Guest Post: Probing Viral Marketing Tactics

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Disposable toilet seat covers offer new form of social media marketing for hospitals

Hospital marketers now have a new form of social media to explore to get their message out—disposable toilet seat covers. At least, that’s the pitch from Tom Teynor, president of Slip-U-Not, the leading manufacturer of disposable toilet seat covers in North America.

“The options for custom designing your TSCs are really endless, and it’s a perfect medium for hospitals given their large toilet volumes,” says Teynor. “We consider this a form of social media given the open format and networking aspect of the medium.”

Teynor, whose company offers a special adhesive solution to prevent slippage, notes that the TSC industry is over $3 billion in annual sales, with the majority coming from healthcare. While no hospital is currently using the customized TSC for branding purposes, GI Centers have been fast adopters, according to Teynor.

I’m sorry, what?

OK, so if you haven’t caught on by now, this isn’t a real story about healthcare marketing. But it’s the kind of story you’ll find at The Weekly Probe, a Web site our firm created in April. [more]

In the Future, it’s all about the Patient’s Experience

In this month’s HealthLeaders magazine cover story, I wrote about The Patient of the Future.

From adopting (and adapting to) new technologies to building better doctor-patient relationships to making it easier for patients to get information about their health to making it easier for them to book appointments, the predictions in the article all have one thing in common: They improve the patient experience.

My favorite prediction: Docs will start using e-mail to communicate with patients (I sure wish mine would). And two of the most outrageous predictions: people will start taking ownership of their own health and physicians will get over the whole “I’m the doctor and I know best” attitude.

What do you think the future holds for patients and patient care? Do you think any of the predictions in the article are totally off the mark? I’d love (as always) to hear your thoughts.

John McEnroe stars in GlaxoSmithKline prostate cancer awareness campaign

Tennis legend John McEnroe is the new spokesperson for a GlaxoSmithKline-funded prostate cancer awareness campaign, according to Medical Marketing & Media. The print campaign was created by the Entertainment Industry Foundation’s Stand Up To Cancer initiative and features McEnroe after he had blood drawn with the tagline, “Get serious.” The campaign’s goal is to encourage men over age 40 to get tested for the disease.

McEnroe, whose father was recently diagnosed with prostate cancer, said he was surprised to learn that one in six men in the U.S. gets the disease.

The tennis great has also appeared on CNN’s Larry King, Fox’s Hannity, and CBS’s Early Show to urge men to get tested. Print ads will run in People, Fortune, and Sports Illustrated.

With all the tennis rage that occurred last week, it’s nice to see a former hot-tempered player using his celebrity for good.

Campaign Spotlight: Newsworthy Campaign Achieves Results

A teenage boy and his mother were sitting at the breakfast table in their Minnesota home when the boy noticed a hospital-sponsored article in the newspaper about people who suffer from eating disorders. “I’m one of them,” he told his mother. The young man soon checked himself in to Park Nicollet Health Services—one of the organizations that sponsored the article—for treatment.

The Minneapolis health system partnered with a local television station and newspaper to sponsor the Stay Healthy Minnesota campaign, which features educational print ads, TV spots, and Web content about several health issues. The campaign began in 2007 when the Milwaukee-based Zizzo Group Advertising + PR agency suggested the health system create an educational campaign similar to ones Zizzo had done for hospitals in other markets.

Read more about Park Nicollet’s integrated awareness campaign here.

Wellmont Employees Go Viral with Flu Shot Video

Today’s column, Employee Engagement, Participation, Helps Spread the Flu Shot Message, is about the difficult task hospitals face in convincing employees to get the flu shot each year–a task that’s even more critical this year because of the H1N1 virus. One example of a healthcare organization that’s done a great job engaging employees is the eight-hospital Wellmont Health System, which serves Northeast Tennessee and Southwest Virginia.

Employees throughout the organization got on board by participating in this must-see (seriously) video on the importance of getting a flu shot this year–sung to the tune of “Gimme Three Steps.” Thanks to Wellmont’s Amy Stevens for sharing.

Now, what are you doing at your organization to communicate to employees the importance of getting a flu shot this year?

Campaign Spotlight: Recruiting Physicians with Photography

Marketers at Geisinger Health System wanted to create a memorable take-away to give to physician candidates, and they wanted something just a little more engaging than a coffee mug. So the Danville, PA, health system teamed with Wilmington, DE, agency Aloysius Butler & Clark to create a coffee table book filled with photography that highlights the organization’s emphasis on first-class medicine and physician work/life balance.

“To recruit to rural northeastern Pennsylvania we wanted to emphasize our theme of clinical excellence and outstanding quality of life,” says Cathy Connolley, associate vice president of marketing. “We have physicians or candidates that were in serious talks with and we wanted a higher-end piece to give them that was very compelling and left them with a feeling of excellence.”

Marketers started giving the book to physician candidates who visited the organization last year. Connolley says it has a shelf life of about three years before they have to redesign it or create something new.

Read more about Geisinger’s recruitment photography book here.

Campaign Spotlight: “Hope. Care. Cure.” Success

The smirking, ruddy-faced boy featured in one of Seattle Children’s Hospitals “Hope. Care. Cure.” campaign’s print ads doesn’t look like he suffers from mitochondrial disease—and that’s the point. The hospital’s rebranding campaign used patients, families, physicians, nurses, staff, and volunteers to spread the word about its quality of care, foundation, and research.

“We wanted to create a campaign that that would help us enhance our national presence,” says Katharine Fitzgerald, Seattle Children’s director of advertising and partnerships. “And we wanted something that honored the 101-year history that we have here in the Pacific Northwest.”

The campaign launched in April and includes TV, radio, outdoor, print, and online elements and ran in Washington, Idaho, and parts of Alaska. It is scheduled to run through 2010.

Read more about the “Hope. Care. Cure.” campaign here.

Do Kaiser’s New Thrive Ads Get the EHR Message Across?

Do Kaiser’s New Thrive Ads Get the EHR Message Across?

Kaiser Permanente’s latest “Thrive” campaign ads are just as visually stunning as the others in the series. But one of these ads is more effective than the other in communicating the benefits of new technology such as EHRs and the ability to use technology to better manage your own health. You can read what I think in today’s column, Challenges to Marketing New Patient-Centered Technologies Ahead

So, what do you think?

Check out my favorite Kaiser Thrive ad, Kabuki, in this MarketShare post from earlier this year.

Campaign Spotlight: Abington Memorial Asks ‘What If?’

When marketers at Abington (PA) Memorial Hospital discovered that their community didn’t fully understand the benefits of receiving cancer treatment at a full-service hospital rather than a dedicated cancer center, they knew it was time for an attention-grabbing campaign. So Abington enlisted Wilmington, DE ad agency Aloysius Butler & Clark to craft creative that would make patients and physicians take notice.

The resulting campaign was called “What If” and ran print, radio, and transit ads from June 2008–March 2009. Each ad emphasized all of the oncology and emergent services that Abington could provide.

“‘What If’ was born because we learned there was an opportunity in their market to distinguish Abington by asking the question ‘What if?’, as if we were the cancer patient—and that Abington provides the solution,” says Lynda Rudolph, creative director at AB&C.

Read more about Abington’s questioning campaign here.

Do These Pro-Healthcare Reform Ads Bore You?

Check out the videos below, referenced in today’s column, Pro-Healthcare Reform Ads Suffering an Identical Crisis, and tell us what you think. Are they effective? Too vanilla? Or is consistency of message what counts?

Another thought: Should pro-reform ads answer accusations from the other side, such as the claim that end of life care is the same as euthanasia or that in Massachusetts you can go to jail if you don’t have state-mandated healthcare?

I wrote about anti-healthcare reform ads last week, read more and watch videos on the post “Do These Anti-Healthcare Reform Ads Scare You?“

PhRMA/Families USA pro-reform ad:

Democratic National Committee pro-reform ad:

AHIP pro-reform ad: