I read a great article on Ad Age the other other. Healthcare marketing agencies need to start thinking like software companies and provide branded apps to our clients. The advent of on-line repositories like Apple's app store have created an completely new channel to communicate a message.
The question becomes are agencies prepared to be software developers? The answer needs to be YES are software developers will be the marketers of the next decade.
As the world awaits the announcement of the Olympic Host city for the 2016 Games I look out my window and see the crowd building here in Chicago.
I wonder as I stare out the window- What does this mean for healthcare marketing agencies like us?
I think about our on-going relationship with CLOCC (The Consortium to Lower Obesity in Chicago Children) and how we need to use the Olympics as a motivator to help causes like this. The obesity epidemic in America is only getting worse. Hopefully, we will have the next 6 years to incorporate the Olympics into our messaging and continue to make a difference
When we work on marketing strategy for medical products everyday sometimes we miss the real opprotunity to communicate. Sometimes we get so wrapped up in providing the healthcare marketing plan to our client that the plan gets in the way of seizing the moment.
Case in point-
A TV host in Canada had an idea to promote Breast Cancer Awareness Month in support of rethink breast cancer. This TV host has a sister suffering from breast cancer. This progressive organization is trying to raise awareness in younger women. A TV spot was created that sold out the event in record time. While somewhat provocative this spot has create a viral buzz on-line. Good or bad this resonated with the younger audience and drove a huge increase in donations.
This has received international exposure on CNN and other news outlets.
As a healthcare marketing agency we need to LISTEN and understand our audiences and provide content that creates a response.
Evaluating creative is an age old issue in any marketing business. The worst feedback is empty feedback like "I don't like it." You don't like it tells us nothing. While I understand we miss the mark somedays we need to work collectively with our clients to evaluate the creative.
Our Exec. VP Creative Director, Dave Raube, uses this approach
G&A is referred to as a "mid-size" agency in the healthcare marketing space. While many may look at this as a drawback to doing business with us or any agency this size I beg to differ. Some believe that only the BIG agencies can provide the BIG idea. Look at Adage's small agency of the year.
As we continue to develop healthcare websites and on-line content we need to recognize how and where the content is being consumed. I am an avid iPhone user and I am beginning to be frustrated by content I cannot view on my iPhone. We as marketers need to continue to question where content is be consumed and make sure we are adapting accordingly.
I came across an article about Doylestown Hospital and how they are implementing iPhone solutions to better support its physician users. We need to get our messages to these physicians on the device they are using. We need to be smarter about the behavior of the consumers of our tactics.
As the debate continues over healthcare reform and cost control we continue to hear about electronic health records. While this is a great step forward (see my other post about Google Health) it is great to see other applications.
Airstrip Technologies is using the iPhone as a remote monitoring device for vital signs. I hope this is just the beginning of more technology from this great company. I hope to find the opportunity to provide healthcare marketing services to companies like this.
Well not exactly. The continued marketing practice to build product sites for healthcare related products and services and then just let them sit idle is dead. Healthcare marketers need to work with clients and find solutions to the hurdles that prevent them from using blogs, twitter, Facebook and other social media as a solution.
In a recent post Chris Baggott CEO of Compendium Blogware outlines some interesting facts about the migration away from "sites"
Obviously I am quite interested in how we integrate web technologies into healthcare marketing solutions or I would not be spending time writing this blog. So yesterday I posted a twit about staring this blog and I am amazed that I get new followers. These are people I have no other connections to just random this random follow.
So the marketing issue becomes how best to communicate with my new Twitter followers. So I welcome followers @mgoble on Twitter.
And I welcome kevinmd / Kevin Pho, M.D. one of my new followers
It is awesome when the opportunity presents itself to interface with a patient that has been so positively impacted by the products we work on. So often these days when working in healthcare marketing strategy we are limited by HIPAA and other regulations from using actual patients in our advertising.
Prostrakan is doing just that with its product Sancuso. Sancuso is a supportive care cancer product that helps with nausea and vomiting. We have taken the approach to use real patients in marketing this product.
Please take a look and see how Sancuso is helping Melvin.
In reviewing many of the media accounts and stories about the Swine Flu epidemic it makes me think that healthcare marketers still have a long way to go in educating the consumer. This clip from CNN shows how people are afraid to eat pork and that simply washing hands is one of the best defenses.
It is great to see that investment by pharmaceuticals companies is paying off in a time of need. Baxter Healthcare has developed a technology that can cut in half the time needed to create a vaccine. This is one of the many reasons that pharma companies need to charge the prices for prescriptions so technologies like this can be created.
Goble & Assocaites has been providing Pro-Bono service to the American Porphyria Foundation (APF) for many years. Porphyria is an extremely complicated disease that typically takes many years to diagnosis. At present fewer than 2500 patients are being treated in this US.
We have recently revised the APF website to better serve that patients and caregivers that support those who suffer from this disease.
From the agency perspective we find it very rewarding to apply our creative and healthcare marketing skills to support organizations like the APF.
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