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?