Healthy Conversations
Imagining & Creating New Value For Health Brands & Consumers

Let’s face it. Most brands aren’t the kind that people love and can’t wait to talk about. 

But as a Forrester report – Social Technology Strategies for “Boring” Consumer Brands – points out, the key with these “boring” brands is to get people talking about their problems, since they won’t talk about your brand.

According to Josh Bernoff, study author, “the trick is borrowed relevance — creating an application that’s about your customers’ problems and then tapping into that application. Building around customers’ problems means you can accomplish goals including generating research insights, energizing fans, getting customers to support each other, or even crowdsourcing your marketing. But no matter the objective, the key is to recognize that you’re creating a long-term asset, not an advertising campaign.”

Examples of brands that tapped into this borrowed relevance concept, by making the experience all about their audiences and not about them, include P&G’s beinggirl.com (which I recently wrote about), Liberty Mutual’s The Responsibility Project and American Express Members’ Project.

What other boring brands have leveraged this concept and therefore did become more important and talkable?

According to a MarketingProfs survey, Twitter ranks second to “corporate” blogs as the social media tool that delivers the most company value – ahead of LinkedIn and Facebook.  And 83% of respondents stated that their company’s use of Twitter will increase in the next six months.

There are six ways that Twitter (according to MarketingProfs) helps companies strengthen their marketing and efficiently reach their objectives by getting closer to customers. However, I’ve added a seventh, and supported all of them with examples:

1. Building Community—creating a strong community of followers that ultimately help drive business objectives and bring in new customers (DunkinDonuts, Rubbermaid)
2. Customer Service—using Twitter to successfully engage with customers needing help (@JetBlue, @ComcastCares)
3. Selling—driving online and offline sales by using Twitter to post promotions, discounts and offers (Burton, @DellOutlet)
4. Prospecting—creating demand and pinpointing potential customers needing the type of solution your product offers (Gartner, Forrester)
5. Branding & Awareness—employing Twitter in creative ways to increase awareness around a product, or business (ScottMonty – Ford’s official Tweeter, GE,  AT&T)
6. Fundraising—using Twitter to spread the word about important causes (Amnesty, NWF)
7.  Research—asking for people’s opinions, or searching via twitter tools, to help companies evaluate new ideas (zappos)

Are there other objectives that you think should be added to this list? Do you have other company successes to share?

“Marketing professionals used to be the high-priest gatekeepers, but now we can all have a direct relationship with the Almighty Brand.”

This quote is from Grant McCracken, author, anthropologist and consultant, who describes this consumer involvement as a kind of branding Reformation, in the Free Advertising article appearing in the NY Times Magazine.  ”The era of the brand that’s blandly constructed and hopes not to offend anyone – to be pleasant – that notion is really dead”, he goes on to say. 

And why do consumers want to be a part of this co-creation. “Because they can,” McCracken says, “as both the technological tools and the knowledge of advertising grammer are now widely dispersed.” 

Citing a number of brands that have sought out the participation of consumers, McCracken also exposes the downside of this strategy. When G.M. solicited input in online ad-making for its Chevy Tahoe, many people responded with anti-S.U.V. messages. 

Still, I believe, a healthy conversation. 

When P&G finds that social efforts increase sales, and do so more effectively than traditional advertising, we should pay attention.  Earlier this week, Josh Bernoff, Forrester Research’s VP and Principle Analyst presented a case study of P&G’s BeingGirl community building site at IAB’s Social Media Conference.

As reported in this Ecoconsultancy blog post For Procter & Gamble, the indirect approach increased sales, Bernoff chose the site because people (and particularly 13 year old girls) don’t want to be discussing personal hygiene products (specifically tampons).

So P&G’s indirect approach was to create a community for these young girls to discuss the issues that stress them out them most. By providing health facts, a discussion forum, and relevant culture items on a site with Tampax and Always branding, P&G greatly increased sales. According to the company, the site was four times as effective per dollar spend as advertising. And the site is now duplicated in 21 different countries.

But the real lesson for Bernoff, and what many marketers still don’t seem to grasp, is that people don’t care to discuss your products. They’re simply not that important. Much more significant is how you help them solve their problems. That’s when ears perk up, conversations start to take place and hearts start to beat faster. And hopefully, you can be the one to provide the solution to their problems in ways that others can’t. Only then, does your product really matter.

I just stumbled upon this new video-in-print technology. If you’re looking for a vehicle to tell your brand story and express the emotion of your brand, this is pretty powerful. What a luxury to be able to (rationally) educate and then (emotionally) punctuate your real end-benefit through the same vehicle.  Click here to watch.

Here’s a real example of what’s working and what’s not in the world of social media, as reported by Amber Naslund of Radian6.  She’s sharing lessons learned from Greg Matthews at Humana in her post Building the Social Media Chamber of Commerce: Humana.

Here’s what Greg had to say about Humana deciding to dip its toe into social media last year:

• We did it to make a deeper connection with consumers, collaborate better with docs and hospitals and to connect healthy people with programs to help keep them healthy.
• It really came to fruition after Humana scored free press for its freewheelin initiative.  This led to a presentation to Humana’s executive committee about how to harness our social media activities into a common company-wide platform, leading to a set of principles called Town Square.
• The Town Square concept lets every department in the company  get a “lot” on the town square, and build whatever kind of building suits their business needs best.  It’s the place for Humana to understand, explore and use social media to take its business forward. It’s not about tools or technology; it’s about a new model for interaction and collaboration.  While it’s for our customers, it also applies to the way we work with doctors, hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, employers, the government and each other.
• There’s one rule in the Town Square, governed by six fundamental principles. The rule is: We Share. We share ideas and plans, what’s worked and what hasn’t, recommendations, reference materials and resources.
• The fundamentals (read the post for more explanation) are Authenticity, Active Listening, Going Where They Are, Personal Voice, Learning Through Action, Sharing/Open Source.
• Following the Town Square metaphor, we created a Chamber of Commerce as a means to carry company learning forward, consisting of a group representing 14 different departments of the company.  It’s run as an un-committee. It doesn’t have a charter, rules, P&L or budget. The Chamber meets every 3-4 weeks, typically reviewing social media initiatives, learning and impact.

Greg says that this new way of doing business will stretch and redefine the capabilities of every department in the company. He summarizes the value that the Chamber, and social media brings to Humana as follows:  There are very few large companies that have really made social media a differentiator for their business.  And I can’t really think of any in health or health care. [though I'd take exception to this and say that The Mayo Clinic is right up there]

We know that health, and the health system, have to change.  Humana intends to continue leading that change through innovation and our focus on consumers. There’s a lot of work to do . . . but luckily we work in a company with 29,000 other people who can help.  And that’s what the Chamber of Commerce will be tapping into.

What have you learned? Any similar stories to share?

With the connectivity made possible by social media, companies have found a new way to engage their customers, solve their problems, and build goodwill for their brands: Twitter.

Passing along this excellent post from Ben Parr: HOW TO: Use Twitter for Customer Service.  He provides five easy tips for leveraging Twitter to transform an organizations customer relations:

1. Understand why Twitter is an ideal customer service platform
2. Track the entire conversation around your brand
3. Make customers aware of your presence
4. Respond quickly and transparently
5. Be engaged in the conversations
6. Be authentic

The benefits that accrue to your brand and to your customers of using Twitter can be tremendous. Just ask Comcast, Dell, Ford, Mayo Clinic, Starbucks and  Zappos, to name a few.

When underdogs choose not to play by Goliath’s rules, their winning percentage goes from 28.5 to 63.6.  Even when one side was at least ten times as powerful – in terms of armed might and population – the underdog won almost a third of the time. David’s do win. This was the finding of political scientist Ivan Arrequin-Toft, who looked at every war fought in the past two hundred years between strong and weak combatants. 

This article - How David Beats Goliath – by Malcolm Gladwell ran in the May 12 Annals of Innovation section of The New Yorker. It’s well worth the read.

Trust is one of the drivers of brand credibility. Yet the one thing we’ve learned this past year is that trust is hard to find. Going forward, it will grow in importance, to become one of the most important and sustainable competitive advantages an organization can own.

Here’s a checklist of ten very simple things your customers would ask of you to earn their trust. As is usually the case, it’s the little things  - like listening, being transparent and responsive – that often matter most:

1. don’t over promise
2. do what you say you will do
3. reduce my level of stress
4. make my life simpler
5. don’t talk about me behind my back
6. keep my confidential information between you and me
7. stay in touch
8. talk to me, not at me
9. do for me what I can’t do for myself
10. and do it better than any other brand

Really shouldn’t be all that difficult. If your trustworthy.

Just because you’ve jumped on the Social Media bandwagon doesn’t mean that you’re a player.  Tweets don’t equal relevancy. Joining social networks won’t automatically grow your fan base. Uploads don’t automatically equate to popularity. While these tactics are important tools in the new 21st century healthcare marketing arsenal, they don’t guarantee your place at the customers table. 

At the end of the day, there’s only one way to ensure your relevancy and to secure your future. Find your different. It can be a big different or a little different. But either way, it should yield big impact for your customers. Your different should improve lives – making people happier, helping them achieve what they can’t on their own, fulfilling dreams, easing fears, surprising and delighting.  Along the way, building brand love. 

Borrowing on Blue Ocean Strategy® principles, here are four steps that a company can take to carve out new market space and get their different:

• Eliminate: what features can you eliminate that industry players take for granted but that add no real perceived  value (or distinctiveness) for customers (e.g. Cirque du Soleil eliminating star performers)
• Reduce: what features can you reduce below those of other competitors to make you more compelling for customers  (Hello Health eliminating the complexity of making a doctor’s appointment) 
• Raise: what attributes can you raise to add value beyond competitors (NikeiD making it possible to customize your own shoes)
• Create: what new sources of value can you create that others have never offered (HealthVault helping you manage your family’s health)