on the smartphone. The “Human Atlas” lets users manipulate superbly detailed medical illustrations and animations at the touch of a finger. There’s a zoom feature that provides the ability to explore different body systems.

Blausen points out that a click of a button helps explain a complicated medical problem or diagnosis. Seeing the problem in pictures helps doctors (for example) relieve fears and concerns for all kinds of patients. Hensgen says that the individual experiences with the application are stunning: Learning and understanding are speeded up dramatically.

In selling the application, Blausen wants to leverage both the iPhone and web-delivered versions to give hospitals a competitive advantage in terms of communications. The hospitals’ medical and nursing staffs can take the educational opportunity right to the point of care, and deliver a patient experience that’s superior to any other.

Hensgen demo’d the Human Atlas on his iPhone for me; it’s dramatic. The tool also just got a perceptive nod from iPhone Medical App Review: …this is an app that could change the way physicians and providers communicate with patients. We've been using this application on a daily basis with our patients.

Coming to the AMA Healthcare SIG event, Blausen and Hensgen have a slightly different challenge. Can they envision (and communicate to SIG attendees) how an institution might combine its use of the Human Atlas with its hospital-wide iPhone platform – and then market the combination to its stakeholders?

To paraphrase Harvard professor Theodore Levitt: Marketing is different than selling. Marketing views the entire business process as a tightly integrated effort to discover, create, arouse and satisfy customer needs.

The implication (to me) is “user intimacy” – the inherent opportunity to bring customers much, much closer to a brand. Register for September 25. We’ll find out together how “technologies” like the-palm-of-your-hand Human-Atlas-plus iPhone combination will take us to the next level of healthcare marketing.

A big thank-you to Bruce Blausen and Mike Hensgen for helping me think ahead on this topic. Photos courtesy of Blausen Media.

“Live Life to the Youngest” with the RealAge® Test? Nah...

I’m on Facebook – some of you know that. I use very, very few of the hundreds of Facebook apps but I confess, for example, to recently nominating my “Top Five Movies.” The rock-bottom fact is, there’s a damn huge amount of personal information about me on the Worldwide Web.

I admit to being an active participant in life online. What I have NOT done is join RealAge and Mehmet Oz so I can “live life to the youngest.” I have not taken the RealAge® Test.

That, in my view, turns out to be a good thing. Mike Damon of Damon Medical Communications sent over a New York Times article, “Online Age Quiz Is a Window for Drug Makers” by reporter Stephanie Clifford. RealAge is fuzzing up the fact that it’s selling participants’ personal, medical information to drug companies…your basic invasion of privacy, not to mention maybe (just maybe) being against the HIPAA rules. Those are the rules that the government has set to protect intimate health-related information.

The article says: RealAge’s privacy policy does not specifically address the firm’s relationship with drug companies, but does state, in part, “we will share your personal data with third parties to fulfill the services that you have asked us to provide to you,” and it adds test results to its database only when respondents become RealAge members. Some critics, however, charge that consumers do not have enough information when they join.
Unlike certain media outlets, I don’t have an automatic bias against pharmaceutical companies. I even wonder if the New York Times would have even looked at this story if it did not involve “drug companies.”

Okay – 27 million people have taken the RealAge quiz. They are (as a group) not very concerned about what happens to their intimate health information. As a marketer, though, I think there’s an ethical problem here. Despite RealAge protestations, my sense is that the website has not been completely transparent in its business relationships with the drug companies.

Will people get upset about this particular issue? I bet not – not when it involves a doctor who regularly appears on Oprah. After all, it’s not AIG bonuses.

Medtronic Customer

I’d like to report that I chose the ICD (Implantable Cardiac Defibrillator) that’s currently in my left “subclavian” space. I did not.

That task fell to Alex Drtil, the cardiologist who installed it this past Thursday morning, Of the “Big Three” companies involved in cardiac pacing and defibrillation, Medtronic was his choice...probably because it was before noon and the weather was cloudy. (Medtronic, like the others, doesn’t much advertise to its prospective patients except in the vaguest ways.)

Woowhee! I got me a Medtronic VirtuosoTM tachyarrhythmia management system complete with ConnexusTM wireless telemetry – so many trademarks on the Medtronic website you’d think every Tom, Dick and Harry was in the pacemaker business…and that cardiologists actually remember all these trade names. I doubt it.

I did work on Medtronic business years and years ago, in Minnesota. Then the big problem was getting cardiologists to select a brand name out of the (then) dozen or so pacemakers available. Now, there’s even a Medtronic sales technician in the cath lab with the implantation team, monitoring the performance of the ICD over what I suppose is Connexus wireless.

This same, very pleasant young woman became a little confused when I asked her if I could use the ICD’s WiFi capability for my own laptop. When she confessed that the Virtuoso unit did not allow for this, I asked about the coupons.

“Coupons?” she responded blankly. “Yes,” I replied strongly. “I’m sure I read that Medtronic was offering its customers half-price dinners and suchlike in coupon booklets if they had one of its units installed. Don’t you know about the coupon program?” She admitted she didn’t know anything about coupons and retired to her console in confusion. (I apologized to her the next day when she stopped by my palatial medical suite to check the unit – again via the Connexus system. I’d like to think she’s checked with the Medtronic marketing people about the coupon book.)

I was pretty much awake during the entire procedure though I couldn’t see anything – they’d draped my head in a tent-like structure. Possibly so I couldn’t see that the doctor was actually implanting a used crankcase cam from a 1948 Chrysler boat engine in my chest. At least, that what I thought he told me. But the procedure went smoothly. I’d like to thank everyone in the room (including me for not screaming like a little girl). The procedure went smoothly – despite the fact that I was wearing a strobe light on my head throughout the entire procedure.

You see, I attended the Subsea Tieback Forum in Galveston earlier in the week. While visiting with Esmeralda McLeane and Tom Taylor at the WellDynamics booth, they gave me this nifty, hang-around-your-neck colored strobe light with the company name on it – I told them I’d wear it for the operation.

So I did. Barbara attached it to my forehead with a piece of tape and I switched it on while the nurses were wheeling me into the cath lab. I told them, “It’s my connection with the higher ethereal plane – I won’t need anesthesia, you see.” I could tell this wasn’t entirely believed. But the cardiologist took one look at it, burst out laughing and told me I had to wear it throughout the entire procedure. Afterwards, he took a cellphone picture of it and if he shares it with me, you’ll see it here eventually.

So extra thanks to WellDynamics for the laugh – higher plane or not, it works just as well as the Medtronic Virtuoso ICD with Connexus wireless telemetry. And I bet it cost a whole lot less.

Next post: “Exploring Subclavian Space with Captain Kirk and the Crew of the Starship Enterprise.”

More Hardware

Kind of Susan Reeves of Prism Design to protray “What every great ad man needs” when he’s going in to have a defibrillator installed. More information to come after I’ve had my session with the cardioelectrician – I wonder if he’s a member of the IBEW? I’ll report on the brand, of course. Thanks to all for advance good wishes. Ta for Thursday…Richard “Three Stents” Baron.

Elective Emotions

I decided not to write this fast. So it appears today instead of right after the American Marketing Association-Houston’s Healthcare SIG event. I hope you take a moment to read it.

My previous Elective Surgery post invited medical marketers to hear about “Marketing Elective Medical Procedures.” All the information we needed to begin to market elective medical procedures was laid out by four speakers this past Wednesday.

Yep, there were tips and takeaways about marketing plans and media; measurements to determine which campaigns worked and which campaigns did not. Why out-of-home doesn’t work for people who don’t go out much, but the Internet does.

These are mere nuts-and-bolts, the things we ought to have learned in college or through years of working in the industry.

It became clear in our speakers’ presentations that marketing the “electives” – urological and gynecological procedures in one case, bariatric surgical solutions for the morbidly obese in the other – is intimately connected with humanity.

The most difficult group of people to whom to market elective procedures are women with these health problems because of the extremely sensitive and revealing nature of the conditions.

What did I re-learn?

1. Genuine empathy is important and intensely personal. Kimberly P Taylor (left) is Director of Marketing Brand Strategy for Bariatric Partners and is rolling out a new brand image for the organization’s flagship program, Journey Lite for Life. She pointed out, “The mission of a bariatric program is to treat the disease of obesity. It must be done with compassion, sensitivity, and be heartfelt in order to succeed.”

“Heartfelt.” Every speaker, from the physician and the nurse to the directors of marketing, repeatedly emphasized it. Taylor spoke specifically about her specialty: “If your heart isn’t touched by the obese, don’t even consider going into bariatrics.” Empathy applies no matter what the area of practice.

2. Connect with prospective patients in meaningful and intelligent ways. Patient needs can be medical, certainly; but also psychological and social and financial: elective procedures often contain a monetary component that is part of the “worry structure” and it ought to be addressed in the marketing process.

3. Select creative and media that transmit compassion, that help build confidence and trust.

4. Continue the relationship with your patients – not only to retain them, but to grow your practice (whether you’re representing a major hospital or a small group of physicians). Stay connected with them. Enable them to form additional connections that “continue the campaign” long after the actual procedure.

The four speakers: Dr. Richard Collier and Kimberly Taylor of Bariatric Partners, Inc.; and Nurse Practitioner Joleen Bishop and Mary Beth Robinson of Obstetrics and Gynecology Associates, PA. They spoke to more than 30 marketers for a full hour and a half about the topic. Several attendees commented that the program was too long. But for every attendee that left to return to work, there was another who stayed on, talking to the speakers well after 2PM.

Sooner or later, our Association is going to release a new definition of marketing. Right now, it’s this: Marketing is an organizational function and a set of processes for creating, communicating and delivering value to customers and for managing customer relationships in ways that benefit the organization and its stakeholders.

Among the famous “4 Ps” of marketing (Product, Position, Price and Promotion), it seems that “People” has gone missing. Check out the current post by Susan Kirkland on pharmaceutical pricing practices if you don’t believe me.

Although the AMA mentions “stakeholders” in its definition, it’s clear we (sometimes) institutionally forget the human in the equation – at least when it comes to healthcare marketing.

Thank goodness our speakers came along to remind us.

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