Doctor, Doctor...What Can We Do?

I received a call this morning from the business editor of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

The locals here in Atlanta refer to the newspaper as the AJC.

The editor called me to get my commentary about healthcare advertising in the region.

It’s March, its spring time and here in Atlanta, once one hospital starts advertising, they all seem to jump on board and follow suit.

One of the questions the editor asked is where do hospitals advertise…which one of the following do they use… television, radio, print or outdoor?

The answer… yes… they use all of them.

But they also interact and have dialogue with people on the Internet, their website, YouTube, Facebook and MySpace.

He asked this question several times again…not quite understanding the answer.

Okay.

The next question asked…”What is the message they say that makes people come to use their hospital?”

I responded back with a question… You were in college in the 1960s weren’t you?

He replied yes, how did you know?

Subliminal Advertising. Remember the letters S-E-X that the author claimed were planted in the ice cubes?

Hello. It’s 2008.

Consumers today know how to leverage their power!

They trust their instincts, explore options, see through the hype and run from canned marketing.

As reported in the recent Yankelovich Monitor…76% of consumers follow their own internal instincts versus listen to the experts. And that percentage is up from 63% in 2002.

The survey also reports that 58% of consumers actively avoid the hype. And again, that percentage is up from 38% in 2002.

We work with a good number of large as well as small hospitals that “get it.”

They understand when we tell them to avoid the four-letter word that begins with a “C” (care). And they also get it when we tell them that the # of physicians they have and the number of rooms is meaningless.

Consumers are fed up with everything from insurance companies telling them what they will pay to waiting hours in a physician’s practice to hearing hospitals tell them that the rooms are clean and the nurses care.

I think what prompted the editor to call is a series of full-page, four-color newspaper ads that a hospital is currently running in the AJC.

The exact same ads are also plastered on billboards across the city.

The ads introduce the public to the hospitals “new” cardiac team…one that had recently expanded with the top cardiologists the hospital hired away from a competitive hospital.

The full-page, four-color newspaper ads illustrate the skyline of Atlanta across the bottom of the ad with the majority of space that then ascends upward into the top of the page that then illustrates stars, clouds, the hospital logo and facial outlines of the physicians.

It’s very, very, very similar (did I say “very, very, very similar”) to the ancient illustrations of the Roman and Greek gods peering down on the mere peoples of the time.

I have a copy of the ad on my office wall and take it with me when I meet with our healthcare clients.

“This is what the competition is doing. This is what we are here to prevent you from ever doing.”

Every newspaper reporter and editor today really wishes that they could be the next Woodward and Bernstein.

This hospital is a good hospital that delivers good service.

But as I shared with the editor of the article…good people also do very, very, very stupid things.