Finding the right doctor for every age

How do marketers make patients “brand” loyal to their PCP?

The days of doctors making house calls may be making a full circle as the new focus for insurance companies is promoting the importance of the primary care physician. In a world where people change doctors like they change their socks, how do marketers make patients “brand” loyal to their PCP?Read full post...

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Life sciences marketing: the two brains revisited

Reason and imagination actually reside in both hemispheres of the brain.

No doubt you — like millions of others — are an avid follower of my posts on this site. Cast your memory back about a year ago. In “Feeding the thing with two brains,” I blogged about the attraction to life sciences marketing, likening it to balancing the “needs” of the two sides of the brain — the rational and the emotional. Well, now I’m writing about another aspect of this field that continues to fascinate: the potential to learn something new — or unlearn a “fact” you have known forever.

Imagine my amazement when I viewed a presentation via TED of an RSA Animate talk given by noted psychiatrist, author and brain expert Iain McGilchrist. In this artfully animated talk, he disposes of the old paradigm I quoted in my previous post: “The right brain is the seat of all that is rationale, and the left brain is the seat of the emotions.”

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10 steps to creating effective landing pages

To create a better landing page, follow these 10 steps.

So, you have marketing tactics driving people to your website. Great! The next question most marketers ask is, “How can I make the site work harder for me?”

1. Identify business goals.

Before you can figure out how to make a landing page work harder, ask yourself, “What was the business need behind the campaign?” Lead generation, patient education, engagement? Answering this will help define a call-to-action (CTA) to engage visitors on the landing page. It will also help you find effective ways to measure how well everything is working.Read full post...

Cigarette warnings get graphic

One of the FDA-approved graphic warning labels

Full disclosure: I have worked on Tobacco Prevention and Control social marketing campaigns for more than 10 years. As you may have heard, beginning September 2012 the FDA will require cigarette companies to place very large and graphic warning labels on the packaging of their cigarette products. These labels will have to cover the top half of the cigarette box and 20% of any tobacco advertisement.Read full post...

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Is it time to bust some new moves in hospital advertising?

It can be scary to bust some new moves.

In all communications with consumers, whether it’s online, in print or over the airwaves, it’s easy to forget that we’re just talking to people. Usually that’s because there’s a laundry list of information that “needs” to go into each ad. In fact, in healthcare advertising there’s a well-known dance:

Step 1: Mention skilled doctors, latest technology and dedicated staff.

Step 2: Throw in a patient testimonial.

Step 3: Always tell people about your awards (even if they have no idea what you’re talking about).

Step 4: Grab a partner (preferably a celebrity).Read full post...

Talkin’ ’bout my generation

 

Marketing to the Baby Boomers

According to a recent report from NielsenWire, advertisers focus on reaching consumers 18–34 or 18–49. While these consumers spend billions of dollars every year, the report states that advertisers and consumer goods manufacturers are overlooking a group that has tremendous buying power — the 78 million Baby Boomers. Read full post...

The power of product placement

Using (or overusing) product placement in the movies.

Have you seen the trailer for The Social Network, the movie about the founding of Facebook? Not only is the premise intriguing, the marketing prowess of the producers is awesome: This film is a three-hour product placement. And it made me a little nostalgic for some other product placement movies. If your favorite is missing from my top 5, please feel free to comment.

5. Demolition Man — 1993
As a movie fan I’m willing to suspend disbelief for as long as need be. So when you’re telling me a story about a cop and a criminal mastermind who are cryogenically frozen for decades only to reemerge as healthy as ever, I’ll stay with you. When you tell me that society in the future has become completely nonviolent and utopian, I’ll follow. But the second you try to sell me on the idea that this perfect, nonviolent society dines solely at Taco Bell, you have officially lost me.Read full post...

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Thinking about testing your genes? Buy a pair of jeans instead.

The dangers of marketing genetic tests.

Some months ago, scientists sent samples of the same DNA to several direct-to- consumer (DTC) genetic testing services. When the reports came back the interpretations of the findings were wildly different. This has just been confirmed by the General Accounting Office and was reported on this week in Washington. So if you want to know if you’re predisposed to some ailment, don’t bother spending the $300 to $1,000 that these tests cost.

Even worse than the rotten results were the horrific marketing practices that the GAO uncovered: One firm claimed that the product they sold could “repair DNA.”  Others claimed they could tell parents which sports their children would do well in. One woman was told she would definitely develop breast cancer, while another was assured that the company would test her fiancé’s DNA secretly.Read full post...

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Are you a mix tape, or a playlist?

Traditional marketing tactics may be like your old mix tapes.

Traditional marketing tactics may be like your old mix tapes.

It seems like only yesterday. I wanted to catch the attention of that special person and I knew the perfect way to go about doing it — the mix tape! A combination of all those songs that would tell her exactly how I felt and why she should want my company as much as I wanted hers.

Times have certainly changed. Now you wouldn’t make a mix tape, or even a mix CD. Now it’s all about the playlist.

Are business relationships really any different?Read full post...

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A marketing idea that stops consumers in their tracks

 

Creating a customized online risk assessment

Creating a customized online risk assessment

So how do you get a cardiovascular campaign to stand out above the clutter when there are more than 50 hospitals flooding the market with similar messages? How do you engage consumers to come to your website and sign up for your marketing materials? How do you get people to realize that they’re at risk for heart disease and proactively seek out a cardiologist in your health system?

These are all questions we were asked by The Chester County Hospital (TCCH) marketing team and questions we asked ourselves as we developed marketing recommendations for their cardiovascular service line.  Our answer was to develop an online risk assessment that would determine an individual’s risk level for heart disease.Read full post...

On again, off again

The danger of marketing without FDA approval

The danger of marketing without FDA approval

The strange story of drug store–based genetic tests.

It was a quick trip on and off the shelves at several thousand Walgreens drug stores for Pathway Genomics direct-to-consumer genetic testing kit. Less than 48 hours after announcing the availability of the test kits, Walgreens pulled back due to an intervention by the Food and Drug Administration saying that the test was without regulatory approval, telling Genetic Pathways that it would be an “illegally marketed device.” In Act II of this genetic drama, CVS also pulled out of marketing the same product a few days ago.

For my money, I can’t believe they went to market without considering the FDA’s reaction. Naivety? Cockiness? When you work in a regulated environment, particularly one in which the regulations are under development and fluid, assume nothing. I have clients that have worked with the FDA, not around them, even thought their product did not require FDA approval. They obtained the guidance they needed to move forward and both parties were better off for the interaction.

Imagine all that must have been involved in doing two deals of this magnitude. But, according to the FDA, “if a company is making claims about a product that hasn’t been reviewed or validated by FDA, we want to make sure the information to consumers is accurate and the test will do what it says it will do.”

Duh!

Read another blog entry about this issue.

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Will online marketing and social media kill the jumbotron?

Can mobile media compete with the jumbotron.

Can mobile media compete with the jumbotron?

These days, it seems like everyone is asking whether something is about to kill something else: “Will html5 kill flash?” “Will the iPad kill Kindle?”

So, with tongue firmly in cheek, I thought, “I gotta get in on this killing spree.”

In my daily romp through my normal news sites, I stumbled upon an article about a guy named Fred Ehrhart who is taking advantage of online marketing’s incredible targeting capabilities to ask a question usually reserved for jumbotrons, billboards and banners being towed behind airplanes: “Will you marry me?” The ads are all long gone, but they directed his potential bride and anyone else who clicked to this landing page.Read full post...

How parenting is just like market research

Determining the all-important why.

Determining the all-important why.

My six-year-old son asks a lot of questions. More questions than I ever knew one human could possibly ask. If I am lucky, I can answer maybe a third of them. Sometimes the questions are about Star Wars or subjects he learned in school, but there is always one common thread with his questions that requires both my husband and I to think quickly — he wants to know the motive.

“Why did Obi Wan die so they could get on their plane?”
“Why did Anakin go to the dark side?”
“Why did Jack’s mom get so mad that he sold his cow for the magic beans?”
“Why is Dopey so dopey?”Read full post...

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