As I’ve more closely followed healthcare over the last several years, I have occasionally wondered whether what WordWrite Communications preaches about strategic healthcare communications was being heard and understood. Or are we trying to convert a congregation so steadfast in its long-held beliefs that we’d have to walk on water to hope anyone would even listen to us?
But as so often happens in life when self-doubt creeps in, I saw a ray of light that validated our belief and strengthened my convictions.
I happened upon an editorial written by John D. Thomas, chief of editorial operations at Modern Healthcare, titled “Ad it up: Marketing for healthcare needs as much steak as sizzle.” Thomas questions the credibility of healthcare advertising campaigns, asking whether consumers can trust them, especially when talking about people’s well being. He concedes to the visual appeal but gives little credence to the interchangeable phrases that seemingly every health system across the country uses to promote and describe itself or its services in its marketing efforts.
I’ve written numerous times about the worn-out approach the healthcare industry has taken to marketing its “brand.” My most recent blog asks whether a health system’s “brand” can really tell its story. In fact, WordWrite Communications firmly believes that traditional healthcare marketing is dead.
Tired logos, taglines and jingles permeate brochures, billboards, websites and television spots. Unfortunately, none of these worn tactics tell a cohesive story or demonstrate how a specific community benefited from its hospital’s services, and none of them carry much, if any, credibility. Unlike a brand, a healthcare system’s story — complete with a beginning, middle and end — can provide a more robust, authentic framework in which to engage stakeholders, from patients to the IRS.
In his piece, Thomas, referencing an eight-page healthcare ad spread in the New York Times, asks what he didn’t see in those ads. “A lot of facts. If I am a healthcare consumer trying to decide where to go for a procedure, I want to know why your hospital is better. I need less description and more data.”
My translation: consumers need context, and ads and other tactics associated with brand can’t provide that. Story can. Story, with a capital S, trumps brand. And we’re not talking simply about human-interest stories of doctors providing care and miraculous results. Those have a place. But a healthcare organization’s Story, which is broader and deeper than its “brand,” provides a more robust, authentic and useful framework to engage patients and other stakeholders. It provides context. It is authentic. The institution’s story enables its leaders to showcase the true value of what they do in ways that do not have to be shoehorned into oversimplified brand “hooks,” tag lines or other premises.
Thomas asserts that a good ad, marketing campaign or feature article should take solid, meaningful data and articulate it in a compelling way so that consumers can benefit from it. I agree. But that tactic is only a sliver of a broader effort. Meaningful, fact-based tactics are a microcosm of a comprehensive strategy for the organization to tell a compelling Story.
Find out more about what we mean when we say traditional healthcare marketing is dead, and let us know what you think.
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Jason Snyder is a senior vice president for WordWrite Communications.
