Talking About How We Market Healthcare

E.B. MOSS ON WHY OUR ISSUES – AND OPPORTUNITIES – AROUND HEALTHCARE MARKETING SPARKED THE FOCUS OF THIS ISSUE 

There, almost literally, is no one on the planet not aware of the impact of COVID-19 on the world today. And yet, we still have a messaging problem. 

Whether from mis- or dis-information, news avoidance altogether or a lack of unity about the bottom line, getting a cohesive word out on our universal problem has been, well, a problem. This issue of The Continuum looks not just at our challenge with marketing pandemic messaging, but, with our attention hyper-focused on health as a result, how are we marketing healthcare overall differently? How do we grow awareness of everything from tele-health to the Social Determinants of Health and drive better outcomes for not just our clients but our very species?

A recent article by Dr. Jeremy Faust in New York Magazine bemoaned the missed opportunity to both grow awareness of the facts around getting the COVID vaccine as well as post-injection outcomes. Doctors, he said, are not clearly warning recipients about short term side effects or the incubation time for full protection -- and thus the imperative of maintaining safety protocols. He specifically said we are “burying the lead.”  (Ironically, his lead – the demand for better patient messaging – was buried towards the end of his article, sort of emblematic of the point itself.) 

He pointedly noted: 

“We — and by we, I mean journalists and public-health commentators — have got to be a bit more rigorous about how we frame reports like these in this most crucial of moments.” 

The lead of Faust’s story, to me, is: 

“If we do not tell our patients about how the vaccine works and when the protective effects are expected to kick in, some people are going to feel betrayed when they get sick following vaccination. That’s preventable. Vaccinations are both a public-health and messaging opportunity. At the moment, we’re letting it slip away.” 

The following week, the New York Times published some of its most “rigorous” and detailed work explaining the process and performance of the vaccine. But whether in talking about how we talk about healthcare, per the well-intended New York article,  or how healthcare brands or providers are actually talking about it to consumers (got that?!), we must message better. 

Do take the lead from Issue 2 contributors like Sarah C. Sanders, Chief Marketing Officer for a large children’s health system, who talks OUR talk: she literally described the imperative of both brand and demand in healthcare marketing as a necessary “continuum.” (Gotta love that.) Five-time healthcare CMO Arra Yerganian then builds a case for not just the need to shift power from doctors to members (AKA “patients” – a word he banned in his CMO roles) but for growing the awareness that our very zip codes and lifestyles are huge determinants of health. 

Now a “health coach to the stars,” Liz Josefsberg shifted from from once telling the brand story of Weight Watchers to actually writing the book on weight loss and healthy attitudes. And to understand the power of emotion in story telling as a way to drive uptake of anything from vaccines to insurance read my interview with RPAs Chief Creative Officer, Joe Baratelli. (You can also listen to the complete 30-minute conversations of both the Yerganian and Baratelli interviews as a podcast.)

Telling compelling stories, and disrupting business as usual, is part of what Publicis Health Media President Andrea Palmer charges her healthcare agency with. Finally, we round out this issue, as we will always do in The Continuum, with a POV on tactics, in this case from someone running a very healthy trade association: Barry Frey, CEO of DPAA shares why digital out of home has had a banner year. 

Thank you for reading and passing along The Continuum. In future articles we’ll be covering how brand + demand is reflected in everything from corporate social responsibility to CPG. But for now, in this new year, filled with hope for better health and happiness, here’s to your good, better, best health — in body, mind and marketing!  

February 1, 2021