Are doctors easily influenced by drug marketing?

Legislation at federal and state levels places an increasing amount of restriction on pharmaceutical marketing. Proposed bills in the State of Minnesota, which would prohibit pharmaceutical companies from buying doctors' prescribing records, require unbiased drug data, and expand reporting requirements for organizations receiving gifts and consulting fees, are just the latest example of an established trend.

(Article at MPR.org: http://ow.ly/10zlT)

Most restrictive legislation is created under the assumption that doctors are easily influenced by drug marketing.

Is this true?

Doctors are people, and, with administrative pressure to see more patients in less time, its understandable they *might* rely on information from drug companies more than they would if they had more time for their own research.

At the same time, the medical profession is founded on solemn oaths to put patients first. Most doctors choose the job out of a sincere desire to serve.

It's equally likely that these trained professionals would hold drug company claims at arm's length, ensuring they had the best, and not just the most convenient, information at hand to ensure patients receive the best care.

Are we giving doctors enough credit? Don't have an answer to this one, so feel free to weigh in.

Twitter as Counter-Propaganda - #doyoufollowme?

From Cool Twitter Conference Mpls, 12/3/09.

"#doyoufollowme? Twitter as Counter-Propaganda"

View more presentations from Eric Hayward.

why is health care so boring (part 1 of 2)

Check out this SlideShare Presentation:

why is health care so boring

View more documents from Eric Hayward.

where to go from here ("why is health care so boring?" part 2)

Check out this SlideShare Presentation:

Part 2: Where to go from here

View more documents from Eric Hayward.

How Emotions Shape Our World.

Are we engaging in honest, compassionate communication when we talk to people about their health, or just spewing data? More importantly, are we listening?

If you go far enough out into space, the Earth looks like little more than a pale blue dot. Astronomer Carl Sagan said the following about such a picture of Earth, taken by Voyager spacecraft, in an excerpt from a 1996 commencement address.

That's home. On it...every hunter and forager...every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every...mother and father, every inventor and explorer...every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam. Think of the rivers of blood spilled [to] become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot.

The delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe [is] challenged by this point of pale light... To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.

From this perspective, it’s hard, at first, to think that anything we do matters. Fortunately we have emotions. Seemingly at war with the cold logic of space, the color of emotion paints our world as far bigger than a mere dot. Logic assembles our experience as data and facts. Emotions, however, spin facts into stories.

Telling ourselves these stories we define realities that challenge meaninglessness. These are the realities of family, lovers, and friends. Our emotions expand the significance of these circles to become worlds in themselves.

Health care: world of confusion

Are we pushing out data or addressing people's emotions when we talk to them about health?

(continues)
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How Emotions Shape Our World. (2)

Are we using data or are we engaging in honest, compassionate communication when we talk to people about their health? More importantly, are we listening? In strong language, a June, 2008 McKinsey Quarterly article, What Consumers Want in Health Care, lays out pretty clearly just how "confused, concerned, and unprepared" people are in the face of not just addressing, but paying for, their own health care.

The new Star Trek movie is largely about world-sized emotions. Emotions add vital texture to the story, bringing weight to Zachary Quinto’s portrayal of young Spock as a sullen if not smoldering Vulcan.






Spock beaming down to Vulcan to save his mom.
Paramount Pictures, 2009

We learn that Vulcans feel things deeply, but have an austere system of logic to control these feelings. They share ancestry with the Romulans, who shrug off any restrictions on emotionality. Nero (Eric Bana) spends decades lurking in a vast, black, nightmarish ship with squid-like tentacles reaching into the darkness, seeking revenge against perceived wrongs.

As health consumers we are feeling hopeless and afraid, lacking the knowledge we need to navigate a vast and confusing universe. When nobody listens to our anger and fear, they likewise grow to become black and all-encompassing.

Science fiction sets up a helpful metaphor for considering a less logical and more emotional way of communicating with people feeling lost and afraid. Actual science, social science in this case, reveals even more.

Anthropology offers insights from our ancient past

What's the most effective way to communicate with someone in this groundless state? Reason with them logically, or acknowledge their emotions?

(Continues)
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How Emotions Shape Our World. (3)

Anthropology offers insights from our ancient past

What's the most effective way to communicate with someone feeling lost, hopeless, and afraid? Reason with them logically, or acknowledge their emotions?

Of all places, there's an answer to that question in an article called, How to Solve Toddler Tantrums: Think Like a Neanderthal by anthropologist Meredith Small. The parallel observations she makes regarding human adults in an article about, of all things, two-year-olds, were more useful and profound than much of what's written on social marketing or public health.

Small cites the theories of pediatrician Harvey Karp, who suggests toddlers are driven by instinct and emotion more so than reason. Specifically, seeing toddlers under the lens of human development, children are like our distant ancestors, the Neanderthals.

Karp suggests speaking in succinct phrases that acknowledge the toddler’s feelings ("You are angry") rather than in analytical, Homo Sapiens terms (“Axel, Fuddruckers simply isn't the place for civilized people to carry on in this way") avoids infuriating them further. They only want to know they are heard, and that their emotions are valid.

Neanderthals were no dummies. Their brains were bigger than Homo Sapiens' and most likely capable of sophisticated logic, but history worked against them. They had not yet developed the tools of language.

[Karp's] advice is better couched in the notion that Homo sapiens, and presumably our ancestors, were designed to feel very deeply, and little kids simply want their emotions acknowledged, just like adults. In fact, adults spend millions of dollars each year to talk to counselors and get their feelings heard.

I was immediately struck, upon reading that, by how frequently health care messages are posed to patients and consumers in a Homo Sapiens kind of way. Because health care is treated as a “technical” subject — involving the application of tools to fix symptoms in the machine of the human body — messages hinge around technical imagery couched in slightly pedantic, analytical language, which Karp suggests infuriates the Neanderthal brain.

(Continues)
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How Emotions Shape Our World. (4)

Clubbing us over the head: excerpts from actual campaigns

Here are excerpts from actual ad campaigns that might infuriate or fall flat with me if, in becoming a confused consumer, I am retreating into my Neanderthal sensibility.

Insurance company

This out-of-home campaign features not only pictures of an insurance card, but the torn-out excerpt of a Summary Plan of Benefits, replete with linear, Vulcan phraseology. This provider also prominently featured the word "colonoscopy" in recent ads appearing on buses and bus shelters. This campaign emphasizes bureaucratic process and procedure, with a little scary, technical terminology thrown in for good measure.

Hospital system

On billboards, this hospital system makes strides by showing human faces, but the faces of stock photo models — not mine, nor those I could interpret as being my family’s, and mostly Caucasian I might add — with technical terms like “surgeon” and “cardiac center” floating above. Showing people is good, but consumers can easily sniff out and disregard what is too obviously stock art. And again, we can't seem to get away from technical terms that focus on the scary procedure instead of on the positive, human outcome.

HMO

This one shows a folksy, retro-inspired illustration of a dirty hand, and tells me to wash mine. This is part of a campaign whose launch featured giant, anthropomorphic specimen cups and syringes. The effort to use unique design — albeit representing the same, overtly medical subjects — is laudable in a market flooded with its opposite. It's a step forward. Somehow, the message went in the opposite direction, seeming paternalistic and slightly demeaning.

(Continues)
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How Emotions Shape Our World. (5)

The McKinsey Quarterly says, “Consumers are confused, concerned, and uncertain about their health insurance and financing needs. Companies should listen to them.”

This confusion and concern extends from health care financing to health itself. I’m scared and confused by my symptoms. Won’t somebody listen to me?

The camera pulls back again to the pale blue dot, that mote of dust suspended in the sunbeam. In the vast cosmic plane, where our shouts could echo on forever, or land with another person, forming interlacing connections that give solid shape to the emptiness, it’s the presence of some listener that makes a universe of difference.

Listen to me! The first tools (provided by the influence of weird, unexplained monoliths) serve not to build shelters or get food but express existential rage in Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Metro-Goldwyn Mayer, 1968

(End)
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A quick look at what good looks like.

What A.L. has said so far.
A summary argument for better health care creative

1.
Mostly, Americans have done the best with what they have.

2.
Busy (and broke) as some of us are, much of what we have is cheap, convenient, and
comforting.

3.
Can you blame us? Apparently, yes. Much of public- and consumer-health messaging pushes individual accountability in pedantic tones, telling us to "do" or "not do" things it defines as "healthy."

4.
In fact, eating, drinking, and smoking are exactly what American society and our economy tells us to do. We're encouraged to be consumers. So we consume.

5.
Landmark research suggests a better approach. Better than merely blaming us for our own bad habits, public health messaging can reveal the ways food and consumer product manufacturers haven't always given us healthy choices...

(Continues)
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A quick look at what good looks like. (2)

6.
....For example, foods are loaded with super-simple carbohydrates, nasty oils, coloring. These additives manipulate our bodies' powerful abilities to use flavor/cravings as indicators for foods we need. Granted, we're adults. We can take some responsibility for overlooking these ingredients, often found, however, in cheap, quick foods that satisfy a real need for the cash-strapped. But, what about kids?

Are kids' bodies being programmed for a taste for fake food? Is it harder and harder for stressed-out parents to battle the onslaught of messaging, not just for junk food, but junk recreation, that encourages kids to sit idly in front of TV, PC, and Wii screens?

Messaging that unites us in a shared motivation to counter the ploys of manufacturers creates a grass roots movement. Grass roots movements influence markets as well as policy. Ultimately, research suggests, they drive widespread change by getting us to think socially and politically as well as individually.

Social media are channels we can explore to take a socially-driven approach to moving society forward.

(Continues)
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A quick look at what good looks like. (3)

7.
As much as we can think about people in groups, there's still great value in thinking about them as individuals. This is a time-tested strategy for effective advertising. Advertising has changed. It's become more about listening-to than telling. Let's listen to the genuine fear and confusion people are experiencing about health care. Anthropologist Meredith Small says people are emotional beings. Appeals to rationality may infuriate or fall flat withconsumers. Health-care-speak is an example. McKinsey Quarterly says we should listen to and reassure them.

8.
Examples from high-profile health campaigns (see "Clubbing us over the head...") show us
what not-so-good looks like.

(Continues)
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A quick look at what good looks like. (4)

9.
What good might look like:

• Tell stories using humor, metaphors, and images, restating health care in a form that speaks to consumers' psyche as advertisees rather than propagandees. The latter is more easily tuned out.
• Show you're listening and offer reassurance.
• Employ social media, with a plan. Find the places where people naturally assemble to talk about health stuff, where you can listen to their fears and questions and provide answers ---- answers they'll pass on, rather than being force-fed information that stops there.
• Use content and editorial. Blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Digg are transforming our tastes. We want news. We're looking for "updates," personal updates from people we know as well as from the world at large.

All of these ideas are founded in the same climate that has spawned social media. Social media help marketers, of which health care leadership is one example, build relationships in the same way we build relationships with each other. We remove blame and recognize each other's emotions. We can recognize that people essentially do the best with what they have. We can give them more.

(End.)
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Landmark Research on Health Advertising Reveals the Pitfalls of Preaching

The problem of pushing individual accountability as a way to sell” good” health behaviors

People are great. In spite of our misguided moments, we’re generally trying to do best by ourselves, our families, and if we can swing it, by our neighbors and our communities.

If you share this basic belief, you might be troubled by the tone that creeps into a lot of consumer health messages. These messages suggest America’s trillion-dollar health care problem is our fault, because we eat Reese’s Peanut Butter cups, smoke, drink, sit on the couch, or forget to get our blood pressure checked.

The messaging I’m talking about often emphasizes individual accountability for “better health behaviors.” The object of the communication is a mysterious cabal of unhealthy Americans, kind of like Reagan’s Welfare Mothers, whom it demonizes.

Media studies suggest focusing on individual accountability is not only ineffective, but worse, avoids targeting social and economic factors that may be the underlying causes of health problems.

The study in question, Advertising Health: The Cause for Counter-Ads, is actually about a form of advertising recommended by many public health, communications, and media experts. Personally, I don’t love counter ads, which generally include some form of attack against an organization or institution. However true, any message posed as a negative risks not asserting a positive. I think positives reflect better on the speaker as a brand foundation for ongoing messaging.

But the real revelation of this study is not so much the specifics of the counter ad format. It’s the underlying approach, which is significant in the way that it avoids targeting the individual. Rather, it builds affinity with the audience, pitting viewers as unwitting players in a bigger but unbalanced story, one with inequities that that can now be righted.

So—rather than saying, “Hey, stop eating so many carbs, fatty,” we can say, “Foodmakers mix secret ingredients into everyday foods that taste just fine by themselves.” The ad could go on to reveal the shocking number of unnecessary calories contained in mega-carb additives. The tone could bear some enlightened outrage at the challenge to our independence posed by producers, who try to inform our sense of what tastes good.

This approach works better, the study suggests, because it raises the attention of communities and institutions whose programs, support or legislation can help attack the real problem. It led to things like the creation of food labels, for example.

I think this approach works better not because it leads to more legislation, but because, as the recipient of it, I don’t resent the message. It doesn’t judge me for my waistline or my habits. It doesn’t assume I have the time or income to spend two hours at the gym or buy organic foods. It has some compassion for my position but also makes me feel like I have power and choice.

Mostly, it doesn’t judge me for the ill effects of being a Consumer (think about the real meaning of that word), which is exactly what government and industry want me to be.

Here’s an ad I’d love to see. We hear a quirky, fast-paced, techno-carnival soundtrack.
We follow one and then more everyday people trying to get through their everyday lives despite a barrage of comforts and conveniences, all of which impede their natural progress. (If you’ve ever been corralled onto a moving walkway in the airport to traverse the distance of only a couple gates, you’ll get what I mean).

Corporate health care is part of the same consumer system that continually peddles convenience. With a change in awareness, health care leaders can help extract the industry from this giant, idling hamster wheel. Health care can become a powerful agent of reform for our whole way of life.

Google's blog on Google Health

Google's official blog has a current post about Google Health, which I discovered the existence of myself at Moveo's blog and posted an entry about yesterday. Google Health is a new personal health record (PHR) letting people post and manage health records and histories online.

I'm just spitting back some information from the Google blog, which gives four differentiating factors of the new site over others: 1) Assurance of privacy and security; 2) A platform letting you import records and test results, and later, set appointments and fill scrips; 3) Portability of health records; and 4) User focus.

I'm particularly interested and excited about the last point. Google says, "We aren't doctors or healthcare experts, but one thing Google can create is a clean, easy-to-use user experience that makes managing your health information straightforward and easy."

If Google can execute on the usability promise, which certainly is a brand asset, it's a piece that's been missing piece all along. Past PHRs have been convoluted and kind of ugly. I'd be surprised if they built any consumer confidence in the security question, as a lot of the ones I saw have kind of a homegrown look. Here's some other PHRs:

http://www.myphr.com/
http://www.recordsforliving.com/HealthFrame/Ideas/PersonalHealthRecord.aspx
http://www.pdhi.com/webnew/products/ConXushealth.asp

The other point of interest is the platform description, which claims it will allow integration with services, tasks and providers. In the past, similar services have lacked background muscle on promotion and networking to fill them adequately with participating providers. Again, I'm hoping Google's brand clout will get the participation to make this aspect worth consumer's time.

I'm considering reviewing the service and writing about it; has anybody used Google Health?

with Google and Microsoft involved, big step for health care "consumerism"

This is some news: http://blog.moveo.com/moveo_weblog/healthcare/

Both health care organizations and technology companies (from portal providers to more back-end-oriented shops) have been trying to get into the online health records business for years. The idea is giving consumers a single place to post information about their health visits and history --- most humans don't do a great job of this. At least I don't.

Anyway, I don't believe anybody's quite done it right. The attempts I've seen that have failed mostly did so because of the same combination of elements: great technology, terrible web design. (Also possibly a lack of promotion).

The news posted on Moveo's blog that Google and Microsoft are getting into online health records is of interest.

Hopefully this will bring a level of consumer-sensitivity to the navigation, content, and most importantly, marketing of these sites to drive participation.

Here is a link to Micrsoft's HealthVault: http://www.healthvault.com/
Here is Google Health: http://www.google.com/health

Have a Healthy Downturn

Actionable Strategy for Health Care Brands

In the last post I launched a new effort I'm spearheading to help my favorite companies through the alleged downturn: a marketing audit.

A marketing audit is intended to save money, by eliminating redundant efforts. It also sets the stage for future, highly-profitable activities. When better budgets arrive, a plan is in place for execution.

Health care organizations have unique issues to consider, particularly health insurance companies and hospitals.

All types of organizations can benefit from collateral reviews, analyzing customer touch points, consumer segmentation, and a review of core messaging.

Health care organizations, however, can especially consider a "communications audit." They often send out a lot of collateral to patients and members.

Auditing your collateral

Content-wise, there's tremendous value in having someone go through the various pieces, from an editorial and communications-planning perspective, to look at messaging:

Can certain print pieces, bearing redundant messages, be eliminated?

Even three or four fewer pieces sent out a year per member (for insurers, for example), at multiple thousands of members, not only cuts costs but increases the likelihood the right message lands.

More administratively, are you sending the same pieces out twice? Religiously I received two, big benefits booklets from my old health plan, every year.

These audit projects pay for themselves.

And at the very least, the organization has now also invested in a valuable review of its core messages. At the very most, they've gotten closer to the bigger, fundamental review of health care branding that I am recommending all health care organizations take (see this post):

We need to reconsider the fundamental story we're telling patients and members in light of what they really care about. Talk to your writers about this meditative activity for the downturn.

In addition to a deeper analysis of a health care brand, a cheap, high-value activity is this:

Review photography that can be easily replaced on the web or in print.

One of the most valuable services your design and advertising partners can offer in health care branding is photo direction. As we evolve the underlying story, or "messaging platform," an interim step is simply choosing more original imagery. With a little help you can replace photos and artwork without changing layouts just yet. (Which I also recommend considering).

So a downturn is a time for strategy. I keep "strategy projects" at arms length of course, wanting to ensure they are always linked to executable suggestions and not simply generating documents. The ideas here perfectly represent actionable strategy for health care brands.

A Movement Toward Better Health Care Marketing

The stakes

Of all the marketing messages consumers receive, those dealing with health care are arguably the most important.

I mean, it's hard to argue against the value of knowing there's a "spicy" Baconator out there, and who would deny the role of Mighty Putty as a vital glue to our consumer civilization?

But connecting people with the professionals, tools and technology that can enrich, if not save, their lives still seems a more valid exercise for mass communication.

"Importance" is subjective, and not the best metric for evaluating the potential cause and execution of good advertising. But if we do care about the mission of better health, we have a responsibility to share that mission more effectively with patients.

Pharmaceuticals have it sewn up pretty tight. Big marketing budgets are one thing, and they sure have them. But underlying the most effective campaigns is something that transcends money. It's an understanding big pharma shares with Wendy's, OxyClean and Nike.

The understanding is that advertising is a translation process. Advertising maps a mere product agenda to heartfelt human desires. Where Wendy's has escape, pleasure and convenience going for it, health care has these true biggies in the realm of human want: love, lovemaking, longevity and freedom. For starters.

If we can subvert clichés (which I believe are the first of three health care marketing mistakes) we can more quickly connect with the needs and beliefs consumers care about, rather than losing them in a stream of hackneyed words and images the mind is all too good at tuning out.

The clichés

Of these, my favorite is the "silver-haired family doctor."

The silver-haired family doctor is always smiling, smiling as he peers knowingly into a little girl’s ear with his otoscope. She is smiling too, clutching her favorite doll. Mom is also there, just smiling away.

Why is everyone so happy?

This silver-haired doctor gets around.

You've seen him comforting an elderly woman in a hospital bed. Sometimes he looks directly into the camera. Other times he stands with a group of doctors, arms crossed in welcoming but confident postures. What are they doing?

Who can tell? The image, like most of the stock-photo scenarios used in ads and marketing materials for health care services, is steeped in unreality, emptied of relevance and meaning. Why?

Telling better stories

We've gotten lazy. We keep dipping into the same pool of superficial generic images, forgetting to create new, better underlying stories. That's what advertising is: translating the brute reality of mere marketing into great stories that reach our hearts. If we put story first and details second, the better story will inform more relevant choices for the words, images and sounds that activate feeling and drive action. A better story is one connecting health care with personal desires for beauty and freedom, versus connecting it with morality.

It's easy and convenient to recycle a preachy, "apple a day" storyline about what we should and shouldn't do as a cause for better health care.

It's harder but better to appeal to human self interest, looking at the self-generated motivations consumer/patients identify as their own reasons to pursue better health care.

If our own laziness as marketers is truly the culprit, guess what? Patients will get lazy too.

Left without a reason to choose your services over another, they also will pick whatever is closest at hand. Will it be you?

The Revolution Has Not Been Televised

Why the health care revolution has not taken root.

The past five/ten years saw the uprising of a number of "revolutionary" health care organizations.

They take a number of forms. Most are entrepreneurial ventures of health care veterans providing more customized ways to purchase services. Equally driven by idealism and opportunism, these pioneers all seem to agree --- consumers can be elevated to a position of volition and power.

A lot of these organizations have struggled. Many have failed, or changed forms. Why?

Revolution comes from the ground up, from people. It's hard to sustain a movement conceived top-down in a conference room instead of a break room. People like you and me have tried to create a revolution out of a marketing agenda.

"The people" simply haven't followed, whether it's consumers themselves, or the providers who have to participate in a new form of business to get on board. What's missing?

Two things: 1) Grass-roots organizing and 2) Effective advertising.

The advertising part is simple...

First, we can strike all health care clichés from the images and messaging used to talk about health.

Second, we can stop talking about health.

We can start talking about life, love, lovemaking, freedom and all the other emotional causes that drive people to reconsider their health. Versus talking about cholesterol and colonoscopies.

As for grassroots organizing, it's vital, but more complicated.

First, we have to reconfigure our attitude, from a top-down approach (I concoct a marketing agenda and push messages at consumers) to a democratic one (I listen to what consumers are saying and help them talk about me).

How are we letting what consumers want change our agenda? How are we communicating those positive changes back to consumers?

An alleged downturn is a great time to start formulating an attitudinal shift. It takes little money. It takes lots of inventiveness, which thrives in tough times.

Revolutions also thrive in tough times.

People are now assembling on their own to figure out their personal health care messes. Will you be tapped to join the conversation?

A Memo to Health Care Marketeers

Listen:

Of all the marketing messages consumers receive, those dealing with health care are arguably the most important.

Weigh the social impact of a Cheesy Bacon BK Wrapper against news of life-saving technology or facilities.

And yet, poor health is communicated far better to American consumers than is good health.

It's not as if health is less interesting.

Health does far more for your sex life, your family life, and your waistline than greasy pork and nicotine. Advertisers are just better at connecting these products, in consumers' minds, with the things they care about...

...The fundamental promise of pleasure (for example), especially appealing in tough economic times, is an easy sell. Identity is wrapped up in there, too. I choose Burger King because I'm funny, creative, and young(ish).

As health care marketers, before we even write copy or shoot photos, we can start with a better fundamental promise.

Right now, we're stuck in a preachy, "apple-a-day" mentality. Thinking top-down, we start from a position of expertise held over the heads of all of you, unhealthy slobs that you are. The fundamental promise of health care is a "should"...

...Exercise more because you should. Eat better because you should.

It's also, often, a negative. Take this and you won't get dandruff, heartburn, or worse.

Product advertisers not only start with a better fundamental promise, they express it far better. They use words, colors, sounds, and images that evoke and invite.

Us health care marketers, on the other hand, have gotten lazy! We dip again and again into the same pool of words and images. Clichés like the friendly, silver-haired doctor, the earnest and dedicated researcher, or even the happy seaside jogger are falling flat with consumers.

We're also far too technical, and scary. More than once recently I've seen the names of complex and unpleasant medical procedures used in headlines and lead copy.

We're allegedly in a downturn (I'm an optimist) and need to spend our money carefully. So let's start with something cheap, or free:

WHAT I SUGGEST:

Write Your Own Revolutionary Memo.

Before beginning, I suggest you listen to this,* for mood: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7OTHnXwr_s

And read this, for tone: http://www.earlyamerica.com/earlyamerica/milestones/commonsense/text.html

I also wanted to include "watch this," but it has a bad word in it, so be warned: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1UeR0CqI4iw)

Now you should be suitably juiced up to open your email program, or better, the case on your college typewriter, and send an urgent note to leadership in your organization about radically rethinking the fundamental assumptions we make in:

1. Forming an underlying health care brand, and
2. Expressing that brand through marketing and advertising.

Tell your people to start watching commercials for pharmaceuticals very carefully (those guys really get it) as well as reading, watching and listening more closely to product advertising for soap, toothpaste and shampoo, as well as cars, turkeys, Wendy's, Mighty Putty, anything.

Tell them to get excited, because you're excited. And then get excited...

...Most of us not-so-secretly desire to be part of something big, and good. We feel guilty about the failure of our working lives to line up with the urgency of widespread, unmitigated suffering in this confusing world.

Those of us working within or as a partner to health care organizations have an opportunity to get creative, which is fun, about delivering a message that saves lives, which is inspiring. And also has some huge dollar signs attached to it too, by the way.

WHAT'S NEXT:

I am working hard to develop more thoughts like these, mapped to practical actions and outcomes. I put a lot of them on my blog (gdahaus.blogspot.com). You can read it.

Way more important, I want to form a loose coalition of like-minded people excited by the creative and socially relevant opportunity of transforming health care marketing. Want to join me? Write eric@grossmandesign.com.

BEST OF LUCK AND HEALTH TO ALL OF YOU IN 2009.

Eric

Creative Accounts Director
Grossman Design Associates
M:(612) 986-9412
O:(952) 922-4343
http://grossmandesign.com/
http://gdahaus.blogspot.com/

*There could conceivably be a spoken lyric in this song that offends somebody. It it's you, tune the words out (for shame) and just listen to the bass line. It's hot.