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

Orlando Health is one of Florida’s most comprehensive private, not-for-profit healthcare networks, caring for nearly two million Central Florida residents and 4,500 international visitors annually.

They’re also a health system that understands that social media really should be social (seemingly obvious, but not always put into practice). Case in point is their Family Is e-Scrapbook, which can be accessed from the home page of their website, and their Family Is Facebook page.

They reached out to the community to ask “tell us what family is to you.” This effort dovetailed with their “Family Is” multi-media campaign. Hundreds of responses were submitted and included in the e-scrapbook, many with personal and heartfelt reflections of what family means in their lives.

What I like about this effort is that it invites participation from people in ways that are really meaningful and genuine. In turn, it reinforces Orlando Health’s promise from its “family” members of caring for its communities like family. A win-win effort all around.

I’ve posted before about Humana – specifically, its CrumpleItup initiative, a dedicated group inside the company focused on coming up with creative ways to help people be healthy while having fun.

Now comes Humana Games For Health. Part of the Innovation Center within Humana, this team is driven by the belief that playing video games keeps your mind and body fit. So they’re helping people of all ages play their way to better health by getting them off their seat and on their feet.

Here’s some brand-building learning from Humana Games:

1. Actions speak louder than words: You can tell people all day long (as most benefits providers do) that they should live healthier lives. But provide them with an enjoyable and sharable experience, one that fits nicely into their daily lives, and their practices will start to change.

2. Experience alongside image: Advertising will always play a role in the marketing mix. But these messages are increasingly being rejected. So seek out the bigger role that your brand can play in customers lives. Be their advocate, and bring your marketing to life (as Humana Games has) with involving, interactive experiences that actually add value to their lives.

3. Build a community beyond the transaction: These games give participants the ability to become a member of the Humana Games universe. They also build valued interactions among game participants. Participants of different ages and stages of life (from kids to seniors).

4. From innovation silo to group think: Humana Games’ concepts (first developed by an inside/outside multidisciplinary team that includes a target audience and intended health outcome) are then taken to the prototype phase, where a working model of the idea is created and tested by consumers to get valuable feedback and determine efficacy.

5. Use of social media to build engagement: Participants can invite their friends to visit Humana Games. Get updates and meet other players on Facebook.

Any comments you’d like to share?

Aetna recently announced that it will be reaching out to its members on the-Go through a mobile-friendly website that’s easier to browse from a handheld device, smartphone “apps,” and text messaging. These mobile solutions will be made available to the majority of Aetna members – regardless of whether they have a basic cell phone or a smartphone with full Internet access.

Just a few examples of the benefits, as stated in the company press release, include “being able to look up the status of a claim while standing in the doctor’s office. Finding a cardiologist and making an appointment during a train ride to work. Researching the price of a prescription from the grocery aisle.”

According to Meg McCabe, vice president of consumer marketing and product for Aetna – “It’s imperative that we meet our members where they are with resources that engage them in making well-informed health care decisions, improve their interactions with their physicians, and even help them save a little money along the way.”

Through On-the-Go, Aetna accomplishes an important, yet somewhat elusive, objective for an insurance company – actually building relationships with a broad spectrum of their customer base. By allowing them to access important information, wherever and whenever they want it, the company is extending and enhancing its interactions with members – in ways they actually value and want.

On CMO.com, there’s a handy guide created by SEO and social media firm 97th Floor which analyzes which tools (across the social channels) are best for Customer Communication (add engagement here), Brand Exposure, Traffic To Your Site and SEO.  Here’s the link, where a downloadable pdf is also available.

How can your healthcare organization create new and greater value for patients and expand the role of your organization in their lives? Climb the engagement ladder.

There are five steps:

Step 1: Converse. Though it’s the first step, you’ve acknowledged that to engage a patient, you need to move away from what your organization wants to say to what they want to hear and achieve. You understand that it’s not your story that matters, but theirs. To this end, you’ve integrated social media platforms alongside your traditional (talking at them) media.

Step 2: Transact. This rung is defined by event-driven characteristics. Your care (their care) is segmented, and the relationship is reactive (they get sick, you respond). This relationship is of limited long-term value to your organization, as it limits your business opportunity to one-off situations. It also limits the value to patients, as you’re merely providing just what they need.

Step 3: Support. Still on the 50 yard line, but closer to where you and your patients want to be. And closer to creating value together. Information and education is available to patients. Communities are formed around specific conditions. And you’re beginning to capture “customer” data beyond the patient.

Step 4: Enable. Your relationship gives patients what they want, when and how they want it. It’s more proactive as you understand the person beyond the patient. It’s not limited to a brand or therapeutic line. Instead, it’s organization-wide.

Step 5: Empower. Patients get exactly what they want, as you solve their jobs to be done. You maximize your business opportunity, become their trusted resource and earn their loyalty. The relationship is collaborative, open and evolving. It’s the ultimate win-win, as both patients and your organization grow stronger.

Mayo Clinic is a pace setter when it comes to integrating social media into a healthcare organization’s marketing efforts.

It’s now creating new value for healthcare consumers and the organization itself through its partnership with DoApps. They’ve formed start-up mRemedy (website coming soon), to create new apps for smartphones based on Mayo’s research and services.

It’s first app, which just launched for Apple’s iPhone and iPod touch is Mayo Clinic Meditation (perfect for those of us [all of us] who would love to take a few minutes out of our day for meditation). You can watch the video here:

This is another great example of Mayo:

• extending its relevancy (and generating revenue) beyond its traditional care services boundaries
• engaging audiences on their terms in ways they value and want
• creating new relationships with what will ultimately be a wide range of niche audiences sharing and spreading mRemedy apps

So how will you, as a healthcare leader, marketer or innovator, create and capture more value in 2010? What opportunities do you have to develop or creatively package your intellectual property?

The more you know about your customers as real people – looking beyond their obvious needs to their hopes, dreams, fears and challenges – the more you can help them achieve.

In turn, the more value you give, the more you’ll receive in return. Ideally, this “return” will come in the form of customers who become enthusiastic fans of your organization. The ones who are more than happy to sing your praises.

Here are eight ways to make this happen through social media:

1. Internal Engagement. Give employees, the ones who power your brand, the chance to shine, e.g. Best Buy Connect
2. Collaboration. Create mechanisms for customers to influence your products and services, e.g. Dell’s IdeaStorm
3. Authenticity. Feature happy customers on video, e.g. Mayo Clinic’s atrium piano
4. Feedback. Create real-time feedback channels, e.g. ComcastCares
5. Participation. Create suggestion boxes and reward customers for their participation, e.g. My Starbucks Idea
6. Experiences. Create new ways of delivering experiences that fit with their lifestyles, e.g. healthierme
7. Conduit. Allowing customers to share with each other through you rather than driven by you, e.g. beinggirl.com
8. Sharing. Allow customers to share their ratings, e.g. revolutionhealth

Are there other good examples that come to mind?

Here are ten reasons I’ve heard and read over the past couple of weeks about why healthcare marketers aren’t engaging their audiences through social media:

1. our new hospital project is weighing us down
2. it’s the end of the year and we’ve put off any decision about social media until 1st quarter
3. we (actually being the marketing department) don’t have resources to dedicate to social right now
4. this is a senior leadership decision, and they’re not yet comfortable with the tools
5. social media doesn’t have much strategic significance for us right now
6. social media doesn’t fit with our marketing priorities
7. we’ve already allocated our budgets across media vehicles for next year
8. social media isn’t in line with our key service line goals and strategies
9. it’s more important, next year, for us to focus on our strongest potential business development opportunities across key service lines
10. we’re not yet equipped to handle direct interaction with patients and our communities

What’s fascinating about this list is that all of these reasons are about “we.” As if patients, families, communities, care providers, employees, etc. are waiting for 1) “you” to decide you’re ready to engage “them” in ways they want; and 2) you to give them the green light to be broadcasting and talking to each other about your organization.

Are any of these reasons holding your organization back from participating in social media? Do your goals and strategies really do justify participation (at least monitoring the conversation), but there are artificial internal force fields holding you back? Want to talk about it?

I wrote a post yesterday providing ten tips to get your health brand engines going. One of the tips was “What’s Your Story.”

This presentation from Kevin Dugan – What’s Your Story? Storytelling’s Link to Social Marketing Sucess – provides great insight into the power of story for health brand marketers.

I think the most important takeaways from his presentation about the power of stories is that they:

• are easier to remember than facts
• are contagious
• bring people together and build loyalty
• can be used to start the conversation, change the conversation, humanize brands, create brands and communities
• have a beginning (a problem or antagonist), middle (solution or hero/awareness) and end (results, transformation)
• online, are told through social media channels, and contributed to by participants, who then share/discuss, comment/link, friend/follow, connect live, support, provide feedback to, reply/rt

All great brands are built on great stories. Stories that have no boundaries. Stories that you know well and stories that will grow in importance over time – Virgin, Apple, Southwest Airlines, St. Jude, Jones Soda, Mayo Clinic, Life Is Good, (RED), Pret Manger, Womenheart, Zara, Memorial Sloan Kettering, Nike, Cirque du Soleil, One Laptop Per Child, 23AndMe.

Their stories engage us in ways that facts and figures can’t. They help create emotional connections that transcend the pervasive and often ignorable messaging around functionality and quality. They reflect who we are or want to be, and help inspire and guide us to do more and achieve more than we could on our own. In turn, they help you stand out from the crowd.

Importantly, every brand has a story. Sometimes it’s right there ready to be told. Other times, you need to search it out. But it’s worth the hard work. Because ultimately, your story is a powerful means to creating enduring customer connections and sustainable competitive advantage.

What other brands would you add to the list of those who tell a great story?

So you feel like the wind might finally be at your back (at least a few days out of the week). Your CFO is easing off the brake pedal. Competitors and customers are showing signs of life. The Board is once again focused on top-line growth rather than cost savings.

It’s time to restart your brand engines. Here are 10 tips for how to proceed:

1. Revisit your customer. Listen unbiasedly to understand their pain points, priorities, practices and unmet needs. Spend time walking in their shoes. Don’t be you being them. Become them.

2. Sharpen your story. Use these insights to help determine where and how you most meaningfully improve customers lives; and do it differently from others? What do you (ultimately) help them achieve that others can’t; or aren’t?

3. Be ambitious (this is actually part b of number 2 above). Beyond where you are today, what can you be in the future? If status quo wasn’t an option (it’s not for customers), what would you want to achieve?

4. Get the juices flowing inside. Brand-building really does start inside the company. If employees are educated, if they’re believers, if they’re inspired, can walk the talk, and do it consistently, customers will come along for the ride (and bring their friends).

5. Deeds versus words. Brands used to be built through imagery and messaging. But those days are just about over. Today’s power brands are involving and dynamic, deliver great customer experiences, are mechanisms for connections and community and for more meaningfully improving our lives.

6. Co-create value. Harness the collective intelligence of audiences to create greater and new value for your customers and company; along the way, creating stronger relationships, greater advocacy and deeper loyalty.

7. Tag team. An inspiring and brand-engaged CEO, coupled with a talented, imaginative and respected CMO is a tough team to beat.

8. Deliver happiness. Happy customers are happy to spread your word. And with multiple channels at their disposal, they certainly will.

9. Extend apologies. If you screw up, admit it. Trying to hide behind it doesn’t make much sense, because you can’t.

10. Execute brilliantly. Success is in the details. Which means your whole brand house needs to be in order. Every facet of your brand expression – from behaviors, to communications, environments and products – must reflect and extend your story.

Any other tips to add to this list?