Author Archive for Gienna Shaw

The One Thing About Healthcare Marketing Is …

Today I started my weekly healthcare marketing column with the phrase “The more things change, the more they stay the same.” It’s a bit of a cliche, I know. But it’s also appropriate. The column is a collection of some of the responses I’ve gotten over the years to my typical interview-closing question: “If you could tell the CEO one thing about this story’s topic (be it marketing your hospital’s quality rankings, competing against big brand-name organizations, or investing time and money in social media), what would it be?” So many of the quotes in answer to that question still resonate today.

But it’s also appropriate to mention change because this week’s column is my last as senior editor for marketing. Starting next week, my colleague Marianne Aiello will be covering marketing in the magazine and online and I’m moving to the technology beat. Marianne has already been covering marketing, contributing to the MarketShare blog, writing the weekly Campaign Spotlight feature, creating the multimedia healthcare marketing newsletter, Healthcare Marketing Advisor, writing marketing stories for our magazine and online, and much more. I know that the marketing audience is in good hands. I will continue to contribute occasionally to the MarketShare blog and I’ll continue to tweet about marketing and technology at www.twitter.com/gienna, so I hope to stay in touch with all the wonderful people I’ve met over the past few years.

Check out this week’s column and please share with us your words of wisdom by leaving a comment below: If You Could Tell the CEO One Thing About Marketing, What Would it Be?

Did Ads Make the Difference In Massachusetts Senate Race?

In this week’s column I wrote about the campaign ads in the recent Massachusetts U.S. Senate race between Democrat Martha Coakley and Republican Scott Brown. Check out the following videos: Did these ads impact the outcome of the race?

Here’s the “Different People, Same Message” ad I mentioned, in which Brown took advantage of Coakley’s weeklong hiatus from the campaign trail to compare himself to the late Ted Kennedy:

Coakley responded with a series of ads that many considered negative, including the “Lockstep” ad below. Love the narrator’s deep voice and the scary background music. Plus they spelled “Massachusetts” wrong in the final frames. Yes, really.

Finally, in the ad below, Brown opens with the line “By now, you’ve probably seen the negative ads launched by Martha Coakley and her supporters.” A safe assumption: The TV ads from both candidates ran nonstop on local stations, especially in the final week of the campaign. Often, Brown’s “By now you’ve probably seen the negative ads” ad ran immediately following Coakley’s “lockstep” ad.

Check out this week’s column, Coakley’s Failed Senate Bid: Four Lessons for Healthcare Marketers for more on Coakley’s communications strategy (or lack thereof) and get some ideas on how you can avoid making the same mistakes she did in your own healthcare marketing campaigns.

Find Time to Read About Thinking (Worry About Finding Time to Think Later)

I recently received in the mail a copy of the book “How Successful People Think: Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life.” My initial witty reaction was “I don’t have time to think, let alone to read about thinking!”

But I can scan, and after a flip-through I settled on the chapter about strategic thinking, a topic healthcare marketers should be thinking about. But strategic thinking, writes author John C. Maxwell, is not just about marketing plans that will turn your organization around. “Strategic thinking can make a positive impact on any area of life,” he writes.

Some of the tips that resonated with me (sorry, Mr. Maxwell, but there’s no way I’m capable of planning my life, hour by hour, for 40-day chunks of time as you suggest at the start of the chapter):

• Create a system (or strategy) for filing quotes, stories, and other materials that can help you when you need to prepare a presentation or are looking for inspiration.
• Ask questions to break down complex issues, such as “what should we do next?” and “Why?” In fact, you should ask “why?” before you ask “how,” he writes. “Asking why helps you think about all the reasons for decisions. It helps you to open your mind to the possibilities and opportunities.”
• And a tactic that I think is too often overlooked: Include your team as part of your strategic thinking. Why? Well, duh: Who do you think is going to implement all your strategery? “Before you can implement your plan, you must make sure you have the right people in place,” Maxwell writes. “Even the best strategic thinking won’t help if you don’t take into account the people part of the equation.”

Though short on detail and specifics (the 6×5 inch book is just 124 pages long) there are some gems in here–so maybe I will find time to read it after all. Or maybe I’ll get the audiobook version.

(Thanks to the folks at Barlow/McCarthy, for sending me the book.)

Celebrating Those Who’ve Made a Difference in Healthcare

The annual HealthLeaders magazine “20 People Who Make Healthcare Better” issue has arrived in print and the expanded version is now online–it features a range of people who’ve made a difference, including Atul Gawande, MD, whose New Yorker article, The Cost Conundrum, was required reading for anyone who wanted to better understand healthcare costs and reform.

There are also some names on the list that are less well-known–but no less notable. I interviewed two of the top 20: patient engagement advocate Dave deBronkart and his primary care physician, Daniel Sands, MD, an early advocate of patient engagement and using technology to improve the patient experience.

Patient/physician relations: Dave deBronkart (left) and his physician, Daniel Sands, MD. (Photograph courtesy Dave deBronkart and BIDMC.)

I spoke to deBronkart and Sands together for the HealthLeaders 20 issue and it was clear that their relationship was much more evolved than the stereotypical paternalistic physician and passive patient. They are more like partners–sharing information with each other and spreading their passion for patient engagement to others as well. In fact, there were times during the interview that they finished each others’ sentences. I think you get a sense of their relationship and how they interact from the photo on the left, taken at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, where Sands practices.

There are expanded articles about each of the “HealthLeaders 20” in the online version of the feature. Among them: an inventor, a volunteer pilot who transports patients to and from medical appointments, a green CEO, and an advocate for patient-centered care.

Waiter, There’s a Fly in my Marketing!

This promotion at the Frankfurt Book Fair by the German publishing company Eichborn sparked an intense debate by the team of crack reporters who write for MarketShare. Are the flies real? Or are they tiny robots, possibly created by the FBI? Is this the best marketing stunt ever? Or the ickiest? Where did they get those flies and how on earth did they harness them? And, more importantly, which of the one zillion possible jokey headlines should we use for this post? (Runners-up included “Marketing Promo Really Flies” and “PETA: Marketing Campaign isn’t Fly.”) Then there was the question of how to tag and catagorize this post. “Viral marketing,” perhaps?

(Thanks to Daphne Leigh for sharing the link.)

Poll: Is Nudity on TV Appropriate for Breast Cancer Awareness and Education?

A Washington, DC, TV station’s decision to air stories featuring partially-nude women doing breast self-exams was part of a breast cancer awareness effort, Good Morning America reports, but critics say the reports’ airing during a key ratings period suggests the piece was exploitive. What do you think?

Reading Roundup: Marketing Blog Posts and Stories You Might Have Missed

Reading roundup: A random and sporadic list of our favorite marketing articles and blog posts from the past week or so. (Or month. Or two months. Hey, there’s a reason the department of redundancy department called this feature ”random and sporadic” from its inception.)

What do the swine flu and customer experience have in common? In a wonderful extended analogy, Mark Gregory talks about a UK ad campaign aimed at stopping the spread of H1N1 and how the campaign tagline, Catch it, bin it, kill it, is a good antidote against negative word-of-mouth, too. (“Bin,” in case you were wondering, is UK for “trash can.” Sounds so much nicer, doesn’t it?)

There are 25 things Paul Anthony wishes he knew when he started blogging. That sounded like a lot, at first.  Upon reflection, though, I decided there’s probably a lot more than 25 things I don’t know about blogging. The list includes such juicy tricks as how to catch scumbags who scrape your content. In fact, I’m catching them right now.

With all the gushing about what social media can do, here’s a list from B.L. Ochman of 10 things social media can’t do. Not everybody agrees—especially with number 5, which says social media can’t “be done in-house by the vast majority of companies.”

That latter point ties in nicely with Reed Smith’s Twitpoll question: Who’s Behind a Successful Social Media Strategy? What do you think?

I’ve posted here about the Kaiser Permanente ads: I like them ’cause they’re pretty and fun to watch. My colleague Marianne Aiello digs a little deeper into why the Kaiser Thrive campaign works.

A culture that embraces failure. That might make surgeons shudder, but healthcare organizations hungry for innovation should read this AdAge interview with Cheezburger Network CEO Ben Huh. My favorite line: “Most of our ideas stink … But that’s how you get to success. It’s a part of our culture to FAIL.”

By the way, if you find yourself going from the Huh interview to the Lolcats site, I am not to blame for your sudden drop in productivity.

Who’s Behind a Successful Social Media Strategy?

In this Twitpoll, Reed Smith wants to know what you think is the best way to implement a social media strategy. Outside help? In-house staff? A combination thereof? (My answer: Ask a millennial.)

2009 HealthLeaders Media Marketing Awards Winners Posted

Healthcare advertising campaigns that set clear objectives, met or exceeded them, and showed positive ROI were honored at last week’s HealthLeaders Media Marketing Experience event in Chicago.

We’ve posted the complete list of winners online, and in coming weeks we’ll be featuring some of the winning campaigns in our e-newsletter’s “Spotlight” feature, in HealthLeaders magazine, and in the Healthcare Marketing Advisor newsletter—so stay tuned.

In the meantime, you can get a sneak peek with some highlights from the three campaigns our judges chose as best in show in today’s column.

Healthcare Marketing Leaders: What’s on Your Mind?

NOTE: the link to the survey is fixed now!

In the 2009 HealthLeaders Media Industry Survey, only 16% of healthcare marketing leaders said their efforts were “highly valued” by stakeholders organization-wide. Curious to know if that number has changed in the past year? Well, here’s your chance to participate: The 2010 marketing leaders survey is now open.

Our annual survey reveals a host of information about the healthcare industry in general and healthcare marketing in particular.

And in coming years we’ll be benchmarking questions, gathering information about what leaders consider their top priorities and how they assess of key marketing initiatives. We also have some new questions this year—so make sure to speak up and be heard. The survey of healthcare professionals should take about 14 minutes to complete. [Take the Survey Now]