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

The future of marketing is about doing things and saying things with people. Building relationships that are collaborative, helpful, personal and honest. Requiring your healthcare organization to expose a lot more of its humanity, because customers trust each other/trust people more than they tend to trust your organization.

Blogging gives you that ability. The ability for a searcher to enter a keyword phrase, land on your post (written by a real person), which can lead to dialog, and a connection beyond what other social vehicles can provide.

Here are seven specific benefits of your blog to your healthcare organization:

1. Creating Attraction (starting with search)
2. Creating Value For Your Audiences (on their terms)
3. Building Trust (sorely lacking yet vital to building strong healthcare brands)
4. Creating and Strengthening Brand Relationships (between you and your audiences)
5. Energizing Employees (which leads to happier customers)
6. Building Transparency (a highly sought after characteristic)
7. Creating Separation Vs. Others (community building, access to customers, volume and revenue)

Are there other benefits that you’d add to this list?

How can you contribute to making a meaningful difference in the daily lives of your communities and patients? Your blog, through your content, your insights, your stories, your solving of problems, is a means to do this.

I had the pleasure of delivering this presentation – Entering The Blogosphere: The Nucleus Of Your Healthcare Social Media Strategy – at IQPC’s recent Strategic Social Media for Healthcare Summit in NYC. Given the feedback (fortunately very positive) and the follow-up conversations I’ve had, I thought it would be of value to socialize the presentation.

It covered why and how healthcare organizations should enter the blogosphere, the important strategic and tactical considerations it takes to get up and running; and offered tips to how organizations who are already participating might improve upon their current efforts.

I hope you find value in the presentation. Any questions, comments or suggestions to share with me and others?

The Brands Create Customers blog (on next-generation brands: new models, platforms, applications) is authored by Brian Phipps. I find great value in Brian’s take on the changing nature of brands and the brand-customer relationship.

Brian wrote a post last week titled New Brand Glossary: update 4. It’s worth holding on to this glossary. Because it doesn’t resemble much of the current (old) thinking about brands and their holds on customers.

Here’s a snippet of his introduction:

Traditional brand glossaries usually assume a passive customer “audience” for brand messaging campaigns, where the brand aspires to be a “belief system” that serves the company’s interests. In this view, brands aim to be timeless (static) “icons” worshiped by “consumers,” who are positioned as little more than sheep with credit. Traditional brand glossaries are therefore largely glossaries of control. The brands they describe really don’t do much for customers—except to keep them in place.

In contrast, this is a glossary of value-based brands and of brand innovation. It contains concepts, terms and definitions for a new era of brands designed to foment new business by creating new customer opportunities. The essence of these brands is collaboration, not control. These brands create proactive new customers who leave old brands—and old companies—far behind.

How do you find most health brands stack up against these new definitions? How about most health brand marketing?

As a marketer, you really only have one purpose. One ultimate gauge of success. That is, to continuously create new and greater value for your health brand customers.

Value that is defined on your customers terms and reflects their agenda. Value that transcends your messaging and your one-way communication about your organization and your offerings.

Ask yourself these three questions:

1. Is your marketing really adding value to your customers lives?
2. Are you helping them do something they want to do, or solve something that helps them achieve more than they could on their own?
3. If you were your customer, would you find you indispensable?

Make your customer agenda your agenda. You’ll create greater value for both of you.

Can you be the Apple of (fill-in your health segment here)?

There’s good learning here for marketers to take away from Fast Company’s July cover story – Invincible Apple: 10 Lessons From the Coolest Company Anywhere.

After speaking with former employees, current partners, and others who have watched Apple for many years, the article’s author states the answers to Apple’s phenomenal success center around discipline, focus, long-term thinking, and a willingness to flout the rules that govern everybody else’s business.

Here’s Fast Company’s excerpted report on the Apple playbook:

1. Go Into Your Cave: translated as set your own agenda.
2. It’s Okay To Be King: Jobs and his team know exactly what they want, so everyone knows what the plan is. And from the likes of it, it’s working.
3. Transcend Orthodoxy: Despite all the noise about Apple’s closed ideology, the company adopts positions based on two simple conditions – whether they make for good products and good business.
4. Just Say No: Jobs’s primary role at Apple is to turn things down. Every day, he’s presented with ideas for new products and new features within existing ones. The default answer is no. “I’m as proud of the products that we have not done as the ones we have done,” Jobs told an interviewer in 2004.
5. Serve Your Customer: When Apple devised its retail strategy a decade ago, the company had a single overriding goal: to launch stores (and associated service) that were unlike anything that customers associated with the computer industry.
6. Everything Is Marketing: Apple’s most effective marketing is built into its products, i.e. iPod’s white earbuds, the Mac’s startup sound, the shape of the MacBook’s back panel. Apple understands the lasting power of sensory cues, and it goes out of its way to infuse everything it makes with memorable ideas that scream its brand.
7. Kill The Past: No other company reimagines the fundamental parts of its business as frequently, and with as much gusto, as Apple does.
8. Turn Feedback Into Inspiration: Apple believes that people can’t really envision what they want. So he uses customer ideas as inspiration, not direction; as a means, not an end.
9. Don’t Invent, Reinvent: To use a musical analogy, Apple’s specialty is the remix. It curates the best ideas bubbling up around the tech world and makes them its own. It’s also a great fixer, improving on everything that’s wrong with other similar products on the shelves.
10. Play By Your Own Clock: Jobs knows he’ll never be fired, so he can devote years, if that’s what it takes, to attain Apple’s high standards. Of all the points covered here (according to this author), Apple’s willingness to go long is perhaps its greatest strength.

After reading this article, I begin to think about innovative, game-changing health organizations like Mayo Clinic, PatientsLikeMe, Sermo, Walgreens (Take Care Clinics), Intuitive Surgical (da Vinci robotic system), 23andme…

What others would you add to this list?

KeepBritainBiking.com is a service of UK-based Devitt Insurance Services Ltd (“Devitt”). The website helps bikers exchange views and useful information about biking, to help new and experienced bikers get the most out of biking.

Here are some lessons for health marketers to take away KeepBritianBiking.com:

1. It creates a meaningful difference in the lives of its customers – beyond the initial transaction and the occasional call about a claim or a rate adjustment.

2. It allows Devitt to build an emotional connection with their customers – above and beyond the functionality of its (and all others) insurance products.

3. It allows biking customers to connect with each other – a group that places great importance on sharing.

4. It maintains Devitt’s relevance and increases its odds of success – through a different offering, delivery of unique benefits, and the opportunity to extend its customer base.

5. This “social community” promotes word-of-mouth – and gets friends talking about biking (through its biking forums, biking blog and biking gallery) and Devitt.

6. Ultimately, it stretches Devitt brand meaning – delivering more emotional and self-expressive punch to customers beyond a traditional insurance company.

What are your thoughts about this effort?

What is the next generation of crowdsourcing (of customers and companies working together to create new value)?

Clinton Booner answers this question as the author of this guest post Crowdsourcing: Beyond the Basics, over at Jay Baer’s Convince and Convert Blog.

Clinton offers his 3c’s of next generation crowdsourcing: Co-Creation, Constant and Control:

1. Co-Creation. Allowing consumers to contribute in a number of ways to product and service enhancements.
2. Constant. Multiple initiatives happening in parallel and offering the user a constant stream of new involvement opportunities.
3. Control. Brands viewing open innovation strategies as not ‘giving up creative control’ but rather understanding what this really is – co-created market research that is more accurate – ultimately offering remarkable ways to help deliver happy, impassioned, and loyal consumers.

Would you add any C’s to this list?

Quebec-based Technowait gets that our time is valuable. So they’ve developed a new service that creates new value for patients – freeing them from having to wait for long periods of time in hospital and clinic waiting rooms.

Their service allows patients (after checking-in and taking a number) to leave the waiting room and go somewhere else until they’re ready to be seen. Calling in to an interactive system, they can find out via an automated message how how much waiting time still remains. As their turn approaches, they can then return in just-in-time fashion. Eventually, TechnowaiT aims to add phone alerts so that patients can get notified half an hour before it’s their turn.

Here are a few things we should appreciate about (and learn from) Technowait:

1. They’re advocates for us patients. More so than the hospitals or clinics we’re often captive to, they understand that nothing about a “waiting room” (beginning with the name) is a pleasant experience. Their service is helpful and acts on our behalf.

2. Their demonstrating respect. Someone from Technowait initially walked in our shoes. They’ve been the customer. Or they listened, acknowledged and responded to others. Either way, it’s nice to be treated like a person beyond a patient.

3. They’re also building value for their hospital and clinic clients . Beyond the time and identity value they create for patients, they’re creating relationship value for the hospitals and clinics that use their service. Everyone benefits. Everyone wins.

4. When ready, they might possibly play a bigger role in our lives. By thinking more expansively about what they ultimately provide (similar to Zappos whose real mission is customer happiness), Technowait has a lot of room to expand beyond the waiting room to other venues.

Any thoughts or ideas to share?

If you want an exceptional retail brand experience, visit Teavana. I discovered this “part tea bar, part tea emporium” through the aroma of the freshly-brewed Chai tea being released into the Short Hills Mall.

The Teavana website says that they want to introduce people to the aromas, textures, and beneficial qualities of loose leaf teas while enlightening them with the history and variety of teas available –– creating a unique tea experience in each store by encouraging a positive, healthy outlook for all who enter. Goal accomplished.

Here’s what makes the brand so special:

A great story. One that’s built around the rituals and rich history of tea.

Focused on doing one thing better than anyone else. Teavana equals tea. Everything about tea. And this is their focus moving forward. With tremendous growth opportunities available into the future.

Great staff make for an exceptional brand experience. I had no intention of buying any tea that day I visited the mall. I left with a lot of tea. A beautiful canister to house the tea. And a great tea maker. All because of a tremendous staff member knowledgeable about tea and passionate about Teavana.

Engaging website that extends the experience. You can learn about, and shop their teas, and participate in the conversation through their “Heaven of Tea” blog.

Ability to generate word-of-mouth. I’ve told friends about this brand since first visiting the store. And they’ve told others.

Have you heard of, or visited, Teavana. Please share your thoughts.

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?