As healthcare organizations continue to spend more time and money filling the airwaves, newspaper and magazine columns with messages aimed at persuading and converting consumers, that very audience is increasingly confused, cynical and less receptive to those messages.
At a recent focus group being conducted on behalf of a hospital system, when the moderator held up a pile of print ads, one participant blurted out "Blah, blah, blah - best, biggest, cutting-edge, national leaders."
Obviously the guy had seen a lot of the advertising because he was right on target. When radio ads were played, one woman in the group said "I guess they're OK. They all sound alike."
Similar to many other industries, healthcare advertising has reached full maturity. Healthcare marketing messages are increasingly indistinct.
There are three contributing factors:
"Us, Too" Syndrome.
This strategy is doomed for failure. If one hospital is making the "we have nationally recognized doctors" claim, and six others chime in with the same message, the typical result is that consumers will become indifferent or confused.
When consumers have no criteria for making a judgment ("Who knows what's true and what's not," asked a focus group participant), they move past the message, either to something they know is true/not true ("a new building" is verifiable) or to something that's relevant to them ("My neighbor went there and they were nice/horrible).
Answering "Who Cares?"
The issue of relevance is critical in healthcare advertising. Consumer research usually reveals that the things consumers are most concerned with are not addressed in healthcare advertising campaigns.
The list of assets that draw a ho-hum response from consumers in most markets include "our doctors are famous," "we won XXXX award," accreditations, statistics without context ("200 open heart surgeries a year" is meaningless to most consumers), and general statistics.
Healthcare decision-makers tend to default to the personal experiences of friends and relatives. "They may do all that stuff," said one respondent referring to statistical claims, "but when my neighbor was there, the people were rude."
Blind Faith in Conventional Wisdom.
There is a tendency to develop messages based on conventional wisdom, without testing those messages with consumers. Consider the "new consumerism," that is gaining in popularity.
This school of thought holds that today's healthcare consumers are proactive, involved, "want-to-be-in-charge" folks.
It was the impetus behind a recent positioning campaign developed for a large hospital system in a mature managed care market.
When that message was tested with consumers in that market, there were a few who responded positively, but the majority responded with varying degrees of unease.
Seniors commented that they didn't want to be in charge; they wanted their doctors to be in charge.
Even younger consumers were slow to warm to the message as one put it, "I want to be listened to and respected, but I'm not a medical professional and if I need care, I don't want to have to figure it out by myself."
Fortunately, the research was done before the ads were produced, so the positioning could be reworked.
The campaign not only would have failed, it could possibly have had a disastrous results, scaring some of the more conservative consumers away.
Another telling example involved the concept of physician-hospital partnerships. Again, pundits would tell us that the concept of hospitals and physicians acting in concert would have great appeal to consumers, because of its successful track record in several markets.
However, in real-time testing, the position didn't hold up. In fact, consumers responded very negatively, because of the word "partners."
To consumers, this word raises a red flag and communicates a financial arrangement where the doctors and hospitals are in "cahoots," said one consumer, which would be detrimental to patients. Of significant interest to healthcare communicators is the fact that the consumers attributed the negative, profit-centered motives to the hospitals, and felt that physicians would be sullied by a partnership with the hospital.
Although these examples are not applicable to every market, healthcare communicators must understand the bigger picture. We seem to be sending messages that may be irrelevant, confusing or even offensive to the public.
This situation can be avoided if we take the time to talk to our customers, with a heavy focus on listening.
Kathy Lewton is director of the National Health Care Practice at Porter Novelli in Chicago. She is author of Public Relations in Health Care: A Guide For Professionals.
She can be reached at 312/856-8888 or email: [email protected].