Intangibility. The absolute biggest challenge of advertising in the field of healthcare.

I feel for the marketing folks at healthcare technology companies. They’re consumers, they see the Coke ads, the Nike ads, all the slick auto advertising, and they want something cool too! And they deserve it. Don’t worry, I’m not going to start talking budgets. I’m also not going to start using intangibility as an excuse. It is possible to do great ads for intangible services and products (within a budget too!). It’s more of a creative challenge, but it is possible.

I guess you could argue that technology products aren’t completely abstract. You could use a computer to represent technology. Of course, we’re not selling PCs, we’re selling software, middleware, systems, portals, whatever, so let’s fill the screen with a big blurry screen shot of 3pt type or show a group of administrators pointing and smiling at a computer screen. Obviously, this doesn’t work, so we focus on the benefits.

So the next challenge of healthcare technology advertising is that just about every competing company touts the same benefits. Increasing revenue is a big one, especially for a Clearinghouse. So let’s show a giant dollar bill or a big stack of money. Our audience is smarter than that. This type of advertising might seem to work in a focus group due to its obvious message, but what is it really doing to your brand long term? It cheapens your brand. It lacks intelligence. So what is another benefit of many healthcare technology companies? Let’s say Electronic Medical Records is the “product”, then the benefit is often efficiency which hopefully leads to better patient care. Is this a stretch? And even if it’s not a stretch, how do you show “efficiency” in an ad and still stand out from the competition? Happy patients are often seen in healthcare advertising and we used to be able to get away with that, but the stopping power just isn’t there without some kind of creative spin in this world of advertising overload. It’s too common.

So what’s the answer? The answer is dig deeper.Dig past the obvious, dig for something unique to your company, something to grab attention first and foremost. Think about the ad’s environment. What will stand out in the healthcare environment? Think of objects that can represent the benefit that have nothing to do with healthcare and look for ways to relate it back to healthcare immediately with the copy. Or think of healthcare or technology objects that you can play around with or put in unexpected situations in order to get the point across in a way that’s not overdone and cliché. This article, “Ten Myths About Selling Intangible Services,” brings up a very good point. It says that “The biggest difference between selling “things” and intangible services is the pivotal role of trust. Trust is even more critical to selling intangible services than it is to selling things.” Oh how true this is! So, if you can find a valid truth, and execute it in an interesting way, you have a winner.

Here are a few examples:

Capario, one of our clients, offers customized, easy-to-use revenue cycle management solutions. What does this mean? What’s the benefit? Well, the benefit is improved cash flow for physician practices. So do we show the doctor drowning in a stack of cash or do we dig deeper to find a concept that would lift a brand by portraying its personality, get attention, and get the point across in an intelligent and believable way? The nugget, the believable piece of information was, that according to a recent independent study by KLAS®, claims submitted via Capario are paid on the first payer submission at least 90 percent of the time. Awesome. It makes our job much easier when the client really has an excellent product or service to sell. But how do we visualize that? Just a big headline that says “according to a recent independent study by KLAS®, claims submitted via Capario are paid on the first payer submission at least 90 percent of the time.” Not bad, but would you stop to read it? OK, how about a pie chart with the same statement? Not bad, but would you remember it, would it make you “like” Capario, would it make you think that Capario had a nice “brand personality”, make you want to get to know them? We had to keep digging. Why does our target audience care so much about getting paid? Well, it makes their life easier right? So what have we got? We’ve got a factual statement, a pie chart, and the concept of “easy”….GETTING PAID THE FIRST TIME. EASY AS PIE. We literally made a pie chart out of a cherry pie which tied in perfectly to Capario’s brand colors and style. Click here to view the ad. OK, so admittedly it’s not rocket science, but it’s an interesting visual, that stands out in the technology space, while still giving a clear and believable message with a little bit of personality. By the way, we also gave away a cherry red Dell computer which again, was a perfect tie-in to the brand and this particular concept.

Another one of our clients is the AMGA. The American Medical Group Association. This client is different to most of our clients because they are a membership organization not a technology company. The intangible benefit of “networking” was our challenge in this case.See the 2 ads we developed: one for Medical members and the other for Corporate. Both ads visualize the intangible in a way that’s unique but not so far removed that the message isn’t immediately understood.

Another one of our clients which was recognized in a KLAS® report is Precyse Solutions. I like this ad because it uses the dictation devices to make their more intangible product and service tangible and combines it with the typical “thumbs up” imagery to create a simple believable message in an interesting way.

A few weeks ago, I was in Massachusetts visiting a sick family member. This is the area where I began my healthcare sales career back in 1983, and I had a great time remembering those early days. I was a sales manager at a ComputerLand, kind of an old version of BestBuy. One of my customers developed software to manage medical practices, and they bought their PCs from my store. (By the way, just as a point of reference, these PCs either had two 5 1/4” floppy disks—one for software and one for data—or had one floppy disk and a built-in 10 megabyte hard drive. The de facto standard of the day was the IBM XT.) I quickly became enamored with software, and a short time later I took a sales position with the software company. Their name was National Medical Systems, the application was called Med-1, and they were ultimately acquired by Misys.

My territory included Worcester and Springfield, so I spent a lot of my time visiting physician practices around the large BayState Health System in Springfield and University of Massachusetts Medical Center, an up-and-coming teaching hospital in Worcester. Whenever I was in Worcester, I liked to frequent a popular diner called the Parkway. Great food, friendly employees, reasonable prices. It was at the Parkway that I learned one of my earliest, most valuable sales lessons. As I sat down at the counter for breakfast one day, lo and behold, one of my “A” prospects was sitting right next to me. What a coincidence!

After a bit of small talk between gulps of coffee, I said something like: “So, Dr. Patel, can you see how this practice management solution will make your office run more smoothly and make your office manager’s work so much easier?” I felt if I could use this time to convince him of the overwhelming merits of our application, I might even walk out of breakfast with a sale!

He replied, “I have very little interest in making my office manager’s life any easier. I already pay her well, and she should work hard for the money.” Ouch! After a little more awkward conversation, I agreed to follow up with him later, and as I was leaving the diner, I realized I had blown the sale. But I had learned a valuable lesson: I can only make the sale if I a) KNOW what the prospect’s pain points are and 2) can ease said pain. And in the software business, sometimes the market doesn’t even know they HAVE the pain your product will ease. If they DO know, do they also know there are products available to ease the pain? And if they know that, do they know that your company offers those products? And if they know that, do they know the unique value proposition that makes your product a leader in the field?

Too often, we assume we know what our prospects want, need and what will motivate them to buy. We can’t take that for granted. We need to do the research. Ask the tough questions. And gear our sales presentations to those exact needs.

On the bright side, the eggs were great.

It was only a decade ago that technology insiders prophesized a change in the way that the Internet would be used. Darcy Dinucci’s 1999 article, “Fragmented Future,” predicted the emergence of an interactive Internet, where users would not just read published material, but would contribute to the content of the site. Deemed Web 2.0, these interactive sites have helped shape the Internet over the last few years. Millions of people now share content worldwide through Facebook; students conduct research for term papers through Wikis written by other people; and millions joined in Ashton Kutcher’s race to one million followers on Twitter – and then thousands watched as Kutcher proceeded to “ding dong ditch” Ted Turner live on Ustream, CNN and other Internet streaming sites.

Despite the popularity of Web 2.0, the predictions of monetary gains that would dwarf Amazon and Yahoo never materialized. However, the rapid expansion of Web 2.0 through social media sites such as Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn has led those same insiders to predict the Internet’s evolution to Web 3.0 – which will take the Internet to another level for users and supposedly help those operating the Web sites to make a significant amount of money in the process. So what is Web 3.0 and how will it impact healthcare marketing, communications and advertising?

Defining Web 3.0. (aka “The Semantic Web”)

While Web 2.0 is characterized by its efforts to make the Internet easier to navigate and its focus on social interactions, Web 3.0 will move us from present-day “clunkier” searching to richer URL structure with a greater depth of information and improved search results. Already, Bing – Microsoft’s latest search engine – is billing itself as “the cure for search overload” and is claiming that it will help reduce the irrelevant and random search results. Web 3.0 search engines promise pinpoint precision in their results, just as Bing guarantees.

Web 3.0 will impact the way that healthcare companies market themselves online and the amount of time companies put into their Web site. As Web 3.0 gains ground with users, healthcare companies will have to increase their efforts to keep their Web sites relevant. Since the Semantic Web will incorporate logic and syntax, page designers and copy writers will have to make sure that any and all information users need is incorporated into the Web site so that it will show up in search results.

What benefits will Web 3.0 bring?

Web 3.0 will:

• Allow us to search using complex sentences. In the new Web 3.0 protocol, users will be able to type the sentence “I want to find a PR firm that specializes in healthcare” into a search engine, and if we have done our job well, Dodge Communications’ Web site will be the first result.
• Help us reap more relevant search results. As you use a Web 3.0 browser, it will get to know you the way a personal assistant might. Over time, your browser should be able to respond with fair logic and accuracy to questions like, “What should I have for breakfast?”
• Bring the individualization of TiVo and Pandora to the entire Internet. Imagine a world where the Web understands you. This is 3.0 – the ultimate individualized intelligent Internet, where your personal preferences and tastes dictate what information is shown.

How should we prepare?

Web 3.0 will mean that healthcare marketers and advertisers will be required to think of new ways to build levels of information into Web sites and will force sites to create connectivity in the information so that search engines stream relevant sites to users.

For healthcare marketers and public relations professionals, this new wave of the Internet will mean staying responsive to the environment, even as Web 3.0 continues to be defined. It will demand that Web site owners experiment with ways to offer portals of accessibility to viewers who are ultimately seeking specific information, which is individually tailored for their view of the world and of the Web.

I was pleased to participate as a guest presenter in the Physicians Practice 2009 Podcast Series: Marketing to Physicians Today. Four great topics helping vendors zero in on the current state of the physician marketplace.

My podcast addressed ways to bolster advertising results through the use of PR. The basic premise is this: Even if you have the world’s greatest ad and you get primo placement it in the world’s greatest magazine, there is a high probability that your ad won’t be seen by your audience. All that creativity gone to waste. To increase the probability of the ad being seen, it’s important to have an integrated PR and marketing campaign in place, where advertising is simply one component of many. The podcast discusses important characteristics of your brand—including momentum, credibility, trust and leadership, that are requisite to building a formidable presence in the market. Each step your company takes toward strengthening those characteristics is a step closer to getting a seat at the decision making table. It’s a 10-minute piece. Hope you have a chance to listen.

Color is a funny thing. So is colour. Especially when it comes to branding healthcare organizations. OK, so admittedly blue says healthcare and probably always will. But I believe some new trends are on the horizon. So what is the new blue? NOT BLACK. There are lots of other colors out there, but I would recommend staying away from a heavy usage of black and healthcare. Oh yeah, black’s not a color.

ANYWAY, what I find most difficult about branding for healthcare clients (usually quite conservative and there’s nothing wrong with that) is that often clients seem to want their brand to reflect their living room. That, or some shade of blue. Sometimes, this can work out quite well, but just because you wouldn’t wear any jeans that weren’t blue or paint your house bright red, yellow, or orange doesn’t mean your brand can’t be one of those colors. Combining bright colors with black and/or some other neutral color works well too. OK, or even a hint of blue. What do colors say about a company? Orange is warm, friendly, inviting. I think those are great traits for a medical clinic. Yellow is happy, cheerful, energetic, young – what’s healthier than that?

A few anti-blue logos in the healthcare space are:
3M Canada
ImageNow Perceptive Software
Capario 
AeroScout
Ingenix

And this one, although still blue, gets wild and crazy with that little touch of orange! McKesson 

There’s a great Web site, Colourlovers, that I like to play around with at the start of a new branding project. There is also a good guide to choosing colors for your brand, Usabilitypost.

 So brighten up everyone.

OK, there will always be a place to show a happy doctor, nurse, or administrator. A smiling face is engaging – especially when all the doctors and nurses are in their mid-twenties and look like they stepped right off the set of ER. But let’s face it, if you’re flipping through a medical journal seeing medical image after medical image, what is going to really get your attention? Healthcare advertising needs to take a creative pill. There ARE ways to make healthcare advertising visually interesting.

There are lots of tricks to coming up with creative concepts, but first, the absolute most important thing is to start with the best single-minded proposition that your client and internal team can muster up, and if it it is truly a unique selling point you’re in luck. Sometimes it’s simply focusing on one benefit and taking everything else out of the picture. Sometimes, I highlight one word in a creative brief and focus on that one word. Sometimes I take the opposite of that word to communicate a message. Sometimes I start with the visual, sometimes the headline, but the greatest challenge is making sure each is equally as strong as the other. If you’ve got a kick-ass headline, you probably don’t even need a visual! And my favorite ads are pictures that tell the story – no headline needed. (These are hard to come by.)

And, lastly, if you’ve exhausted all methods and are forced to use ANOTHER happy doctor, at least try to portray an honest/believable brand by not using cheap stock images that have been used a million times in the same space. A photo shoot or even a quality stock image is well worth the investment.

OK, I’ll get off my soap box now.

My good friend Mary Robbins taught me many things about effective advertising. She has served as a creative director for Ogilvy & Mather, Cohn & Wells, ACQ, Robbins Brandt Richter and others. With hundreds of awards for creativity, she’s most proud of campaigns that delivered measurable ROI for her clients.

I’m finding that Mary’s list below – pulled from one of the gazillion articles she has written on advertising that works – is also useful in the healthcare industry. I often glaze over most healthcare advertising that I see. So the list below, mixed with a little creativity, can get your ads noticed and better yet, get people to respond!

1. Photography usually works better than illustration.  People’s imaginations aren’t always as robust as we’d like to believe. (This doesn’t mean we have to show smiling doctors and nurses on everything. Emotive photography and humor through photographic images are a great way to get the viewer to stop and take notice.)
2. Ads that contain a reply device or “where to find out more” details sell more than those that don’t. Yes, just by letting your readers know your product or company is accessible by phone, email, or Web site increases sales.
3. Headlines that contain a feature or benefit  pull up to 10 times better than those that don’t.  David Ogilvy used to say that 98% of the people who look at your ad read the headline and look at the photo and that’s it. Therefore, if your headline doesn’t sell, it is flawed.
4. Certain words do work better than others. New, free, first-time, etc. If you can find a way to weave those magic words into your ads, do so.
5. The message should fit the media. Perhaps obvious, but a subtle learning here.  If you are selling skis, put your ad in a ski magazine. That’s the obvious learning. Less obvious, is to tailor your ads to the medium. Magazines are often about lifestyle. Does your ad take that into account? Does it speak to leisure-time activities? Or in the case of business-to-business magazines, often aimed at a specific industry, does it speak to business needs?
6. It’s a crime to use too much reversed out type (white out of black, but also color out of color). I’ve tested this one over and over, and hate to say it but…if your ad is hard to read, people will not read it.
7. Tell a story. Through your pictures, or in a campaign…David Ogilvy discovered this years ago when he added an eye-patch to the Hathaway shirt man and turned a male model into a story. Who was this mysterious man? Why did he lose his eye? Was he the owner of the company? People wrote hundreds of letters, asking these and other burning questions that kept this campaign alive for years.
8. Color works.  On the other hand, print black type on a light background, say light green or cream, and it’ll work harder than an ad with a white background. That was a great finding when we tested it for Hewlett-Packard.  And 4-color photos usually work better than black and white.
9. Involving your audience works better than boring them. Tactile devices, games, punch out and play, cut along the dotted lines etc – all seem to engage your reader and add memorability to your brand.
10. Actions speak louder than….boring copy. After you’ve completed your ad, or your agency presents you one for approval, think about the verbs. Are they action-oriented or passive? A jogging salesman sells more than a man that is walking. I’ve learned that action words, as well as ones that paint a picture, excite, delight and ignite your readers into action.