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

You can tell people all day long that they need to lose weight. That they need to be more active because it’s good for their health. And they’d expect these “one-way” messages from a healthcare provider like Mayo Clinic.

What you might not expect from Mayo is a fitness device that coaxes people into action. That adds real value to people’s lives – beyond Mayo’s core business of saving lives – and helps them do more than they could on their own.  And giving them the ability to do it alongside others.

Gruve (the first of other activity-based weight management products developed in cooperation with Mayo Clinic) keeps track of a user’s metabolic progress against his or her pre-measured metabolism. The information collected is then synced to the Gruve Online website, giving users the ability to view their daily calorie burn and weight loss progress.

Here are a few important things for marketers to take away about Mayo’s Gruve:

• identifying new products and services through a filter of real customer needs (rather than through what and how you do it today), will free you to see and think in new ways about your possibilities and extending your appeal to new audiences
• these ideas are win-win’s for both customer and organization, as both grow stronger as a result of these new products
• helping people do things alongside others (people can join the Gruve “muvement”) creates an even more powerful proposition

So how can you get your “gruve” on to be more important to more people than you are today?

This is TrendsSpotting’s third annual prediction report following major trends in six categories. What I found really interesting was that for 2010, as part of their “Influencer Series” they adopted this “tweet style” format.

Across many of the predictions, they identified these trends they suggest will influence consumer behavior:

• Healthy, Value, Stability, Disclosure, DIY

Enjoy. The report is a quick read.

If they come back they’re yours; if they don’t they never were. So said novelist Richard Bach (though not quite in this context). 

We all need our space. Very few of us want to be smothered.  But many of us continue to cling to old ways. We intrude upon customers with one-way messaging. We invade instead of asking to be invited in.

How about showing your customers some love by setting them free:
• embracing the opportunity for two-way conversation
• engaging them in ways they value and want
• making your interactions personalized and relevant by being about them
• earning trust through open and honest dialogue
• adding value to their lives
• enabling them to spread the love to others 

Do this, and they’re very likely to come back. If not, guaranteed at some point very soon, they won’t.

Two different sources, one point of view — that mobile is going to continue to play a larger role in our lives (including our healthcare).

First, from the Pew Internet & American Life Project report. Among expert respondents, 77% mostly agreed that in 2020, the phone (with significantly enhanced computer power) is expected to become the primary connection tool to the internet.

Second, from a health industry conference on the role of mobility and mobile solutions in the health industry. All speakers agreed that as it relates to the cell phone, we are only now beginning to uncover its full potential:

• in the management of chronic diseases
• as a tool for accessing timely information
• as an essential device for capturing information
• as a way to collaborate across time and distance
• as a means to interact in new ways with patients
• and as a platform for education and entertainment.

Yet all acknowledged that we have barely scratched the surface on the ways these devices and mobile solutions will play out in the future.

A Simply Better Way is a great talk from Saul Kaplan at the Business Innovation Factory. “My dream for the future is that we can come together as a connected community with a shared purpose for a simply better way” are the words he uses to introduce his talk. He focuses primarily on healthcare, education and energy, but if you are not in one of those sectors you will still find inspiration. 

First, you can connect it back to my last post. You can either wallow in the mud of the current situation, or consider his metaphor of “a simply better way” so that you’re the one consumers turn to when we turn the corner.

But  On the idea of “connected community” with a shared purpose to achieve a better way. He states that it “has become easier to connect via the internet with someone on the other side of the world then it is to connect with the rich diversity of citizens and institutions in our own backyard. Despite all of the networking technology, we have become surprisingly disconnected from our own neighbors.”

So much of our focus has turned to social networks. Creating connected and collaborative virtual communities of people with shared interests. But his point is that we’ve missed something important along the way. We need to mobilize. We need to collaborate, not in Second Life, but in real life, to make change happen. As he states, “we need to reconnect the dots into purposeful networks focused on healthcare, education, and energy independence as the path towards prosperity and a simply better way.” Because communities really do matter.

Imagine the impact of each of us switching out just one brand per week (one of the “things” we use, throw away and waste), to help build a more sustainable, livable, prosperous future. Doesn’t take much to make a difference.

“Our things define us.”

What we buy, what we use, what we keep and throw away, what we waste, and what we save: the stuff that surrounds us and flows through our lives is a key indicator of the kinds of lives we’re living. To be an affluent twenty-first-century person is to float on a sea of material objects – each with its own history and future.

They may be hidden from our eyes, but in practical global terms, those histories and futures tend to be the most important aspects of the stuff we own.”

This is from one of the chapters of a new book called Worldchanging: A Users Guide for the 21st Century – a compilation of innovative solutions, ideas and inventions for building a sustainable, livable, prosperous future. It’s written by WorldChanging, a nonprofit media organization founded on the idea that real solutions already exist for building the future we want.

Keeping an eye on the trends that will impact health and healthy lifestyle brands.

Like a 40 mile an hour wind at our backs, the world is constantly changing. How can you get a handle on all these changes, and how do you discern which ones are important and which are just passing fads. Consider an in-house futurist.